H.M.S. Unseen (41 page)

Bill’s days were busy in the early spring, keeping track of the herds, which his brother Ray tended on a day-to-day basis, and watching the beef markets, deciding when to buy and what to sell. The warmer weather sometimes came late to the High Plains, and it was often frosty and still freezing cold when the master of the great Baldridge spread marched out onto the frozen ground before first light. Sometimes he was so tired in the evenings he could have crashed into bed at seven o’clock, but he treasured the peaceful later hours with his beautiful Scottish wife, and they always stayed up until around eleven-thirty.

They had both talked to her father this evening, and he was unusually tense, explaining to them that he still thought it possible that Ben might try to get into the United States, despite Admiral Morgan’s dragnet around the points of entry.

The veteran Royal Navy submariner begged Laura to be careful, and when he spoke to Bill he practically forbade him to allow her to be alone at any time of the day or night.

“I don’t need to tell you how dangerous, or how mad he may be,” said Admiral MacLean. “But I intend to ask Admiral Morgan to get some heavy security into the ranch within the next twenty-four hours. I simply do not consider it worth taking a chance.”

By 2130 Ben Adnam had completed a study of a detailed map of the counties that surrounded Dodge City. And there, just west of Burdett, he noted in red letters the symbol “B/B,” then, in parenthesis (Baldridge). It looked as if the main ranch buildings were right off Route 156, where the Pawnee River and Buckner Creek converged before winding down to the Arkansas River. The Scottish newspaper that had described Lt. Commander Baldridge as a farmer was right. Ben figured there were thousands and thousands of acres out there in the flat grazing land that straddles Pawnee County and Hodgeman County. “About twice the size of Baghdad,” he murmured. “It could be hard to find the house, but you couldn’t miss the land.”

Ben, dressed in his dark track suit and soft, black running shoes, left the hotel, with his bag, at around 2145, driving fast out along Route 50 from Dodge City. He turned north up 283 to Jetmore, then east, 23 miles to Burdett, the little town that sits almost on the border of Pawnee County. He checked the road signs every few minutes. They stayed consistent. There were no turns. He was running dead straight along 156.

Ben drove through the little township of Hanston, which he guessed was his halfway point from Jetmore. He checked the reading on the speedometer and resolved to start slowing down and searching after 10 more miles.

Instinct more than navigational skill guided him, and approximately one and a half miles before he reached Burdett, he made a sharp right turn into the pitch darkness of a south-running country road. Way out to the left he could see lights, and as he came to a bridge he slowed and stopped, winding down the window, and hearing the unmissable sound of a flowing river not far below.
Too far. That’s the Pawnee,
he thought,
in full flow at this time of the year after the winter snow, melting down from the Rockies. Like the Tigris at this time, back home. Different mountains, same sound.

He reversed the car, swinging backward into a gateway and heading back to Route 156, where he took the next right turn, into an equally dark country road. But there were lights dead ahead now, floodlighting the great iron gates and archway of the B/B Ranch. He could see that the entrance was closed, and that the post-and-rail fence ran right up to stone pillars guarding the entrance. He caught sight of two carved wooden longhorn steers on each post but kept going, driving at 50 mph past the B-Bar-B, where Laura lived.

He kept driving for a mile. The fence had ended, and Ben could see a clump of trees on the edge of the frosty road. He pulled off onto the grass shoulder and parked behind the trees. Then he pulled on an extra sweater, leather gloves, and a dark woolen hat. He checked that his big desert knife was firm in the back of his leather belt and, after locking the car, began to jog back to the main gates of the Baldridge Ranch.

It took him eight minutes, but before he got there, he cleared the fence and made his way cross-country toward the distant lights. The moon was up, and very bright, and he wanted to come into the ranch compound behind the buildings, with the shadows in front of him, rather then behind. This was difficult, and he realized he would have to circle the ranch buildings in order to achieve it, but he did not want the clear, pale light of the moon in his face.

He reached the buildings and flattened himself behind them. Inside he heard a sharp thud on the wall, followed by another.
Stables,
he thought.
And the horses have heard me.

He began his circle around to the main house, creeping silently through the shadows with the soft, light steps of the Bedouin. He hoped to God no one would see or hear him, because he was not intending to kill anyone, except perhaps Baldridge, if he had to. If it became obvious that Laura would leave with him. There was a corner of Ben’s brain that was not functioning in any way accurately, or even rationally. And the master of all these Kansas acres was right in that corner.

Ben made his way softly into a place where he could observe the house, with his back to the moon. His plan was to take Bill and Laura by surprise. There was no point walking up to the door and trying to be reasonable. For all he knew this damned cowboy would gun him down in cold blood. No, he had to take control. And to do that, he must put them both on the defensive. That way he could see how the land lay.

He planned to enter the house through an upstairs window in which the curtain was not drawn, the sure sign of an empty guest room. The trouble was none of them were drawn right now, unlike the downstairs windows. And he could see light crossing the hallways between the rooms. He had seen one room on the farside of the house with a drawn curtain but no light, and he guessed, correctly, that Laura’s daughters might be asleep in there.

He waited for a half hour, until 2345. The curtains were being drawn by a figure he could not identify, and he made his move. He slipped quietly across the yard and climbed easily onto the roof of an outbuilding. From there he swung up onto a second-floor balcony, then went higher, to a gently sloping roof leading up to the one window with still no drawn curtain.

Crouching on the sill, he inserted his knife between the sliding panes and flicked the catch back. At that exact moment Laura Baldridge walked in, switched on the light, and saw the big blade of the desert knife jutting upward in the gap. She also saw a dark figure in the light, and she yelled at the top of her lungs…“BILL! BILL! COME QUICK! THERE’S SOMEONE BREAKING IN!”

Outside on the roof, Ben Adnam nearly died of shock. Two dogs were barking furiously below. He ducked low and moved higher, the only way he could go, up toward the chimneys.

Bill Baldridge unlocked the gun cupboard in the back hall, selected a D.M. Lefever 9FE shotgun, and snapped two 16-gauge shells into it, cramming four more into his jacket pocket. He took the stairs two at a time and found Laura pressed against the passage wall outside the spare room.

“Right in there,” she whispered. “I saw Adnam close against the window with a big knife…it was Ben…I know it was him…if we don’t kill him, he’ll kill us. Jesus, wait here, I’m going for a shotgun. This is bloody ridiculous.”

“I guess there are advantages in marrying a girl whose family trade is war,” he smiled. “She doesn’t lose her nerve that easy.”

At the same time Laura was going to get a shotgun, it was 0600 of the next day in Scotland and Douglas Anderson was awakening in Waverley Railway Station, in a sleeping car, on the overnight express from London. The red light on his cellular phone was flashing, and he pressed the button for his recorded messages. There was just one. The familiar voice of Beresford informed him that Admiral MacLean wished to speak to him on a matter of the utmost urgency, and would he call him at whatever time of the day or night.

Douglas was usually somewhat unnerved by the admiral, and he did precisely as he was asked, awakening Sir Iain on a misty Scottish morning just before dawn.

But the great submariner awakened fast, asked his former son-in-law to hold for one moment, pulled on his dressing gown, and hurried downstairs to his study.

“I say, Iain, I’m awfully sorry about the time…but the message did say…”

“Don’t worry about that, Douglas. I’m delighted you made it…and I did want to ask you something very important, and I wish I had been able to reach you before…you remember that South African chap who called to see Laura the other day…did he, by any chance, ask where Laura lives now? I don’t mean just America…he didn’t ask for her address, did he?”

“Yes, he did. He said his own wife would very much like to send her a Christmas card, just to show they had tried to make contact in Scotland…I wrote it down, in full, on a piece of paper for him. It seemed a reasonable request.”

Admiral MacLean’s heart missed a beat. But he steadied himself while Douglas went on, calmly, “The ranch in Pawnee County, Kansas, correct? I remember it…sounds like something out of the Wild West.”

“Yes…so it does. Thank you, Douglas. I’m sorry to have been a bother.” And with a pounding heart, Admiral MacLean replaced the receiver. “Fuck,” he said, uncharacteristically. Then he picked up the phone again and placed a call to Admiral Arnold Morgan’s office in the White House, where it just after 0100.

The main switchboard patched him through to Kathy O’Brien’s house immediately, and the national security advisor awakened instantly.

“Iain…hi. This has got to be important.”

“It is. In the last few minutes I found out that Adnam is almost certainly on his way to the Baldridge Ranch. He’s walking around with their complete address and zip code in his pocket. That’s what he went to Anderson’s house for…Arnold, trust me. He’s on his way…My God, he’s capable of blowing the house up.”

“Holy Topeka!” grated the admiral, slipping into Kansas mode. “Leave it with me, pal. I’ll have a team of heavies in there inside two hours.”

He rang off, called the CIA duty officer, and told him to put him through to Frank Reidel, the Agency’s chief military liaison man. They connected in less than sixty seconds, and the admiral wasted no time with explanations. Just told Frank to get a half dozen heavily armed hard men by helicopter to the Baldridge Ranch in Pawnee County, Kansas, IMMEDIATELY. He told them they knew the way in the control room at McConnell Air Force Base, Wichita. No, he did not care if they used civilians, agents, U.S. Marines, Navy SEALs, or King Kong. Just so long as they moved fast…who are they looking for?…an escaped Arab terrorist, Benjamin Adnam, Commander Benjamin Adnam. Certainly armed. Extremely dangerous. Preemptive action if necessary. But try to keep him alive.”

Then Arnold Morgan called Bill Baldridge and waited with mounting concern while the phone rang and rang before an answering machine picked up and requested that he leave a message.

It was just a few minutes after midnight back in Kansas, and Laura was heading downstairs at breakneck speed to the gun cupboard in search of the shotgun, left to her by her grandmother, the countess of Jedburgh. Bill Baldridge went into the small office next to his bedroom and spent five minutes adjusting the zones on the burglar alarms, activating the entire downstairs area, but only one part of the upstairs system.

He positioned himself on the main landing, in the shadows near the big fireplace along the corridor from his old bedroom. If Adnam was to enter the house, he would have to come through one of two rooms on the second floor, or else the alarms would go off, floodlighting the house, alerting every ranch worker and the local police.

Bill believed Laura. It had to be Ben, and his plan of action was clear. If the Iraqi came through either of those bedroom doors onto the landing, he would gun him down like a prairie dog, no questions asked. If he tried to gain entry through the downstairs doors or windows, the alarm system would surely frighten him off.

However the five minutes he had taken resetting the zones was critical. Out on the roof, Ben Adnam had been scared, but not unnerved, by being spotted. And like a good submarine commander, he elected to press home his attack while the enemy was in disarray. He moved from the chimneys, back down the roof, and opened the window where he had prised open the catch.

Laura, in her haste, had not relocked it, and Adnam climbed through, crossed the room, and turned out the light, positioning himself behind the door of the empty third-floor spare room. It was Bill he wanted, because that way everything else would fall into place when Laura could see clearly who the master was.

Ben stood breathing hard after his exertions, gathering his thoughts, trying to work out what he wanted most, Laura, or access to the United States national security chief. The problem was confusing him. He knew he wanted Laura more than anything he had ever wanted. But he sensed that was his heart. His brain was still a small voice in the background, telling him, whispering
If you kill Bill Baldridge, you’ll probably have to kill Laura…you’ll never get out of this state, never mind this country, alive…they’ll hunt you down and send you to the chair…don’t be a fool…negotiate with Baldridge
…
because that way may lie sanctuary, and a life…

And yet…he longed for Laura. The memory of her touch and her laughter, and their love for each other, was as vivid that night as it had ever been. Ben Adnam would have cut off his right arm to have her just once more. And at 0004 he stepped through the doorway into the upstairs corridor, his desert knife clutched in his right hand.

One floor below him, Bill leaned against the wall, his rifle cocked, watching the two doors along the southern corridor. Ben saw him first, the glint of the barrels of the Lefever, which was not so much an advantage as a clarification. The Iraqi’s task was plain, he had to descend thirteen steps without being heard, at which point Bill Baldridge was his.

Downstairs he heard Laura yell, “Where do you keep the shells for this damned thing…?” Bill, standing not fifteen feet below Commander Adnam, shouted back “Cupboard by the back stairs…top shelf…right-hand side…leather box…”