Walk the Wire

by David Baldacci

  “Just keep going.”

  He watched as the shot-up vehicle, now revealed as a Hummer, made the turn. And then he watched with a sickening feeling as another Hummer pulled in right behind the first one.

  They had reinforcements and machine guns. This would not be a long or fair fight.

  He looked toward the front of their SUV and saw what looked to be an abandoned farmhouse with broken corral fencing and a hay barn with rotted doors swinging off.

  “Head for that barn,” he told Jamison.

  The SUV shot through the opening and she slammed on the brakes, bringing them to a stop right before they crashed into the opposite wall. They scrambled out of the SUV and took up position behind their vehicle.

  Decker has already tried to call 911 for help, but there were no bars on his phone. Even if he had, it would probably take hours for even a single cop to show up out here.

  Jamison had her gun pointed at the open doors. She glanced at Decker. “What now?”

  He was eyeing the interior of the barn, and then his gaze went up. “High ground is the best.”

  They hustled to an old wooden ladder and clambered up to the hayloft, which was half full of thoroughly rotted straw.

  Decker tested each floorboard with his weight before edging over to the hayloft doors and opening them just a crack.

  Twin pairs of headlights were cutting through the darkness around the farmyard. The doors of the Hummer with the cracked windshield opened and four men climbed out. They wore all black, including ski masks, and carried automatic weapons. The doors of the second Hummer opened and three more men got out. In the blink of an eye they fanned out, and within seconds they had the barn surrounded.

  Decker turned back to Jamison. “Well, our options seem limited.”

  “Yeah, as in zero,” she replied grimly.

  Decker reached into his pocket and pulled out the device Robie had given him.

  Jamison noted this and said, “Little late for that.”

  “I was thinking the same thing but what do we have to lose now?”

  The shots outside drew their attention back to the hayloft doors.

  As they watched, the lead Hummer exploded and the detonation lifted the multiton vehicle straight up into the air before it slammed back down to earth, a collision that burst all four tires.

  “What the hell?” began Jamison.

  They dropped to the floor and slid backward as automatic gunfire started up again.

  A few moments later Decker crawled forward and peered through the crack in the doors. He watched as two of the men in black were gunned down. Three more rushed from around the rear of the barn and took up position behind the destroyed Hummer.

  They fired into the distance and received return fire.

  Decker pointed his gun out the crack, took aim, and shot one of the men in the back. He fell to the dirt. The other men turned and fired at the barn.

  Decker slammed the door shut, and he and Jamison took up cover behind a thick bale of rotted hay. Multiple rounds ripped through the wooden doors and into the straw.

  There was more gunfire, another detonation. Screams, more gunfire, shouts. And then, the sound of a vehicle starting up.

  Decker and Jamison crawled forward in time to see the second Hummer racing back down the road. Soon, it had disappeared into the darkness.

  Jamison looked at Decker and said breathlessly, “What the hell just happened?”

  Before Decker could answer, the phone Robie had given him buzzed. He answered it.

  Will Robie said, “You can come down now.”

  ROBIE AND REEL were in the front seats and Jamison and Decker in the rear of Reel’s SUV as they drove back to London. When Jamison and Decker had come out of the barn, they had been met by the pair along with a number of dead bodies.

  Robie had introduced Jessica Reel to them. She had said nothing, only nodding curtly in their direction.

  “How’d you know where we were?” asked Jamison.

  Before Robie could answer, Decker held up the phone. “This has a tracking device.”

  Robie nodded. “We followed you to your destination. Then saw the Hummers on the return trip. It was a close call.”

  “I wish you didn’t have to keep saving my life,” said Decker quite frankly. “It’s getting a little bit hairy.”

  “I can see that.”

  “What did you find out with Purdy’s mother?” asked Reel as she steered the SUV.

  “Ben Purdy was last there around ten months ago. The Air Force has been by looking for him a few times. No one else. We took some things from his room. They may be clues.” He held up the printed pages.

  Robie took them and looked the pages over. “A bunch of different military installations. What do you think he was looking for?”

  “Facts about something that was important to him.”

  “You think this has to do with Vector taking over London AFS?” said Robie.

  “If you asked me that yesterday I would have said maybe. But I don’t think Purdy was aware it was going to become a prison.”

  “We thought you might have figured that out,” said Robie.

  “Purdy was transferred out before any of that happened. He was upset about the transfer, his mother said, but he didn’t know the details of what was coming in to replace him and the others. Vector apparently wasn’t on the scene yet, and without them around there weren’t going to be any prisoners sent there.”

  Jamison said, “So it seems clear that the time bomb Purdy mentioned doesn’t involve the prison.”

  “Little town for so many big things to be happening,” commented Reel.

  “Couldn’t have said it better myself,” remarked Jamison.

  Robie said, “The guys we took care of back there looked just like the ones who tried to ambush me the other night.”

  “We figured you were involved in all that,” said Decker.

  Robie glanced at Reel. “But for my partner here, they would have had to send someone else to take my place.”

  Reel said, “We all do our part.”

  Robie continued, “They’re clearly mercenaries. And there are a shitload of them out for hire. Anyone with enough money can have their pick of some very serious people.”

  “But again, why London, North Dakota, for all the attention?” said Jamison.

  “Time bomb,” said Decker as he glanced down at the printed pages Robie had handed back to him. “And apparently these folks want to make damn sure it goes off.”

  * * *

  The knock came on Decker’s door about an hour after they got back to London.

  Considering what had happened to them, Decker answered the door with his Glock in hand.

  It was Robie. “Got a minute?” he asked.

  They sat in two chairs facing each other. Robie looked grim.

  “I take it you have bad news,” said Decker.

  “They got to Beverly Purdy. She’s dead.”

  Decker sat back and slowly absorbed this not-so-surprising news. What else could they do? They had no idea what Ben had told his mother, or him and Jamison. It was surprising that they hadn’t killed her before. But then there was a simple answer to that.

  “So when we went there we signed her death warrant?” said Decker. “They obviously followed us out there.”

  “I doubt it would have mattered,” said Robie. “She was a loose end. They would have gotten to her at some point.”

  Decker stood and looked out the window into the darkness. “I’m a cop, Robie. And right now I feel like I’m in the middle of a James Bond film. I have no experience with shit like this.”

  Robie didn’t respond right away, but when he did it was in a calm, judicious tone.

  “The world hasn’t gotten safer over time, Decker. It’s just gotten more complicated. Humans are still in control and humans do bad things all the time. We had the Cold War with nukes, and now we have hot spots all over with people slaughtering other people and dictators rising up agai
n because democracy seems stalemated and nothing gets done and people get fed up. But a dictator doesn’t need supporters, he just needs followers. And the best way to make people follow, at least in the eyes of guys like that, is to give them no choice in the matter.”

  Decker sat back down. “Thanks for the geopolitical education, but it still doesn’t get us where we need to go.”

  “Jessica Reel and I are here to help you. Our strengths are in protection, and in removing people in the most efficient way possible.”

  “I’ve seen your handiwork.”

  “Your strength is figuring things out. So any ideas? You said the prison thing is not the big deal here. And for what it’s worth, our boss agrees with you.”

  “Does he have any ideas?” asked Decker.

  “Not that he’s shared. But from what I could gather, he has a strategy about the prison issue that’s he’s going to pull the trigger on. We’ll let him handle that piece. You focus on the time bomb.”

  Decker eyed him skeptically. “You’re not authorized to operate in this country.”

  “So the law says.”

  “Well, you seem to be operating okay.”

  Robie rose. “You should get some sleep.”

  “What I should do is start to figure this out.”

  BLUE MAN SAT in a leather chair at a prestigious club within a stone’s throw of the Capitol Building. Silent men in starched livery walked around carrying trays with expensive whiskeys and bowls of cheap nuts. The walls were paneled with luxurious wallpaper, and on them were hung portraits of old, grave men in suits. The carpet underfoot had several inches of give. The furnishings were old but originally expensive. Newspapers rustled alongside murmurings of educated, cultured voices and clinks of ice cubes in cocktail glasses as both business and government leaders made decisions that would have massive impact on millions of people, all without their knowledge or consent.

  If one did not know better, it could have been 1920 rather than a century later.

  Blue Man’s gaze roamed the room. He nodded to those he liked and respected, and also to those he loathed and distrusted, but to whom some level of acknowledgment was required. It certainly said something that he had been in this business so long that the latter group far outnumbered the former.

  His gaze finally alighted on the stout man who came into the room, carrying a folded newspaper and a glass half full of gin and tonic along with a self-important look.

  Blue Man rose and approached him. “Patrick?” he said.

  Patrick McIntosh, the gentleman who had met with Colonel Mark Sumter in that little house over a thousand miles from here, stared back at him, his features instantly wary.

  “Roger, how are you?”

  Blue Man’s real name was Roger Walton. He had almost no occasion now to ever use it.

  But this was one of those times.

  “Not bad, not bad. You?”

  “Things are going very well, thank you.”

  “Do you have a moment?” said Blue Man. “I’ve engaged a private room.”

  The smile that McIntosh had forced onto his lips retreated to a straight line one might employ after being sworn in to testify in front of a hostile congressional committee.

  “A private room? Why the need for that?” He chuckled. “Am I going to get the third degree?”

  “We’ve both been around long enough to know the answer to that,” replied Blue Man genially and also largely unresponsively, as he placed a firm grip on McIntosh’s elbow. “Oh, and Director Cassidy sends her best.”

  “So you’ve spoken with Rachel?” said McIntosh as Blue Man led him down a dark paneled corridor to a door that opened into a ten-by-ten windowless room with two upholstered chairs facing one another.

  “She is my superior, after all.”

  “I meant had you spoken to her about me?”

  “Not to sound like a cliché, but that would be classified.” Blue Man tacked on a smile, which seemed to relieve McIntosh.

  “I’m glad I’m no longer in the public sector. You should make the jump, Roger. A man with your experience and Rolodex. The money you could make.”

  “My needs are simple, my salary more than ample.”

  “I just bought an Italian villa in Tuscany. Sherry and I will spend the summers there.”

  “Congratulations. Please have a seat.”

  The men faced off in the chairs.

  McIntosh laid his paper aside but did drain the rest of his gin.

  “I’ve been traveling,” said Blue Man.

  “Oh really? Where? I hope somewhere nice. South of France? Rome? Sydney?”

  “London.”

  “Oh, very nice.”

  “London, North Dakota.”

  McIntosh set the empty glass down on a table next to his chair. To his credit, his hand remained sure and steady, noted Blue Man.

  “Did you enjoy your time there, wherever that is? North Dakota, you said?”

  “It was instructive. But surely your memory fails you?”

  “Come again?”

  Blue Man slid an envelope and a small digital recorder from his pocket. He took his time opening the envelope and slipped out a number of photos. “You look distinguished in these photos, Patrick. It was quite hot that night, if I recall. Your colleague, or more accurately your coconspirator, Colonel Mark Sumter, decided not to dress in uniform, it was so toasty. He opted for civilian clothes.”

  McIntosh glanced at the photos as Blue Man fanned them out but said nothing in reply.

  Next, Blue Man set the recorder down and hit the start button. The conversation between McIntosh and Sumter wafted over the small room.

  When it was finished, Blue Man shut off the machine and settled back in his chair.

  “Well?”

  “Well what?”

  “Do you not feel that explanations are in order?”

  “Not at all,” said McIntosh offhandedly.

  “I see. Well then, let me speak for a bit and see if what I have to say prompts you to rethink that answer.”

  “I doubt that it will.”

  Blue Man said, “Guantanamo hasn’t accepted any new prisoners since 2008. The current cost of the remaining prisoners there, all one hundred of them, is around one point three billion and change.”

  McIntosh picked a piece of lint off his sleeve. “Is it? My goodness. Hardly a bargain to house savages like that.”

  “Granted. But it is authorized.”

  McIntosh flicked away the piece of lint. “Are we done here yet? Because, frankly, I’m not following any of this.”

  “You’re on the board of Vector Security.”

  “I know I am. A wonderful, patriotic company.”

  “With only one contract approved by the government. Namely, to operate the Douglas S. George Defense Complex, aka London Air Force Station.”

  “I hope it doesn’t surprise you that I was already aware of that. Hence my visit there. I am a good board member after all.”

  “You’re not only a board member. You also have a direct financial interest in the business of Vector.”

  “As board members so often do.”

  “The budget for the complex is six hundred and forty-four million, nine hundred and seventy-six thousand dollars per annum.”

  “It’s expensive keeping us safe. Now, if you’ll excuse me.” McIntosh started to rise from his seat.

  “Which means the cost of each of the ten prisoners currently housed there is over sixty-four million dollars. Hardly a bargain compared to Gitmo’s thirteen million per pop.”

  McIntosh sat down. “Prisoners? What on earth are you talking about, Roger? Have you suffered a stroke or something?”

  Blue Man took out additional photos that Robie had taken showing the men being wheeled off to ambulances. “I’m talking about these men.”

  “Could be anyone,” said McIntosh, glancing at them. “Looks like some Air Force personnel in distress. As you said, it gets hot out there.”

  “They’re
not Air Force personnel, as you well know.”

  “You say, I say.”

  Blue Man’s expression now hardened. “This back-and-forth grows wearisome, and you are not the only item on my agenda for today.” He leaned forward. “Vector’s COO and CFO also say. As does Colonel Sumter. They’re ISIS, Taliban, and Al-Qaeda prisoners taken from the battlefields and smuggled into this country without the knowledge of government leadership.”

  McIntosh’s eyelids rose a bit more fully, revealing his pale blue eyes. “You’ve . . . you’ve talked to Sumter?”

  “We actually couldn’t get him to stop talking once he saw the trouble he was in.”

  “I don’t see it that way at all. And contrary to your observation, it was all approved with a nice little bow on top.”

  “What was approved a very long time ago and never revisited was the operation of London AFS as a PARCS radar array monitoring facility, which function it was performing up until about a year ago. Then its purpose dramatically shifted. It has the same quasi-pyramidal building as its cousin in Grand Forks and the same impressive surveillance system. However, since we already have one of those in North Dakota, and the one at Grand Forks is newer and better positioned, a spare was not really needed. But that’s certainly not the first time the Pentagon has had redundancies and wasted money. So a complex out in the hinterlands with a duplicative purpose? You must have felt like a pot of gold had been dropped into your lap because that made it the perfect facility to house additional unauthorized prisoners who should never have been brought into this country. To torture them. And then dispose of them when they had told all they could or refused to do so, and then you would pass along this intelligence to others in government under the subterfuge that it had come through ordinary channels. The ambulances? They might as well have been meat wagons for the bodies. Which we are right now digging up, by the way, based on information provided to us.”

  McIntosh sat back. “I commend the speed with which you have moved on this, Roger. I really do.”

  “The federal government is like an aircraft carrier. It takes us a while to get going, but once we do, look out.”