Deadly Dozen: 12 Mysteries/Thrillers (279 page)

The theft had triggered red flags throughout both the law enforcement and intelligence communities, because the stolen missiles were almost completely intact. In most cases, Stingers were delivered in several separate pieces to guard against an occurrence like the one that had just taken place. In this case, however, time-sensitive critical software modifications had been made, necessitating the shipment of missiles that were virtually complete. The only thing missing was the guidance system, which, if added, would give whoever possessed the shoulder-fired Stingers the ability to wreak untold havoc and kill potentially many thousands of people in a disaster that could rival the September 11, 2001 attacks.

The likelihood that the group which had stolen the weapons was actually in possession of the software needed to accurately control them was slim, but still, law enforcement agencies at all levels around the country had been put on the highest alert status. This would remain the case until the missiles had been safely recovered.

Kristin stifled a surge of annoyance that Nick Jensen had waited a couple of days after discovering the notes and other materials before alerting the authorities. Had he done so even one day sooner, DHS and the FBI could have set up a sting operation, driving a decoy truck along the mapped-out route that night with nothing inside it but a few empty crates. They could have taken down the terrorist organization that had purchased the information, and today there would be one less group of murderous fanatics out there bent on the destruction of the United States or some other Western country.

Of course, Kristin couldn’t really blame Nick. The poor guy had just lost his wife in a terrible accident and didn’t have any idea what he had stumbled upon when he found it hidden in the back of a closet. Plenty of people would never even have bothered to contact anyone. They would have tossed the binder in the trash and gone on with their lives, never giving it a second thought.

It was hard to blame Nick’s wife, either. Lisa was employed as an auditor at the Pentagon, and her work had been mostly limited to staffers stealing pens and surfing inappropriate websites. She had clearly known she was dealing with something big, but had been too hesitant in informing her superiors. Hell, maybe she had been concerned that a supervisor was involved and hadn’t known who she could trust with the discovery. Ultimately, Lisa Jensen had been involved in something much bigger than she was prepared to handle, and it had cost her her life.

Kristin found her mind wandering back to her meeting a few nights ago with Nick, and she was embarrassed to admit that she felt a tug of attraction. The man had just lost his wife, for God’s sake. Still, she couldn’t help how she felt, and even though his face had been pale and drawn from sorrow and lack of sleep, there was something about him that she found alluring. He wasn’t football-star handsome, had probably never dated the prom queen in high school, but still, he seemed honest, with an easy smile and natural charm…

Jesus
, she thought,
what’s wrong with me? There’s a group of homicidal maniacs running around with a stolen truckload of lethal weapons, and I’m daydreaming like some love-struck junior high girl about a guy whose wife is barely in the ground.

She shook her head, disgusted with herself, and got back to work.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

An eight-foot-high chain-link fence encircled the outer perimeter of the large plot of land housing the Boston Consolidated TRACON. The upper eighteen inches of fencing consisted of four strands of tightly wound barbed wire angled outward forty-five-degrees. The fence was set back from the ugly mustard-colored brick building a minimum of fifty feet in all directions.

Ornamental trees, small and insignificant looking against the backdrop of the big building, dotted the landscaped property, but most of the area had been left open, presumably for security purposes. Anyone somehow managing to scale the fence without being incapacitated by the barbed wire strands—in addition to leaking copious amounts of blood—would be forced to cross a wide expanse of well-lit open ground before getting anywhere near the BCT building itself.

Closed-circuit cameras were mounted on all exterior corners of the building, providing three hundred sixty degrees of CCTV surveillance around the BCT, as well as in dozens of locations throughout the interior. The cameras were monitored twenty-four hours a day by armed security personnel quartered inside a brick guard shack, complete with bulletproof glass, located at the only entrance to the facility. A reinforced steel gate could be trundled across the entryway at the touch of a button, repelling access by any vehicle smaller than a tank.

Outside the fence, though, was a different story entirely. The land immediately behind the property was heavily populated with decades-old, maybe centuries-old, fir trees. They were big and ancient and provided excellent cover for anyone interested in observing the facility while keeping his presence a secret.

Sitting quietly in this thickly forested area were Tony, Brian, and Jackie. It was Sunday, just shy of 2:00 a.m., and United States President Robert Cartwright was scheduled to fly into Logan Airport on Air Force One in approximately three hours. Tony’s goal was to ensure that it was the last time the president ever flew anywhere, except straight to hell where he belonged.

Clouds gathered overhead, thickening rapidly, effectively obscuring the quarter-full moon. Ambient light would not be a problem. The weather forecasters were calling for ceilings to continue to lower and eventually for a light but steady rain to begin falling across the region. If the conditions deteriorated too quickly, it would spell problems for the remaining two members of the team, who were hunkered down in a remote location outside Logan Airport with the stolen Stingers, but Tony wasn’t worried. He had studied several different forecasts, and they were unanimous in their estimates that the worst of the conditions around Logan would not occur until much later in the day—long after their mission had been completed.

All his men needed in order to fire upon Air Force One as it hung in the sky over the airport—exposed like a fish in a barrel, just waiting to be blown to bits—were cloud bases of as low as a few hundred feet. Assuming the current forecast was accurate, in a few hours the president would be killed in a fiery plane crash. Once the job was done, the clouds could extend all the way down to the ground; it wouldn’t matter to Tony in the least.

The faint sound of rubber-soled shoes scuffling on pavement floated through the heavy air. Tony glanced at his watch. Two o’clock. Right on time. He and his men had staked out the BCT for several days now, and each morning at exactly the same time, one of the two security guards on duty clomped past on the paved walking path encircling the facility just inside the perimeter of the security fence.

Protocol, not to mention common sense, should have dictated that the guards vary the timing of the nightly sweeps, but it had become quite clear to Tony that security at this facility—located far off the beaten path in New Hampshire—was inexcusably lax; the guards had not varied their routine in the slightest from one evening to the next.

A damp breeze rustled the massive evergreens all around them, and the group held their positions, standing perfectly still in the shadows as the patrolling security guard materialized out of the darkness. He yawned, practically sleepwalking as he strolled the path, paying little attention to his surroundings and moving with the gait of someone who couldn’t wait to get back to his favorite chair and take a load off.

#

Jackie lay prone on the cold carpet of moss and reddish brown fallen pine needles and watched the man pass. He was stationed just far enough into the pitch-black area behind the trees that he remained invisible to the security guard as he made his rounds.

He sighted down the barrel of a TCI M89SR sniper rifle, patiently tracking his prey. The compact semiautomatic weapon, originally manufactured for the Israeli Defense Forces and now in common use by the Special Forces units of numerous countries, was fitted with a sound suppressor and rested comfortably in a portable bipod, barrel angled upward. Jackie followed the ambling gait of the unwitting guard, making minute adjustments, keeping the man’s body centered in the crosshairs.

Minutes earlier, Jackie had taken out the lone security camera monitoring the grounds behind the BCT building. The camera, mounted high on the back wall of the building, had been programmed for constant motion, continually scanning for anything out of the ordinary. Now, however, this area remained free of electronic surveillance, the camera currently resting in a thousand useless pieces scattered across the rear parking lot.

#

The possibility that the guard manning the security station might be alarmed by the lack of video surveillance in this area didn’t concern Tony. There were so many cameras on this federal government property that it was unlikely the guard would even notice the blank screen for some time, and that was assuming he was even paying close attention to all the monitors in the guard shack rather than sleeping—an unlikely scenario given the late hour and general security laxness Tony had observed.

The patrolling guard wandered sleepily in front of Tony and his unmoving men, three pairs of eyes quietly marking his progress. When he reached a point almost directly in front of them, passing less than forty feet away on the other side of the chain-link fence, Jackie squeezed the trigger of the M89, and a soft
phht
sound was accompanied a second later by the sight of the guard tumbling to the ground. He executed a slow, almost balletic, pirouette before dropping gracefully to the pavement. He kicked his legs once and lay still.

Under the over of the trees, no one moved for nearly a full minute. When Jackie was finally satisfied the man was either dead or fully incapacitated, he took his finger off the trigger and began dismantling his equipment and repacking it into his bag.

#

Brian approached the fence carrying a small but powerful set of bolt cutters. He was covered by Tony, but the team anticipated no interruption from the other guard, who was undoubtedly still huddled in the security building and out of sight around a corner, unaware of what had befallen his partner. The two men never patrolled together.

When Brian reached the fence, he began snipping the tempered steel with the powerful jaws of the bolt cutter, steadily moving from the ground up in more or less a straight line, until he had created a jagged opening in the fence roughly six feet high and three feet wide that the group could squeeze through. For sixty seconds, the only sound was a muffled ting-ting-ting as he worked his way through the reinforced steel.

#

The sound of the links snapping was surprisingly clear, enough so that Tony wondered whether it would carry through the moist, still air all the way to the guard shack. He then decided it didn’t really matter.

Even assuming the lone remaining guard was awake and heard the noise, he would take some time to try to figure out what the hell it was. By the time he decided to get off his ass and investigate, the sound would have long since stopped, and he would likely just shrug and forget about it. It was clear to Tony that these rent-a-cops didn’t exactly represent the top of the law enforcement food chain.

#

When Brian finished creating an opening in the security fence big enough for the team to squeeze through, he pulled the chain links apart, and Jackie slipped through and entered the property. The fence creaked quietly and then fell silent as Brian maintained a steady tension on the links.

Jackie approached the fallen security guard cautiously, his Glock 9mm semiautomatic pistol with sound suppressor trained on the unmoving man. He reached the guard in a few steps and knelt beside him, running his fingers lightly along the side of the man’s neck, feeling for a pulse. He shook his head in disbelief, then placed the gun at the guard’s temple, turned his body, and squeezed off a single shot. He felt for a pulse again.

Now satisfied that the man was dead, Jackie jammed the gun into the waistband of his jeans and grabbed the prostrate guard’s ankles, dragging him back through the fence and into the relative darkness and safety of the thick stand of trees just outside the BCT property line. Brian eased the makeshift gate closed behind him and then retreated into the trees, too.

Shivering from the cool and damp air, Jackie began to undress.