“HOREB.”
“SIMON.”
“WHICH?”
“SORCERER. 2-3-13.”
“UR HOME. SF ON THE MOVE. AMOC1 WITH UNID PASSENGER. U AVAIL?”
“WHERE?”
“AMOC ETA FTWAYNE, IND, 2:30 PM CST.”
Woodbine looked at his watch. It was 11:55. He sighed. He would have to hurry.
“CANDO,” he typed.
“GOOD LUCK.”
“SELAH.”
He brought up the weather on the computer screen while he dialed the hardware store.
“Ferguson’s,” Charley Moore’s cheerful voice answered.
“Charley, Don.”
“Hi, boss, what’s up?”
“Gotta business thing. I’ll be gone for a couple days. Any problem?”
“No, sir, Hazel and me can handle everything.”
“Good. When you gonna marry that girl?”
“Soon’s you gimme a raise,” Charley said with a laugh.
“Poor child’s destined to be an old maid.”
“I’ll tell her you said that.”
“Give her a kiss on the cheek instead. I should be back before the weekend.”
“Safe trip.”
“Thanks.”
The weather was clear and cold from Michigan all the way south to the Ohio border. There was weather moving in from the west, but nothing bad enough to worry him. He walked briskly into the bedroom, took a quick shower, and changed into a plain gray business suit with a dark tie that he left knotted loosely around his neck. He went to the garage, swung a heavy worktable away from the rear wall. He reached inside his shirt and pulled out a silver chain with two keys hanging on it. They were the kind of keys used with safe deposit boxes; one had to activate the lock before the second key opened it. He used both to unlock a three-foot door and slid it sideways, revealing a carbon steel Malhauser safe. He twirled the dials and swung the heavy door open.
The safe contained two aluminum suitcases, a two-foot-high steel filing cabinet with two drawers, and two large strongboxes. He selected one of the aluminum cases, laid it on the floor, and snapped it open. Embedded in Styrofoam were the components of a .50 caliber fully automatic rifle, a telescopic sight, a twenty-shot clip, and a .50 caliber Eagle handgun with two sixteen-shot clips. There was one open slot in the Styrofoam tray. He unclipped the pocket in the lid of the case and lowered it. Secured in pockets in the lid were six boxes of steel jacket .50 caliber bullets. Three hundred rounds. He took each component from the case and studied it carefully: stock, barrel, silencer, scope, and telescoping aluminum tripod. Satisfied that they were clean and ready for action, he replaced them in their slots.
He opened one of the strongboxes. It was packed to the rim with neatly stacked ten-, twenty-, and fifty-dollar bills. He counted out a thousand dollars in various denominations, placed the packet of bills in the one open slot in the case, then snapped it shut. He reached up inside the safe above the door and pressed a button on a small black box. Then he closed the safe, twirled the dials on the lock, slid the door shut, and double-locked it. The house was wired with a pound of C-4 and several tubes of gasoline that he had built into the walls. The bomb could be deactivated only by using a remote controller that blocked the bomb switch attached to the lock of the safe door. If the safe was opened or blown, or the inside door to the carport was opened, the entire house would be instantly demolished and what was left would burn out of control. He swung the worktable back in place and carried the aluminum case into the house.
In his closet, he kept a small carry bag with a change of shirts, socks and underwear, and toilet articles, enough to last him five days. He quickly checked to make sure all windows and doors were locked, although there had not been a house robbery in Bad Rapids for years, and set the burglar alarm. He took the case, carry bag, and a briefcase, went back to the garage, and put them in the rear seat of his Four Runner. Then he drove the three miles to the landing strip on a ten-acre tract he owned.
The plane was a twin turbo prop Beechcraft Baron D-55 with 375-horsepower Lycoming turbo engines. It had a cruising speed of 300 miles per hour and a range of a thousand miles. The pressurized cabin provided a maximum altitude of 33,000 feet. It was hangared in a rebuilt barn at one corner of the lot. The landing strip stretched from the door of the barn, two thousand feet to the other end of the field, plenty of stretch for the plane. The Baron was fully fueled and always in flight-ready condition. He put the gun case and carry bag behind him on the floor of the plane, put the briefcase on the seat beside him, cranked up the ship, and pulled it out of the barn. He got out, put his car in the barn, closed and locked the doors. Five minutes later he was aloft.
He checked his watch. It was 12:27.
He brought up a United States atlas program on the built-in computer in the control panel and marked a course from Bad Rapids, Michigan, to Fort Wayne, Indiana; 206 miles. The weather was clear almost all the way there.
They had been tracking Sam Firestone for months, hoping he would lead them to Waller. So far, all dead ends. But as long as they continued to pay him ten thousand dollars to go on these wild goose chases, Woodbine was glad to oblige. And if he happened to get lucky and finish the job, the fee jumped to fifty thousand, which was fair enough.
He set his compass, leaned back, and turned on the CD player. Sarah Vaughn’s “My Ship” boomed from the stereo.
What a lovely day for a spin.
CHAPTER 13
The big jet whined around the corner of the concourse and swung past Woodbine’s small plane. He opened his briefcase, removed a palm-sized digital video camera, and stepping through the door, perched one foot on the wheel and braced the camera in the jamb of the door to keep it steady. He was casual about every move. No one noticed him seemingly resting in the doorway of the plane, a plain man in an off-the-rack gray suit. He watched the 737 as it followed the ground crew man to a designated spot on the tarmac and stopped. The ground crew rolled a portable staircase up to it and a moment later the door hissed open.
The video camera had a switch on the back that enabled Woodbine to shoot either video or still shots. He moved the switch to video and waited. A tall black man came out on the staircase platform and looked around. That would be Nielson. Behind him, the shorter guy in the blue jacket stepped out. Silverman. He had seen them before, always through the lens of a camera or through binoculars. A moment later Firestone came out with his passenger. He taped Firestone and Vail as they exited the AMOC and went down the stairs. The plane’s captain followed them down. He stretched when he reached the tarmac and rubbed the back of his neck.
Vail and Firestone were chatting, Firestone occasionally pointing toward a small single-engine Cherokee.
Who is that guy? Woodbine wondered. Doesn’t look like a big shot, the way he’s dressed.
Woodbine switched the camera to still shot and snapped a half-dozen medium close-ups of the unidentified passenger. He slid back on the seat of the plane and put the video camera back in the briefcase.
They’re heading for the Cherokee, he thought. They’re playing hard to get He nodded to himself. It made sense, all this security. This is it. He’s going to Waller.
Firestone led Vail to the Cherokee. A man in a dark blue suit, wearing sunglasses, smiled and they shook hands.
“A1 Ricardo, Martin Vail. Mr. Vail, A1 is FBI.”
“The gang’s all here,” Vail said, shaking Ricardo’s hand.
“She’s gassed and flight-checked,” Ricardo said. “There’s a two-door black Taurus waiting. Key’s in the inside rim, right rear.”
“You’re a good man, Al,” Firestone said, climbing into the plane. “Be careful, huh,” Ricardo said. “I had to sign for the car and Cherokee.”
“Trust me,” Firestone said.
“That’s what you said the last time.” Ricardo smiled as Firestone pulled the door shut. Vail climbed in beside him.
“You flying this bird?” he asked Firestone.
; “Yep. Been flying for thirty years.”
“What was that about the last time?”
“It’s a long story.” Firestone laughed and, ignoring the question, said, “You don’t have a problem in small planes, do you?”
“I once flew seventy miles in a chopper in the middle of a blizzard at zero altitude,” Vail said.
“That when you were shagging Stampler down in Kentucky?”
“You know about that, too, huh.”
“The A.G. showed me your clips, Mr. Vail.”
“Do we have to be so damn formal? Why don’t you call me Martin or Marty, whichever you prefer, and I’ll call you Sam.”
“Fine.”
He tuned the radio to the tower frequency, advised the flight controller he was heading southeast to the Lima, Ohio, county airport, and asked for takeoff instructions.
“Roger, Cherokee N-32,” the tower responded. “You’ll take runway two. You have two aircraft in front of you. You got some weather moving in on Lima.”
“I read you, Tower. Maybe we’ll beat it there.”
“Roger. Wait for your clearance.”
“Roger and out.”
Following close behind, Woodbine listened to the conversation on his scanner.
Lima, Ohio. So far, so good.
Above the Lima airport Woodbine held steady at a thousand feet, a half mile away, and watched through his binoculars. Vail and Firestone parked the Cherokee and drove off in the black sedan, heading northwest on the county road into Lima. A mile southeast of town the car turned onto Interstate 75 and headed south. The weather was working against Woodbine. Rocked by winds and turbulence, he flitted in and out of dark clouds and lost the car. He dropped down to five hundred feet to get below the storm. Cars whizzed north and south on the highway. He held at five hundred, scanning the road south of Lima, searching for his elusive prey. Finally, still battered by the turbulence and dodging in and out of black low-hanging clouds, he started a square search, checking the automap on his computer and sectioning off the area south of Lima. He flew a two-mile square east of the interstate, then did the same to the west, heading south in two-mile increments. Twice he thought he spotted the black car on narrow county roads, but checked them with his binoculars to no avail. He flew in the same two-mile squares until he was fifty miles south of Lima. Still buffeted by the bad weather, he finally turned and headed back north.
The interstate was almost empty.
He had lost the car.
Firestone had turned off the interstate onto a two-lane road. He drove for ten or fifteen minutes, then turned into a country filling station and parked under the roof over the pumps.
“Thirsty?” he asked Vail.
“Are you kidding?” Vail said with a pained expression. “I’ve been eating and drinking ever since I got on the AMOC this morning.”
Firestone walked to an old-fashioned soft drink machine and fed quarters into the slot. He popped the tab on a can of ginger ale as he walked back to the car. He stood on Vail’s side of the car, staring back at the road.
It was quiet except for a slight wind that rustled the frozen snow at the edge of the blacktop and the roar of a plane as it flew by half a mile to the north.
“Looking for a tail, aren’t you?”
Firestone smiled down at him. “Caution’s my middle name.” He threw the can in a waste bucket and got back in the car. “We’re almost there.”
“Want to tell me who, what, or where ‘there’ is?”
“Ralph, Marty. That’s what you’ll call him, Ralph. He’s going to tell you a story. Just listen, don’t break his train of thought. You break his train of thought, he’ll have to start over.”
“He’s memorized this yarn, that it?”
“More or less. Once he’s through, ask him anything you want.”
“WitSec, right?”
Firestone nodded.
“No wonder you’re so cautious. Somebody must really want this Ralph bad.”
“Everybody in witness protection is on top of somebody’s list.”
The farmhouse sat two hundred feet from the road, a nicely kept two-story wood frame structure, white with gray trim. A dirt road led to a turnaround adjacent to a sagging barn, where a muddy, two-year-old Chevrolet was parked haphazardly near the door. As Firestone pulled up, white lace curtains parted in a front window and a young woman peered out with cautious eyes. Firestone got out of the car and she moved out of the window. A moment later the front door opened and she stepped out.
“Hello, Marie.”
“Hi, Mr. Firestone.”
“Where’s Ralph?”
“Out in the field. The tractor’s stuck in a hole.”
“Marie, this is Mr. Vail.”
“How do you do,” she said, and shook his hand. She nodded toward the door. “Don’t mind Noah. Come on in.”
She was a fragile young woman, with her waist-length ash-blond hair tied in a ponytail. Vail thought she had once been pretty, but her face was lined with the creases of harsh living, and the sparkle in her green eyes had long since faded. She was wearing jeans and a dark green flannel shirt, its sleeves rolled up to her elbows.
She led Vail and Firestone back toward the kitchen through the living room, which was cheaply but tastefully furnished. There was a large picture of Jesus on one wall, his hands out at his sides as if blessing the house, and a large leather-bound Bible on the coffee table. The kitchen was spotless. A large gas grill dominated the center of the room, and there was a breakfast nook in one corner with a painting of the Last Supper on the wall.
She opened the back door and yelled to her husband, who was twenty or so yards out on the snow-encrusted field, standing on the tractor, snapping the controls back and forth, trying to jog the John Deere out of a frozen mud hole.
“Ralphie. It’s Mr. Firestone.”
He stopped what he was doing, turned the tractor off, jumped down, and trotted across the frozen earth to the house. He wiped his hands on his pants and shook hands with Firestone.
“This is Mr. Vail, Ralph. He’s with the A.G., wants to hear your story. What say we just sit here at the kitchen table.”
“Sure. Marie, make up some fresh coffee, would you?”
He shook off his thick parka and threw it in a chair. He was wearing jeans and a plain white T-shirt, a good-looking young man, about twenty-five, short—five-six or -seven—and husky from working the farm. His black hair was trimmed short. A black beard covered the lower part of his face, and he had brown eyes that avoided direct eye contact. He looked at Vail’s chin when he spoke. But what attracted Vail’s attention was the tattoo on his right arm, an ominous black spiderweb that spread from the bicep through the inside of his elbow to his forearm. He remembered noticing a tattoo just like it in one of the dozens of photographs that had flashed across the monitor screen earlier in the day while the A.G. was briefing him on Christian hate groups.
Marie busied herself making a pot of coffee in an old-fashioned percolator.
“Where d’ya want me to start?” he asked in a flat western drawl.
“From the beginning,” Firestone answered.
***
I come from this little town called Wolf Point, near the Fort Peck Indian reservation along the Missouri Breaks in east Montana. We had us a little ranch ten miles or so out of town. Cattle and horses. I could break a jump-buckin’ long-haired wild pony after they’d been running wild all winter by the time I was eleven years old. My ma was a nurse. Worked for Doc Zimmerman, who was a Jew, which was kinda rare around there, but he was the only one for a long ways around and liken it pissed off my pa that she was workin’ for the Jew but it was the best job she could get. M’pa was kinda short like me with big, callused hands, a God-fearin’ Christian he was, read the Bible every night whilst m’ma played one of them old-timey pump organs. We’d sit around the fireplace and he’d read scripture and then he’d quiz us. My sister Lorraine and me had to learn a verse every night. Word-to-word, make a mistake and
he’d glower down on us with them big black eyes a’his and shake his head and make us do it over. Everything we did, every decision he made, he took outta the Book. No dancin’, smokin’, drinkin’. No TV. We had us a radio which he used to listen to the patriot stations every night.
When I was twelve, Ma come down with pneumonia. We had a birthing shed where she had to stay four or five days a month when she was bleeding or when she had a baby, and she caught cold out there around Thanksgiving and just couldn’t shake it. By Christmas she was havin’ a real bad time breathin’, and Lorraine took her place at the organ. I remember Pa and me goin’ out and fndin’ a perfect Christmas tree, cuttin’ it down, and bringin’ it home. We all made ornaments for it and made Christmas as happy as we could. She made it through Christmas but she died on New Year’s Eve. Shook Pa’s faith up pretty good. He blamed Doc Zimmerman, said that was the problem with the country, that the Jewboys was takin’ over and they was inferior in everything they did. He hated nigras, too, but I never seen one up close until I was almost growed. Pa was angry a lot after that, go out in the field and curse God, shake the Bible at the sky. But he still relied on the scriptures for how we lived day by day and the Bible readin’ went on like always.
Long as I can remember, there’d be these men from down in Arkansas and over to Michigan who would come by once, twice a year. They’d sit down in the livin’ room and talk about how the country was goin’ to hell and what was wrong. When I was a little kid I couldn’t sit with them but I’d lay at the top of the stairs listenin’. One such was Mr. Orin Plummer. He was fierce-lookin’ ’cause he had lost his right hand makin’ a hand grenade and he had bad scars all over his face and he always wore a pistol low at his hip. I heard later he was shot in the back by the ATFs. When he come to the house I’d run and hide in the stable and he’d stand in the door and laugh and yell at me to come on down there. And then Pa would order me down and Major Orin, which is what they called him, shook hands with this kinda plastic hand. It was always cold and kinda slick and it gave me the creeps.
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