Devil's Eye (9 page)

“
Lucky, they didn’t get a chance to use these. They each could have sprayed us with sixty rounds. Mean weapons. Especially these automatics. Illegal, you know.”

Caine’s apparent flippancy was affecting her. “What about the scream? What are you going to do? What about these men? You shot them! Are you going to call the police?”

The Colonel realized he was totally preoccupied and ignoring her concerns. He got up and faced her. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to put you through this.”

She looked at him in a mixture of fear and relief and collapsed into his embrace, still clutching the stiletto.

They hurried to his car with the night breeze turning to a brisk wind that rustled the treetops in the Mall and swayed them back and forth in seeming mimicry of the assault that had just been thwarted.

In the roadster Caine grabbed his secure phone and raised the night duty officer at his Pentagon office. He asked the officer to relay a message about the two bodies to the Washington police. “I’ll file a report.” He signed off.

Caine looked with concern at Laura.

“
If I’m going to keep seeing you, I’ll have to take up karate,” she said.

As the Viper’s taillights receded in the darkness, a head peered from an upper window inside the Museum of Natural History. It looked intently through the pane at the scene of the commotion below. Even though the hallway beyond the window was dimly lit, the features of the derelict whom Caine had seen under the tree on his way to the reception were unmistakable. He glowered into the darkness outside, then disappeared into the depths of the building.

Chapter 8

Massive expanses of black
‐
topped parking areas ringing the Pentagon were still void of cars that morning, giving the vast complex the look of a fortress surrounded by a tar moat. Colonel Caine drove his dark red roadster into an area off I
‐
395 and parked at an eastern entrance to the building.

Passing security, he hurried upstairs then along an infinite corridor towards the office of his commanding general on the fourth floor. It was in the third section of the five concentric pentagons making up the familiar headquarters of the Department of Defense. Due to the ultra
‐
secret nature of the Omega Group, the office was deliberately located outside the prestigious “E ring” where the most senior officials had their offices.

As he passed the office adjoining his own, he heard the inevitable through an open door.

“
Yo! Swamp Fox! The General’s got our orders.”

Caine looked in on his fellow
‐
officer, Colonel Garrison Jones, one of the ranking field officers in the Omega Group. “Morning, Arie.”

“
It’s the Middle East again,” Jones said. He rose from his chair and approached Caine in the hallway. Jones, like Caine was athletically built and out of uniform that day. Still, his khaki slacks and matching safari shirt, complementing his dark complexion, gave him a crisp military bearing.

“
Where to?” replied Caine.

“
The old man will fill us in. I hear you were at the Smithsonian last night. Talking to mummies?”

“
I may as well have,” Caine replied as the two walked towards General Bradley’s office.

“
Didn’t you catch Sherwyck?”

“
There was no sign of him. But we got tangled up with some baddies outside.”

“
We? I thought I was your partner.”

“
Dr. Laura Mitchell.”

“
Here I am sittin’ at my desk with paperwork up to here and you’re mixin’ it up somewhere with a strange woman?”

Caine did not reply to his friend’s usual banter as they entered General Bradley’s office. He was at his desk with a cup of coffee in his hand.

The General beckoned them to sit down on the studded leather sofa along a wall opposite his desk. He joined them and sat down in a matching armchair facing the couch.

“
I hear there was some gunplay at the Smithsonian last night,” the General said as he took a careful sip of his steaming coffee.

Jones looked over to Caine.

“
Yes, sir,” Caine replied. He recounted the details of the previous night’s encounter; the three who fled and the two men he shot.

The faces of the two were fixed in Caine’s mind. The Colonel remembered the Asian was frozen forever in a queer, hateful look that seemed triumphant even in death. The other, a man with Middle Eastern features—probably of Egyptian origin, Caine surmised—had a death look of simple surprise. Five of his seven shots had found their mark, he reported.

“
It’s unlikely it was a gang,” Colonel Jones offered. “I don’t know of any turf battles going on over the Mall or public monuments. It’s out of the ‘hood.”

“
These muggers were ethnically diverse. It’s usually homogeneity that welds gangs together,” Caine added. “Besides, they don’t usually carry Israeli submachine guns.”

“
Our night watch got a call from the D.C. police,” General Bradley interspersed. “They were on the scene within ten minutes after you patched through. They didn’t find a thing. No bodies, no blood, no clothes.”

“
Impossible, sir!” Caine retorted. “The woman with me witnessed the whole thing. She got some licks in herself.”

“
Under your umbrella, I’m sure,” General Bradley surmised. “I don’t doubt you for a minute,” he assured. The General took another slow sip of his coffee. “Actually, there is something. Chinks in the side of the Museum of Natural History and a couple of thirty
‐
eight caliber cartridges in the grass. So, I know you shot at something. But that’s for the Washington Police Department, there’s no need for us to get off track here.”

“
Sir?”

“
Chris, my boy,” The general said paternalistically. “Under the circumstances a formal report would look a little empty. Why don’t you just detail a memo for me—‘Your Eyes Only’.”

“
If anything further develops, we can spend more time on it.”

“
The others must have returned for them. They picked up the bodies.”

“
That’s unusual for street thugs,” the General replied. “Especially when you routed them. Their only concern is to get away.”

“
They probably didn’t want attention focused on the area,” Colonel Jones offered.

“
Let’s file this away for now,” the General reiterated. “Our attention is Jeannie McConnel. Not your average street muggings,” he added with sarcasm.

General Bradley rose from the armchair and started back to his desk. “Our lead’s in Beirut. That’s where you’re going. Things are dicey there again, so it’ll have to be an insertion. Who knows who’s in charge and we don’t want you noticed. Rendezvous at Andrews at Eighteen hundred. I called General Wittenfield for transport. Your

orders will be waiting for you.”

“
Very well, sir,” both officers responded and started to leave.

“
By the way, General. What about Sherwyck?” Caine added.

“
Talk to him upon return. If things pan out in Beirut, you may not even have to.”

“
Yes, sir.”

In the hallway, Colonel Jones turned to his friend. “You want me to find some appropriate get up for you? You know, something to help blend in at the bazaars, so you won’t stand out as a former plantation owner lost in the desert?”

Caine responded with a broad smile. “Don’t you forget your alligator shoes.”

***

Colonel Caine drove back from the Pentagon along the George Washington Parkway towards Arlington. The sounds of the 600 horsepower rumbling engine, barely muffled for effect, and the sights of the contrasting fresh greenery around him absorbed his preoccupied mind. He glimpsed a portion of Georgetown across the Potomac as the treed canopy of the parkway parted near some grassy banks of the river and opened onto a vista of new condominiums rising on the other side.

His thoughts mellowed into an image of Laura Mitchell. He had offered to drive her to her townhouse in Georgetown. She asked if he could drop her off at her uncle’s instead. She was all right, she said but would feel safer being with Uncle Jonas that night.

Colonel Caine sensed some continuing apprehension in her. At one point a sudden chill coursed through her body. He had turned on the Viper’s heater.

He assured her it was a rare incident. She was a brave woman and he thanked her for helping him against the attackers. She insisted she had heard a woman’s scream inside the building. He promised to check it out with their mutual friend Al Carruthers, as soon as possible.

When they reached her uncle’s residence, she uttered a demure “thank you” and kissed his cheek. Their eyes locked for a moment and each knew they would see each other again. He waited until she was inside.

Caine felt an urge to cut across the Key Bridge to Georgetown, but figured he may not find her at her uncle’s and he didn‘t know where she lived. He could easily find out, but there would be no time before reporting to Andrews Air Force Base. He contented himself with her smiling image, so familiar now after the harrowing incident that had welded their acquaintance.

Chapter 9

Ronald Stack, the Secretary of Defense, was riding in a limousine along Pennsylvania Avenue with the Director of the FBI. He had offered Richard Worthington a ride to their strategy session that day to coordinate plans for action on the Jeannie McConnell case and was taking him back to the Hoover Building.

“
I still think this should be a police matter,” the Secretary of Defense said, staring out the limousine’s window. “We have much graver issues to handle in the Group.”

Richard Worthington nodded slightly. He had heard the Secretary of Defense, but was preoccupied with another thought.

“
Dick?” The Secretary asked turning to Worthington.

“
I heard you, Ron. I was just thinking. If information from this Warlock contact is correct, we could really be in for high level blackmail. Imagine a family member of one of our highest officials being displayed on the internet with machetes at their throat. What would the President do? How would our people react? One of our roles in the Omega Group is successful negotiation in the most sensitive international hostage situations. This is way beyond local police work. We have criminals at war with governments. They don’t have shock troops or tanks. They go for the underbelly. One by one. Things we treasure. People we treasure. What would we give up to get Jeannie back?”

“
I don’t know, Dick. What would we give up?” pondered the Secretary of Defense.

“
I think that answers your question,” the FBI Director replied. “We use our top resources to make sure we never face that kind of choice. The D.C. cops are good, but they have too many street shootings to deal with.”

“
You’re right, Dick,” Ronald Stack conceded with frustration. “I suppose my pitch to Congress for less vulnerable, higher altitude attack helicopters for the ‘no man’s land’ mountains in Asia can wait,” he recited with irony.

“
We need to find her, Ron. That’s all,” the FBI Director said emphatically.

“
Alive, I hope,” the Secretary of Defense replied fervently.

Two blocks from FBI Headquarters their car stopped at a red light. Dust from a construction site was swirling around them at the intersection. Overhead a large crane had just hoisted a steel I
‐
beam from a tractor trailer along the adjacent curb and was swinging it into place about four stories above them. Suddenly, for no apparent reason, the large eye bolt holding the hook that was attached to the braided steel cable holding the beam sheared in half with a bang and the half
‐
ton beam came swooshing down as if propelled by a large, lazy slingshot.

It crashed at a perpendicular onto the roof of the limousine with a horrible grinding and popping sound, sending glass flying in all directions and freezing passersby into a momentary paralysis.

Seconds later there was disoriented movement in the limousine. FBI Director Worthington and two special agents gazed around in shocked bewilderment. The driver was hunched low, looking upward through the shattered space that had been the windshield, instinctively, but ineffectively, reaching for the revolver in his belt holster.