Intercept (40 page)

“Do we have a plan?” asked Mack. “I mean, do you want to question him? Ask him precisely who’s in Mountainside Farm?”

“Yes. But it might be tricky if he’s got bodyguards in there with him,” replied Benny. “This guy’s a friend of the friggin’ King of Saudi Arabia right? My guys know all about him.”

“That’s why the police have not picked him up,” said Johnny. “These days no one wants the king to be pissed off.”

“Well, what do you plan to do? Walk in, then kill him and the bodyguards?” said Mack with deliberate oversimplification.

“We’ll play it by ear,” said Johnny. “But this Faisal guy is involved in mass murder, and we’re not leaving him alive. I don’t want to kill bodyguards. But we may have to keep them quiet.”

“Guess we better get up there and find out what’s what,” said Mack. “I’m here to help, but I’m not going to take out Assad. Those are not my orders.”

“No need. I’ll do it,” said Benny, the man from the Mossad.

They walked to the empty elevator and were slightly disoriented when a young woman in a dark business suit appeared to come out of nowhere and joined them, pressing the button for the twenty-seventh floor. Johnny reached over and pressed eighteen, twenty, and twenty-four. No one spoke and they disembarked, each on one of the wrong floors.

Five minutes later, they met up at the stairs on the twenty-first floor. Standard undercover procedure.

Now they walked down the corridor to number 21D. Mack stood back and Benny rang the bell. No reply. Benny rang again. Silence.

“Fuck,” said Johnny. He tried to open the door, but it was locked. He tried to open it with a credit card, sliding the card between the door and the doorpost, level with the handle, and to everyone’s amazement, the door opened.

Benny stepped softly into the foyer and checked behind the door. “Two other locks, none of them active,” he said.

“He’s gotta be here,” said Strauss. “No one goes out without locking in Manhattan. Maybe he’s asleep.”

They walked quietly into the main room, which was beautifully furnished. Three striking marine paintings and a couple expensive-looking
prints signed by Andrew Wyeth hung on the walls. But the place was quiet. The kitchen was tidy, but empty, with no sign of anyone having taken nourishment or even had a drink, or even coffee.

They walked down a short corridor to the master bedroom. Empty. They opened the closets. Almost empty. They opened the bedroom drawers. Bereft. Checked the hall closet for coats. None. Mack picked up the phone. Dead. Switched on the cable television. No signal.

“Fuck me,” said Benny. “He’s gone.”

“Mountainside Farm?” asked Johnny.

“Yeah, right,” replied Mack. “How about Guantanamo Bay? I don’t think so. This tricky little sonofabitch is on his way home to Riyadh.”

The three of them wandered disconsolately around the apartment, checking drawers, opening closets. But there was nothing much to be found. Faisal had packed his stuff and cleared out.

Except for a somewhat esoteric clue in the waste basket next to a large antique desk.

“What is it?” asked Benny
.

“It’s not much,” said Mack. “But I think we might have solved the Penn Station bomb mystery. Those four little bastards crossed from one side of this country to the other by train, and they stayed here.” He showed them the Amtrak rail ticket stubs he’d found in the trash. The date was correct, and they were stamped in light blue, big letters:
CARDINAL.
“I just found their tickets.”

 

MACK MOVED HIS STUFF
from the Waldorf Astoria to the Blackberry River Hotel the following morning. The drive took him almost three hours, and he was glad for the time alone. He needed to think.

Because his prime task was one of surveillance, he not only had to make positive identification that the four ex-Guantanamo prisoners were in residence at Mountainside Farm, he had to establish precisely how they intended to hit the academy. Only then could he make his decisive move to end their attack and their lives. But first he needed to know their plan.

Mack had no doubt his top-secret mission was achievable, although he suspected it might involve of lot of night-work. Freezing cold night-work. Goddamned dangerous night-work.

He pulled into the parking lot of the Blackberry River Hotel at around 2 p.m. and headed directly to his room, which appeared to be just as he had left it the previous evening. He was tired after the long drive and
crashed out on the bed for a couple of hours. He read the local newspaper, the
Register Citizen,
and went downstairs for a beer and a steak at around 7 p.m., adopting a similar procedure to his previous evening. After dinner, he made a quick change into his combat gear: his Navy sweater and scarf, heavy parka, boots, binoculars, gloves, and knife sheathed and tucked into his waistband.

Again Mack made his exit through the rear door when the coast was clear, and drove back across the Blackberry River, concealing the Nissan in the trees and walking through the woods on the farm’s northern border. He took up his old position, staring through his binoculars across the frosty field, straight at the farmyard and house. This time the outside lights were all on and the barn doors were open. Mack could see only piles of straw through the open door, and there was no guard on duty outside. He thought he could hear the distant hum of a running engine, but he could see no vehicle.

He waited for another fifteen minutes, back in the dark shadow of the woods, but he could see no discernible activity. And at a few minutes before 9:30 he began his walk across the dark and freezing field, aiming for the shadow of the barn.

Fifty yards from the shelter of that rear wall, he began to realize he had misjudged the situation. There was clear and obvious noise coming from somewhere. In fact it sounded like an active workshop in a Navy shipyard.

He could hear the periodic whine of an electric drill, the intermittent thump of a nail-gun, and the rattling revs of a big running engine. But he could see nothing around that corner into the well-lit farmyard. Whatever was happening was happening inside that barn.

He moved back along the wall, to the far end, and tried to get a better angle on the open door. But that was no better. The only spot with a front and center view of the goddamned haystack was from the front door of the house in which were residing around ten armed cutthroats.

Mack assessed that this was not a good spot for him and considered requesting that Coronado fly in a box of hand grenades, which he could activate and hurl in through the window. But upon reflection he decided this would not help his strict secrecy policy.

Mack’s imagination was apt to run riot at times like this, and every instinct told him he could not possibly attack a group this large, especially since all appeared to have loaded Kalashnikovs at their disposal.

No, he would have to wait it out, until the barn workers elected to turn it in for the night. But who knew when that would be. From across the yard, using the binoculars, he could see at least six other men sitting inside watching television, their backs to the window.

The night shift pressed on until just before midnight and then the noise stopped. The engine was switched off, the drill went silent, and there was only the murmur of voices as the lights went off and a group of five men came out of the barn. Mack watched four of them walk over to the front door. The fifth stayed to fasten a big padlock to a chain on the double doors. “Fuck,” said Mack, still waiting in the shadows.

Just then the downstairs lights in the house went out, which robbed Mack of a shot at getting to the window and trying to make some identification. His chance of getting into the barn, without breaking in and making one hell of a noise forty feet from the nearest bedroom, had also passed.

With immense reluctance, he turned and headed back across the field. Again he had taken a big risk, and again no reward. “Towelhead pricks,” he grumbled, knowing that the following night might mean an even greater risk.

 

IT WAS ALMOST 1 A.M.
on a brand new Tuesday morning when Mack finally arrived back at the sleeping hotel. He walked through the reception area and stood by the dying embers of the log fire in the residents’ lounge. He’d been this cold before, but not in living memory.

He finally hit the sack just before 1:30 and slept the deep sleep of the just. The following morning he stayed in bed until 8:30. He had a light breakfast—coffee and a couple of croissants with apricot preserves—and immediately left the hotel.

He fired up the Nissan and headed straight down the road to Torrington. As he passed the front entrance to Mountainside Farm, he noticed there was a figure in a heavy black jacket standing alone in the woods, about twenty yards to the left of the track that led to the blacktop.

“I don’t think he’s been there all night,” muttered Mack. “But you never know. Poor bastard.”

He covered the eighteen-mile journey in a half-hour, parked in a lot at least a half-mile from Cutlers (not wishing to run into Aimee), and
walked down to the hardware store he’d noticed on Main Street. He wandered through the aisles and picked up a hefty-looking padlock and key, as well as a slim flashlight. Lastly, he moved over to the heavy-duty area and found a bolt-cutter, with thirty-inch handles, just in case.

He gassed up the car and drove straight back to the Blackberry River Hotel, where he spent the day either sitting by the fire, locked in his room, reading, sleeping, or going through a SEAL exercise routine, which would certainly have put a civilian in his grave.

Mack skipped lunch, just drinking a couple of cups of coffee, but headed downstairs for an early dinner at 5:30 p.m. He ate grilled New England scrod, with spinach, salad, and fizzy water. No starter, no potato, no bread, and no dessert. Maybe later. Mack Bedford never went to war on a full stomach.

At 10 p.m. he said goodnight to the receptionist, who manned the front desk until eleven, and slipped quietly up to his room to change. Remembering he’d been what he poetically described as
colder ’n a well-digger’s ass
, all night over at Mountainside, he wore a T-shirt, then two dark turtlenecks, his heavy Navy sweater and scarf, parka, gloves, and combat boots.

He moved softly down the back stairs and out the rear door. Moments later he was on the road, aiming the Nissan at Norfolk central, and over the bridge toward Mountainside. There was hardly another vehicle on the road, and while he wondered whether there was in fact an all-night guard at the entrance, he did not drive back toward it.

Instead, with his headlights lowered, he drove through the darkness up to his usual copse of trees and parked out of sight from the road. He shoved the big padlock and key into his pocket, and picked up the heavy bolt-cutters. It was pitch black when he crossed the road and entered the wood that guarded the north side of the farm.

Mack knew the way by now, and navigated his way through the trees in zero visibility. He arrived at his usual spot and trained his binoculars on the farmyard across the wide field. Again he could see there was activity, with lights on in the farmyard, barn doors open, more lights inside, and, just faintly, probably because he guessed it was there, the faint hum of a running engine.

There was just one difference. Mack could see one man standing outside the barn, about forty feet across from the front door. He could see no one else, but the supreme magnifying power of his Special Forces binoculars
pulled up an image that Mack, quite frankly, could have done without. The guy was holding an AK-47, unmissable to a Navy SEAL.

In itself, this was not a problem. Mack could have crept up on the guy and killed him any one of a dozen ways. But dead bodies he did not need. Because right then these lunatics might abandon the mission. And this did not fit in with Mack’s plans. Obviously, he intended to end it for them. On his terms. In his time. And in a way that would cause al-Qaeda and everyone involved with them the most shattering damage. In Mack’s view, dead bodies were a major pain in the ass.

He picked up the bolt-cutters and set off once more across the crunchy acres of the freezing field.

As he drew nearer, he once more made for the shadows, crouching low and half-running, the classic mobile stance of the Navy SEAL coming in for the fast attack.

He reached the night-black cover of the barn wall, and kept stock-still for three minutes. Discerning no movement, he just stood and listened to the industrial din emanating from the barn. He edged along the wall, and peered around the corner, a course of action that offered him two separate pieces of bad news.

First, there was the armed guard, leaning on one of the barn doors, his rifle slung across the lower part of his chest.
Like fucking Che Guevara, stupid prick, Mack thought. He makes one wrong move, I’ll shove that Kalashnikov straight up his ass.

There are only a few people in this world who could make such a statement and mean every word of it. Most of them are United States Navy SEALs.

The second piece of bad news had to do with the padlock. It was in place on the near door, but from what Mack could see, it was locked and there was no key jutting out. That meant someone had the friggin’ key, and that someone probably intended to lock up when the barn workforce quit for the night.

Mack considered that he had an eighty percent chance of fooling that someone, and he just decided to wait it out. But somehow, sometime on this night, he, Lt. Commander Bedford, was going to find out what the hell was going on in that barn. And if he didn’t like it, it was not going to happen.

Twenty minutes later, Che Guevara took a coffee break. He called into the barn and asked if anyone else wanted any. A voice called back, “Four,
please, all with sugar.” And Mack watched the guard walk over to the house.