There was a turnaround and a landscaped island at the end of the driveway, perfectly placed to line up on the front door and covered porch above. Shaw quickly navigated the tight turn and parked the Pontiac as close to the front doors as he could get. As he opened the car door and got out, he pulled the Beretta from the small of his back and pressed it against his right leg as he bounced up the front stairs. That put him underneath the peaked canopy, which extended over the front porch, effectively screening him from the sentry on the roof. He rang the doorbell and moments later a young girl of perhaps seven or eight, holding a big ugly cat in her arms opened the door and looked up at him, puzzled.
“Ellie, you know you’re not supposed to open the door,” a frazzled blonde woman in her mid-twenties called to the little girl as she hurried across the foyer to the door. “Sorry,” the woman said to Shaw. “We just got home, and this has been a crazy night. Can I help you?” she asked, sounding annoyed.
Shaw smiled. “Oh, I already heard. Mr. Burke sent me to pick you up.”
“Pick us up? We just got home… and he didn’t say anything to me,” Linda frowned as she stared at him more closely. “Wait a minute, nobody calls him ‘Mr. Burke.’ ”
Shaw’s smile faded as he glanced left and right and then looked inside the foyer, but he saw no one else was around. “To be perfectly honest, I don’t call him Mr. Burke, either. That’s not to say I haven’t called him a lot of other things lately, but I’ll be nice and won’t use those in front of tender ears,” he said as he raised the Beretta and pointed it at Ellie. “Now get in the car, you and the little girl.”
Linda stood frozen in the doorway, staring at him, until she put her arm around Ellie and drew her closer. Shaw made the mistake of reaching for the young girl’s arm, until the cat turned its head, bared its teeth, and took a quick swipe at him with the sharp claws of its right paw. They took a divot on the back of Shaw’s hand, and he quickly backed away.
At the same time, Shaw heard a man’s voice call from behind him, from the left front corner of the house outside. “Is everything okay, Mrs. Burke?” the man asked as he continued walking closer. Shaw saw he was dressed in black and carrying an Army M-4 carbine with the night vision scope. Obviously, he wasn’t the gardener, Shaw thought as he raised the Beretta and fired three rounds at him from under his arm. He had always been more accurate firing offhand like this without going through the who motions of dropping into a proper shooting stance, and he was that night. His first round went high, but the next two caught the guard in the chest. The guard’s rifle flew through the air and he fell to the ground, but Shaw knew there were probably other guards patrolling the house and time was now at a premium.
“Now that you know I’m serious,” he glared at the woman, “get in the car, or I’ll drop you right here in the doorway, both of you.” This time, the woman didn’t argue. He motioned them forward and stayed close by her side, using the woman as a shield from the sentry on the roof, as he walked them around the car and opened the rear passenger side door. As they got in, he ducked low and got in behind the steering wheel. He dropped the big Pontiac into gear and floored it, kicking up a cloud of dust and gravel as the car continued through the turnaround and up the long entry road drive. In the rearview mirror, he saw the sentry he shot get to his feet and reach for his rifle. Body armor, Shaw realized, but neither that guard nor the one on the roof dared take a shot with the boss’s wife in the car.
“You’re making a huge mistake,” Linda warned him. “You have no idea who you’re messing with.”
“Au, contraire, I know exactly who I’m messing with, Mrs. Burke, which is exactly why the two of you are in my car.”
“If you harm either one of us, he’ll cut you into little pieces.”
“Oh, I am sure he’ll try, which is exactly what I want. After all, he’s the supreme challenge, isn’t he?” Shaw laughed. “He’s the big enchilada, the ultimate test — and by the way, I’ll take your cell phone,” he said as he held out his hand, “yours and the little girl’s.”
“I don’t… we don’t…”
“Don’t lie to me. We both know you do,” he bluffed. “Now, hand them over.”
Reluctantly, Linda pulled hers out of her blue jeans pocket, took Ellie’s, and dropped them on the front passenger seat.
“Excellent!” Shaw said. “Now sit back and enjoy the ride. Most people find me to be very pleasant company. So don’t worry, nothing will happen to either of you, provided you do what I tell you. By the way,” Shaw caught her eyes in the rearview mirror as he pressed the button on his armrest which made a loud click as it locked the car’s back doors. “Aren’t child door locks wonderful?”
Bob and Ace walked back inside the Muslim Student Center. The SWAT team had added the four men they brought down from the second floor to the lineup against the far wall. They placed them two feet apart, making whispering that much more difficult. Bob and Ace walked down the line and compared faces to the photos the Geeks had sent to their cell phones, as well as the plastic in the young men’s wallets — their driver’s licenses, student IDs, Army ID cards, cafeteria IDs, even their video arcade cards and Gold’s Gym IDs. At the same time, they checked those against the men’s real passports, Army records, and their INS files which the Geeks had downloaded to Bob’s and Ace’s cell phones. Surprise, surprise! Most of it didn’t match. Bob pointed out four or five to Harry Van Zandt, who pulled them into one of the side lounges for closer interrogation by the SWAT team.
“Where’s a goddamned INS agent, when you really need one?” Phillips mumbled.
The SWAT team Captain Charlie Weatherford shook his head. “It really don’t make no never-mind, ma’am. Even if you bust ’em for that stuff, the INS and the Federal magistrates’ll kick ’em loose on their own recognizance faster than you can get your car out of the parking lot, after they warn you to stop picking on those poor ‘unfortunates.’ ”
“With the rifles in the basement, why don’t you book them on terrorism, and bypass all that immigration bull?” Ace offered, but that hopeful thought was interrupted by the ringing of his cell phone. He answered the call; and as Bob watched, the big man’s eyes narrowed, and then his expression changed to a frown and then into something far grimmer and angrier.
“Problems?” Bob asked as Ace handed him the phone and they exchanged a look. On the other end was Dorothy, and the former Air Force captain knew how to deliver a proper military situation report, or sit-rep.
“Linda and Ellie are gone,” Dorothy began.
“Define gone,” Bob asked and took a deep breath.
“Taken at gunpoint, about five minutes ago. As best I can ascertain from the guards, a man with blond hair and red glasses came to the front door…”
“That’s Shaw! Goddamnit!”
“He forced them into an old maroon Pontiac and tore out of here toward the main road.”
“Where the hell were the guards?” Bob asked, steaming.
“Not their fault. The guy had either planned it perfectly or he was damned lucky. One of the contractors, Swanson, was up on the roof when the car came down the driveway. He had his scope on him when he got out of the car and walked up to the front door; but the front porch has that roof, and he couldn’t see what was happening underneath.”
“Tell me something,” Bob asked angrily. “Was the damned front door locked?”
“Apparently so, but they think Ellie opened it. When Swanson didn’t have eyes on him, he called the rover over. He came around the corner and ‘red glasses’ put two 9-millimeter rounds in his chest. His first shot missed, I guess to show he’s human. Fortunately, the rover was wearing body armor, and just got the wind knocked out of him. Another contractor, Murphy, was working inside the house. By the time he ran to the foyer, the rover got his breath back, and Swanson was able to see what was happening, Shaw was too close to Linda and Ellie for any of them to risk a shot.”
“Understood,” Bob said reluctantly. “Were they able to pursue
?” he asked.
“Murphy had one of the Yukons around in front in less than a minute, but the Pontiac was gone. It tore up the driveway to the main road and turned to the right, as best Swanson could see from the roof.”
“To the right? That would take them down to I-95, not back to campus,” Bob answered as the wheels in his head quickly turned. “That’s okay. I know where he’s going.”
“Oh, and Ellie has the cat with her.”
“The cat? Good. If Shaw harms a hair on her head, he’d better hope I get to him before Godzilla does. I was just going to kill him.”
Bob rang off and tossed the cell phone to Ace. “You heard that?”
Ace simply replied, “Orders?” One look in his eyes made anything else unnecessary.
“Call ‘High Rider.’ Tell him we’ll be at the LZ in ‘three.”
“Roger, that,” Ace answered as he pressed Speed Dial, shouldered the phone, and checked the load in his Beretta. “By the way, I got dibs on him after the cat.”
Bob pulled out his own phone and pressed Koz’s number. The Sergeant First Class answered on the first ring. “Koz, Ghost. Who’s inside the hangar now?”
“One of the Khans never left. That’s Batir, I think. The other one, Mergen, left earlier this afternoon in the Mercedes and he came back with another guy. Looked Middle Eastern, and none too happy. They carried a bunch of cardboard boxes from the car into the hangar. They’re still in there, and I haven’t seen anyone else come or go since.”
“All right, tell the other nests to be on alert and ready to engage. Meanwhile, keep your eyes out for a maroon Pontiac with a blond guy in red glasses behind the wheel. Let me know if you see him. He took Linda and Ellie.”
“Jeez…”
“Ace and I are headed your way in a Blackhawk, so don’t fire. Not yet. Got that?”
Linda rode in the back seat with her arms around Ellie, not certain what she should do. If she were alone, she would have fought back and never gotten into the car; but with Ellie to protect, her options were sharply limited.
“Are you the one who’s been setting off those bombs, the one who’s behind all the shootings?” Linda asked.
“I’m afraid so, Linda. You don’t mind if I call you Linda, do you?”
“I don’t give a hot damn what you call me, but why are you doing this?”
“To act for those who cannot act,” Shaw answered in his professorial voice as if he were reciting a well-practiced speech. “It is my mission to strike down the oppressors of the Muslim people, right here at Fort Bragg, at the very heart of their Special Operations snake pit until they beg for peace.”
She leaned forward and stared into his eyes in the rearview mirror, studying him for a moment, until she shook her head and laughed at him. “Who are you trying to kid? Hell, you don’t even believe you; I can see it in your eyes.”
His eyes narrowed and he glared back at her for a moment. “Oh, you want to know why I am doing this?” he laughed. “Well, the answer to that question is much, much simpler. I want to draw out your husband,” Shaw said as his laughter died away and he glared back at her in the mirror. “He spoiled my attack, organized a manhunt against me, killed my men, and ruined my plans. With all the police and army people he keeps around him, there’s no way I can get at him. Now, I won’t have to. I have you, and I’m going to let him find me.”
“Oh boy, this is going to be fun,” Ellie told him.
With Bob driving, it only took two minutes to drive the short distance to Fayetteville Fire Department Station 14, where High Rider Carmody was waiting in the pilot seat of his Blackhawk on the FFD’s helipad behind the station.
Halfway there, Bob’s cell phone rang. As soon as he answered, he recognized Sharmayne Phillips’ excited voice. “Burke, who’s that moron full colonel you decked back at the commissary?”
“You mean Adkins? Stansky told me he’s his new deputy. Wasn’t very happy about it either. Let’s just say he and I have had our share of run-ins. Why?”
“I just got off the phone with the Post Provost Marshall. No sooner was Stansky pronounced DOA at the hospital than your boy ran to the PM and tried to get an arrest order issued on you for assaulting a senior officer.”
“Obviously, I didn’t hit him hard enough.”
“There’s that; but the PM’s a full colonel too. He’s as straight as they come, and he wasn’t impressed. He called me, so I told him you were a civilian, you were no longer on post, and there’s a dozen witnesses, including me, who didn’t see it the way Adkins claimed it happened. I also told him that Stansky accused Adkins of being drunk and told us he was going to can him.”
“Thanks, Sharmayne. I don’t usually get along with MPs, but you’re the exception.”
“Well, my suggestion is to tread lightly around that guy. He isn’t done with you.”
“Copy that, and the feeling’s mutual,” he told her as he turned into the fire station driveway and sped around to the back of the building. The stealthy Blackhawk was waiting, its long, black rotor blades hanging limp, but its powerful engine idling. “Thanks, Sharmayne, but I gotta run. My ride’s waiting.”
“Your ride? What about Shaw?”
“Oh, you won’t have to worry about him much longer, not after I get finished. I’ll buy you a beer and explain later,” he said as he terminated the call and hung up.
High Rider was talking to Air Traffic Control and wasn’t waiting. The Blackhawk’s engine began to whine, and its long rotor blades began to circle while Bob and Ace were still sprinting across the parking lot. They ducked as the blades picked up speed, turning faster and faster, and jumped in through the open rear door as the skids lifted off the ground. Both Bob and Ace quickly donned the headsets hanging on the bulkhead as the helicopter rose over the fire station. Without their noise reduction, you could barely think inside.
“Head south,” Bob told Carmody.
“There’s a big nylon bag lying at your feet,” Carmody replied, as they swept south over the city. “The Berettas, the two M-4s, and the ammo you wanted are inside. The two Barretts are in front of it up against the bulkhead. Okay, where are we going?”
“Are you familiar with Gray’s Creek Aviation?”
“Sure. Been in there a dozen times on practice ops over the years. The owners have always been real cooperative with us.”
“Well, they won’t be when they learn they’ve got an ISIS terrorist cell on their property. When we get there, circle the airstrip several times. There’s a building at the east end I want to check out with the infrared scope.”
“That new one, with the white stripes? I saw that going up a couple of weeks ago.”
“You got it!” Bob answered as the helicopter swept south over I-95. “And can you patch me into a telephone circuit up here?”
“No problem, there’s a comm panel in front of you with a USB port and cable. Just plug in your cell phone and dial away.”
“Good, and I’d like you to listen in,” Bob told him as he connected and speed dialed the Geekatorium. Seconds later he heard Jimmy’s voice at the other end. “Time’s up, what have you guys learned?” Bob asked. “Who owns that hangar?”
“I drilled into the North Carolina Secretary of State’s corporate registry, while Ronald got a peek at the FAA database up in DC, and Sasha’s tracking their money through the international banking system.”
“So, who the hell is Caspian Aviation Services?”
“Lawyers, more lawyers, holding companies, and still more lawyers, but they’ve got a ton of money in their accounts, over nine million dollars, Sasha says. The ownership tracks through Raleigh to a New York law firm and a holding company, then through several banks in Switzerland, to Dubai, Beirut, and — this is going to really crack you up — are you ready?”
“Stop screwing around, or I’ll send Patsy back to Chicago.”
“Testy tonight, aren’t we? Okay, the answer is the Russian People’s Bank in Moscow.”
Bob was silent for
a moment. “Moscow? You’re kidding me?” Bob said “I don’t get surprised very often, but this time I’m surprised.”
“Told you so! Sasha says the RPB has been a KGB front since Putin took over.”
“ISIS in bed with the KGB?” Bob shook his head. “Well, why not?”
“And Sasha told me to tell you that he’s working on getting inside their accounts. He doesn’t expect it to take all that long, since he went to school with most of the guys who the KGB assigned to set up the RPB. ‘Greatly inferior!’ he told me to tell the Boss.”
“I guess with everything else Putin’s into these days… but ISIS?”
“That’s what Sasha thought, too. Of course he said it with a lot of Russian swear words which I think have to do with the anatomy of barnyard animals. Anyway, Sasha wants to know if you want him to take the money?”
“He said nine million? No doubt about it. They’re as dirty as the Carbonaris, but tell him to wait until first thing tomorrow morning. And I want him to be very careful this time. No tripwires, her no footprints, no fingerprints, and none of his little jokes; I just want the money to disappear. That should put a dent in Vladimir’s samovar, but we have enough people looking for us already. I’d rather not add the KGB to the list.”
“Sasha figured you’d say that, too. He told me to tell you, ‘No problem. You tell Comrade General I go in on leeetle kitten feeeet!’ ”
“Sasha? On leeetle kitten feet? That’ll be the day. All right, what did you learn from the FAA? Does Caspian have an airplane or a helicopter registered down there?”
“Yeah, it looks like they have a single-engine airplane registered at that address with the FAA. It’s a Cessna TTX T240.”
“High Rider, are you on? What kind of an airplane is that?”
“It’s one of the new models Cessna’s come out with. It’s slick and has all the toys — high-performance, low-wing, state-of-the-art avionics, and fast. It seats four and can fly around 270 miles per hour.”
Burke's Revenge: Bob Burke Suspense Thriller #3 (Bob Burke Action Adventure Novels) Page 38
