The Templar conspiracy t-4

by Paul Christopher

  The overhead light dimmed, flickered and died. Everything went dark.

  "The beginning," said Holliday, out of the blackness. "Now get us out of these cuffs before it's too late."

  36

  The positioning of the first of the tanker trucks beside the shopping center had not been accidental. A hundred feet away, tucked in behind the P amp;C supermarket, was the main substation off the 132-kilovolt grid that powered the entire town of Winter Falls. The eight-foot-high chain-link fence topped with razor wire was no protection at all from the ANFO bomb and was obliterated during the first seconds after the explosion.

  Unfortunately for the residents of the town, the main switching station for Granite State Telephone stood fifty feet from the electrical substation and transformer, and the two nearby cell phone towers on Pine Hill Road were also rendered inoperable. Within an instant almost all methods of communication in Winter Falls were destroyed.

  The sound of the explosion even penetrated the hockey arena at the Abbey School, the arched rafters shaking as the pressure wave rolled over the town. Within seconds the Secret Service had begun their standard extraction procedures for the president, but they were startled and more than surprised to find themselves pinned down by what sounded like small-arms fire coming from the woods. The president and his party were taken to the Abbey dressing room, a below-grade concrete bunker where they would be safe.

  "Where's the president right now?" Holliday asked as they struggled to find their way through the squad room. Half the ceiling had collapsed and the air was full of plaster dust. They could hear voices and the sound of coughing, but they couldn't see anything. Holliday and Peggy kept close on Chief Lockwood's heels as he followed the wall around toward the entrance to the squad room.

  "Hang on," wheezed Lockwood, trying to spit out the cloying, ancient plaster from his mouth. "I'll get a handheld." The policeman reached out blindly, his hand finally finding the rack of charging radios the officers used when they weren't in their cruisers. He hit the ON switch but there was nothing but static. "What the hell?" He hammered the radio set with his palm but there was still nothing. They could hear the sounds of people trapped in the rubble from the fallen ceiling. "Flashlights," said Lockwood numbly. "We need flashlights so we can get these people out of here."

  "There's no time!" Holliday insisted. "That was just the start! You think it's a coincidence with the president here?" He clutched at Lockwood in the darkness. "Where would he be?"

  "The rink. The Abbey School."

  "Where would the Secret Service take him in an emergency? A blackout?"

  "Back here." Lockwood said. "His chopper's on a temporary pad in the park."

  "We've got to stop him before it's too late," Holliday said firmly. He tugged hard on Lockwood's arm. "Get us out of here. Now."

  "There are people injured here. My people. I can't just leave them."

  "You can't help them, either. This son of a bitch murdered the Pope and blew up the vice president. He just took out all your lights, power and communications, and I guarantee you, he's not finished yet."

  Lockwood stumbled out into the hallway with Holliday and Peggy close behind. Plaster dust hung like a cloud and in the haze shadowy figures made their way to the shattered glass-front door. Finally they stood outside the building in the blowing snow. The entire town was dark except for the headlights of slow-moving vehicles across the park. There was no sign of the presidential motorcade.

  "We're going to freeze to death like this," said Holliday, shivering.

  "Come on," said Lockwood. He led them down the street that ran in front of the building to a row of shops on the square. Lockwood stopped at the largest one and Holliday read the old-fashioned sign on the front: UNCLE JIMMY'S SPORT PARADISE. Lockwood didn't hesitate. He put his boot through the metal-and-glass-front door, reached in and twisted the lock, then stepped inside. Holliday and Peggy followed. The place was dark and silent, a wide, long, low-ceilinged room divided into aisles. Lockwood found a big twelve-volt lantern and swung the beam around the room. Racks of antlers, a moose head, a stuffed lynx head and a lacquered blue marlin hung from the walls.

  Lockwood shone the light down the middle aisle. At its end there was a rack of orange and camo quilted hunting jackets. They followed the policeman down the aisle and each of them pulled on one of the jackets.

  "Now what?" Peggy asked.

  "Weapons," said Holliday.

  "I'm not sure I want you armed," said Lockwood.

  "I don't care what you're sure of. I'm not going after Billy Tritt without something with a very large caliber in my hand."

  "I could lose my job," said Lockwood.

  "I could lose my life."

  "Point taken," said Lockwood. "Gun up, I guess."

  Holliday chose a secondhand AR-15 with a sling and put it over his back. He stuffed his pockets with magazines, then chose a Mossberg 12-gauge autoloader, crammed five slug shells into the automag and stuffed his pants pockets with twenty more. For a handgun he chose a Colt M1911.45-caliber semiautomatic pistol exactly like the one he'd used in combat from Vietnam to Somalia. He found a web belt with a pouch and loaded half a dozen magazines, while Peggy and Lockwood armed themselves.

  "This is like an audition for Rambo Six," Peggy said, choosing a rather unladylike Ruger Blackhawk. "What kind of bullets does this thing use?"

  Lockwood had picked a Remington 480 Bushmaster to go along with the Walther on his hip. "Casulls,.454-caliber. You fire that thing, young lady, you be sure to hold it in both hands. He handed her a box of the large shells and she methodically began to load the cylinder.

  "Young lady, my ass," she muttered.

  "What if the good guys see us wandering around like this?"

  Lockwood took out his badge and ID wallet, slipped out the badge and pinned it on the front of the camopatterned hunting jacket. "This will have to do," he said. "Now, what exactly are we looking for?"

  "The explosion was a distraction," said Holliday. "It's almost certainly designed to draw away local law enforcement and get the Secret Service to exfiltrate the president. That means they'll bring him back to the chopper and get him the hell out of here. That's the obvious protocol."

  "So you think this Tritt character will be close by?"

  "I can almost guarantee it." Holliday nodded. "He'll have night-vision equipment and something big enough to bring the helicopter down before it gets very far off the ground. A Stinger or something like it. And that won't be the end of it, either."

  "That's not enough?" Lockwood said.

  "The whole idea is to create enough chaos to justify Matoon pressuring the White House into declaring martial law. I'm guessing Tritt's got more truck bombs that he's going to let off, probably using some kind of remote detonator."

  "Cell and radio are out. How's he supposed to set these things off?"

  "Cell phones are out, but satellite phones aren't."

  "How do we know this guy if we see him?" Lockwood asked. "My town's being blown to hell and its pitch-dark."

  "Look for the guy carrying a surface-to-air missile," said Holliday.

  "This is just like the good old days," grunted Lockwood. "Trying to kill an enemy you can't see."

  "I hated the good old days," said Holliday.

  "Me, too," answered Lockwood. They went out into the cold again.

  At the Abbey School the Secret Service had found and routed the half dozen men in phony National Guard uniforms, killing four and wounding two, who were now being held prisoner. The two survivors quickly told the Secret Service about the plan to blow up the entire school with an ANFO bomb, and the president and his entourage were immediately removed from the premises, leaving the evacuation of the other people at the stadium to the local police. Twenty-five minutes after the explosion that had turned out the lights all over Winter Falls the presidential limousine was on its way back to the center of town and the waiting Marine One helicopter.

  Billy Tritt sat in his room in the inn and
tried to control his anger. The first explosion had gone off perfectly, sending Malcolm Teeter to whatever hell awaited his shriveled, mindless soul.

  Windows had blown out in half of Winter Falls, there was panic everywhere and a huge fire was developing on the eastern edge of town. It had been distraction enough to draw the fire trucks out of their hall on the west side of the Municipal Building and from the looks of it from his position, part of the roof of the police department had collapsed. With the cessation of communication resulting from the triple threat of the destruction of the electrical substation, the telephone switching hub and the two cell towers serving Winter Falls, both the Headquarters Emergency Management unit of the New Hampshire State Police in Concord and the F Troop station in Twin Mountains would have automatically been alerted, but F Troop was sixty miles away and Concord ever farther. At the very least it would take F Troop the better part of an hour to appear and the HQ SWAT team about half an hour longer.

  However, the second truck bomb at the Abbey School had not detonated for some reason and Tritt had been forced to go to his Plan B alternative. The second bomb should have demolished the main building of the school, the stone debris in turn destroying the relatively flimsy construction of the arched shell enclosing the hockey rink. By now Tritt should have been halfway across Lake Winnipesaukee, riding on the snowmobile he'd left behind Gorman's Restaurant earlier in the evening.

  Reaching the other side of the lake and his rental car, Tritt would have detonated the other four truck bombs spread around the town via satellite phone, and while Winter Falls burned he'd be climbing aboard the little Cessna he'd chartered at Laconia Airport and heading into oblivion once more.

  Instead he was on the third floor of an old brick bed-and-breakfast in a snowstorm, awaiting the inevitable arrival of the president and his retinue. It would make his own exfiltration considerably more dangerous, but he'd contracted for the president's death and, if nothing else, he always fulfilled his contracts.

  Tritt shifted slightly in his chair beside the window. They'd be coming from the west and they'd be coming fast, lights flashing and sirens wailing. The security they used for once-upon-a-time presidents was definitely second-tier-new Secret Service types as well as old burnouts-but it was enough to give him trouble. There'd be a few local cops and a squad of state police from the VIP protection bunch, but that would be about it.

  They'd all heave a sigh of relief once the chopper rose into the snowy air, and that's when he would strike. He reached over and laid his hand on the tube of the ATC Confined Space Anti-Tank weapon. Unlike the weapon he'd used in Italy, the ATC was unguided, but from his window the chopper was no more than 150 meters away. He could hardly miss. The two-kilo, high-explosive warhead would turn the VIP helicopter into scrap metal in a split second.

  He had timed it roughly and it would take him about thirty seconds to get out through the main-floor kitchen of the hotel and another minute to reach Gorman's Restaurant and the dock that ran out to the ice beside it. It was really the only way out.

  Whatever was left of the Maine's Right Arm bunch he'd brought with him were to escape by road, but if the state police were any good at all they'd have expanding perimeter roadblocks established very quickly, especially with a President of the United States involved, soon-to-be-ex or otherwise.

  If the MRA types were dumb enough they'd try to shoot their way out, which would mean even more fuel to Matoon and the Sinclair bitch's fire. The whole plan was insane, of course, but so was Hitler, and it didn't matter, anyway, since they paid well. He could and would retire on what they were paying him for this night's work.

  He heard the sirens now, approaching fast. He parted the curtains slightly and opened the old-fashioned casement window. He picked up the antitank weapon from the side table on his left, balanced it on his right shoulder and used the index finger of his right hand to disengage the two safeties. He moved the index finger from the safety switches on the side of the tube and laid it firmly on the firing button that was located just in front of the optical night sight. He waited and for a moment he let himself see the clear Caribbean blue of the water just offshore from his place at Lyford Cay. He slowly let the air out of his lungs, imagining himself snorkeling above a school of darting spotted drums. Below him the motorcade came into view. They were here and it was time to end it.

  37

  "Shit," said Randy Lockwood. Out of the whirling snow he could see the lead car of the motorcade, light bar flashing, the sound of its siren muffled by the storm. If Tritt was nearby they had no more than a few seconds to find him. Behind the Winter Falls cruiser he could see the trailing line of Escalades, one of them with the president inside. He gritted his teeth and prayed that this man Holliday was wrong.

  As a rule the average person rarely looks higher than the horizon directly in front of him. This is a natural instinct bred into the human race for millions of years, since man's predators almost inevitably approached him on the same level, whether from the front or the rear. It is also the first instinct to disappear very quickly among military personnel and even civilians in places like Iraq and Afghanistan; like the unofficial motto of the Eighty-second Airborne in Vietnam, death very often came from above.

  Holliday knew that if Tritt was nearby he'd go for the high ground. The square in front of the Municipal Building had two-story, Victorian-era buildings on the east side and the same on the west, with the Municipal Building forming the northern side of the square. The south, or Main Street side, was taken up by the Dominion Hotel, a squat, seven-story, flat-roofed brick building that looked down onto the park that formed the center of the square.

  As the motorcade swept around the eastern side of the square Holliday looked up. At first nothing seemed out of place. The Dominion Hotel, like every other building in Winter Falls, was dark.

  "Anything?" Lockwood said.

  "No," said Holliday, squinting through the heavy snowfall. The motorcade was pulling up in front of the Municipal Building.

  "There!" said Peggy, pointing.

  "What?"

  "Third floor, fourth from the left. The window's open! Who the hell would have a window open on a night like this?"

  Holliday stared upward, following her pointing finger. He caught a flutter of movement as the wind billowed the curtains. It was Kandahar, before he'd lost his eye. A fluttering window and a shadow with a cell phone. The Humvee stopped just in front of the IED before it exploded and the.50-caliber machine gun on the vehicle shredded the window frame around the twitching curtain and the shadowy figure behind it. He didn't hesitate and neither did Lockwood. They fired simultaneously just as Tritt's finger pushed down on the firing button of the antitank rocket.

  The world exploded all around them. A flame trail from the rocket arced down from the hotel window, catching the Super Puma helicopter squarely between the sliding door and the slightly sagging multiple rotors, striking the big twin Turbomeca engines and rupturing the fuel lines. For a fraction of a second there was silence and it seemed as though little or no damage had been done. Then the explosive warhead of the rocket detonated and the entire helicopter was enveloped in a growing fireball. The blast wave knocked Holliday, Peggy and Lockwood to the ground as fractured pieces of rotor spun off in all directions, one piece slicing through the front entrance of Uncle Jimmy's Sport Paradise, while a second, larger piece sawed through the middle of the lead police cruiser in the motorcade, instantly killing both the driver and his partner.

  Through the smoke and flames there was no way to know what had happened to the president. A cloud of choking smoke drifted over the square as Holliday, Lockwood and Peggy picked themselves up. Combined with the heavy snowfall, visibility was now almost zero.

  "He was on the third floor," said Lockwood.

  "Which way would he go?" Holliday asked.

  "If he's smart he'll figure on roadblocks."

  "What does that mean?"

  "He's probably got a snowmobile someplace. They use them to
get out to the ice-fishing huts. It wouldn't look out of place down by the docks."

  Holliday nodded. "He cuts across the lake and he's gone before anybody has time to think. Somewhere along the line he dials his sat phone and blows Winter Falls to hell."

  "Something like that."

  Holliday turned to Peggy. "Find the top cop in charge over there," he said, pointing toward the flaming remains of the helicopter. Tell whoever it is that the chief and I are going after Tritt, and they should start looking for more truck bombs before it's too late."

  "You're not just trying to get rid of me are you?"

  "Don't be an idiot. I'm trying to save lives. Go!"

  She went.

  "Now what?" Holliday said.

  "Follow me," said Lockwood. He turned and disappeared into the smoke and snow, heading across the street to the inn.

  It had been too soon, but Tritt didn't have any choice. He fired the rocket, dropped the hot metal tube unceremoniously off his shoulder and headed for the door, patting the pocket of his heavy parka to make sure the satellite phone was still there. He ran out into the dark hallway, ignored the elevator to the left and turned right until he reached the door leading to the stairwell.

  A minute later he reached the lobby, which was now swarming with guests and hotel employees. People were calling out to one another, someone was crying and flashlight beams were cutting through the haze that had started filling up the main-floor reception area. Everything smelled of smoke and jet fuel. No one noticed as Tritt headed into the restaurant at the rear of the hotel, then pushed through the swinging doors leading into the kitchen. Ninety seconds after destroying the helicopter in the square he was racing down the alley behind the hotel, and two minutes after that he was turning the key in the ignition of the big, silver Yamaha Vector snowmobile parked behind the patio of Gorman's Restaurant. He twisted the throttle, turned the snowmobile into a tight circle and headed west, out onto the frozen lake.