Eden's Gate (35 page)

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Authors: David Hagberg

BOOK: Eden's Gate
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“Where?”
“In the barn. Heide and Rudolph are with it.” She panted, trying to catch her breath, but even more blood welled from her nose and mouth, and the pool of blood on the floor beneath her was growing.
Lane wiped her mouth with his handkerchief and gently stroked her face. He took his time with her, although he wanted to race down to the barn. She was only one woman dying here. There were tens of thousands of potential victims in Washington.
“He's crazy,” Gloria said. She closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them again. “But I loved him—” Her eyes went unfocused, came back and then went blank, her body sagging loosely in death.
Lane sat back on his haunches, and studied her face. She had been a woman who had made bad choices all of her life. But they had been mostly innocent decisions, until she met Speyer.
He removed her hand from his arm and got to his feet. He took one last look at her, then pulled out his pistol and headed downstairs, his heart harder than it had ever been in his life.
The Oval Office was filled with the president's advisers and most of his National Security Council, everyone talking at once when Leslie Newby's voice rose over the others.
“Mr. President, it's him on the computer.”
The president's advisers had been arguing all morning to no avail for the president to leave Washington. The room abruptly fell silent.
The president went to the computer on the coffee table in front of Newby and sat down at it. The message on the screen was simple and to the point.
“There are less than 34 hours remaining. Why have no deposits been made as instructed?”
A good deal of discussion amongst the president's advisers had been about the issue they were facing right now. Tell the bastard that he would never get any money from the U.S. government and that he would be hunted down like a rabid animal, or try to stall him by promising him whatever he wanted in order to give Lane and the ASSAF time to do their jobs?
The president typed his reply. “Why are you doing this? You know that you will get caught.”
“That is my concern. Yours is the safety of the people who voted you into office. Where is my money?”
“We need more time.”
“You have already wasted more than half of the generous amount of time that I allowed you, without so much as a token payment. WHERE IS MY MONEY?????”
The president glanced up at the expectant faces all watching him. He typed: “You will have your money before the end of your deadline. I hope you rot in hell.”
This time the president broke the connection as everyone started to talk at once.
Lane approached the barn from the back where he could look through the cracks between the uneven boards. Speyer had beaten his wife to death with the heel and toe of his boots, by the look of the marks on her head and on her clothing. The woman had been a twit and a lush but nobody deserved a death like that, especially not at the hands of someone she loved. “You'll be dealing with me before this is over, pal,” he said softly.
The agplane was parked in the middle of the barn, its nose pointed toward the big double doors, its canopy open. A pair of compact Steyr AUG 9mm Para submachine guns were propped against a tool case a few feet away. A cylinder about the size of a scuba tank was connected under the wing on the left side, and even in the imperfect light Lane spotted the plumbing connections attaching it to a bell-shaped set of three spray nozzles.
At first it appeared that the barn had been deserted, but then two men came into view from the front of the plane. He recognized both of them from the Kalispell ranch. This time they were dressed in civilian clothes, and they both looked angry, as if they had been arguing.
They spoke in German, most of which Lane could pick up.
“We can turn our backs on this, Carl, and you know it,” Rudolph said.
“We would be on the run for the rest of our lives.”
“Better than dead.”
“You heard the
Kapitän.
We'll be long gone before the effects are felt in Washington. By the time they know what hit them we will be in Havana.”
“You dumb bastard, look at the nozzles,” Rudolph shouted. “The entire side of the airplane will be contaminated. No one will be coming for us. We're dead men.”
Heide studied the spraying arrangement under the wing, and after a few moments he nodded. “You could be right, unless the
Kapitän
has brought a neutralizing agent. Something to clear the way for us.”
Rudolph turned away in disgust, his eyes falling on the crack in the boards where Lane was watching. He hesitated for just an instant
before he turned away nonchalantly. Too nonchalantly. “Maybe you're right after all,” he said, moving toward the weapons.
Lane sprinted to the front of the barn, flicking the Beretta's safety catch to the off position. He looked cautiously through a crack in the main doors. Heide and Rudolph, both armed now with the assault rifles, stood covering the rear wall.
Lane eased one of the doors open just wide enough for him to slip inside. He reached the side of the airplane before they heard anything, and Rudolph turned around.
“Nobody needs to get hurt here,” Lane said.
Heide turned around, too, his eyes narrowed, obviously calculating the odds. There were two of them, trained soldiers armed with submachine guns, up against only one civilian armed with nothing more than a pistol.
“A prison cell is preferable to a slab in the morgue,” Lane said.
Rudolph glanced at Heide. “Let's give it up, Carl—”
Heide started to bring his rifle up and Lane shot him in the chest just below his breast bone, driving him backward off his feet.
Committed now against his will, Rudolph was bringing the submachine gun to bear when Lane switched aim and fired two shots, one catching him in the groin and the second in the chest in almost exactly the same spot Heide had been hit. He went down on one knee, an almost apologetic look on his face, and then toppled over.
Lane quickly checked to make sure that both men were dead, then checked the front to make sure that Speyer and Baumann across the creek hadn't heard the shots and were on the way to investigate. For the moment no one was coming.
Holstering his pistol, he went back to the airplane and inspected the plumbing and control connections to the tank. It was possible that by trying to disconnect it from the wing he might inadvertently allow some of the virus to escape. The CDC antiterrorist team would be better equipped and qualified for the job. In the meantime, he would make sure that the plane would not be flying any time soon.
He found a Zeuss fastener tool and quickly undid the twelve fasteners holding a section of the engine cowling in place. When he had it off, he found a pair of wire cutters and began cutting ignition wires and fuel lines and electronic wiring bundles. The job took less than five minutes, but it would take hours, perhaps days, to put the airplane back into flying condition.
When he was finished, he took one of the submachineguns, slipped out of the barn, and headed to the rear of the house and the path that led across the creek.
 
“The president said that we would get paid,” Baumann tried to argue.
“He was lying,” Speyer said. “Put yourself in their shoes. What would you recommend to the president? That he tell us to go to hell?” Speyer shook his head. “If they were going to pay us anything, they would have started the transfers by now. They're stalling for time.”
“Then let's drive back to the farm, pick up Hans and Carl and leave. We can take both cylinders.”
“You still don't understand, do you, Ernst,” Speyer said tightly. It was almost impossible to keep on track, to keep from exploding with rage. How easy it would be to pull out his gun and put a couple of rounds into Sergeant Baumann's complaining face.
“You want to demonstrate the weapon, yes, I know this, Herr
Kapitän.
But those are innocent people in Washington. Women and children. And the sample we sent to the White House has been analyzed by now. They know what we have. No need for us to take any more risks.”
“There will be no further risks to us,” Speyer replied. “The weapon will be delivered, Carl and Hans will die, and we will be long gone before anyone is the wiser. Then, in a few months, we will open the bidding on our weapon from a position of safety.”
“You're forgetting Browne—”
“If it was actually him, something I'm starting to find hard to believe, why hasn't he returned with the authorities?”
Baumann had no immediate answer.
Speyer keyed the walkie-talkie. “Unit one, code red. I repeat the message. Unit one, code red, code red.”
Baumann shuddered, but then the moment passed and he looked down toward the line of woods where they would be seeing the airplane take off in a few minutes. “
Jetzt, er ist fertig
,” he mumbled. Now it is finished.
Speyer was suddenly in good spirits. He packed up his laptop and put it and the walkie-talkie in the back of the SUV along with their luggage and scuba equipment. A little diving vacation. It was just what the doctor ordered, they would tell anyone who asked.
Baumann went into the house to get the telephone equipment while Speyer got out a pair of binoculars and scanned the tree line across the creek. He took out the detonator control and laid it on the open tailgate, and then checked the tree line again.
Patience was not one of his virtues. He had fought the problem all of his life. Most of the time he had been surrounded with stupid, dull people who were always a couple of steps behind him. He had learned to control himself, to slow down, to let them catch up. But it wasn't easy.
By now he was certain that he should be hearing the agplane's big radial engine. But the morning was quiet. Too quiet.
Baumann came out of the house with the telephone relay and small dish antenna. He, too, realized that something was wrong. He stopped and cocked an ear. “Maybe they are having trouble with the engine.”
Speyer grabbed the walkie-talkie out of the back. “Hans, this is unit one, come back.”
There was no answer.
“Hans or Carl, this is unit one, come back.”
Still there was no reply.
Speyer tossed the walkie-talkie in the SUV, pocketed the detonator unit, and shut the tailgate. “We have to get down there. Something has gone wrong.”
Frances eased the Rover into the right lane a quarter mile back from the convoy. Traffic was moderate at this time of the morning so it was easy to keep up with Speyer's people. They passed a sign that said BALTIMORE-WASHINGTON INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, 27 MILES VIA I-695. There was little doubt in her mind now that she knew what was going on. Speyer's people were simply making their escape. William, on the other hand, was in the middle of it back at the farm.
Tom Hughes was on the computer. He looked up as they passed the road sign. “It's the airport then.”
“Are you still in the strike force database?”
“Yes, but they took off about twenty minutes ago.”
Frances glanced over at him. “Have they reached the farm?”
Hughes brought up the Lucky Sevens' encrypted mission operation program overlaid on a grid reference map of the West Friendship area. “They're about three miles out from their staging zone.”
“How long would it take them to get up here?”
“Not very long once I convince them it's what they should do.”
“Get started, love.” It was hard for her to keep her head focused on the task at hand, thinking about William up against Speyer and Baumann. She wanted to be with him more than anything she'd ever wanted in her life. Pregnancy does that to a girl, she thought wryly. And that was something that neither of them had planned.
Hughes's fingers flew over the keyboard, and after a minute he
was into the squadron's voice circuits. “Good morning, I would like to speak with your commanding officer, Major Heinzman, please.”
The face of a very startled gunnery sergeant came up on the screen. “Who the hell is this? You're on a U.S. military tactical circuit. Get off now!”
“Gunny, I don't have the time to have the nice chat that I know you and I could have, so I'm going to show you something,” Hughes said pleasantly. He hit a key and the strike squadron's entire operations program was shut down, replaced by a rapid-fire profile of Speyer's entire operation and the role that Lane had in busting it up.
The data transfer took less than ninety seconds, and when the screen cleared again Major Heinzman, in battle fatigues, was there.
“Okay, Mr. Hughes, you have our attention, what can we do for you?”
“Are you in sight of the farm?” Hughes asked.
“No, but we're coming in on our staging area.”
“I need you to divert your troops to my position so that we can avoid a bloodbath.” Hughes quickly explained the situation to the Lucky Sevens commander. When he was finished he pulled up the mission map, expanded it, and pinpointed the convoy's location.
Major Heinzman was vexed. “You're going to have to show my people how you do that to our computers.”
“Agreed,” Hughes said. “How soon can you get here?”
“What about the farm?”
“Bill Lane will take care of that for the moment. We have to deal with this problem first.”
Heinzman consulted with someone off screen and when he came back the mission map insert at the bottom right of Hughes's screen showed that the helicopters were already turning to the east. “Our ETA is four minutes,” he said. “Those are Captain Speyer's men, so I'm assuming that they are heavily armed.”
“That's a good assumption.”
“Okay, we'll make one pass from the rear and I want you to try to stop traffic if you can.”
“We'll do our best. Good luck, Major.”
“They're not getting to the airport, I can guarantee it, sir.”
Lane had just crossed the creek and started up the path on the other side when he heard the SUV coming his way. He scrambled off the
path and ducked into some brush and high grass, the Austrian-made submachine gun in hand.
The heavy sport utility vehicle was moving fast, and as it flashed past Lane, bumped across the creek and disappeared up toward the house, he caught a brief glimpse of Baumann at the wheel with Speyer riding shotgun. Neither of them looked particularly happy. Lane's guess was that they tried to make contact with the two men in the barn and were coming back to investigate what the trouble was. It probably meant that Speyer had given the order for the operation to begin. It was a chilling thought. But Lane didn't understand why Speyer and Baumann hadn't left with the others. Why had they stuck around at the next-door farm?
Lane got up and started after them. One tank of the virus was still strapped to the airplane, while the other was probably in the SUV. Talk about trotting down into hell, he thought. He was practically slavering to get there.
 
Baumann pulled up alongside the barn and parked twenty feet from the front. Speyer pulled out a Glock 17 and jumped out of the SUV. Baumann took out his own gun and joined him.
“They should have had the engine started by now,” Speyer said.
They ran to the front of the barn, Baumann scanning the tree line up toward the highway for any sign of movement. He had a feeling in the pit of his stomach that Browne had come back, and that they were all in for it.
Speyer peered around the corner, then went to the big doors and looked through a crack. “
Verdammt
,” he said. He yanked open the barn door and disappeared inside.
Baumann made a second quick sweep of the open fields around the farm, then followed Speyer inside. Part of the airplane's engine cowling had been removed and he could see that someone had made a mess of the wires. Heide and Rudolph lay in pools of their own blood.
Speyer went from the airplane to the two downed men, feeling for a pulse. He was beside himself with rage. When he looked up his face was that of an insane man's. “They'll pay,” he said through clenched teeth.
“We can worry about revenge later, Herr
Kapitän.
We must leave now while we still can. We can drive to Frederick as we planned. We can be in Havana with the men by this afternoon.”
“We're going to stay here and fix the airplane,” Speyer said, getting up. “The mission is still a go. Especially now.”
“Who is going to fly it? Carl is dead.”
“You'll fly the airplane, Ernst.”
“I'm not a pilot.”
Speyer laughed. “Anybody can turn an ignition switch, taxi down a runway and take off. That's the easy part.”
“I won't do this,” Baumann said. Before Speyer could react, Baumann slipped outside and headed back to the SUV.
“Go, you bastard!” Speyer shouted. “Run! Coward!”
Speyer had gone completely mad. There was no reasoning with him now. The only hope was getting out of the country as rapidly as possible.
 
Lane came up behind the barn from the creek in time to hear the argument. He hurried around to the SUV, checked to make sure that the second tank was in the back, then took the car keys out of the ignition and ducked down out of sight as Baumann came charging around from the front.
When he was sure that Speyer wasn't coming immediately, he stood up and stepped around the back of the SUV, the submachine gun in the crook of his arm. “Good morning, Ernst.”
Baumann stopped short, his left hand outstretched, and the pistol in his right pointing down toward the ground. “
Gott in Himmel
,” he said softly. “I knew it was you.”
“He's gone completely around the bend, hasn't he?”
“Yes, yes. He meant to release the virus over Washington whether we got paid or not.”
“Why didn't you stop him?”
Baumann shook his head as if the question was incomprehensible. “We were following our orders. It was very simple.”
“All those people in Washington would have died.”
“It's not my responsibility. I was following—”
“Yeah, I know, pal, you were just following your orders,” Lane said harshly.
Baumann saw something in Lane's eyes and realizing all of a sudden that he was in trouble, started to raise his pistol. Lane pulled off two rapid shots both hitting the German in the heart, killing him instantly.
 
It was John Browne. Speyer recognized the voice. He stepped back from the barn door, the Glock 17 in his hand, his heart in his throat. He'd seen the bastard in action. They all had in Kalispell and in
Germany and again at sea. He was a demon. He had shot Ernst to death, and now he was coming in here to finish the job.
Such a long time since Berlin. They had come a long way out of the ashes; too far for it to end here when they were on the verge of such a fabulous victory. This was the operation that would get the world's attention.
He glanced at the ruined airplane engine. That was too bad, but the two tanks of virus were still intact. Still just as deadly.
All that stood between him and success now was the one man. Only one.
Speyer turned and hurried back to the ladder up to the hayloft. He looked over his shoulder to make sure that Browne wasn't right behind him and then scrambled up as quickly and as silently as he could.
 
Lane came to the partially open door in time to see Speyer disappear up into the dark hayloft. There was still the tank hanging off the airplane wing. If Speyer was nuts enough he might just try to shoot at it. If it exploded there would be enough casualties several miles downwind to fill every funeral home and morgue from here to Baltimore.
He hurried around to the opposite side of the barn. There were four windows along its length, along with a feed chute for loading hay aboard a truck or trailer. Laying the submachine gun aside, he climbed up on the chute and managed to crawl the ten feet or so to the swinging door. Lane eased it open and crawled inside. He was directly beneath the hayloft. The airplane was parked off to his left, and the ladder Speyer had used was to the right.
Speyer would be watching the airplane and the front door.
Lane took out his pistol, went quietly to the ladder, and climbed up to the loft. He hesitated just below the top, easing just high enough to see what was there. It took a few moments for his eyes to adjust to the darkness, but then he made out a form crouched behind a pile of hay bales ten feet away.
Legally the correct thing for him to do would be to give Speyer a fair warning: Give up, lay your weapon down, raise your hands over your head or I'll shoot you.
But then again Speyer was obviously completely insane, and there was no telling what a crazy man might be capable of doing. He ordered the deaths of all the crewmen aboard the
Maria
, and he certainly didn't give them any warning. Nor was it likely that he had
warned Gloria to behave or he was going to cave in her skull with the heel of his boot. He'd even killed his old friend in the chalet back in Germany.
Give him a fair warning first? Give him a chance?
Lane smiled. “I don't think so,” he said to himself. He rose up and fired three shots as fast as he could pull the Beretta's trigger.
Speyer rolled off to the side of the hay bales with a cry of pain.
Lane fired two more shots then scrambled up over the top, rolling left as he brought up his pistol.
Speyer, blood stains spreading on his right thigh and high on his right shoulder, was whimpering as he desperately searched for his gun. He'd dropped it and couldn't find it in the hay.
Lane got up and went over to him.
Speyer looked up, his eyes wide and he started to cry and squeal like a pig being led to slaughter. “There's money for you. Millions, my God, I swear to Christ, you'll be a rich—”
“Right,” Lane said. He raised his pistol and fired one shot, hitting Speyer in the forehead between his eyes, at the same time Speyer raised his left hand in supplication.
The morning was suddenly intensely quiet. Lane couldn't even hear the birds singing. He holstered his pistol and went to Speyer's body. The German had something clutched in his left hand. Lane pried open Speyer's fingers and took the small electronic unit out of his hand. It was about the size of a pack of cigarettes with a small antenna, and one caged button. The safety was up. Speyer had pushed the button.
Lane straightened up and looked down at the agplane, his blood running cold. The son of a bitch had sabotaged the plane to blow so that there would be no evidence, no survivors.
He had no idea how long the delayed fuse might be. The choice was searching for and disconnecting the explosive device in time, or risk releasing the virus by trying to disconnect the tank. He had to choose one or the other right now.
Traffic on the interstate several miles west of the I-695 interchange had already started to back up when the pair of Iroquois assault helicopters passed behind the convoy of two minivans and two dark gray SUVs.
Speyer's troops, realizing that something was going on behind them, had sped up when the helicopters flashed across the highway about fifty feet off the deck.
“Break break, command one. Looks like they spotted us,” the pilot of chopper two radioed Major Heinzman. “I have a clear shot.”
“Stand by,” Heinzman said. He directed his pilot to take them ahead of the convoy and threaten the lead car nose to nose.
“Okay, heads up back there,” Heinzman called to the two door gunners. “If they so much as twitch you are authorized to fire.”
“Roger that, sir,” they said. They cycled the bolts on their 7.62mm machineguns.
“Unit two, command one. You are cleared for weapons hot.”
“Aye, weapons hot,” the copilot of chopper two replied. Heinzman's copilot gave him a questioning look. He nodded and the officer gave him the thumbs-up.
Each helicopter carried six Hellfire AGM-114A air-to-surface missiles, each capable of taking out a ceramic-armored tank. Laser guided, they could not miss. All six on each chopper were armed and pointed at the four vehicles below.
The lead chopper swooped low over the convoy and dropped down to ten feet above the surface of the highway about twenty yards ahead of the SUV. The pilot flew sideways, pacing the convoy, which had slowed way down.
Heinzman was looking directly into the eyes of the driver and passenger. He raised his right hand and motioned for them to slow down and stop.
He could see the indecision on their faces, which finally turned to resignation. They were professional soldiers and they understood that they were outmaneuvered, outgunned and outclassed.
The driver raised his hand in salute and slowed down. Within fifty yards the convoy had come to a complete halt.
The lead chopper turned to face the lead vehicle, its Hellfire missiles locked onto their targets. Chopper two took up position just behind and to the right of the last minivan in the convoy, at an altitude of no more than twenty feet.
Heinzman got on the loud hailer. “Dismount from your vehicles now, with your hands in the air. Leave all your weapons behind, and then get on the pavement facedown.”
Slowly the ten men got out of the vehicles, their hands in plain
sight, and lay facedown on the highway. In the distance from the east and west dozens of police vehicles, their lights flashing, were converging on the scene.
One of the door gunners, not realizing his mike was hot, safetied his weapon noisily. “Ah, shit, they gave up too fast,” he said. “That's no fun.”

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