Live Bait

by David Archer

  Harry paused, so Sam prompted him. “And Vladimir is important because…”

  The old man chuckled. “Vladimir was the captain of the Sokorov, an Oscar II class nuclear submarine that was built in the eighties. He was also one of the most disillusioned men I had ever met, disgusted with his own country and its military policies. While we were drinking together one night, I suggested to him that I had a way to make him a very wealthy man, if he was interested in starting a new life. Since his wife had left him and taken his children over his long tours of duty, and he was very tired of living in a tin can under the waves, it wasn’t difficult to convince him to help me steal six of the warheads. He forged a set of orders indicating they were to be taken to another secret base in the Yam Islands, then screamed at people until they were loaded into his weapons bay. As soon as that was finished, we all got aboard and sailed out of the base, and I took him to Pearl Harbor. He and his entire crew defected and were quietly given new identities and dispersed around the United States. The warheads were offloaded from the submarine, which was then taken to some secret base of our own and dismantled. In February of ’93, I accompanied the warheads to their final destination in a top-secret bunker on a top-secret base in the Arizona desert, just outside Tucson. They’re still there, and still highly classified, but that’s just to help the Russians save face.”

  “I’m amazed no one ever let the secret out,” Sam said. “Of course, there have been rumors about them for a long time, apparently.”

  “Why, Sam,” Harry said. “Surely you know the best way to hide something is to keep people looking for it in the wrong place, don’t you? We make sure to let rumors out periodically, always pointing to some other part of the globe, of course.”

  “That’s pretty smart,” Summer said.

  “Okay, so here’s the situation,” Sam said. “There is an up-and-coming terrorist organization in Africa called PAF. We have a chance to identify and hopefully arrest some of its leadership, which will hopefully kill off the entire organization. The guy we’re dealing with, who may be their top man, is Heinrich Wegner. He wants to get his hands on those warheads, so we’re dangling them out as bait as we set a trap. I need enough truth to convince him we can really get him those warheads. Any ideas?”

  “Why, certainly,” Harry said, a smile evident in his voice. “I can give you the coordinates of the base, and you can take him right to them. The place is only used for storage of classified material, so it only has a skeleton crew. We can replace them with some of your own trusted people, and then you can go in and make it look like they’ve been captured.”

  Sam’s eyes went wide. “Harry, I just want to bluff the guy. I wouldn’t want to really let him know where they are, just in case things go wrong and he actually got away with them.”

  “Oh, it wouldn’t matter if he did. The nuclear explosives or whatever they call that stuff, that was all removed back in ’93. There’s enough residual radiation in the casings to convince a Geiger counter that they’re still live, but they couldn’t go off. The only reason they still keep them a secret is because Clinton thought people might panic if the word ever got out that the Russkis really did make the most powerful nukes ever, but nowadays, I don’t think anyone would be all that surprised. You can set your trap right there in the desert, and close this case for good.”

  “Okay, Harry, you’ve obviously got something in mind. What is it?”

  “Why, it’s simple, Sam boy,” Harry said. “I’m an old man, right? If you put some of your people to beating me up, I’d spill every secret I know, wouldn’t I? And if you had a video of me spilling the beans about where they were hidden, since I know so many details about how they got there and all that, that would be pretty believable, wouldn’t it?”

  “I’m sure it would,” Sam said. “How soon can you get here?”

  “How soon can you get me a plane? Tell Indie Kathy and I want to come and see the kids, then get Q started on the makeup. We want me to look beat up, but I don’t intend to let anybody hit me for real.”

  “Hold on a moment,” Sam said. He put Harry on hold, then hit the button for the intercom and spoke to Ron. “Harry has a plan to let us use the real Soviet Sixpack, which has been disarmed, to set a trap for Wegner and his organization. Can you arrange to fly him and his wife up here from Florida?”

  “Consider it done,” Ron said. “Tell Harry I'll call him with the details in a few minutes.”

  Sam hit the button to return to Harry. “Ron’s setting it up,” he said. “He’ll call you as soon as he knows the flight details. I'll have everything ready by the time you get here, and Indie will be delighted to see you both.”

  “Sounds like a plan, Sam,” Harry said. “I'll make a few calls and clear this with the Joint Chiefs—they owe me, so it won’t be any problem—and we’ll make it happen. See you soon, Sam, boy.”

  Sam cut the call and looked at the others, including Reese. “I think we might just have a bait that our mouse can’t resist,” he said.

  “Damn, I’d say so,” Reese said. “So the Sixpack was real all along… I never would have believed it before now, but I know Heinrich always did. And we are actually going to let him get his hands on them?”

  “You heard Harry,” Sam said. “What he’s going to see is nothing but the casings, the bombs have been neutralized. The beauty of this is that it’s going to be the set up in an isolated location. We're going to be able to take them down without endangering any bystanders.”

  “Harry said this place has a skeleton staff,” Darren said. “If we replace that with our own security people, then invite Wegner and his people to come on in after we supposedly ‘captured’ them all, we should have a fairly significant force. I’m willing to bet that twenty or so of our people are more than a match for anything the PAF might bring along.”

  Sam nodded. “I agree,” he said. “Especially since we can make sure their weapons are within reach wherever we pretend to lock them up. One quick signal and they can be armed and ready to back us up.”

  “There’s just one problem,” Jade said. “Sam, they’ll know who you are. Your face was all over CNN after Amber’s rescue. And, I hate to say it, but you’re pretty well-known. That’s what almost got you killed on this one, remember?”

  “Mr. Prichard?” Jenna’s voice suddenly came through the intercom. “Ron said Mr. Winslow will arrive about four o’clock this afternoon. Roger will pick him and Mrs. Winslow up at the airport and bring them straight here.”

  “That’s perfect,” Sam said. “Thank you, Jenna.”

  “Yes, sir,” Jenna said, “and your wife is on line three.”

  Sam grinned as he punched the button. “Hey, babe,” he said. “Are you having fun?”

  “I am,” she said. “The grandmas decided they weren’t ready to give up the kids just yet, so we have the rest of the day to ourselves. I know you’re busy, so I’m getting in some shopping while I can.”

  Sam chuckled. “That sounds good,” he said. “Harry and Kathy will be here later today, but Harry is likely to be busy for the evening. They’ll want to see the kids tomorrow, though.”

  “No problem. I told Mom I’d be out to get them in the morning, so they can come over then.”

  “I’m sure that will work. All right, I'll let them know and you can let me know when you get back home.”

  They pledged their love to one another as they always did, and then Sam cut off the call. The rest of the team went back to their own desks, and Sam leaned back to think about how to handle the situation. Denny took Reese with him, promising to stop at the break room to let him get a cup of coffee.

  An idea came to mind, but then Sam remembered Harry’s request. He got up and went to see their gadgets maker, who was known as Q.

  “Hi, Sam,” said the short, stocky man. His real name was Fred Turner, but he got his nickname because his gadgets rivaled those in the James Bond movies. “What can I do for you?”

  “Q, Harry Winslow is flying in
this afternoon. We need to make a video of him getting beat up, and it needs to look very realistic. He told me to give you a heads up about that, because he doesn’t want anybody beating on him for real.”

  Q chuckled. “I can handle it,” he said. “We’ll use the old tied to a chair in the damp basement routine. I'll put some blood packs in his mouth that he can bite down on and spit out, that’ll make it look like blood is flying every time he gets punched, and we’ll mark him up with bruises and a black eye before we turn on the camera. What’s the gimmick?”

  “He’s supposed to be getting tortured, beaten to make him give up information. It has to be extremely convincing, so I imagine that means no cuts in the video. It’ll all have to be done in one take, so the camera stays on him the whole time.”

  “Yeah, that’s no problem. I'll have it all set up before he gets here, don’t worry. Who’s going to do the beating?”

  Sam shrugged. “I hadn’t thought of that,” he said.

  “No worries. I can round up somebody who looks mean.”

  TWELVE

  The rest of the day went pretty slowly after Sam’s visit back to Q and his domain, to make sure everything would be ready before Harry arrived late in the afternoon. Sam was sitting in his office when the old man and his wife came walking in, and he got up quickly to shake his hand.

  “Sam, boy, the things I do for you. Do you have any idea how many favors I had to cancel out or call in to pull this whole thing off? General Kelsey made me sign an agreement that I’d never reveal certain little details about his early years in the army, things I’d already forgotten about, anyway. Pity, too, because there were a few things he would’ve done anything to keep secret over the years. One of them involved the day I had to go get him out of a Japanese jail cell and arrived to find him wearing nothing but a silk kimono. It seems all his uniform and ID had been stolen by the hooker he had gotten mixed up with, and she screamed for the police when he decided he was going to wear her dress to make his escape.”

  Sam’s eyes went wide, but he said nothing.

  “It’s probably BS, Sam,” Kathy said. “I learned a long time ago not to believe all of Harry’s stories.”

  “Now, woman, it’s the gospel truth,” Harry said. “I just wish I had remembered it ten years ago, when Kelsey was trying to cut some of our funding.”

  Sam chuckled and the three of them sat at the conference table to visit for a bit. A little while later, Ron stuck his head in to say that Q was ready.

  Making the video was likely to take a couple of hours, Ron said, so Sam decided to head home for dinner. “Kathy, would you like to come along and visit with Indie?”

  “Oh, no,” Kathy said. “There’s no way I’m going to miss this. I’m going to sit back and watch them make the video, because it’s going to be the only time I ever saw Harry get beat up.” She winked at Sam. “Other than the few times when I did it myself, that is.”

  “There you go again,” Harry said, “telling all our secrets.” He and his wife followed Ron off to see Q, and Sam took the opportunity to slip out and head for his car.

  He got home a short time later, and Indie met him at the door with a kiss. “I’m making us a couple of steaks for dinner,” she said. “They’ll be done in a few minutes, would you like a glass of iced tea?”

  “That sounds delicious,” Sam said. He followed her into the kitchen and sat at the table while supporting the glass. He told her about everything that was happening while she cooked dinner, and then they sat and ate together.

  By the time dinner was finished, both of them had realized that they were alone. Since that wasn’t something that happened very often, Sam helped Indie load the dishwasher, and then they headed for the bedroom.

  Two hours later, basking in the afterglow, Indie was cuddled up under Sam’s arm when his phone rang. He reached to the nightstand and picked it up, and saw that it was the office number calling.

  “Hello,” he said, and he heard Ron’s voice.

  “Sam,” he said, “I need you in my office in an hour. Is Indie with you?”

  “Yes, she’s right here.”

  “Bring her along,” Ron said, and then the line went dead.

  Sam turned to Indie. “Ron wants us at his office in an hour. You need anything before we go?”

  Indie’s eyes were wide, but she shook her head. “Just to get dressed.”

  Sam nodded and they got out of bed. They took a shower together to wash off the sweat, then went out the door and got into his Mustang. The drive in to Windlass only took about thirty minutes, so they made it easily. Sam parked in his own space at the Windlass office building, and they quickly made their way to Ron’s office. Lisa, his secretary, was already gone for the day, but there were lights on inside. Sam tapped on the door and heard Ron call out, “Come in.”

  They stepped inside and Sam was surprised to see no one else there. Ron was fumbling with some papers on his desk and pointed at the chairs in front of it. “Sit,” he said. They sat and waited for Ron to finish what he was doing. It took him another minute or so and then he looked up at them.

  “Sorry for the sudden roust,” he said. “I just got off a three hour conference call with the alphabet soup in DC, and I learned a couple of things you need to know. It seems that Heinrich almost certainly must have been working on some kind of plot that was designed to favor the Ethiopian electronics outfit. NSA and CIA have both picked up chatter that confirms that he was the mastermind behind the plot to use the girl against McCabe. They’ve got at least eight clandestine meetings between him and the Ethiopian ambassador over a three-month period leading up to her disappearance. In at least one of them, the topic of discussion was the alliance the Ethio Electronics outfit has been pressuring for, and the ambassador was heard saying that the only thing standing in the way was McCabe’s reluctance to sign the contracts.”

  Sam shrugged. “Well, we beat him,” he said. “You don’t think they’ll try to use the girl again, do you?”

  Ron shook her head. “Very doubtful,” she said. “And this doesn’t really mean a whole lot to us, anyway, except that it confirms just how evil this organization really is. They claim to be trying to liberate the people in the poorer African nations, but their actions are as terroristic as some of the things Al Qaeda used to do. It seems Wegner has even been involved in deals involving very small nuclear devices, such as suitcase nukes.”

  Sam sat and looked at him for a moment, letting all that he was saying run through his mind. “I can’t really say I’m surprised,” he said. “Any idea what their next step might be?”

  Ron shook his head. “The CIA is working on it, but they don’t seem to have any real leads. Harry did manage to get the Joint Chiefs to sign off on his plan, and this whole phone conference came about because NSA, DHS and CIA are fighting over who gets to run the operation. Don’t worry, I got them all off your back. This is your gig, Sam.”

  Sam’s expression did not change. “I should have seen that,” he said. “I should have realized there was some other agenda behind this whole thing. Why else would Wegner want these super nuclear bombs?”

  Indie reached over and took his hand. “Sam, don’t beat yourself up,” she said. “You can’t predict what people like this will do. You’re only human, remember?”

  Ron leaned forward again, bracing his arms on top of his desk. “Well, like I said, none of this really matters a whole lot to us, because we would have taken this case, anyway. The girl was an innocent victim, we couldn’t just leave her at their mercy.”

  Sam was still thinking it all over, running all the information through in his mind, and he reached a conclusion. “It’s Heinrich that I want,” he said. “According to Reese, he’s been trying to get his hands on these super nuclear bombs for more than twenty years. I would just about bet that they plan to use them in this fake war of liberation, and that’s going to mean a pretty massive act of terrorism. And now, thanks to us, he thinks he can get his hands on the biggest nukes ev
er built. I’d give anything to know what he’s planning.”

  “Yes,” Ron said, “and so would the alphabet soup groups.” He let out a sigh. “There was some new chatter, also. It seems that Heinrich Wegner has decided to offer a bounty on your head, Sam. Two hundred thousand dollars to anybody who can kill you and confirm it to him.”

  “I’m not that surprised,” Sam said. “Since I killed his nephew, he’s undoubtedly going to want me dead in retaliation. Beauregard even warned me about this, but we didn’t know what he was saying at the time. The trouble is that this plays right into Heinrich’s hands, because it’s going to mean every punk in the international underworld will be looking to collect that bounty.”

  Ron and Sam looked into each other’s eyes for a few seconds, and then Sam broke the silence.

  “Ron, I need you to make sure my family is safe. Pull in whatever favors you have to, but get them into a safe house, somewhere. Give them all the security you can, and…”

  Ron held up a hand and grinned. “I’ve already got it set up, Sam. Gary Collins runs one of our security teams, like Rob Feinstein. He and his men are at your mother’s house, gathering up them and the kids right now, and they’ll be back here shortly to pick up Indie. Harry and Kathy will be going along with them, as well, just to keep them company. You can stay in one of our guestrooms until this is over.”

  “I’m not staying anywhere,” Sam said. “In fact, I’m probably on the way to Arizona. How did things go with the video, with Harry?”

  Ron grinned. “See for yourself,” he said. He tapped a couple of keys on his computer, then turned the monitor so that Sam and Indie could see it.

  In what looked like a dimly lit, damp basement of some sort, Harry Winslow was bound to a chair. The chair was big and heavy, and gave the impression of being bolted to the floor. There was a band around Harry’s chest, and Sam recognized the connections to a polygraph machine.