Perfect killer

CHAPTER 77

Brigadier General Jack Kilgore stood in his glass-sided corner office and took in the desks and maps and consoles and displays filling the vast operations room beyond. Troops in the operations room avoided looking at him and focused on their mission. When their commanding officer refused to sit it meant his pitifully anorexic tolerance for BS had gone AWOL.

Kilgore held a cell phone to his ear and listened to the endless ringing of Dan Gabriel not picking up. The longer Kilgore listened, the more it sounded like a siren. He stopped at his door and followed the thick multicolored skeins of Cat-5 cabling, coax, wave guides, power cords, and assorted wires neatly bundled with cable ties and harnesses, which made only precise ninety-degree turns as they parceled out data, radio waves, and electricity from origin to destination.

There were times he preferred the old days when God, guts, and guns were all you needed to win a battle, provided you had enough intelligence to apply them in the proper proportions at the correct times.

But this new technology, Xantaeus, held only horror, not hope. It dehumanized, removed choice, deprived the individual soldier of his free will and ripped out the very thing that made him human. Gabriel's notion that some soldiers would go where the drug took them and never return haunted Kilgore and made him entertain seditious thoughts.

In the far corner of the operations room, Kilgore's second-in-command, Colonel Bill Lewis, talked with the mapping officer, who accessed the same data that guided cruise missiles and allowed pilots-and Kilgore's troops-to rehearse simulated missions by "seeing" the actual terrain overlaid by aerial and satellite photos with better quality and resolution than the average scrapbook snapshot.

Kilgore pulled the phone from his ear, stared at it for a moment, then pressed the "end" button and let his hand fall to his side. A moment later, Colonel Lewis stood up, took several sheets of paper from the console operator and gave Kilgore a nod. Then he made his way to Kilgore's door and entered.

"Any idea?" Kilgore asked.

Lewis shook his head. "General Gabriel's phone works fine."

"I know that," Kilgore snapped. He waved the wireless unit in Lewis's face. "Tell me something useful."

Kilgore closed his eyes and grimaced. "Sorry, Bill. I'm low on sleep. My anger's uncalled for."

"We've all been there, sir." Lewis nodded. "This is a pretty intense security exercise given the probability of Braxton as our next president."

Lewis, like almost every other soldier Kilgore knew-himself included-took pride in that they would finally get a commander in chief with knowledge, courage, and guts, someone they looked up to after the dismal parade of draft dodgers, cowboys, flaky liberal peaceniks, actors, and poseurs who had abused the military in one stupid, selfserving way or another. Kilgore realized part of his temper came from disappointment: after they'd waited for so long, the soldier headed for the Oval Office had claymore feet.

He wanted to tell Lewis this, but said only, "Thank you."

"I can tell you the cell's GPS functions are operating properly." Lewis handed Kilgore a full-color, topographical printout on fine, slick eleven-by-seventeen paper. "From this we know he spent over ten hours here." Lewis pointed to a spot near San Rafael. "At his hotel. His last call to you came from there. Then he goes north on 101, east on 37, and north again toward Sonoma." Lewis traced the route. "He stopped for a moment here, then for a much longer stop at an address in the Temelec subdivision, which checks out as the residence of Dr. Frank Harper."

Kilgore followed this silently.

"The phone remained at Harper's for more than five hours, traveled east, then north, and has been stationary since then, right here." He pointed to a series of almost concentric topographical elevation lines west of the Silverado Trail in Napa Valley.

"Braxton's estate," Kilgore said. "Figures. They have a meeting this afternoon." He thought silently for a moment. "Okay, here's how I want you to handle this. Pull a squad together who've trained in Al Qaeda tactics and give them everything a well-funded terrorist cell can get hold of-data, plans from the county, photographs from the French surveillance satellites, leaks from German intelligence-that sort of thing, and start them on planning an intrusion.

"Also, pull together another squad who'll gather everything we have and have them report to me. Put a fire wall between the two groups. Have the first one rent an office or something in the area, set up their operations. Keep this hermetic, no notifications to anybody outside this organization."

"Sir," Lewis said. "Who do you want commanding the squad?"

"You."

"Sir." Lewis smiled.

"Okay. How about the Mississippi situation?"

"The usual cock-up," Lewis said. "The Customs Service weenies are running around like a bunch of chickens with their heads cut off, only twice as fast and half as smart."

"You do know, don't you, that Brown is one of Braxton's men?"

"Nobody's perfect, sir," Lewis said evenly. "The General can't know everything. That's why people like us need to be at our best and weed out the bad apples."

"Well said."

"Thank you, sir," Lewis said, then continued his report. "The fire in Itta Bena spread to a whole row of buildings and burned way past dawn. Brown's assault team caught the blame, and the lawyers are standing in line to file lawsuits. Shanker's family's at the head of the line. He was quite an admired lawyer and beloved figure around those parts, and there was a near riot around the hotel where Homeland Security was staying.

"The Leflore County sheriff, the police chief in Itta Bena, and a bunch of others drove down to Jackson to complain to the senators and the U.S. attorney there, and I understand they're filling some sort of legal action as well. The networks have it, news vans and cameras everywhere. Photos of Stone and Thompson have hit everywhere, but any reporter with an IQ larger than his shoe size is asking embarrassing questions that should eventually discredit David Brown and his Customs assholes."

Kilgore smiled broadly then. Bill Lewis carried a long railroad-siding of a scar along the left side of his abdomen where a trigger-happy Customs agent had shot him during a joint-task-force raid on a bunch of innocent Muslims in Virginia. David Brown had instigated the raid on fabricated intelligence. Kilgore had opposed Task Force 86M's participation in the raid and had relented only after direct orders from the Pentagon. There had been rumors Lewis had deliberately been shot in retaliation, but given Customs' habitual inability to shoot straight, proving it would be impossible.

"They making any progress finding Stone and Thompson?"

Lewis shrugged. "A little. They're working a family tree like what caught Saddam-you know, a chart of everybody he ever knew, hoping it will lead them to Stone. They figure he's headed to Jackson."

"So what do you think of the questions the media are asking."

"I don't have enough data to form an operational conclusion on it yet."

"Uh-huh," Kilgore said slowly. "Do you have a personal opinion?"

Lewis nodded. "The whole thing stinks. I've looked at the records. NSA sent us the voice recordings of the radio conversations starting with Stone's Mayday off Marina del Rey." Lewis shook his head. "This looks like some sort of frame-up cobbled out of bits and pieces. It reminds me of Brown's bogus raids against those Muslim groups in Virginia."

"This doesn't involve Brown or Customs. This was some Army folks from the Technical Escort Unit."

"But, remember, they've been lobbying for Homeland Security budget funds themselves. I spent a little extracurricular time and pulled some records on the colonel who ran the Marina del Rey operation and… " Lewis smiled.

"And?"

"He served on active duty with Braxton."

"I see where this is headed."

"And so did Brown."

"Good work, Bill." Kilgore slapped him on the shoulder. "I'll take over control of the Mississippi operation so you can pull together the Napa stuff."