Chicago Assault (13 page)

“I was wondering how the follow-up on the Beckerman murder was going.”

“Well, your story checks out, if that's what you mean. The paperwork boys will be calling you downtown soon to take a statement, and you may even have to talk to the D.A. But you got nothing to worry about. Like I said, your story checks.”

“And what about the guys who wasted Beckerman?”

“Aside from being real dead, you mean? Well, I've had a hell of a time getting a line on them.”

“Does that mean you found out something?”

Chezick immediately became suspicious. “Why's it so important to you?”

“Just nosy, Chezick. I've been reading stuff in the papers that bothers me. There's been a lot of killing going on lately.”

“Tell me about it, Hawker,” he snorted. “It's like a fuckin' war zone around here lately. And something very big went down two nights ago we ain't even releasing to the news boys 'cause it might start a goddamn general panic.”

“So why don't you fill me in, Boone? My curiosity's been working overtime.”

“It wouldn't have something to do with that mick's bar getting firebombed, would it?”

“That ‘mick' was Jimmy O'Neil, Lieutenant. And he just happened to be my best friend.”

“O'Neil, huh? That's who we figured it was. The damn body was burned so bad—” Chezick had the good manners to catch himself. “Anyway, until the lab gives us the official word, we've been working on the assumption that it was O'Neil. And O'Neil was involved in that IRA shit.”

“You think there might be a connection?” Hawker tested.

Chezick became cautious again. “You're Irish. You tell me.”

“For Christ's sake, Boone. If I knew something about it, wouldn't I have found a way to help O'Neil?”

“Maybe you did find a way, Hawk. There was a vanload of guys blown away outside the Ennisfree the night of the bombing.”

“Come on, Chezick. You know I don't give a shit about politics. And that includes Irish politics.”

The big Polish cop thought for a moment, then said, “Yeah, I guess that's true, Hawk.” He laughed. “I must be getting a little paranoid. Anyway, I think there's a connection. I think a few of your Irish cousins are trying to organize themselves into a big-time crime network, and it stinks clear through. They're trying to shake money loose from some very big people, and—” Chezick caught himself again. “And that's all I'm going to tell you, Hawk. Sorry.”

“But you haven't found them yet?”

“Hawk, if they live on land, we can track them. If we can track them, we can find them. And I'm not saying another word about it.”

So Hawker made small talk for a time, trying to dig a few more facts out of Chezick. When Chezick refused to be tricked, the two of them laughed together at Hawker's craftiness, and he wished Chezick luck before saying good-bye.

It was a hollow wish.

Hawker's one great fear now was that Chezick would get to Galway and Phelan before he did.

Sometimes, when Megan didn't know he was watching, Hawker would study her perfect face, the auburn hair, and the sleek lines and curves of her body, trying to memorize everything about her.

There was an air of nobility about her—in appearance and in mind. And Hawker knew she couldn't allow herself to think about the future until her quest had been fulfilled.

So he went to work.

The listening devices he had planted in the Bas Gan Sagart headquarters had been found, of course. In fact, Hawker's Tobias Seismic Recording system had monitored the entire search. On tape, Hawker had the sound of the candy-colored transmitting devices being crunched.

But the tape made it possible for him to hear Galway's voice—as identified by Megan—for the very first time.

It was a little higher than he'd thought it would be, with an oily smoothness. Galway retained just a touch of accent from his years in Ireland. And that's all they got from their night of bugging.

But he still had his computer. Hawker was no electronic wizard, but he had grudgingly come to the conclusion that it was the computer age. He could either sit back and scoff—and suffer from his own ignorance—or he could jump to the head of the line and see what computers had to offer.

He chose to jump to the head of the line, and he'd never been sorry. His 128K RAM terminal had been invaluable in more than one criminal case.

So now he put his computer to work on two names. Thomas Galway. And Padraic Phelan.

While Megan slept in his bed, he worked far into the night at his computer, using the RUSTLED software programmed by a brilliant and occasionally crooked friend of his. The software program made it possible to pirate any computer in the city.

First, he checked the license number he had noted on one of Bas Gan Sagart's vans.

Galway and Phelan obviously liked irony, for the vans were registered to a fictional corporation at the same address as the Ennisfree.

He could picture the two smirking at the thought of the police checking the same Department of Motor Vehicle file after the bar had burned.

Hawker checked references and cross-references in every other government data bank he could think of. The public records on Phelan and Galway were easy to follow up until the year they left for Ireland. But slowly and surely, Hawker was getting a mental picture of the two men he now hunted.

And it wasn't a very pretty picture.

As teenagers, they had spent their lives in and out of trouble. Fights. Drunken brawls. A stabbing. They were suspects in the murder and robbery of a Kenilworth elderly couple. Both were charged in a multiple rape case, but the charges were dropped when the victim refused to testify against them.

Jimmy O'Neil had described them as “tough and full of fight.”

But they were more than that, Hawker was learning. They were vicious. They liked to kill. And they liked to be in control.

Megan had described Galway as the leader, a linebacker-sized hood with long red hair, sloping shoulders, and a face like a boiled ham. She said he had a funny way of laughing. A high, sharp intake of breath, like a wheeze. He was the planner, she said. The brains. He was the one who had dreams of being rich.

Phelan, she said, was an overweight scarecrow with bad skin. A coward—and, like all cowards, vicious when the scales were tipped safely in his favor. Everything about him was sharp angles and rolls of fat. A tall, awkward, gawking man out of the Lincoln mold, but without the Lincoln grace. In the IRA, he became known as a back-shooter. And there were rumors he liked to disfigure victims after he had killed them.

The more Hawker learned about them, the more he wondered why Jimmy O'Neil had recruited them. Obviously, they had lied to him about their past. But hadn't he even done some preliminary checking on them? Perhaps he had. Perhaps he was desperate. Desperation is, after all, the hallmark of all hopeless causes.

The computer gave him facts and figures and histories. But it wasn't enough. He had to know where to intercept them, where to find them. The chances of their going back to the headquarters were slim. Their little terrorist army would be in disarray. They would be on the run. And it was a possibility, as Hawker had to admit to himself, that they may have already left Chicago.

But his instincts told him different. His instincts told him they were still around. Like all small-time crooks with dreams of grandeur, they would try to bleed their scam of one last big score.

And that's when it hit Hawker. Suddenly, he knew where to intercept them.

He knew their next logical move.

And he could only hope that America's third richest man wouldn't mind being used as bait.

fourteen

It was 3
A
.
M
.

Hawker sat cramped in a stand of trees, hidden away in a blind of oak limbs and leaves, ten feet above the ground.

Before him, the ribbon of Sheridan Road veered away north and south into darkness, a cold ribbon of gray in the white glow of a quarter moon.

Behind him, the solitary lights of Jacob Montgomery Hayes's mansion glimmered through the September trees. A wind moved off the lake, cold in experimental gusts, as if testing itself for winter.

The dark trees clattered and writhed in the darkness, alive with the wind.

Hawker waited.

He waited just as he had waited the night before. And the night before that. And the night before that.

And each night, he saw nothing. He heard nothing. And he grew increasingly concerned that maybe—just maybe—his instincts were wrong.

Perhaps his premature hit on Bas Gan Sagart's headquarters had spooked Galway and Phelan.

And perhaps they had correctly seen Jacob Montgomery Hayes's profane refusal to their final extortion offer for what it was: a challenge.

Because that's just what it was. When they called his corporate office only three days earlier to see if Hayes would see them personally, one of Hayes's trusted officers had given them his message. And he had given it to them word for word:
If the bastards want me so bad, tell them to come and get me
.

It was a challenge, all right.

But it was also a trap, and Hawker was now afraid that Galway and Phelan were smart enough to suspect it.

Even so, Hawker waited.

Over the past three nights, he had added pillows and blankets until the deer stand in which he sat was fairly comfortable.

He wore the thick black, oiled-wool sweater. The black watch cap was pulled down over his red hair.

A blanket was pulled over his legs to keep out the wind. Across the blanket lay a Colt Commando Rifle. The Colt fired 5.56mm ammo at a cyclical rate of close to 800 rounds per minute.

Atop the automatic weapon, he had mounted a Star-Tron Mark 303a night-vision scope. The scope was about the size of a good camera, but it was a hell of a lot more complicated. It worked on the principle of light intensification. The objective lens collected all available light: starlight, moonlight, even the dim light from Hayes's mansion. The objective lens then focused the light into an intensifier tube, which amplified the light fifty thousand times.

The result was a sharp, clear, red-tinted image when viewed through the binocular eyepiece. Mounted on the Commando, the cross-hair grid wasn't much use, because the Colt just wasn't that accurate over a long distance, although its killing range was nearly two hundred meters.

But it was a great weapon for close-quarters bush work, which was exactly why Hawker had selected it.

If he could see them through the scope, there was no doubt in his mind that he could get close enough to reach them with the Colt.

If Galway and Phelan came.

Hawker checked the safety on the Colt. He lifted the eyepiece of the night-vision scope to his cheek and scanned the tree-line along the wrought iron border that fenced Hayes's estate.

Finally, he spotted Megan. She sat high in a maple on her own deer stand.

A charge of warm emotion moved through him.

He wondered how she felt. Cold? And what was she thinking about? Him?

Night after night, it had been the same. Sitting alone in a tree. Able to see her but not able to go to her. Able to call to her but not touch her.

In a way, it was the perfect metaphor for their whole relationship.

But that would change, once her mission was over.

He hoped.

Hawker stiffened. A cone of white light fanned over the horizon. A car was coming. He ducked back into the leaves and watched its approach through the Star-Tron. The scope turned the headlights to glowing rubies.

It was a police car. On patrol. It whooshed past doing a bored forty miles an hour.

Hawker smiled and wondered how many long, long nights he had spent doing just what the two cops in the car were doing. Talking. Shooting the bull. Listening to the static voice of the dispatcher on the radio.

Did he miss it?

Yeah. Maybe.

But the work he was doing now was a lot more important.

And that was consolation enough.

Hawker settled back against the trunk of the oak tree. The wind freshened. The moon glowed through the clatter of falling leaves. From off Lake Michigan came the pleasant hum of boat engines.

A cruiser out late. On a cold, September night. Hawker didn't envy them.

He checked his watch. It was 3:25
A.M
.

The need for sleep moved through him like a fog. He reached for the Thermos of coffee and poured the plastic cup full. He had had the Thermos filled with
café con leche
at a Cuban restaurant.

The coffee was hot and strong and sweet.

Hawker lounged back, filled with his own thoughts. He finished the coffee and poured another half cup.

As he sipped the coffee, he reviewed the entire Bas Gan Sagart affair. It was like a cheap jigsaw puzzle. With pieces missing.

Hawker couldn't get the missing pieces out of his mind. They were like shards of glass in his brain.

They dug at him and nagged him. He was missing something, but what in the hell was it?

He felt the same way he did when he met some old friend unexpectedly and just couldn't remember the old friend's name. The name would bang around in the back of his brain, stoutly refusing to step forward.

Now some missing bit of data was refusing to step forward.

What was it?

Hawker puzzled over it, growing increasingly anxious. He cursed himself and cursed his memory.

And then it hit him. It came at him as if down a long, thin tunnel. It was something Boone Chezick had said: “If they live on land, we can track them. And if we can track them, we can find them.”

And something Megan had said, too: “I covered almost every street in Chicago and still couldn't find their house.”

If they live on land
…

“The bastards came by boat!” he whispered to himself.

Quickly, Hawker checked his watch. It was 3:45
A
.
M
.