The Illuminati (60 page)
Going on a hunch, Jeff searched the New Orleans police files for reports of stolen vehicles, believing that any agents assigned to locate the CRC headquarters would not take the chance of being tracked through a government vehicle. There were hundreds of stolen car reports in New Orleans, but only one that coincided with the time and location he was interested in: a white 1999 Chevrolet.
Jeff set up a routine search for subsequent police reports involving any vehicles matching that description. There was just one. A white Chevrolet carrying four men was involved in a multiple homicide in a small town in Mississippi, about two hundred miles from New Orleansâon a direct line with the CRC's headquarters.
Coincidence?
Well, maybe
, Jeff thought to himself.
But on such coincidences, wars have been won or lost
. He had to decide what to do, in a hurry.
Mowr and his team of cutthroats continued on in a direct line toward Dentville, Mississippi. “Shouldn't we ditch the car?” the driver asked Mowr. “What if someone spotted us back there?”
“Don't be stupid,”Mowr growled. “There was nobody back there left to spot us. We've got nearly a full tank of gas left. I'm not dumpin' this car now.”
The others knew they were violating the cardinal rule of an assault mission: They had committed a crime and continued on in the same vehicle. By now there would be a stolen car report out too. But they did what Mowr ordered; they knew he wouldn't hesitate to do to them what he had done to the people of Compton.
Jeff decided what he had to do. He patched into the Mississippi State Patrol emergency network. He knew it was a risk; it left him vulnerable to a trace within Data-Net as long as the link was open. If Dr. Loo was monitoring, it was possible to identify the source. But it was a risk he had to run. If the attack on Compton was the work of an assault team, the CRC camp was in grave danger. The agents could be closing in even now.
Jeff sent an all-points bulletin to Highway Patrol stations from Compton to Dentville, giving the description of the stolen vehicle and the four men. Jeff was laying out all the cards. If the team was not headed in a straight line to Dentville, he had just diverted all the Highway Patrol units in southern Mississippi to the wrong place.
At the Mississippi Highway Patrol stations, the bulletin was received, notifying all units to take up positions along the interstate and all main roads between Compton and Dentville. The all-points bulletin said the men in the car were armed and should be considered extremely dangerous.
Mowr ordered the driver to pull off the interstate and find a back road into Dentville. It was nothing he could put his finger on, but somehow he knew the police had been alerted. He had made his living most of his life by obeying his instincts; he felt nothing for the people he had killed, including those in Compton. They were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. To Mowr, the only life that counted was his.
“We're gettin' close,”Mowr said to the others. “I can smell it. Pull into that farm. We need some information.”
Mowr knew only one way to do anything: brute force. He intended to grab one of the locals, find out what he could about any unusual activity in the area, kill the hostage, and attack the target he had been assigned. He knew they had to be close, but his information only narrowed the search area to a few square miles.
Jeff called all the men in his camp together and told them what he knew, or at least suspected, about the assault team headed their way. Once the highway patrol had been alerted, all they could do was wait until something happened.
The former FBI agents working with the CRC had their orders from Shepperd: they were to take no chances if attacked. Although Shepperd had agreed to Elder's decision not to attack government forces, he did not interpret that to mean they could not defend themselves. His agents were armed at all times. In this emergency, they went into their hidden cache of weapons and brought out some bigger artillery. If the assault team hit their compound, they would not find them as passive as most of the people they confronted.
“What the . . .” the startled driver said as he pulled on to the dirt road leading to the farm. There was a large tree blocking most of the road.
Suddenly alert, Mowr's eyes darted back and forth looking for any signs of a trap. He had set enough traps himself to be wary of anything out of the ordinary.
“It looks like it blew down in the last couple of days,” the driver said.
“See if you can get around it.” Mowr ordered even as he armed his weapon. Everything looked normal, except for the tree. It was possible that whoever lived on the farm simply lacked the equipment to move it.
The driver eased the car onto the shoulder of the road. Even as he did so, several armed men watched from their well-concealed positions in the corn field. As the car swung around the tree, the driver saw a large silver-colored cylindrical tank, hitched to a tractor, directly in his path. He swerved to the right to avoid hitting it. Suddenly the ground gave way beneath the car's tires, and it lurched to one side as the frame bottomed out in the ditch.
Mowr let out a string of obscenities at the driver. He couldn't know that just such a mishap had been designed into the old road. “Get out and see how bad it is,” Mowr ordered the others. He sat in the car with his weapon out of sight . . . but ready.
As the three men stepped out of the car, someone shouted from the field, “Lay down your weapons and put your hands over your heads. You're surrounded.”
By pure chance, Mowr had found the compound he was looking for. But instead of catching them by surprise, thanks to Jeff's warning, they were ready.
The startled agents dropped their weapons shouting, “Don't shoot. We're government agents. . .”
“Shut up you fools,” Mowr snapped. He raised his weapon to spray the field where the shout had come from.
When the ex-FBI agent saw the barrel of the automatic weapon peek over the car windowsill, he reacted instinctively. The LAARS rocket he was aiming was armed and ready. He squeezed the trigger gently and the solid motor rocket roared into action. It covered the distance to the car in less than a second, even before Mowr could fire a single round. The explosion of the rocket and the silver cylinder obliterated the car and the men who had been riding in it.
The fireball was visible from a mile away. A highway patrolman positioned at one of the county road blocks saw the fireball as it erupted. The sound reached him a few seconds later with a deafening roar. He fired up his engine and raced in the direction of the explosion.
When the patrolman arrived at the farm, only a solitary figure was visible. One of the ex-FBI agents dressed in coveralls was standing by the entrance road.
“What happened?” the startled patrolman asked as he saw the burned wreck.
“Some fools in a white car drove into the propane tank I hitched to my tractor,” the agent said in a Mississippi drawl. “Had guns stickin' out of every window. I guess they were gonna rob the place. Serves 'em right, I guess. Besides, we don't have much to steal.”
“You're very lucky,” the patrolman said. “These are probably the killers we've been looking for. They killed twenty-three people in Compton. Wiped out most of the town. I'll get some of our forensic people out here to verify who they are. Just don't touch anything.”
“You betcha,” the agent said casually as the patrolman called on his mobile phone.
The state police took pictures of the crash site and did a forensic analysis of the bodies. Satisfied that they were the men who attacked Compton, they removed the bodies and the demolished car.
Activity on the farm was slowed for several days until the area was cleared. Then Shepperd and Elder returned to the headquarters.
“We have to move quickly,” Shepperd told the others the first evening they were back together. “It's only a matter of time until Rutland tries again. The next time it might not be a bunch of thugs. It could be the army.”
“I agree with Donald,” Elder told the group. “It's time we pulled out all the stops. If we get caught, there will be no second chance.”