The Omega Command

by Jon Land

“Nothing!”

  Blaine dug the gun’s barrel home until he broke flesh. “Christmas Eve, Krell, tell me about Christmas Eve.”

  “I don’t know. I’m just a middleman. I relay orders, arrange shipments.”

  “Of arms?”

  “Yes.”

  “Through who?”

  “Deveraux,” Krell rasped. “In France.”

  “Deveraux?” Blaine said, more to himself than to Krell. Deveraux was the most successful, respected arms dealer in the world. Why would he be mixed up in something like this? “You’ll have to do better than that.”

  “It’s the truth! Nine major shipments so far. One left to go. I coordinate all the activity between Deveraux and Sahhan so there’s no direct link between them.”

  “Did Sahhan set all this up?”

  “Not at first. … You’ve got to let me live! I’m telling you everything I know!”

  “Just answer my questions. Who put you on to Sahhan?”

  “I don’t know their names. They sent me to him and handled all the financial arrangements. I was just a middleman, I tell you!”

  “Were they black or white?”

  “What?”

  “The men who approached you, were they black or white?”

  “White. All of them. They stressed that Sahhan was never to be implicated in the dealings. I was told to get the best from the best. Price didn’t matter. I went to Deveraux.”

  “And Deveraux handled the shipments. …”

  “But he didn’t realize to who. I had dealt with him before. He thought the weapons and explosives were bound for South America.”

  “How was payment handled?” Blaine realized his hand was going stiff from the pressure of holding the gun against the fat man’s temple.

  “Cash, always cash. Delivered in leather attache cases. Sums too impossible to believe … I’m telling you everything!”

  “Where were the weapons shipped?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Blaine shoved the barrel harder against him and Krell tumbled to the side. McCracken kept him pinned there, one side of the fat head squeezed against the cement.

  “I swear I don’t know. I’d tell you if I did. Deveraux handled all that. The weapons were gathered in central warehouses, where Sahhan’s men distributed them. The process has been going on for months. Armories have been set up in every major city, all well hidden.”

  “Where are these armories? Which cities?”

  “They never told me. I never asked. That wasn’t my department. You’ve got to believe me!”

  Blaine did believe him. He glanced around. No one was near. The sirens were still blaring. He had little time left before the police would be everywhere.

  Krell swallowed hard. “I’ve told you everything I know. You’ve got to let me go.”

  Blaine said nothing, just started to tighten his finger on the trigger. Krell had to die.

  “You promised!”

  And in that moment of hesitation, Blaine knew he couldn’t pull the trigger. Not now, not like this. Krell was a dead man anyway. He had talked and that meant someone else would be along to do the job.

  McCracken pulled the gun back and lifted Krell up with one powerful arm.

  “Get out of here, fat man! Disappear! They’ll be taking numbers to burn your ass before long.”

  Krell looked back just once, shocked but grateful, then stumbled around the corner and was gone.

  Andrew Stimson met McCracken in the backseat of another cab ninety minutes later, accepting the details of McCracken’s report with grim reserve.

  “You’ve certainly lived up to your reputation, Blaine.”

  “You get what you pay for, Andy. There’s no time to fuck with these people. This is the only way I know to get the job done.”

  “I wasn’t criticizing. I know what we’re dealing with here.” Stimson hesitated. “But I can’t say I approve of your exposing yourself to Sahhan.”

  “It got me to Krell, and that made it worthwhile. I’m not worried.”

  “I gather your impression of Sahhan wasn’t favorable.”

  “He’s a fanatic, Andy, and all fanatics with a following as large as his are dangerous. When it comes to organizing this Christmas Eve business, though, he’s had lots of help. Somebody’s using him and that same somebody set up Krell as a middleman for the arms deals with Deveraux.”

  “Our friends who hired Chen and Scola?”

  Blaine nodded. “The very same. The one thing out of place is Deveraux. He sets the standard for respectable arms dealers, the ones who don’t operate out of a garage. A couple of yachts, a villa in the south of France. Definitely the good life. He’s sold lots of bullets.”

  “Know where to find him?”

  “He conducts all his business from Paris. I’ve got contacts who can bring me the specifics.”

  A look of concern crossed Stimson’s face. “Be careful who you talk to, Blaine. This is a one-man game you’re playing.”

  “Right. What’s the latest from General Peachtree?”

  “It’s Peacher. His teams are starting to move into the cities. It’ll take some time before he has anything to report.”

  “Then I guess I’d better get to Paris fast.”

  “Just try not to leave too many bodies in the streets,” Stimson warned. “I won’t be able to cover for you with my people over there. You’re totally on your own.”

  “Wouldn’t have it any other way.”

  Part Three

  San Melas

  Saturday Afternoon to Tuesday Morning

  Chapter 14

  THE PAST DAY had been an exercise in total frustration for Sandy Lister. The only bright spot had been the call to Stephen Shay she had promised T.J. Brown. Shay listened attentively to her story, from the moment she received the computer disk to its disappearance after her interview with Hollins in Billings. Somehow Shay’s silence made Sandy feel all the more tense. During the course of her story, her mouth got drier and drier, and by the end a thin taste of blood coated her tongue.

  “You should have filled me in on this at the beginning,” Shay said when she had finished. “You broke procedure.”

  “I know.”

  “You jeopardized a police and possibly a federal investigation by withholding evidence, and then you breached national security by talking to that man Coglan. Not to mention the fact that you pursued a story totally out of your jurisdiction without prior network approval and—”

  “Say no more, Steve. I’m on my way home. If you want my head on a platter, you’ve got it.”

  “Wait a minute, you didn’t let me finish. I’m not applauding your methods, but the fact remains you’re on to a hot story here and I was a journalist a long time before I became a producer.”

  “All I’ve ever been is an interviewer, remember? Smile at the right times and dig out fresh responses from basically boring people.”

  “No, San, the connection to Krayman makes this your piece, so I want you to stay with it. And as for the disk, well, possession is nine tenths of the law, and we haven’t got a damn thing anymore.”

  “But who stole it, Steve?”

  “That’s what I expect you to be able to tell me by Christmas.”

  “It had to be someone from inside the network. And T.J. thinks he’s being watched.”

  “Probably his imagination. But I’ll put our security people on it to be on the safe side. You’ve got to stay in touch with me on this from now on, San. Call in regularly. I want to know every move you make. I want to know where you’re going before you get there.”

  Sandy breathed a sigh of relief and barely managed to hold back tears of gratitude. “I’m on my way to Texas now,” she told Shay, “on the trail of Simon Terrell, Randall Krayman’s chief assistant until a few years before he pulled out.”

  “Terrell … Never heard of him. Why bother pursuing the Krayman angle anyway now that you’ve got the space shuttle bit?”

  “Because they’re connected. I just
don’t know how yet. That interview with Hollins raised a lot more questions than answers. Randall Krayman wanted very badly to have total control of that ultra-density memory chip used in telecommunications. He’s got his hand in every television, telephone, and radio in the country and there’s something very wrong about that.”

  The line went silent briefly.

  “That’s quite a mouthful, San.”

  “You should have heard Hollins.”

  “I will … when you return to tape the interview.”

  “Thanks, Steve.”

  “Just make sure I don’t regret this.”

  As it turned out, Sandy might have felt better if Shay had pulled her off the story. Her flight from Billings was airborne only forty minutes Saturday afternoon when a snowstorm forced it to land in Wyoming. She spent four miserable hours in a miniature airport eating prepackaged vending machine food with smudged expiration dates.

  She finally made it to Dallas early Saturday night only to find that Simon Terrell was no longer at the address T.J. had given her. His new one meant a drive up Route 35 toward Denton in a rented car which overheated twenty miles down the highway. It was replaced by the rental company quickly enough with a sub-compact that changed lanes based on the whims of the wind.

  Things got no better in Denton. Simon Terrell had vacated his apartment there nearly six months before and had left yet another forwarding address, this time hundreds of miles away in Seminole, Oklahoma.

  Sandy spent the night in a roadside motel and left for Seminole early Sunday morning. She stopped for breakfast at a diner and bought a road map of Oklahoma at the gas station where she filled up the car. It was already blistering hot as she headed north. The air conditioner was a blessing for a while, but then the car’s temperature needle climbed dangerously toward the red and forced Sandy to use the windows instead. The hot breeze gave her a headache, drowned out the weak radio, and drenched her back with sweat to the point where she felt herself sticking to the vinyl upholstery.

  Incredibly, though, she found Seminole with little trouble and quickly located Simon Terrell’s latest forwarding address.

  “You’re sure this is the address you’re looking for?”

  “Absolutely,” Sandy told the caretaker of the Green-leaves Cemetery.

  A wry smile crossed the man’s face. “Then you’re gonna find it mighty tough to get yourself an interview. Most of our tenants don’t have much to say.” And he laughed.

  With that lead behind her, Sandy would have to find Terrell, if he was among the 7,500 people of Seminole, through good old-fashioned legwork.

  The heat had evaporated as she drew farther into Oklahoma, and Seminole was comfortably cool. The radio predicted a chance of showers. Sandy stopped first at a bar and grill and started asking questions. The people inside seemed suspicious of her, their answers abrupt and terse. None of them had ever heard of Simon Terrell.

  “You that woman on TV, ain’t ya?” one of them asked her.

  “Yes,” Sandy replied, glad for once at the recognition.

  “Oh,” was all the man said before he went back to his beer.

  Sandy went through three cups of coffee trying to figure out her next step. If Simon Terrell had come to Seminole, he would have used a different name. She moved from her booth and settled down at the bar next to the man who had recognized her. His hair was graying, his eyes tired, and he wore a patched-up down vest.

  “Has any man moved into town in the last few months, say a man about forty?”

  “Lots of people pass through,” the man told her, looking up from his beer.

  “I mean somebody who settled down.”

  The man churned his mug until suds formed on the top. “You lookin’ for a husband?”

  “Just a story.”

  The man raised his bushy eyebrows. “This guy you’re after, he do somethin’ wrong?”

  “No, he’s connected to someone else I’m doing a story on. I need his help.”

  “Any chance of me gettin’ on your show if I help ya too?”

  “Nope,” Sandy said frankly, and they both smiled.

  The man downed his beer and signaled for another. “Only one man I seen ’round here fits your boy, but his name ain’t Terrell. I deliver stuff to all the Indian reservations in these parts and he showed up at one a few months back. A teacher or somethin’.”

  “Around forty?”

  “I ain’t too good judgin’ ages, but I’d say yeah, give or take a few years. Got long hair, though.”

  “You remember the man’s name?” Sandy asked, flipping the bartender a bill for the beer before the man could get his hand into his worn-out pants.

  “Trask, I think,” he told her. “Steve Trask.”

  The man’s directions to the Indian reservation were easy to follow, the roads straight, and the turns well marked. Sandy knew she had finally found Terrell. Men on the run often changed their names but kept the same initials to avoid questions about labels on luggage, books, towels, and other possessions. Simon Terrell was running, all right. Denton hadn’t been right for him, nor had Greenville, so he was trying Seminole with the same initials but a different name.

  The reservation was located out on the plains, free of power lines, cables, even telephone poles. If Terrell had wanted to hide, he had certainly come to the right place. But why in Seminole? Why among Indians?

  Sandy’s certainty that Trask was Terrell dwindled as she drew closer to the reservation. There were no identifying signs on the fence enclosing rows of small, well-constructed homes. There were larger buildings as well, none of which were identified in any way. She pulled her compact between a pair of pickups and climbed out.

  There were few people around, and no one paid much attention to her. In all probability few of the reservation’s inhabitants would recognize her. She moved through the dusty grounds, longing for a pair of boots, and outside the parking lot she approached a plump, middle-aged Indian man.

  “Can I help you?” he asked politely.

  “I’m looking for Steven Trask.”

  “You’ll find him somewhere around the school.” The Indian aimed a callused finger to the left. “About fifty yards that way. He’ll probably be with the kids behind the building.”

  Sandy followed the Indian’s directions and found herself walking through a different age. Beneath the clearing sky women sewed and stirred the contents of tall pots over open flames. She didn’t see many men and guessed they were at work in the surrounding fields.

  The schoolhouse was not hard to find, and as she drew closer to it, Sandy could hear the giggling of children not far away. She followed a path around to the rear of the building. A group of twenty or so kids was engaged in various games, and another ten sat in a circle around an elaborate arrangement of small stones. The head of a single adult dominated the scene, his back to Sandy. She moved closer and took a deep breath.

  “Mr. Trask?”

  The man turned around slowly and stood up.

  “Hello, Miss Lister, I’ve been expecting you,” said Simon Terrell.

  Chapter 15

  “HOW DID YOU KNOW—”

  “That you were coming?” Terrell asked, his arms on the shoulders of a young boy and a young girl who flanked him. “I have a friend at your network who told me you were on my trail. I knew you’d track me down sooner or later, though I expected you’d have a camera crew along for the ride.”

  “Would you have talked before a camera?”

  “I’m not sure I have anything to say to you even without one. And you can forget all about that off-the-record crap because with the people you’re looking into, there’s no such thing.”

  The wind whipped up and ruffled Terrell’s overlong hair. He looked pretty much like the picture Sandy had of him, except a bit more ragged and less polished. His curly hair fell naturally around his face, styled by the wind. He had a two- or three-day growth of beard and sunburned skin that made his light blue eyes look even icier. His boots clip-clo
pped on the pebble ground as he moved toward Sandy, the two children still clinging tight to his forearms.

  “Go play with the others,” he told them softly. They resisted for a second, then took off with jealous eyes on Sandy.

  “This is quite a departure from Krayman Industries, Mr. Terrell,” she said, taking his extended hand.

  Terrell glanced around him. “I should have done it years ago. Call me Simon, by the way.”

  “How did your contact at my network know how to reach you?”

  “I’m not a total recluse, Miss Lister.”

  “Sandy.”

  “Sandy. There are a few people who know how to reach me in an emergency.”

  They walked toward the schoolhouse, until they reached the shade of a big tree.

  “This is as good a place as any,” Terrell told her. “As long as you don’t mind getting your pants dirty. I should keep my eye on the kids.”

  “This is fine,” Sandy said, and they both sat down on the ground. Her eyes swept over the young children playing. “Are you their teacher?”

  “Weekdays, yes. On weekends I become a baby-sitter. The older kids are working with their parents, mostly in the fields. Some are out hunting. I volunteered for this duty.”

  “Doing penance for past sins?”

  Terrell smiled briefly at that. “No, just trying to forget about them. My whole life had been based on technology for so long that I almost forgot what people were all about. Finally it got to be too much. I felt more like one of the machines I was tending than a man. I had to get out, so I ran away.”

  “But you’re still running, aren’t you?” Sandy prodded. “Is someone after you?”

  Sandy expected Terrell to hesitate, but his response came immediately. “No one’s after me and I think the running has stopped. For a dozen years I worked for the most powerful man in the world. I saw things I’d rather forget and did things I’d love to blame on somebody else. You could say I’ve been running from myself more than anything. Withdrawing, I guess.”

  Sandy thought of Spud Hollins living at his ranch in the hills of Montana. “Randall Krayman seems to have that effect on people. You left Krayman Industries a few years before he dropped out of sight, correct?”