* * *
—
Mace moved slowly along the crest of a snow-covered ridge running parallel to the abandoned huge coal-processing plant, darting quickly from tree to tree. The rusting buildings, constructed on several acres of cleared land in the middle of the dense forest, were just a few hundred feet below him at this point but were still only barely visible in the early-morning darkness. Mace could not see his watch—he had brought with him a small flashlight but did not want to use it for fear of giving away his position to anyone who might be out there—but guessed it was nearly four in the morning. Built at the base of the western side of the mountain, the facility would not begin receiving any sunlight for at least another two hours. Fortunately the night was clear, and though there was no moon, he could still make out the larger shapes.
For several moments he stared down through the gloom at the vast complex below, then moved back into the woods, sat on a large stump at the edge of the tree line, and closed his eyes. He was exhausted. From the trees between the store and the junkyard he had watched the large truck pick up its payload of food from the loading bay at Gene’s Food Market exactly at nine o’clock last evening. The two men had worked silently, moving the boxes from the raised platform at the back of the store and into the cargo area of the large vehicle quickly. Then they had jumped into the cab of the truck and roared off. He had followed the truck from a safe distance on the used dirt bike Gene’s father had sold him yesterday afternoon.
The truck had moved out of town in the opposite direction from that in which he had entered Sugar Grove Friday night and climbed at a snail’s pace into the mountains south of town. At times the pace had been so slow it had been difficult for Mace to maintain his balance on the motorcycle. At those points he had simply pulled the dirt bike to the side of the winding road and allowed the vehicle he was following to make several minutes’ headway, fearing that the men in the truck might become suspicious of the persistent single headlight in their rearview mirror.
Mace was very certain now that there was a reason Leeny Hunt and Lewis Webster had not allowed him to be privy to the identities of the investors. A reason that most of the money coming into the Broadway Ventures account at Chase had originally passed through Capital Bank. A reason that Leeny had been able to raise the money for the fund so quickly. A reason that the insider trading trial of the LeClair and Foster investment bankers had quietly gone away. He was certain there had to be a unifying factor for all these things. They weren’t just unconnected coincidences. But he didn’t know what that factor was. He had suspicions but no proof. However, the truck, or wherever it was going, might be able to confirm his suspicions. Unless the men in the truck detected him.
Big enough to feed an army; Lewis Webster’s absolute certainty that the Manhattan real estate market would crash; Leeny Hunt’s interest in his apartment computer: All these thoughts had raced through his mind as the wind whipped past the helmet he had purchased at one of the town’s two hardware stores that afternoon.
Halfway up the third mountain, twelve miles south of town, the truck had suddenly veered right onto a dirt road. The two men had hopped out of the vehicle, locked shut a gate behind them, and continued on. Seeing no other option—the dirt bike would make too much noise—Mace had hidden the motorcycle several hundred yards south of the gate and begun what had turned out to be an arduous five-hour trek through the Appalachian forest—roughly paralleling the dirt road the truck had traversed—which had gotten him to this tree stump.
Mace took in a deep breath of the cold, clear air. Beneath his clothes he was perspiring heavily, even in the twenty-degree temperatures. Slowly he stood up again, moved forward to the edge of the tree line again, and peered down at the complex below through the branches of the pines on the crest of the ridge. He had come this far. There was no reason to make this long trek through the forest and not find what you had come to find—whatever that ultimately turned out to be. He laughed to himself. A New York investment banker prowling the dense woods of West Virginia in the middle of the night. Maybe he really was as intense as people said.
He took one more deep breath of air, pushed through the last line of trees out into the open, and began negotiating his way down the steep slope. He needed Slade here. Hell, this was probably what Slade did for a living, though of course he had never made that clear.
The snow gave way beneath his boots. For several moments Mace managed to remain upright, fighting the pull of gravity, but finally he lost his balance. He grabbed at several small trees growing out of the hillside as he tumbled downward but missed them or came away with nothing but a few twigs that snapped off in his large hand. Over and over he tumbled, unable to stop his fall because of the steep slope and the snow, until he felt the ground give way completely beneath him and he fell ten feet through midair into the soft powder at the base of the ridge.
For several minutes he lay still, covered with snow, listening for any sound that would indicate his fall had been detected, testing his body for any broken parts. But there were no sounds to indicate that he had been detected and no broken bones. Just a few bruises on his legs that would turn into nice strawberries in a few hours. He had put up with much more than that on the University of Iowa football field.
Finally he picked himself up, brushed the snow off his face and jacket, and quickly moved toward the side of a large building. When he reached it, he moved slowly against its edge, feeling his way along the rough cinder blocks until he found what appeared to be a door. He turned the handle and pushed gently. It gave way, and he moved inside quietly. As he did, a smell of mildew and rust rushed to his nostrils. Mace waited for a few moments for his eyes to adjust to the pitch darkness inside the building, but nothing came into focus. There was no light inside the building at all.
“Damn,” Mace whispered to himself. He wanted to be back into the safety of the pine woods well before the sun’s rays began to make their way down into this remote valley. But he also wanted to find out what the hell was going on. Mace felt for the small flashlight in his coat pocket. He had no idea what he had just entered or who might see him if he turned the flashlight on, but it was a chance he had to take. He couldn’t just stand here.
He held his breath and flicked the button. Instantly the room was bathed in a soft glow. He glanced about, slowly gaining confidence that there was no one else in the small room. Then suddenly the beam of light began to shake as his gaze focused on the letters on the sides of the boxes piled to the ceiling: ammunition. He stared at the letters for a few seconds, then moved slowly to the boxes and pressed his gloved fingers against the letters inscribed on the wooden crates.
“My God,” he murmured. He flashed the light slowly around the room. Lying open on the floor was a longer crate. He moved to it, bent down and inspected the contents. Assault rifles. AK-47s, the stencil on the side of the crate indicated. Mace had heard a great deal about the weapon but had never actually seen one before. He was mesmerized by the sight of the sleek killing machine.
Mace rose from his kneeling position and glanced about the cinder-block walls. What did this mean? It confirmed to him that the fund was involved in something it should not be. How could this be anything aboveboard? Guns hidden away in a remote piece of the West Virginia backwoods. He had no other answers, but the stench of Broadway Ventures was beginning to overpower him. He needed answers to the questions that were rattling through his brain.
Almost four-thirty. There was little time left. He moved cautiously to a door on the far wall. Like the knob on the door from the outside, this knob turned easily. He pushed forward gently and peered through the space. Suddenly the crack of the door was filled with the bared, gnashing teeth and massive head of a huge German shepherd. The powerful rush of the screaming canine slammed the door shut in Mace’s face, and he tumbled backward onto the cement floor of the ammunition room. “Jesus Christ!” He could hear the dog howling and snapping on the
other side of the metal door in a frenzy, its front claws scraping against the metal like nails scraping down a blackboard. Then Mace heard a voice screaming at the dog.
Instantly Mace picked himself and the flashlight up off the floor and raced for the outside door. He paused only long enough at the entrance to make certain that it was closed tightly after him. He could hear the dog howling from inside as he moved quickly along the wall, back in the direction from which he had come. How foolish could he have been? How utterly foolish? He should have left at the first sight of the ammunition. He should not have attempted to find anything else. He should have simply picked up one of the machine guns as evidence for the state police and made his way back through the woods.
He ran alongside the huge building as best he could through the snow. Any normal person would never have come here. Any normal person would have stayed as far away from Broadway Ventures as possible.
The end of the building was coming up soon. He had to make a break for the woods. There was no choice. The longer he stayed near the complex, the greater the chance he would be caught. It was still very dark, but he was able to pick out a place where the incline of the ridge seemed less steep.
He pushed off from the building and broke for the woods. Fifty yards away from the building, just as the incline was beginning to become noticeable, Mace heard the outside door of the complex open.
“Go, Sasha! Find, Sasha!”
Mace glanced at the tree line. It was still a hundred yards away up the snow-covered slope. The thought of his successfully making it up the slope was preposterous. He would never reach the woods before the German shepherd overtook him. Mace sucked in a breath. Even if he made it to the cover of the woods, the dog would track him down quickly by scent anyway. Hell, the man would be able to follow the footprints in the snow even without the dog. And he was probably armed with one of those AK-47s.
The dog broke as the man released it from the leash and began to follow the scent along the wall, sniffing excitedly in pursuit of Mace. Tabiq smiled as he pushed through the snow behind the dog. It would be over in a matter of minutes. Vargus would be appreciative.
Mace moved sluggishly through the snow toward a large shack farther up the base of the ridge. It was his only chance. Adrenaline coursed through his body, pushing him beyond what he himself thought his capabilities were. He had been chased on the football field, but never by someone wielding a deadly weapon and following a bloodthirsty dog. It was amazing what the body could do when it had to, what the mind could make the body do.
Mace reached the front door of the shack, thrust it open, burst inside, and closed the door behind him. Quickly he snapped on the flashlight he was still carrying to see whether there might be any kind of hardware in the shed that could be of help to him. Immediately the light came to rest on the bodies of the man and woman Vargus had killed weeks before. Well preserved by the intense cold, the hikers hung side by side from the wooden wall by ropes, one end tightly secured about their chests, the other attached to hooks on the wall, their booted feet barely touching the floor of the shack. Mace took a step back, dropped the flashlight, and fell to his knees as the image of the almost headless corpse hanging next to the woman imprinted vividly on his brain, making him forget for an instant about the canine in hot pursuit. He had not eaten in several hours, but what was left of the meal—a hamburger and french fries—spewed immediately onto the floor of the shack. He could not control himself.
The German shepherd bounded through the snow, pointed directly at the small shack. It no longer needed to smell its quarry. The man smiled as he loped through the snow behind the dog. He had not bothered to put on a jacket, and he was glad that the chase would end quickly. The question now wasn’t whether or not the intruder would be caught, but how Tabiq should deal with him when he caught him. Should he shoot him immediately or take him back to Vargus? Tabiq slowed as he neared the shed. The dog stood on its hind legs scraping at the wood as the man neared the door. He held the gun out, ready to fire if necessary.
“Down, Sasha,” he whispered.
The dog obeyed, whimpering excitedly as it sat on its haunches outside the door, ears forward, foam building on its black jaw as it anticipated being allowed to enter the shack. Tabiq stared at the door. The intruder had to be in there. For a moment he considered retracing his steps to enlist help. There was only one intruder—he had determined this fact from the tracks in the snow—but the man might have a gun. Then the man shook his head. He had a dog and a gun, and he was a well-trained commando. Tabiq pulled the door open quickly, and the German shepherd burst into the shack.
In the next moment Mace moved quickly around the corner of the small building from the blind side, the side on which the door hung from its hinges. With a huge effort he slammed the door shut, trapping the animal inside, and then slammed the face of the shovel, which had been hanging next to the bodies, onto the other man’s head. The man dropped into the snow unconscious.
The sun’s first rays were just beginning to filter down into the valley, and Mace could barely make out the trickles of blood moving in rivulets down the man’s face. Almost completely out of breath, Mace sucked in air as he stared at the fallen man, who had meant to kill him.
Quickly he bent over and picked up the AK-47. He might need it. He glanced back at the compound. Others would be coming soon. There would be more dogs and more guns. He had to go now if he stood any chance at all of making it out of there alive. He swallowed hard. Thank God the shack had had a back door.
* * *
—
Vargus pointed at Tabiq still lying unconscious in the snow. “Get him up,” he growled at the other four men.
Quickly they picked up their fallen comrade and began to carry him back toward the facility. Vargus watched them go, his eyes narrow behind the dark sunglasses he wore against the brilliant sunshine. The compound had been broken into. The secrecy of the project had been violated. He could see the footsteps leading away up the slope from the shack toward the woods. On the very last day they were to be here. It defied all odds. It could not have happened this way. But it had.
He could not chase the intruder. They were on a strict timetable now. There was no way to stay another day to track down whoever had entered the base.
Vargus spit several sunflower seeds into the snow. The man in Washington would not be pleased. But there was nothing Vargus could do about it now.
His eyes fell to the doorway and the snow stirred up in front of it. This was where the critical battle had taken place, where Tabiq had failed. Vargus shook his head. Whoever the intruder was, he was resourceful. Tabiq was a practiced killer, one who did not miss.
Vargus pulled open the door of the shack. The German shepherd lay next to the headless body of the dead hiker, which the intruder had removed from the wall and laid carefully across the floor of the shack. As Vargus watched, the dog sniffed at the thigh of the corpse without removing its eyes from him. Vargus shook his head again. He regretted not getting rid of the bodies now. Overlooking even a single detail could be devastating.
28
Janice Dolan moved out of the bathroom with only a towel wrapped about her. She shivered as the cooler air of the bedroom met her damp skin. The warm shower had refreshed her after a long day of teaching at the local public elementary school. She had been dreaming of the clear blue waters of the Caribbean as the streams of the shower had poured down upon her. But now the cold of the bedroom was a stark reminder that winter still clenched the town of Nyack.
Janice shivered again. She hated winter. She had been born and raised in Florida, and she had never been able to become accustomed to the constant cold here during the winter. But Jim’s work was here, so here they would stay. At least the summers were nice.
If only Bobby would just come into the house when she first called him, she thought as she moved toward the large walk-in closet off the bedroom. Unfortunatel
y Jim wouldn’t be home until early tomorrow morning. Bobby knew that, and he was going to take full advantage of it, the way he did every time Jim worked the graveyard shift. It was going to be a struggle to get him to come in from the snow and finish his homework. It always was. She might as well resign herself to the fight.
At first the man’s presence in the walk-in closet did not fully register. His hulking form was so foreign to what she expected as she slid the mirrored door across its tracks that she could only stare at his swarthy face and bushy silver-and-black mustache.
Janice turned to run, but Vargus was on her instantly, like a huge, agile tiger, throwing her face first into the floral-patterned comforter covering the bed. He overpowered her easily, pinning her tiny body to the mattress beneath his great weight. One huge hand grabbed a fistful of her long, freshly washed hair, pressing her mouth to the comforter so she could not scream, while the other removed a small piece of nine-ply rope from his belt. Deftly Vargus wrapped the twine firmly around her throat, crossed the ends at the nape of her neck, took hold of both ends with each hand, and began to choke her in a viselike grip. The woman’s hands lay trapped beneath her body by Vargus’s weight so she could not resist. Nor could she scream. The twine paralyzed her vocal cords.
Vargus smiled down at her as he watched the large veins of her neck begin to bulge. He leaned to one side so that he could see her face as it arched back against his pull. He jerked her neck twice as he pulled, and his lips curled into a tighter smile as he noticed a blood vessel below her left eye burst, filling the skin in the area with purple liquid.
She tried to speak, to utter only a word or two that would let the man know that he could have whatever he wanted if he would only relax the hold that was quickly suffocating her. There was cash in the house, and if it wasn’t enough, she would drive him to a machine for more. There was jewelry he could take. He could even take her if that was what he wanted. She would not resist, and she would never say a word to anyone if he would only let her go. But she could not say these things because the rope was too tightly wrapped about her throat. Pleading silently with the man to have mercy, she stared into his cold dark eyes as he leaned to the side.
The Vulture Fund Page 30
