State of War

37

Toni was at home with their son. Nadine Howard had come and collected Tyrone. The boy was shaken, but he seemed okay otherwise. John Howard had gone home, seen to his boy, and now was back.

The police had gotten their forensics people in and out, and the coroner had hauled the body away. It was late, almost seven P.M., but Michaels was at the office, and neither Jay nor John Howard had any plans to go home.

Michaels had been profuse in his gratitude to Tyrone, and in telling Howard how much he owed them. Howard had been rattled and worried for his son, but under it, a glimmer of pride showed through. In the face of deadly danger, his son had stepped up. Against a man who was a killer, Tyrone had prevailed. It was not every man who could have done it, and for a teenager untrained in violence, it was even more impressive.

But now, everybody in this room was frustrated and angry.

“No ID on the call?” Michaels said.

“No, boss,” Jay said. “But we did get a location. We backwalked it to a cell tower in Tennessee.”

Michaels shook his head. “Who is in Tennessee?”

“Nobody we’re concerned with. But our boy Ames hopped on his private jet this morning, flight plans filed for Texas. At the time of the call to your virgil, given the jet’s cruising speed and path, it would have been somewhere over Tennessee.”

“We’ve got him, then,” Howard said.

Michaels nodded. “What’s in Texas?”

“Ames owns a big fallout shelter, built during the early years of the cold war.”

“A fallout shelter?”

“The size of a village, just about, buried under the plains in the middle of nowhere.”

“Why would he be going there?”

“Maybe he can read minds,” Howard said. “Because if he sent that thug to threaten our children, he’s going to have to hide somewhere. Though I am here to tell you, a fallout shelter will not be deep enough.”

The rage in Howard’s voice was quiet but no less deadly for that. And Michaels was a hundred percent in agreement.

“The thing is, we can’t be positive he made the call,” Jay said.

Both Howard and Michaels looked at him.

Jay blinked, and looked away.

“Who else?” Michaels said. “The only people likely to know that Boudreaux was going after Alex would Boudreaux and whoever sent him.”

“But — Why give him up like that?”

“Because the man had become a liability,” Howard said. “You and Toni made the connection. The Atlanta police are after him for two shootings — one of them a cop-killing — and the FBI is working up evidence to connect him to other murders, including the congressman. If Ames was his employer, Boudreaux would be in a position to do him a lot of damage by implicating him. But if he died in a shoot-out with the police…”

“Dead men tell no tales,” Jay said.

“Exactly.”

“It’s still not enough evidence to get an indictment, Boss,” Jay said, shaking his head. “Even with the hacker, it’s still real thin. We can pin those murders on Junior, I’m pretty sure, but unless Ames slipped up — and as careful as he’s been so far, that doesn’t seem likely — we’ll have a hard time proving he is the guy behind it all.”

“Maybe. But at the very least, we can have a little chat with him about it.”

Jay shook his head again. “You already got one lawsuit from this guy. We’ve got enough to keep digging, maybe even enough to start some serious prying into his affairs, but we don’t have near enough to go after him physically. Not yet.” He sighed. “I’m sorry, Boss.”

Michaels nodded and exchanged looks with Howard. “You’re right, Jay,” he said, “but you know what? I’m seriously thinking about retiring. If Ames turns out to be innocent, let him sue me.”

“Me, too,” Howard said. “I’ve done about all I wanted to do after I was called back into Net Force’s service. You can’t get much mileage with a threat to fire a man who’s ready to quit.”

Jay sighed again, then gave a tight little smile and nodded. “Okay,” he said. “What do you want me to do?”

“Get me some hard information on this bomb shelter,” Michaels said. “Find out everything there is to know. And, Jay,” he added, “this guy ran for a reason. Could be a coincidence, but it could be that he caught wind of us sniffing after his hired killer, so go carefully. Leave no tracks.”

“You got it, Boss.”

The thing about bureaucracy that Jay found so comforting was that there was always a record of any official governmental action. Sometimes it was buried deeply. Sometimes it was covered with so many top-secret layers it was almost impossible to get to. But it was always there, somewhere.

Much of what the U.S. government had been up to during those worrisome days when schoolchildren were taught to duck and cover when the nukes started going off had been kept secret for so long that nobody alive knew where to find it. A great deal of what went on during the cold war had not made the transition from hard copy documents to microfilm and then computer media. It was locked away in a storeroom or vault or somebody’s old desk — extant, but, for all practical purposes, invisible. Finding it would be a Herculean labor. But when it came to real estate that generated income, Uncle Sam didn’t drop that particular ball very often.

The plans, record of sale, and other documentation regarding the underground bunker near Odessa, Texas, had indeed made the shift from paper to pixels. It was all there. Right in the safe-deposit box of the bank vault scenario Jay was currently using.

Of course, Jay wasn’t supposed to be in the vault looking at those plans. He didn’t have the particular clearance necessary.

Jay grinned. That had never stopped him before. Besides, it was just plain silly. What possible threat to national security could it be for him to see it? Here was a site that had been sold to a civilian fifty years after it had been built, having never been used. Keeping this under a top-secret seal was, in a word, and not to put too fine a point on it, stupid.

If he had to guess, Ames had probably paid an additional little premium to someone to keep that top-secret flag on the files. Ames liked his privacy, no doubt about it.

Jay copied the files and exited the scenario.

Howard looked at the printout of the plans and shook his head. “Hard to imagine how worried people were about being bombed by the Russians back then.”

Michaels nodded. “So, what do you think, General?”

Howard frowned. “Well, even assuming the feds pulled all the defensives they had in there when they bailed out, this one’s going to be hard. This guy has money, it’s for sure he’s reinstalled some sort of protective system. He could have rockets, mines, Lord knows what all out there. In addition to that, this place is huge. He could hide from a small crew for a long time — and maybe even get past them if he had a good bolt hole.”

“So, what exactly are you saying?” Michaels asked.

“Our only chance is to sneak up on him. If he knows we’re coming, we’re in trouble.”

Michaels grinned. “So we wait until it gets dark, right?” Howard laughed. “Not quite that easy, Commander. It’s hard to tell by looking, but this place is in the middle of nowhere. If he has any kind of sensor gear, radar, doppler — stuff you can buy in any boat shop — he’ll see us coming a long way off.”

“So, how do you get around that?”

Howard smiled. “I have a couple of ideas,” he said.

Ames was able to call the hideaway on a secure phone and start the power generators by remote control, so that by the time he got there, the main building would be cooler and not so stale-smelling.

The entrance to the hydraulic automobile elevator was an upgrade he’d had installed with a triple-redundant system. There was a mechanical lock that used a magnetic key, an electronic code via a keypad, and a voxax computer chip that not only used a password, but was coded to his voice only. You had to use all three devices or the door wouldn’t open, nor would the lift work. Once inside, the locks could be overridden so they no longer operated from without. The steel door itself was in a reinforced concrete and steel frame that made the average bank vault look puny. Nobody was going to get in that way without enough heavy equipment to knock down a nuclear power plant.

Not that he expected company. Still, it was nice to know no one would be dropping by unexpectedly. He had caught the newscast just before he had landed — an armed man who had broken into the home of Alex Michaels, the commander of Net Force, had been shot and killed by the family’s baby-sitter, a young man whose name wasn’t being revealed because of his age.

Ames had to laugh at that — ace pistoleer Junior Boudreaux shot dead by a juvenile. How galling that must have felt to Junior.

He pulled his car to a stop and got out. Walking over to the override panel, he shut off access to the lift. No point in concerning himself about Junior anymore, he was history, and good riddance.

When he thought about it, there wasn’t any real reason he’d had to leave town. Net Force didn’t have a link to him — and Junior certainly wasn’t going to be providing one now. His exit had been driven by nerves. Not panic, exactly, but, he had to admit, he had been worried.

Well, as long as he was here, he might as well relax and enjoy himself. He deserved it.

He walked down the corridor from the garage, his foot-steps echoing from the tile on floor, walls, and ceiling. Some good wine, a steak and salad, maybe a nice baked potato, then watch a movie, really kick back.

Yeah, he was ready for a little vacation. Then he’d go back to Washington and really turn up the heat on Net Force.