Читать книгу Homeland Terror - Don Pendleton - Страница 12

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Senator Gregory Walden had just nodded off to sleep when the phone rang on the nightstand beside him. The vice chairman of the Joint House-Senate Intelligence Committee groaned and opened one eye, inspecting the luminous readout on the digital clock next to the phone. It was nearly midnight.

“What now?” Walden groaned. The senator had already been interrupted twice tonight, once by a Post reporter looking for the inside scoop on confirmation hearings for the President’s latest Homeland Security nominee, the other time by an aide who was having trouble transcribing some notes Walden had barked into his Dictaphone before leaving the office. He reached for the phone as it continued to ring. Beside him, Nikki, his wife for the past seven years, stirred beneath the sheets.

“Gregory, would you please get that already, for crying out—”

“I just did!” Walden snapped at her. He sat up in bed and vented further into the phone, yelling, “This better be goddamn important!”

There was a pause on the line, then a woman replied to him in a soft voice void of emotion. It was Joan VanderMeer. “Greg, it’s me. I know it’s late, but—”

“I’ll call you right back,” Walden interrupted. He hung up the phone and swung his feet to the floor and rubbed his fists against his temples.

Nikki turned to him, her peroxide hair matted flat on the side she’d been sleeping on. The covers clung as tightly to her silicone breasts as the skin did to her cheeks after her most recent facelift.

“What is it?” she asked.

“The world’s coming to an end,” Walden deadpanned as he stabbed his feet into his bedroom slippers. “Go back to sleep.”

“Always with the sarcasm,” Nikki complained.

“I love you, too, honeybunch,” Walden said flatly. He grabbed his robe from the overstuffed chair next to the bed and put it on as he headed out of the room. The November elections were eight long months away. Walden wondered how the hell he was going to keep the divorce on hold that long. He’d come to hate his wife with a passion, but he knew this year’s campaign would be a tight one, and he couldn’t afford to lose votes by presenting himself as anything other than happily married.

The Waldens lived on the eighth floor of an upscale high-rise located just off the river between Drexel University and the train station the senator had made heavy use of years ago when he was new to Capitol Hill and needed a cheap way to commute between Philadelphia and his office in Washington. Nowadays he could afford a chauffeur. He could also afford the two million dollars’ worth of professional redecoration the apartment had just undergone. The completed results would be featured in the November issue of Architectural Digest, just in time for the election. The photo shoot had already taken place, and Nikki, who’d made most of the decorating choices, had made sure to worm her way into a few of the shots, another reason Walden felt the need to keep up pretenses. Of course, since the photo shoot, Nikki had changed her mind about a few things and had brought the decorators back in for a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of “tweaking.” And she wasn’t done yet. The interior decorator was due back in the morning with swatches for the dining room’s third paint job in as many months.

As he dialed a number on one of his never-ending supply of prepaid cell phones, Walden stared at an obscure Jackson Pollock painting that hung over the den fireplace. Walden hated the piece; to him it looked like something a second-grader had painted. Nikki, of course, thought it was a masterpiece. Which was good for her, Walden thought, because it was probably the most valuable thing she’d be taking away from the marriage when he threw her out after the election.

“Okay, which is it?” Walden said once VanderMeer had picked up. “The Feds are on to you or there was a problem with the gun heist.”

“The gun show,” VanderMeer told him. “They got hold of both semis but ran into a buzz saw trying to get away.”

“You want to translate that for me?” Walden said. He could already feel his blood pressure rising. First that business at the fantasy camp in Sykesville, and now this. This bungling not only jeopardized his master plan, but it also increased the chance that his cover would be blown. If that happened, he would be as good as dead.

“I don’t have all the details yet,” VanderMeer confessed, “but apparently BATF showed up along with some other Feds. Our people were stopped cold, and from what I’ve heard, it was pretty ugly. One of the trucks was blown up, so the place is crawling with media and lookie-loos.”

“Shit,” Walden murmured. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms was one of the few investigatory agencies he hadn’t yet managed to infiltrate with his own people.

“Who were these other Feds?” Walden said as he made his way to the wet bar and poured himself a drink.

“I think they were from Justice,” VanderMeer said. “Special agents.”

“Figures.”

Walden had used his connections to try to find out who’d blown up the weapons cache at the Wildest Dreams Fantasy Camp but had run into a dead end once the trail led to the Justice Department. It turned out that there were some levels of confidentiality even he could not bypass. And now it looked as if the same operative who’d brought down Jason Cummings and Mitch Brower had played a hand in thwarting the AFM’s attempt to replace the arms that had gone up in smoke back in Sykesville. Not knowing who he was up against left Walden feeling vulnerable. But, as with the incident at Wildest Dreams, his foremost concern was that he remain above suspicion.

“Did they take anyone into custody?” the senator asked.

“I don’t think so,” VanderMeer reported. “I think everyone was killed.”

Walden drained his drink and quickly poured another as he assessed the situation. He’d been lucky in the case of Sykesville, since neither Louie Paxton nor Xavier Manuel had known anything about the weapons stolen from Aberdeen, much less Walden’s role in enabling the theft. Both men had protected VanderMeer’s identity, as well, but he knew there was a chance their tongues could be loosened in the interrogation room. In Georgetown, at least, it appeared there were no survivors capable of ratting him out. Some consolation, he thought to himself.

“There’d better not be a trail leading back to us,” he warned.

“We should be okay,” VanderMeer assured him. “I’m on my way to the compound as we speak. I’ll make sure our tracks are covered.”

“Good. Once that’s settled, we need to come up with a way to spin this whole mess in our favor,” Walden advised. Already his mind was sorting through options. Making snap decisions while under duress was a skill he’d mastered over the years; it had helped him immeasurably in his rise through the ranks on Capitol Hill.

“Greg, listen to me,” VanderMeer said. “Bad as the news from Georgetown is, I’m afraid that’s not the worst of it. It’s not the reason I called.”

“What?” Walden was taken aback. “What are you talking about?”

There was a pause on the line, then Joan VanderMeer dropped the bombshell.

“It has to do with Edgar Byrnes,” she said. “You remember him. He’s the older brother of Wallace and Harlan—”

“I know who he is,” Walden interrupted. “We’ve got him planted at that goddamn farm next to Langley with that rocket launcher from Aberdeen. Once we get all our pieces in place, he’ll—”

“He’s not at the farm anymore,” VanderMeer interrupted. “Apparently he snapped tonight.”

“Snapped? What do you mean? He offed himself?”

“Worse,” she said. “He went ahead with the plan. On his own.”

Walden let out a deep breath and sank into chair behind him. This couldn’t be happening. “He fired at Langley?”

“Afraid so. Last I heard, there are eight confirmed dead. They’re still fighting the fire.”

Walden finished his drink, then hurled the shot glass across the room, shattering it against the flagstone hearth. He already had his hands full trying to figure out a way to put a spin on Sykesville and the gun-show fiasco in Georgetown. Now this.

“Please tell me he put a bullet through his head afterward,” he muttered into the cell phone. “Please tell me he’s in no position to talk.”

Once again, there was a moment’s silence on the line. Then VanderMeer warily confirmed Walden’s worst fears.

“I’m sorry, Greg, but he’s still out there somewhere.”