Day of Wrath

CHAPTER SIXTEEN REVELATIONS

The two planes touched down within five minutes of each other. Both were Jetstream Super 31 models — twin-engine turboprops with room for a crew of two and eighteen passengers. The first carried Caraco colors — white overall with a broad black stripe and the company’s name superimposed in gold. The second plane was a rental from an air charter company.

One after the other, the two turboprops taxied smoothly past the ranks of small, single-engined private aircraft and larger crop dusting planes. Ground crewmen waved them to a stop outside the first of Caraco’s two brandnew hangars. Others hurried forward to chock their wheels as soon as the propellers stopped turning.

The ferry crews, two men per aircraft, wasted no time deplaning. They expected quick payment and a quick return to their home base. They’d been hired for a one-way trip — not as part of a long-term contract.

As soon as the commercial pilots were safely off the airfield, the ground crews towed the two twin engine turboprops into the nearest hangar. Then, under the watchful eyes of Reichardt’s security force, mechanics and electronics technicians swarmed over the empty aircraft tearing out seats and installing new control packages in the cockpits.

The Operation’s final phase had begun.

Deputy Assistant Director Lawrence Mcdowell poured himself another generous-sized drink from the bourbon bottle he kept in his bottom desk drawer. Some of it splashed out and puddled on the surface of his desk, staining the pages of the latest faxes from his overseas field offices reporting their continued failure to arrest that bitch Helen Gray and her Army boyfriend. He ignored the mess. Gray and Thorn were irrelevant now. They were stuck in Europe.

What mattered was that Heinrich Wolf, that slimy, blackmailing bastard, had finally screwed up. The sainted J. Edgar had always told his underlings that every crook always made at least one mistake. That it was just a matter of looking hard enough and waiting long enough. Well, Wolf had made his — and just in time, too.

For nearly three weeks, Mcdowell had been quietly sniffing around — trying to get a handle on just who the hell Heinrich Wolf was.

But every path he’d pursued had turned into a dead end. Secure Investments, the company the German first claimed to represent, didn’t exist — not even as a shell corporation. It was pure fiction. And none of the confidential files he’d asked the Berlin field office to pull on former Stasi agents had yielded any leads.

Despite all his efforts, Wolf remained a faceless ghost — a shadowy, commanding presence heard only over the phone.

Until now.

Mcdowell raised his glass to Hoover’s own ghost and swallowed the bourbon — reveling in the way it lit a smoky fire straight down his throat and straight up into his brain.

The pieces had finally started to fall into place yesterday — right after he learned that the Director had shut down the investigation into that Caraco-leased warehouse in Galveston. It hadn’t taken him too much poking and prying to find out why.

Mcdowell had been impressed — very impressed. Not every corporation’s top management had the kind of political clout needed to make both the White House and the FBI sit, roll over, and fetch. In his book, that made Caraco a power to be reckoned with — and a potential target for a little discreet brownnosing on his part. It was all a matter of doing your homework — of knowing exactly who to approach with an occasional background briefing on FBI operations that could affect Caraco’s various enterprises.

So he’d ordered his staff to assemble a dossier on the company and its highest-ranking people.

The dossier sitting open on his desk.

Mcdowell smiled nastily.

There it was in black-and-white — Wolf, Heinrich, Chief of Security, European Division. That smug son of a bitch hadn’t even bothered to use another cover identity when dealing with him. Well, that carelessness would cost the Stasi prick heavily.

What would his new bosses say if they knew they had an ex-German secret policeman running heroin using Caraco as a cover?

Mcdowell knew that he wasn’t out of the woods — not yet.

But at least now he had some leverage. If Wolf threatened him with exposure and ruin again, he could turn the threat against him. And, if need be, he could always shop the German bastard to the FBI’s counterintelligence section as part of a plea bargain.

He recapped the nearly empty bottle and slipped it back into the drawer. Have to remember to bring in a new one, he thought.

The bourbon wasn’t lasting as long as it once had.

The light on his phone flashed and he scooped it up. “Mcdowell.”

“This is Wolf.”

Mcdowell choked back a laugh. Speak of the devil … “Hello, Heinrich.”

“I have an assignment for you.”

Mcdowell shook his head. “Not sure I can help you, Heinrich.” He picked the Caraco dossier off his desk and spun around in his chair to face his office window. “Fact is, I’m thinking about retiring …”

“From the FBI?” Wolf’s voice hardened. “That would be a serious mistake, PEREGRINE. One with grave consequences.”

The FBI agent shrugged. “I don’t know about that, Heinrich.

Seems there are a lot of opportunities out there in the private sector right now.” He narrowed his eyes. “I could always apply at Caraco.

Seems to me they might need a new security chief for their European companies real soon. What do you think about that, Herr Wolf?” The German said nothing for several long seconds. Then he said slowly, “Are you attempting to renegotiate our arrangement, Mr. Mcdowell?”

“Yeah, I guess I am.” Mcdowell turned back to his desk. “My terms are pretty simple: You leave me alone — permanently. In return, I keep my mouth shut about your little extracurricular activities. And everybody goes away happy.”.

“Your terms are unacceptable,” Wolf said grimly. “You overestimate the strength of your position, PEREGRINE.”

“Oh? How’s that?” Mcdowell asked, feeling doubts creep into his mind for the first time since he’d pinpointed the German’s current identity.

This conversation wasn’t going according to his plan.

“You may inconvenience me for a short while,” Wolf explained. “You may even cost me some money. But I think you would find that a poor exchange for years of hard labor in one of your federal maximum-security prisons. I do not believe that your fellow FBI agents view traitors kindly. And, as you know, prison can be a dangerous place.”

This time it was Mcdowell’s turn to stay quiet. He chewed his lower lip in frustration. Wolf wasn’t rolling over the way he’d expected.

“But I will offer you a compromise, PEREGRINE — as a token of my goodwill.”

“What kind of a compromise?”

“If you successfully complete this one last assignment for me, I will cancel your remaining debt to my organization. We will be even, and you will be rid of me.”

That sounded promising. Still holding the phone in one hand, Mcdowell fished the bottle back out of his desk with the other.

“What do you want done?”

“Special Agent Gray and Colonel Thorn are in Washington, D.C” Wolf said flatly.

“What?” The bourbon glass fell onto his carpeted floor and rolled under the desk. “Impossible!”

“Evidently not. Thorn and Gray are clearly quite. resourceful,” the German said. “Too resourceful to be left at large.”

“Well, what more do you expect me to do about them?” Mcdowell demanded. “Because of me, they’re already subject to arrest on sight. I can pass the word they’re hiding out somewhere around here to the local Bureau field office, but that’s about it.”

“No,” Wolf said. “I insist on a permanent solution to the problem.”

Mcdowell shivered involuntarily. He cleared his throat. “I see.”

“Good,” Wolf said. “Now, listen carefully. Your part is simple — but you must make no mistakes …”

Mcdowell heard him out in silence, desperately wishing he could take one more drink. The warm glow he’d been nursing all day had suddenly withered into a dull, pounding ache between his ears.

It was after sunset.

Peter Thorn lay flat on the bed with his hands folded behind his head.

By turning his head, he could see Helen Gray sitting silently by the window. She was on watch — scanning the street below for any signs that the FBI or their mysterious enemies had finally tumbled to their presence back in the United States.

Their room was in darkness — lit only by a soft yellow glow from the street lamps outside. Neither of them wanted to risk their night vision to brighter light.

Thorn frowned. Something had been nagging at him for days.

Something about the trap they’d triggered near the Wilhelmshaven docks.

He’d run the scenario backward and forward in his mind a hundred times, but he still couldn’t see how the men who’d tried to ambush them had tagged them so quickly.

The man who’d called himself Steinhof had come straight up to them — in the very first bar they’d visited.

That couldn’t have been an accident.

And unless Thorn was willing to believe the impossible — that the people they were after had enough operatives to cover every waterfront dive in Wilhelmshaven — then Steinhof and his murder squad had spotted them earlier. But where? At the Port Authority?

He summoned up his memories of the office there. No, nobody had been within earshot when they’d asked their questions, about Baltic Venturer. Could the bad guys have been alerted by the German clerk who’d helped them, Fraulein Geist or Geiss or someone like that? He shook his head, remembering the drab, rigid woman behind that counter.

She hadn’t struck him as somebody who would willingly involve herself in irregular intrigue.

No. Steinhof could have tracked them after they left the Port Authority or the customs office, but to do that he would have had to have known what they looked like — and roughly when they were likely to arrive in Wilhelmshaven.

Which left one disturbing possibility …

“We got company, Peter,” Helen said suddenly. Thorn was off the bed and by her side in less than a second.

“Where?”

“Under the second street lamp — this side.” He saw the car she’d spotted, a dark, four-door sedan that had and parked — right beside a fire hydrant. He stiffened. The front passenger side door opened and Sam Farrell got out onto the sidewalk.

Thorn let out a low whistle. “That’s a relief. For a second there, I thought—”

“Not so fast, Peter. Look who brought him,” Helen said tightly.

The sedan’s driver came into full view under the street lamp.

It was Larry Mcdowell.

Jesus, Thorn thought grimly. He turned to Helen. “Do we bug out?”

She sighed. “No point. There’s another car further out — hanging a block or so back. And Mcdowell may be a moron — but he’s not a complete moron. By now, he’ll have units in position around the whole immediate area.”

Thorn nodded. He watched Sam Farrell head for the front door to the inn, with Mcdowell right behind him. They were out of places to run.

The knock on their door came just a minute or so later. “Special Agent Gray. Colonel Thorn. This is Deputy Assistant Director Mcdowell.”

Holding his temper in check, Thorn flipped the lights on, then opened the door and stepped back.

Sam Farrell came in first, shaking his head apologetically.

“Pete, Helen, I’m sorry as hell about this, but he was waiting on my front steps when I got home.”

“You don’t need to apologize to these two,” Mcdowell said, pushing past the other man to stand in front of Thorn and Helen. “Colonel Thorn and Special Agent Gray should consider themselves very lucky to see me. The first people through that door could have been a SWAT team.”

Helen glared at him. “If you’re here to arrest us, just do it.”

Mcdowell smiled smugly. “Now, Miss Gray. I suggest you watch your tone.”

He spread his empty hands. “I’m not here to arrest you.”

Sure. Thorn looked narrowly at the senior FBI agent. “What’s your game, Mcdowell?”

“No games, Colonel.” The other man half turned toward Farrell.

“Shut the door, please, General. I think we need some privacy.

Once the door was closed, Mcdowell turned back to Helen and Thorn.

“It’s simple, Colonel, so please try to pay attention. Despite what you might have thought, the Director and I haven’t been sitting idly by these past few days. On the contrary, we’ve been very busy tracking down these illegal shipments you claim have been entering the United States.”

“Then why close down the Galveston probe?” Helen demanded.

“Strategy, Special Agent Gray.” Mcdowell shook his head. “I know that you’re a competent tactician, but you clearly have only a limited comprehension of the big picture.”

He quickly held up a hand to forestall Thorn’s angry response.

“Don’t glare at me, Colonel. I’m merely pointing out the facts. The Galveston operation was a dry well — anyone who read the reports could see that. The place had been stripped clean. We knew we weren’t going to find anything useful there.”

“But the raid did generate a very revealing response from Caraco’s senior management,” Mcdowell continued. “And ever since, we’ve been very quietly investigating their personnel and several of their key American facilities.”

“And you found something suspicious?” Helen asked.

“Yes and no,” Mcdowell said. “We’ve certainly detected some odd activity at one of Caraco’s sites — an industrial park complex out near Chantilly. We’ve got surveillance teams around the place right now.”

Helen breathed out. “So the order for our arrest was—”

“A blind,” Mcdowell confirmed. “We needed to get you out of Germany quickly and thought that might be the least conspicuous way to do it.”

He shrugged. “Evidently we underestimated your resources. And those of General Farrell.”

“What do you want from us now?” Thorn asked sharply, still fighting his instinctive dislike for Helen’s superior. The message the FBI agent was sending sounded good — almost too good to be true. Was this stuff about “all sins are forgiven” just a ruse to get them out of the inn quietly — without any unpleasant publicity?

“The Director would like both you and Special Agent Gray to come out and see if you recognize anybody. Some of the suspicious people we’ve observed prowling the grounds at this Chantilly complex recently flew in from Europe. We want to check the possibility that one or more of them might have been part of the team you say attacked you in Wilhelmshaven.”

Thorn could see a look of hope suddenly emerging on Helen’s face.

She’d been trying to goad the FBI’s higher-ups into gear ever since she’d sent Mcdowell that first fax urging him to investigate the Wilhelmshaven docks. And now it looked as though her efforts were finally making a difference.

He stood absolutely still.

Wilhelmshaven.

All the pieces of the puzzle that had been nagging at him abruptly fell into place. Mcdowell had known they were going to Wilhelmshaven.

Mcdowell had known why they were going there. And that bastard had access to their service photos — the same photos he’d later faxed to the Berlin police.

It all fit. And it all added up to a very ugly picture of treachery, betrayal, and attempted murder. Mcdowell had set them up.

Once. Twice, if you counted Berlin.

And he was about to do it again.

Without thinking, Thorn turned away and then whirled around again — sending a hard right cross smashing into Mcdowell’s smug face.

The FBI agent’s head rocked backward under the impact and then snapped forward — right into a left hook that caught him under the chin and threw him onto the floor, flat on his back.

“Peter!”

“What the hell are you doing, Colonel?” Farrell barked.

Thorn ignored them both. He moved closer to the man he’d knocked down.

Still groggy, Mcdowell rolled over and pushed himself up on one knee.

The FBI agent’s hand fumbled under his jacket.

“Not so fast, you son of a bitch.” Thorn’s own hand flashed out and gripped Mcdowell’s wrist. He yanked the other man’s hand out into the open. The butt of a pistol came into view.

He squeezed.

Mcdowell squawked and let go. The pistol thudded onto the carpet.

Thorn released his wrist and scooped up the weapon in one smooth motion. It was a 9mm SIG-Sauer P228. He cocked it with his thumb and placed its muzzle squarely against Mcdowell’s left temple.

The FBI agent froze. Sweat trickled down his forehead. Blood dripped from a cut on his lip.

“Nice weapon,” Thorn said conversationally. He pressed harder, grinding the muzzle into Mcdowell’s forehead. “I really hate to think of how messy it’s going to get when I blow your brains out.”

The other man’s eyes widened. He whimpered.

“Pete,” Farrell said softly. “Don’t do it.”

Thorn could see that his former commanding officer had his own pistol out now, and that it was pointing roughly in his direction.

He shook his head. “I haven’t gone loco, Sam. Not yet anyway.”

“Convince me.” Farrell’s voice was strained.

“I’ll let Deputy Assistant Director Mcdowell here do my convincing for me.” Thorn caught a glimpse of Helen out of the corner of his eye.

Still ashen-faced, she was working her way around to Farrell’s blind side. Christ, they were all teetering on a knife edge. He cleared his throat. “Stay where you are, Helen.”

She stopped moving.

Thorn turned his full attention back to Mcdowell. “Now then, let’s have a little talk, okay? The rules are simple: I ask you questions and you answer them. If you don’t answer, I blow your head off. If you lie to me, I blow your head off. If you tell me the truth, I let you live — at least for a little while longer.”

He prodded the FBI agent’s temple with the pistol. “Do you understand these rules, Mr. Mcdowell?”

Eyes still wide, the other man hurriedly bobbed his head up and down.

“Very good.” Thorn smiled grimly, hiding the fact that he felt sick to his stomach. Torture was against every code of justice and moral law he’d ever been taught. And this came right to the very edge of torture — and maybe even slipped over the edge. Only the memory of seeing Helen apparently helpless and down on one knee on that blood-soaked street in Wilhelmshaven stiffened his resolve.

“First question,” he said. “You’re not taking us to meet with an FBI surveillance team, are you?”

Mcdowell licked his lips, wincing as his tongue ran across the gash Thorn’s fist had torn. “Of course I am—”

“Wrong answer.” Thorn tightened his finger on the trigger.

Mcdowell flinched. “Wait!”

Thorn eased up. “You want to try again?” Seeing the other man nod frantically, he asked, “Where were you taking us?”

The FBI agent hesitated, felt the pistol prod his temple again, and reluctantly admitted, “To a field outside Chantilly.”

“And who’s waiting for us there?”

Mcdowell’s voice dropped off to a whisper. “A man named Wolf.”

“Heinrich Wolf?” Farrell asked, clearly taken aback.

Mcdowell nodded abjectly.

Thorn looked down at the other man in disgust. “And what did Herr Wolf plan to do … in that field outside Chantilly?”

“Kill you,” the FBI agent mumbled. He hung his head, utterly defeated now.

“Christ!” Farrell exploded. He slid the Beretta back into his holster. “Looks like I owe you a big apology, Pete.”

Thorn shook his head. “None needed, Sam.”

Helen stalked forward, drawing closer to the kneeling Mcdowell. Her lip curled in disdain. “Who’s in that other car parked down the block?

More of Wolf’s men?”

“What other car?” Mcdowell said, plainly bewildered. “Farrell and I came alone. I swear it!”

She stared down at him. “You really are an idiot, aren’t you? Didn’t it ever occur to you that Wolf wants you dead, too? That once he’d finished us off, you’d have outlived your usefulness?”

Thorn watched the realization sink in on Mcdowell’s sweating face. He caught the raw smell of alcohol under the sweat now. The FBI agent paled even further. He leaned forward again.

“Now that we’re all on the same page, Larry, let’s take this from the top, shall we?”

Then, step by step, question by question, he dragged the whole sordid story out of the other man. How Mcdowell had sold his soul to the Stasi for a little hard cash years before. How Wolf had blackmailed him in Moscow — forcing him to feed the German information on the ongoing crash investigation. How he’d followed Wolf’s instructions to blacken Helen’s and Thorn’s names with the FBI and other government agencies every chance he got. The one thing he didn’t know was whether or not the German was the top dog in this criminal organization. He’d never had any contact with Prince Ibrahim al Saud.

When Thorn was through, he pulled the pistol back from the FBI agent’s temple and decocked it. Mcdowell swayed and slumped forward onto his hands and knees, head down, panting as though he’d just stumbled over the finish line in a marathon.

Helen stared down at her former boss in cold contempt. “You fucking little weasel! I’m going to look forward to seeing you in prison for the rest of your life.” She looked up at Thorn and Farrell.

“What do we do now?”

“Take him to the FBI?” Farrell wondered.

Helen considered Farrell’s suggestion, then shook her head no.

“Somehow I doubt that Larry here will be quite as cooperative without a gun pressed to his head. Then it comes down to his word against ours... and he’s stacked the deck there.”

Farrell nodded slowly.

“There’s only one thing we can do,” Thorn said quietly. “Herr Wolf has gone to a lot of trouble to arrange a reception for us near Chantilly. Let’s at least meet him halfway.”

Max Harzer watched the four Americans emerge from the town house and climb into the FBI agent Mcdowell’s dark blue Ford Taurus. With one hand, he lifted his cellular phone from the seat beside him and punched in Reichardt’s number. The other hand turned the key in the ignition.

“Yes.” It was Reichardt. There was no disguising that clipped, authoritative voice.

“This is Harzer, sir. They’re on the way.”

“All of them?” Reichardt asked.

“Yes, sir.” Harzer watched the Americans drive past him, then put his own vehicle in gear. “The woman is driving.”

He pulled out onto the street and turned after them.

“Very good, Harzer,” Reichardt said. “But stay well back. There’s no point in spooking the prey so close to the snare. Understood?”

“Yes, sir.” The German reduced his speed slightly, careful to keep three or four other cars between his and the Americans’ vehicle.

“Keep me informed.”

The phone cut off. Harzer put it down on the seat again and concentrated on his driving. Ideally, he would have had a partner in the car to help keep the Americans in sight, but with the Operation so close to completion all of Reichardt’s available manpower was fully committed.

He followed the Americans onto Connecticut Avenue heading south, trailed them around Dupont Circle, out onto New Hampshire Avenue, into Washington Circle, and then down 23rd Street. Harzer was four car lengths behind when Mcdowell’s vehicle shot ahead through a yellow light that turned red before he could cross the intersection.

He dialed the phone again.

“Report.”

“I’ve lost them, sir,” Harzer said, quickly explaining what had happened.

“Was their action deliberate?” Reichardt asked.

The German thought back. Since arriving in America he’d noticed that most drivers seemed to view a yellow light the way a Spanish bull saw a red cape. He doubted that the woman Gray was any different. “No, sir. I don’t believe so.”

The light turned green again.

“And they were still headed for the Roosevelt Bridge?”

Harzer nodded into the phone. “Yes, sir. With no sign of any deviation. They should be almost on the bridge now.”

“Then carry on, Harzer. You ought to pick them up again on Route 50. Reichardt out.”

The grass field lay quiet under a dark, cloudless night sky. Crickets chirped ceaselessly in a whirring, rising and falling, rhythm.

A light wind rustled through the trees surrounding the open, empty ground. Only a few survey stakes, a darkened construction trailer, and a newly graded dirt road indicated that the field would soon be the site of yet another office complex.

From his position in the treeline just to the north, Rolf Ulrich Reichardt looked down at the luminous dial of his watch again.

Another ten minutes had gone by. He turned to Schaaf. “Anything?”

The taciturn ex-commando flipped down his nightvision goggles.

He scanned the edge of the field where the new road cut through the bordering woods, and then shook his head. “Nichts.”

Reichardt frowned. Schaaf had four men concealed in carefully chosen positions around the empty construction trailer.

Each was armed with a silenced MP5 submachine gun. Once the four Americans arrived, the ambush team had orders to cut them all down as soon as Mcdowell led them toward the trailer. Thorn, Gray, Farrell, and the traitorous FBI agent would be dead before they even hit the ground.

Once they arrived … His frown deepened into a scowl. They ought to have been here by now.

The cellular phone clipped to his belt vibrated softly. He snapped it open. “Reichardt.”

“This is Harzer. I’m at the far end of the dirt road. But I don’t see any sign of the Americans’ car.”

Unbelievable.

“Clear the area, Harzer. Return to the compound.” Reichardt flipped the phone shut and spun toward Schaaf. “Something’s gone wrong. Recall your men. We’re getting out of here — now!”

He moved back deeper into the concealing woods while Schaaf loped across the open ground toward the construction trailer. An instinctive, unreasoning shiver ran swiftly down his spine. Thorn and Gray had obviously stumbled onto his plan to ambush them. But how?

And, more to the point, what would they do now?