Worst Case Scenario, page 28
Monk took a deep breath. “So, we’re going through with it?”
McFadden placed his left hand on Monk’s shoulder. “We’re doing what must be done. Nothing in this country will change unless someone steps up and takes control. We might have to view it from afar, but at least we’ll know we started the ball rolling.”
“But if they’re expecting us—”
McFadden sneered. “They’re not expecting what I’m planning.” He redialed his cell. “Okay, guys—we’re going secure—pass it on.”
Months ago, each McFadden Academy graduate attending a university was instructed to purchase six pay-as-you-go cellphones from their local big box store and send them to Newman Smith at a post office box in Albuquerque. McFadden and his most trusted staff now had dozens of burner phones. After activating their phones, they exchanged numbers through snail mail—no electronic records. The prepaid mobile phones could not be traced back to them, nor could they be tracked by the authorities. Once someone went secure, they destroyed their regular phone.
McFadden powered off his phone, removing the battery and SIM card. He rolled down the passenger window and dropped everything on the freeway to be destroyed by the wheels of other vehicles.
Cook glanced at Maxwell as he dragged himself into Cook’s office and collapsed in one of the chairs. Cook stood at a large wall map of the United States and kept talking on the phone. He acknowledged Maxwell with a curt nod before going back to his conversation.
“Okay, thanks—let me know,” Cook said. He took another look at Maxwell. The guy’s shoulders slumped, and the rings under the puffy eyes screamed lack of sleep.
“Rough night, huh?”
Maxwell mumbled, “I’ve had better.”
Cook dropped in his chair and rocked back. “Good news—looks like we just about have him.”
Maxwell’s droopy eyes came alive. “They’ve got McFadden?”
“No, not yet,” Cook said, “but they know about where he is and where he’s going—so it’s just a matter of time. NSA’s been pinging his cell phone and triangulating his calls through cell towers. He’s just east of Oklahoma City. We’ve been listening in on his phone conversations. He’s still on I-40 heading east. In fact, he just told someone he expected to be in Nashville this evening.”
“That’s great. So are we still doing a full deployment tomorrow?”
Cook considered the question. “Yeah, let’s plan on it unless the FBI scoops him up tonight.”
The long shadows of evening cast eerie patterns over Tennessee State Highway 22 South. The traffic had thinned, and everyone needed their headlights. There were fewer homes and businesses the further they drove into the country. Monk sipped the orange juice he’d gotten from the last gas station stop and tried to read McFadden’s thoughts. McFadden finally broke the silence.
“We’ve still got some long driving ahead, Monk. Let me know if you need me to spell you.”
“I’m good for now, but where are we going if not to Nashville?”
McFadden let the passenger window down a couple of inches before lighting the cigar. “Andrews,” he said, between puffs.
Monk’s head snapped. “We’re taking this to Joint Base Andrews?”
McFadden looked at him for a moment with a confused and surprised expression, then let out a booming laugh and slapped the seat. “Hadn’t thought of that—no, we’re going to Andrews, North Carolina.”
“Never heard of it.”
“Good, maybe the feds haven’t either. It’s a little town in the middle of the Smokey Mountains.”
“What’s there?”
“A safe place to rest and hide out for a night.”
McFadden’s quick smile returned. The ash glow from his cigar gave his face a demonic look.
Speaker Henry Wilson paced the floor of his townhouse in Georgetown and spoke softly into the phone. “Why are we going secure communications?” He had already switched to the burner phone and tossed his old one into the roaring fireplace.
General Curtis Shaw dried his hair and stood naked under the bathroom heat lamp. It aggravated him to be interrupted in the middle of his shower. “You know as much as I do,” he said to Henry Wilson. “Piedmont called earlier and said we were going secure. I assume McFadden had a good reason. Anyway, it’s good operational security—don’t worry about it.”
“But, what’s the reason?”
Shaw frowned and tossed the wet towel to the floor. The last thing they needed right now was this crazy bastard coming unglued. “Just relax. I’m sure everything’s fine. He’s probably just being over-cautious, but we don’t want to take any chances, okay?”
“If you say so,” Wilson sighed.
FBI Director Campbell quietly closed the conference room door and stepped into the hall. His aide nervously wrung his hands and stood at attention.
“This had better be important to drag me out of a national security briefing,” Campbell grumbled.
“It is, sir,” the aide replied. “We’ve lost him—McFadden, that is.”
Campbell leaned back against the dark wood-paneled wall and ran his hand slowly down his face. He still had the same headache since his meeting with Fuller and Cook that morning. He’d hardly eaten a thing, and the constant inflow of coffee and bad intel about the McFadden affair had made him jittery.
“What happened?”
“We were tracking him fine earlier—even picking up phone conversations through NSA. We’d just started to zero in with two drones this afternoon when the signal went dead.”
“Dead?”
“Yes, sir. We attempted to do a manual override activation and power up, but no luck. We’re getting nothing but dead air from his phone.”
“Did the DOE aircraft get a rad fix on him?”
“No, sir—it’s flying at 500 feet along the I-40 corridor, but nothing’s reading hot from the freeway.”
Campbell pursed his lips and let out a long exhale. “Okay, thanks. Find him. Epand the search area, look for side roads and alternate routes, put every drone available between him and Washington.” This wasn’t information he wanted to take back into the meeting. As he reached for the door handle, he glanced at his hand. It shook, and he’d subconsciously crossed his fingers.
Daniel Piedmont made the left turn and only glanced at the road ahead. His focus remained on the headlights behind him. He’d just confirmed it—he was being followed. In his second FBI assignment, he’d worked in the elite Mobile Surveillance Team. He’d received training from former intelligence officers and veteran FBI agents about how to observe without being observed. That’s what MST did—they spied on foreign intelligence officers, terrorists, and master criminals.
Since being trained by the best—he knew all their secrets. After talking to McFadden, he decided he’d test the water to determine if he’d fallen under suspicion or if it was just silly paranoia. The easiest way to do it would be to leave home and see who followed. A Saturday night out in Washington, DC would be what they’d expect from a single guy. He packed a small rucksack with everything he’d need for the operation, just in case he couldn’t come back home. After leaving his apartment, he drove to a small Italian restaurant a couple of miles down the road and ate his fill of lasagna and garlic bread. He sat sipping the last of his wine, studying the other customers.
Who had come in after him? Where did they sit? Any sign of weapons or radio bulges under their clothes? He asked for the check, paid it, and headed down the dark back hall leading to the restrooms. If he was under surveillance, there would be someone outside and someone inside. He decided to try an old trick he heard about from a Soviet defector.
The restroom was empty except for one guy at the urinal as Piedmont walked to the toilet stall. He stepped inside, sat on the commode, and locked the door. Now he waited. He planned to make the agents nervous and force someone to come looking for him. If he stayed in the restroom for an abnormal amount of time, they’d have to eventually go and check—if only to make sure he hadn’t slipped out the back unnoticed. The trick could backfire if they decided to force the toilet door, but he figured they were under orders not to tip him off to the surveillance.
Several patrons came in while he sat locked inside the toilet. Piedmont peeked through the crack between the stall’s wall and door at each pair of shoes and pants that entered, then put them to memory. He waited a full fifteen minutes before coming out in a fast walk. The trick worked. From the corner of his eye, he saw the young woman look his way and quickly draw the attention of her older male partner by putting a hand on his sleeve. When the man’s head turned, Piedmont glanced the other way so as not to meet eyes with the guy. He did, however, see the dark green pants and chocolate brown shoes the fellow wore. He’d been the last one to enter the restroom before Piedmont departed.
Piedmont had to lose the surveillance, but how? They’d have planned for every contingency. He didn’t believe they realized he’d discovered them—so that played in his favor. He drove aimlessly around the District for a while, thinking. The only way to shake them would be to go to a location they hadn’t anticipated or planned out in advance, then depart by another exit before they could set up to properly surveil the place. The Regency Hotel seemed to offer several advantages. He allowed the valets to park his car and drifted inside. He knew the area well. He’d conducted a security survey of the hotel a couple of years ago for a VIP, and the knowledge he’d gained about the hotel layout stuck with him.
Piedmont proceeded to the back stairs and went down before anyone at the front desk noticed. He rushed to the lower ballroom level, which stood dark and empty. He ducked inside and ran in the shadows to the rear hallway. It, too, was deserted. If there weren’t banquet customers to serve, the back area leading to the kitchen annex remained deserted. Piedmont raced down the hall past the folded and stacked tables. Around the corner, he found the exit door.
During banquets, the cooks and waiters all congregate outside that door to smoke. They knew if they opened the door, an alarm would sound, so they’d bribed the hotel engineer with chocolate cheesecake to deactivate it for them. Piedmont held his breath. Had it been reactivated? He touched the handle and listened for footsteps in the long hall—there were none. “Here goes nothing,” he whispered.
The door popped open with only a clicking sound into the chilly night. Piedmont looked outside, up the short flight of stairs that led to the street behind the hotel. Shrubs hid the area from the garage and back parking lot. Piedmont peeked over the lowest bush. The sound of squealing tires caused him to jump and duck lower as a sedan made the turn going much faster than usual.
“They drive nicer cars than when I worked there,” he mumbled.
Once the vehicle sped past, he ducked low against the building’s shadows until he’d made it to the freeway service road underpass sixty yards from the hotel. He crouched there a moment, thinking. He couldn’t go home or to any other familiar place for that matter—he had to keep moving. He slung the rucksack over a shoulder and followed the dirt path, always staying in the shadows. Piedmont walked a couple of blocks along the dark fence line which guarded the service road, then ducked under a loose section of wire and hailed a cab.
“Union Station, please.”
“Fine,” the cabbie said.
“Say, how late does the New York Amtrak run on weekends?”
The cabbie looked at him in the mirror and flicked something off the top of the dash before answering. “The last one leaves for New York at ten.”
Piedmont checked his watch. “I might just make it.”
He gave the driver a generous smile and a tip larger than the fare when he got out.
“Thanks for getting me here on time,” he said before heading into the train terminal.
Yeah, that guy would remember him for sure—and the fact he was heading for New York. He strolled through the terminal and out the side exit door—the one with no cameras guarding it. He turned left and walked down the sidewalk toward the shadows before disappearing again into the night.
Twenty-Two
At exactly 11:57 PM, the three vehicles rolled through a sleeping Andrews, NC, and turned right on the park road into the Nantahala National Forest. The heavy tree canopy over the road blocked out the moonlight. McFadden directed Monk up the mountain road, and the sound of rushing water filled the air from the open truck windows. The dim shimmer of the fast-moving river over half-submerged rocks to Monk’s right and the dark forest to his left had a dizzying effect.
“Take the next left,” McFadden ordered.
Monk slowed and leaned forward in the seat, looking for the entrance—there was none. “Where?”
“Right here.” McFadden motioned to the hidden drive in the middle of the curve.
Monk squinted—if it hadn’t been pointed out, he probably wouldn’t have seen it. Anyone coming up or down the mountain is so focused on driving the switchback, they’d hardly notice it, tucked into the curve. He shifted into a lower gear before making the turn. The other two vehicles followed him up the steep incline. After about thirty yards, they came to a metal gate with a combination lock. McFadden jumped out and shined a small light while spinning the dial. He swung the gate open and waved the other vehicles through before relocking it and returning to Monk’s truck.
McFadden nodded and pointed straight ahead. “Just keep following the road up.” When they went around the bend, there was the outline of a large log cabin nestled in a three-acre clearing on the left.
“Swing around to the back,” McFadden said.
Monk followed the gravel road around the house to the mammoth, rustic barn standing thirty feet tall.
“We’ll put the vehicles in here for the night,” McFadden said before sliding out of the truck and opening the double wooden doors.
Monk pulled in, followed by the other trucks. McFadden made a point of greeting each man who climbed out of the trucks. They shook off their fatigue and squared their shoulders.
“We’re almost there, boys,” McFadden said, slapping several of their backs in his good-old-boy fashion. “One more night on the road, and that’s it.” He eyed them and set his jaw. “I need one man awake and patrolling all night—you guys figure up a shift rotation.”
They marched toward the cabin, and Monk took a deep breath of the clean mountain air. The fall temperature at this elevation chilled him. Filtered moonlight outlined McFadden’s shadow as he led the way to the cabin. To Monk, the shadow made McFadden look ten feet tall.
The dark-clad motorcycle rider whose features were hidden by a helmet and face shield pulled up to the warehouse in South Richmond, Virginia. The place looked deserted. Only the engine sounds from the vehicles crossing the James River Bridge broke the silence. He input the four-digit code in the keypad by the metal door. Behind the door, a clicking noise sounded before the door rose. The rider goosed the cycle inside and parked, then removed the helmet and sat it on the seat. Piedmont looked and listened—still nothing but the sound of traffic from I-95, a quarter mile away.
The truck was still there, just as he’d left it two weeks ago. He closed the overhead door before switching on the unit’s six fluorescent lights. The refrigerator in the corner had some funky-smelling liquid draining onto the concrete floor, but the beer inside was still cold. He popped the top on one and walked around the truck to get the feeling back into his legs. Piedmont checked the air in all the truck’s tires, then the oil and coolant—everything looked okay.
Piedmont crawled into the driver’s seat and sat the beer on the dash. He tried cranking it—the truck started with no hesitation. He let it run a minute and turned it off. Piedmont checked his watch—1:38 Sunday morning. He pulled the blankets and pillow from the plastic bag in the floorboard and turned off the overhead lights. Downing the last swallow of beer, he made himself as comfortable as possible on the truck’s seat and closed his eyes. Sleep did not come quickly—his mind still re-ran the night’s events. Piedmont walked for over two hours to get to the private garage where he stored the cycle. Always staying to the side streets, he’d more than once had to fend off hookers and panhandlers. He changed into the leathers and stowed his backpack behind him. It felt good to get out of town. Seeing Washington disappear in his side mirrors caused a bit of sadness. Piedmont knew he’d never see it again—not like this, anyway. After Monday, the landscape would be changed forever.
The 100-mile ride to Richmond had excited and renewed him. Piedmont loved riding the motorcycle at night and didn’t even mind the freeway traffic. McFadden and the others would arrive tomorrow, and the last stage of the plan could be put into motion.
Just before drifting off to sleep, Piedmont reflected on his life. He’d never been one of Mr. McFadden’s wonder boys. Didn’t have the legal brain of Newman Smith, or the science brain of Monk Cole. But Piedmont had something no one of their intellect could ever have—ruthlessness. He’d shown this at the McFadden Academy in how he’d played sports and interacted with the other students. Except for Ochoa, who everyone realized was insane, Piedmont was the most feared kid at the ranch during his school days. That’s the reason Mr. McFadden had groomed him for a federal law enforcement job with the FBI. That’s the reason he’d been entrusted with killing the state trooper, Senator Fillmore, and even his boss, Witcher. And that was probably the reason he’d been selected for the final phase of the plan. A small smile crossed his lips as he dropped into a deep, restful sleep.
Bishop held Cora most of the night. Her petite body occasionally jerked from bad dreams, and she mumbled softly in her disturbed sleep. More than once, she sobbed, and he’d held her tighter, caressing her back and shoulders. When he rolled over to the gray light of dawn, her side of the bed was cold and empty. He raised his head and peeked toward the window. Cora sat in a chair, looking into the woods behind his condo. She appeared so still, she could have been sleeping, but her eyes were open. The blanket from the closet covered her shoulders and encased her like a long woolen dress. She stared impassively at something, or perhaps nothing, watching the sunrise. The pose was that of a Native American princess—dignified, defiant, and beautiful. Bishop rolled to his side, and the pain from the cougar attack on his shoulder and back made him wince. He propped himself on one elbow.
