Termination Limits: Tom Kintrell Book 1 (Tom Kintrell Thriller Series)
Page 7
After Alvarez left her office Dede buzzed her assistant, “Ginny, have Agent Kintrell come to my office.” Dede dreaded this conversation.
A short time later Kintrell entered Dede’s office.
After he was told about Dixon and the taskforce, Kintrell mulled it over for a few seconds. “What about Stryker?”
“It would be highly unlikely for Dixon to include him on the team,” said Dede.
“Okay, Boss, thanks for telling me.” Kintrell smiled and left the office.
Before he got to the door Dede said, “Tom, don’t do anything that would put me in an impossible position.”
“Me, Dede? Nah.”
He could always make her laugh. She thought about reassigning both him and Alvarez but discarded the idea. He was her best option for getting to the bottom of this. What was troubling was his reaction. She expected him to implode. His calm acquiescence made it more worrisome.
Chapter 14
The house sat on a two-acre lot just outside of the city of Ellicot, Maryland, a bedroom community of Baltimore. The house sat back from the street and was fronted by two large oak trees. The residence itself was red-bricked, the windows flanked with attractive greenish shutters, the yards, both front and back, well-tended. If asked, the neighbors would say that the occupant was friendly, but a bit stand-offish. He seemed to travel frequently for his job. When asked what he did, he claimed he was an independent insurance adjuster for the maritime industry. The neighbors knew him as Ron Blumstein. His real name was Henry (Hank) Talmadge, former Delta operator.
Talmadge was in the basement of his house, or more precisely, a secret space that was accessed by a sliding panel under the stairwell. The room, well-lit, measured twelve feet by fifteen feet and contained two gun vaults and an eight-foot work bench, attended by a Kobalt stool with casters.
He brought up the specs of the Stinger on his laptop, paying particular attention to the firing housing.
After removing the projectile from its housing, he carefully disassembled the missile and removed the explosive charge, leaving the weapon’s avionics and propellant intact.
He then reloaded the missile into its firing housing and placed the weapon into its protective case.
The call came in at 9:30 that evening.
“We’re a go.”
“Roger that.”
***
Emerson Cole hung up the phone then made his way to the basement. He lived in Oxford, Pennsylvania not far from the Maryland state line. He checked the AR-15 one more time, then reinserted the magazine. He had zeroed the weapon for the one hundred fifty yard shot the day before. Cole, a former Green Beret, was an expert marksman and the killer of Congressman Storchin.
The alarm went off at 2:30 AM. Cole woke, shut the alarm off and dressed quickly in a pullover and dark jeans. His pack contained camo gear, night optics, water, and a few energy bars. He backed the van out of the garage and headed south, his destination approximately two hours and thirty minutes away. The airfield was west, south-west of Bethesda, Maryland.
***
Also en route was Talmadge in his van. The vans, though untraceable, would have to be abandoned. Ex fil was going to be hairy, but if they stuck to the plan the timing would work, so long as Broderick was on time.
The airfield’s runway was a shade over 5200 feet, just long enough for the Gulfstream G280 that the congresswoman used for her bi-monthly jaunts. The runway, bordered on the south and east by thick woods, was perfect for their plan. Each van contained a dirt bike that ran relatively quiet. After the action, each operator would quickly make their way back to their respective vans on their bikes. Once at the vans they would toss their packs in, and also a thermite grenade. The grenade would ignite the accelerants in the van and destroy any residual traces of DNA. Each of them would then proceed on their dirt bikes to the rally point. Broderick would be waiting in his eighteen-wheeler, parked at the very back of a rest stop, four miles away. The bikes would be abandoned a short distance from the rest stop in a heavily wooded area.
Cole and Talmadge arrived at their separate locations at roughly the same time. Talmadge previously found a dirt road that was about a mile and a half from the airfield. The day before, he strung a chain across the road that read “PRIVATE PROPERTY KEEP OUT.”
He removed the chain, drove through, then reattached the chain. He drove for about a half mile. He removed the dirt bike from the van, changed into his camo gear, donned his night vision goggles, and strapped on his Glock 9MM. He then removed the Stinger from the case and secured it to the dirt bike and made his way towards his hide. He left the bike some two hundred yards from the site, then continued on foot the rest of the way, the Stinger resting on his shoulder.
***
Cole used an old access road that paralleled the airstrip on the south side. After parking the van, he took the AR-15 with him, then set off on his dirt bike towards the east end of the runway. Like Talmadge, he left the bike a few hundred yards from his hide and made the rest of the journey on foot. The shot would be relatively easy at one hundred fifty yards. The target would be moving, but almost straight at him, if all went according to plan. When Cole was in position, he clicked his ear bud. He received two clicks back. Talmadge was in position.
Both Talmadge and Cole settled in for the long wait. Each of them had water and a few energy bars. They would be waiting for approximately ten hours. The waiting would be no problem—both men being skilled in field craft, stealth, and patience.
***
Talmadge spotted the late model Mercedes entering the airfield. The vehicle entered a hangar on the northern side of the airfield. He made ready his weapon then clicked Cole three times. Cole responded with one click
Once inside the hangar the congresswoman and her small entourage exited the vehicle and quickly entered the Gulfstream G280. The pilot was in the process of spinning up its engines. After a short time, the aircraft left the hangar and taxied toward the east end of the runway. Reaching the end of the runway, the pilot turned the aircraft one hundred eighty degrees. The pilot then stood on the brakes as he pushed the throttles forward …
Talmadge, weapon shouldered, had good tone as the aircraft neared the end of the runway and turned to the west. As soon as the aircraft was in position to take off, Talmadge released the weapon. The missile screamed into the starboard engine of the G280.
***
Those inside the plane reacted in shock as the pilot was trying to process what just happened. After a few seconds, the pilot roared, “Evacuate the plane, evacuate the plane.” As he braked the plane and unbuckled his seat belt, one of the congresswoman’s aides was already approaching the door that was toward the front of the plane on the left side. The pilot beat her to it. He opened the door letting the stairs down. The aide was first out. The congresswoman, being thirty years older and not quite as spry, started down the stairs…
***
Cole waited, his weapon’s scope centered on the door of the aircraft. He saw the aide scurry down the steps then saw the congresswoman start to descend, his trigger finger already applying pressure. He felt the retort as the projectile exited the weapon. The bullet entered the congresswoman’s chest just left of center, puncturing the heart, then exited the congresswoman’s back and lodged in the leg of the congresswoman’s son, who was accompanying his mother home for the weekend. The force of the shot pushed the congresswoman backwards, where she came to rest on the legs of her son.
***
The starboard engine ignited as the pilot and two other people were still on the plane, the copilot and another aide. The pilot, at first thinking that the congresswoman fell or had some medical mishap, saw the blood and knew she had been shot. He had to step over the congresswoman and her son to exit the plane. He yelled to the co-pilot to help him remove the two shooting victims from the aircraft. With the help of the other aide, they managed to carry—half drag the congresswoman and her son from the aircraft to a distance the pilot considered sa
fe, should the plane explode. The pilot nervously glanced toward the woods where he thought the shot must have originated.
The aide, first out of the aircraft, was screaming while covering her ears with her hands till the pilot yelled at her, “Get your ass down, there’s someone shooting at us.”
Eyes wide, the aide dropped to the ground.
***
As soon as the missile left the tube and found its mark, Talmadge was on the move. He left the firing housing and headed for the dirt bike, thinking, no time, no time. Arriving at the van he threw his pack together with his night vision optics and the thermite grenade in the van, then set out for the rest stop on the dirt bike. The thermite grenade, with the help of the accelerants inside the van, would obliterate anything and everything in the van, taking it down to bare metal.
***
Cole, after confirming the hit, laid the weapon on the ground then removed the Coke can from his pack and threw it a few feet away from the weapon. He then hightailed it to his bike and arrived back at his van a few minutes later. Like Talmadge he tossed his pack and optics as well as the thermite grenade into the van, then set out for the rally point.
Both Cole and Talmadge hid the bikes in the wooded area behind the rest stop. They assumed whoever stumbled upon the bikes would keep them and no one would be the wiser. Even so, the bikes, like the vans, were untraceable.
Talmadge, into his headpiece, “Extract, two.”
The passenger side door of the semi’s cab opened. Cole, then Talmage, entered the truck and slithered their way to the sleeper cab. They propped up the mattress and opened a hatch that revealed a space about six and a half feet long and five feet wide.
After they entered the space, Broderick, the driver of the truck, made sure the mattress covered the hidden compartment. Broderick was decked out in red neck finery—dirty baseball cap with John Deere insignia, flannel jacket and jeans with an overly large buckle and two-day stubble. Broderick slowly guided the truck out of the rest stop and headed north.
After driving a short distance Broderick saw three vehicles approaching him from the north, lights flashing and sirens screaming. Ten miles out a roadblock was set up across the road. As he approached the cars blocking the road, he was signaled to stop. There were three cars ahead of him. His turn came. He pulled up to the vehicles that straddled the road, stuck his head out the window. “Hey, Officer, what’s going on?”
The trooper stepped up to the vehicle as another trooper approached the rig on the passenger side.
“Looking for a fugitive,” replied the trooper as he climbed up the step of the cab. The trooper on the passenger side also climbed up and opened the door. He then peered into the sleeper cab using a flashlight.
“What’d he do?” asked Broderick.
“Let me see your manifest,” said the officer on Broderick’s side. Broderick produced it. The document showed that he was carrying a load of furniture bound for New York.
The officer that had looked in the sleeper cab exited and headed for the back of the truck. He verified there was a seal attached to the door mechanism. He then signaled the other officer with an okay sign and they waved Broderick through.
***
The pilot, after notifying 911 of the shooting and confirming that the congresswoman was in fact dead, tried administering first aid to her son. After cutting away the boy’s left trouser leg he determined that the bullet had not cut the femoral artery. The pilot tried to staunch the blood flow with a piece of his undershirt while they waited for help to arrive. Afraid the boy was going into shock, the pilot talked quietly to him, holding his hand. The young man, a faraway look in his eyes, kept repeating, “Where’s my mom? Where’s my mom?”
The pilot tried to distract the boy, asking him where he lived and how they could contact his father. The fuel ignited in the jet sending up a firestorm and separating the right wing from the plane which made the young man wail, a high-pitched keening sound, that the pilot would not soon forget.
Approximately nine minutes after the shooting, the pilot heard the sirens. Two ambulances and three police vehicles entered the airfield and raced to the east end of the runway. The police vehicles formed a semicircle around the evacuees. EMTs from each ambulance hurried to the scene. A crowd hovered around the congresswoman and her son.
Attempts to revive the congresswoman proved fruitless. The EMTs working on the son started an IV, then lifted him to a gurney and deposited him in the back of one of the ambulances. Between sobs the boy continued to repeat, “Where’s my mom? Where’s my mom?” The ambulance then raced away, sirens blaring.
As it was an active crime scene, the body of the congresswoman could not be moved, nor could the crew and passengers depart till they were questioned.
After the police had the rudimentary facts, one of them called it in. Dede was apprised of the shooting sixteen minutes after it happened, Kintrell and Alvarez, shortly thereafter. Kintrell requested use of the helicopter to get to the scene as quickly as possible. He contacted Stryker and gave him the location where the helicopter would pick them up.
***
Once in the air Kintrell told Stryker what they knew…
“As the plane was about to take off, one of the engines seems to have malfunctioned. The pilot, fearing that the plane would catch fire, ordered everyone off the plane. As the congresswoman descended the steps of the plane, she was shot—we’re surmising that she was shot. We don’t have confirmation of that yet. Her son was also shot in the leg. We don’t know if he was shot separately or whether the same bullet that hit the congresswoman also hit the son.”
“What the fuck was she doing on an airplane? Weren’t they told that there was a possibility that these fuckers might have Stingers?” said Stryker.
“Not sure who told what to whom,” replied Kintrell.
“Supposedly, all that information was relayed to the House and Senate,” added Alvarez.
Kintrell shook his head. “Lanny, have you confirmed road-blocks are up?”
“Yeah, they were up in a ten-mile radius within twelve minutes of the incident.”
“So, this guy or guys just happened to be in the exact perfect spot, in the hopes the congresswoman would just happen to be forced to deplane in the exact perfect spot,” said Stryker.
“Yeah, lucky,” said Kintrell
“Question is, how could they time it so the plane would be disabled at that spot and the passengers be forced off there? Could the pilot be in on it?” said Alvarez.
“Good question,” said Kintrell.
It took them eighty-five minutes to reach the airfield but there were so many news helicopters in the air, they had to stay away from the scene till the FAA warned off the newsies.
After the chopper landed, the three of them, stooping, exited and hurried to the scene, sixty or seventy yards away. Kintrell and Alvarez held up their creds as they approached. Stryker didn’t bother.
They were met by a Maryland state trooper. Kintrell introduced the three of them to the trooper, then said, “What have we got?”
The trooper confirmed what they already knew.
The airplane itself was still smoldering after having been doused thoroughly by the fire crew.
Kintrell then thanked the trooper and walked to the four people huddled on the runway. The pilot stood up and introduced himself. “Bill Sheridan, you FBI?”
“Yeah, Bill, Tom Kintrell, my partner Lanny Alvarez, and Norm Stryker. Describe for me what happened.”
“We were about to take off then BANG …”
After the pilot was done, Kintrell said, “Thanks, Bill, you did a great job getting those people off the plane. Oh, and one other thing, what do you think destroyed that engine?”
“I’ve been going over that. At first I thought it could have been a bird or something large that was sucked into the intake, but I don’t think so.”
“Why?” asked Alvarez.
“I don’t think a bird could have caused that much of a ban
g. Whatever hit that engine was large and fast, the whole plane shook when it hit.”
“Could it have been a Stinger Missile?” asked Kintrell.
“No, not enough initial damage,” said the pilot.
“How do you know that?” asked Alvarez.
“Before I got this gig, I was a pilot in the Air Force. We were trained on missile capabilities and countermeasures. I’ve seen what Stingers can do. If a Stinger hit that engine, it would have exploded and torn itself right off the aircraft. The aircraft would have been engulfed in flames very quickly. I doubt if any of us would have made it out alive.”
“Okay, thanks again, Bill,” said Kintrell.
Kintrell walked back to the state trooper. “We need this whole area blanketed a thousand yards out south and east.”
“Already working on that,” said the trooper. “We have twenty men sifting those woods as we speak.”
***
Within an hour the Stinger tube was found as well as the AR-15 assault rifle. Both areas were cordoned off so the crime scene techs could corral any other evidence. A discarded Coke can was also found a short distance away from the AR-15 and was bagged. The serial numbers of the AR-15 and the Stinger were duly noted and sent off via text for confirmation of whether they were part of the heist out of North Carolina. The Stinger was confirmed to be one of the missing lot, but the AR-15 was registered to a man named Wyatt with a Virginia address. Wyatt had served a one-year sentence in New York for felonious assault and an eighteen month stretch in Virginia for receiving stolen property and resisting arrest. Wyatt purchased the AR-15 before his trouble with the law. It was thought that while in prison, Wyatt was recruited by a Neo-Nazi group loosely associated with the Aryan Nation.