Gideon's War/Hard Target (43 page)

She got up and walked around to the first building. The door was locked, so she walked to the second building. Inside she found a tangle of complex stainless steel piping attached to various sizes of vats and pressure vessels. It looked similar to the larger pharmaceutical labs Nancy had raided during a joint task force she had served on with the DEA. But these vessels were far larger. And most importantly, it didn’t smell like a meth lab. Small-scale meth labs could often be smelled by neighbors a mile away. But here the smell wasn’t bad. Only a faint, bitter odor that reminded her of almonds.

She walked slowly around the deserted building, probing with her flashlight. On the far end of the room she found a pile of what appeared to be a root vegetable she didn’t recognize, although it was similar to potatoes or yams.

She examined one, which was frozen to a rocklike consistency. She tossed it back in the pile and continued surveying the room.

It was clear as she followed the pipes that the roots were being ground up, the liquid residue piped into a large vat. That vat led to a series of increasingly small steel vessels. Something was being distilled from the roots, and perhaps chemically altered. She reviewed the various naturally derived drugs she was aware of: cocaine, heroin, khat, THC, psilocybin. None of them came from root vegetables.

At the far end of the room was the smallest of the vessels. It appeared to be refrigerated—though that seemed a little unnecessary today. At the bottom of the vessel was a small petcock. She turned the petcock. A single drop of a thin clear liquid ran from the petcock and fell to the concrete floor where it rapidly froze. She considered touching it, but then decided that might not be wise.

Was it possible, she wondered, to synthesize some kind of explosive compound, like nitroglycerin, from a vegetable? If so, she would be wise not to mess with it. She walked out of the shed and around to the other building. The door was reinforced with heavy steel. She drew her Glock and fired point-blank into the door bolt. Dahlgren had forced her to give up her service weapon, so this was a spare she kept on hand. It took half a magazine to finally blow a hole in the door so she could get in.

The room inside was spacious and appeared to be some sort of dormitory. Along one wall stood a row of bunk beds with personal items lying here and there—photographs, a Bible, several dog-eared magazines written in French, with pictures of people Nancy took to be Africans. It was clear that nobody was living here now. The room was nearly as cold as the ten-degree weather outside. On the far side of the wall was a small kitchen. She walked over and found several pots and pans on the stove, one of them full of scorched food. It was as if everyone had left the place in a hurry, before they could even remove their food off the stove.

Whoever had lived here was now probably buried beneath the snow.

Oddly, the rest of the room was empty. It seemed like an awful lot of space for the use it had been put to. Looking around some more, she noticed a foot-long smear of blood on the polished concrete floor. And now, having keyed in on this first blood, she noticed other jagged streaks of dried blood—like the brushwork of a desperate painter. Crusted in one of these was a clot of hair. Then, she felt her eyes begin to sting.

She became aware of the smell of almonone Q of almonds, and within a minute, Nancy’s throat tickled uncomfortably, her nose burned, and she began to feel nauseated. She walked outside and took several deep breaths. The fresh, frigid air burned her nasal passages, even as it relieved the tickling sensation.

A survey of the perimeter revealed a huge air-conditioning unit that looked more suited to a far larger building. Still feeling woozy, she went and sat back down in the Jeep. She had left the vehicle running and was comfortable inside.

She considered heading back to the Wilmot house but decided to take one last circuit of the dormitory building. The wind was bitter cold, and although she understood that she had no choice, she was immediately sorry she hadn’t stayed in the Jeep. Back inside the big room filled with beds, the almond smell seemed even more noxious—as if she were more sensitive to it now than she had been earlier. Suddenly her stomach cramped up. She ran outside and threw up in the snow.

And then, suddenly, she understood. It was like watching the fractured pieces of a puzzle knit themselves together into a unified picture.

Cyanide. Wilmot and Collier were manufacturing cyanide gas.

She ran to the Jeep, climbed in, and began driving quickly up the road. Get to a phone.

The Jeep bumped and slammed as she forced the aging four-wheel-drive vehicle down the slippery rutted road. She could see the house in front of her when she remembered Evan’s wheelchair lying across the logging trail. Driving down here, she had steered carefully around the abandoned wheelchair. But her racing mind had forgotten that, and now the big lump in the snow rose up suddenly before her. She yanked the wheel to the right.

The Jeep pitched up onto its left wheels, hanging there for what seemed an interminable moment, before rolling over.

Once, twice, then a third time.

Nancy hadn’t worn her seat belt. She felt herself slamming hard against the floor—or what seemed like the floor until she realized it was actually the roof.

The Jeep lay quietly, the noise of its impact muffled by the snow. From her inverted position Nancy could see the big house only a few hundred yards away, its windows lit up bright yellow against the whiteness of the snow.

She crawled out of the Jeep and felt something very wrong with her left leg. The pain was acute. Although she could barely put any weight on her leg, she began hobbling toward the house, which suddenly seemed very far away.

33

WASHINGTON, DC

Dale Wilmot and John Collier landed at Reagan National Airport, where they rented a gray Buick Enclave—an SUV guaranteed to attract no attention. They drove back to the hangar, loaded their luggage into the vehicle, then proceeded to downtown Washington, DC, where they checked into a suite at the Hay-Adams Hotel. The two men declined the assistance of a bellman and unloaded the vehicle themselves. Collier had managed to pack their equipment into several suitcases that fit neatly on the steel luggage cart.

Once they were in their suite, Collier turned on his laptop and beganInsssssss T‡ to review his notes on an encrypted file. But Wilmot found himself unable to concentrate and walked out onto the balcony overlooking the mall. Night had fallen, but the Washington Monument and the Capitol were brightly lit.

Despite its catastrophic government, this remained a great country. Even now, especially now, he felt a rush of patriotic pride when he saw the great dome of the Capitol building.

He wondered what Evan would think, knowing what he was about to do. In the breast pocket of his jacket, Wilmot carried the letter he hoped would explain his actions to his son. If not tomorrow, then someday, Wilmot hoped Evan would understand.

Wilmot recalled the first time he had looked down at Evan lying burned and broken in Walter Reed, his face slick with antibiotic ointment. He found himself wondering: if God himself offered to make his boy whole again in exchange for Wilmot aborting the mission he and Collier had planned, would he take the offer?

As he took in the majestic view, he decided that he wouldn’t.

Fate had dealt him this hand precisely because of who he was: the only man capable of taking the harsh but necessary action of punishing those most responsible for ruining the state of the union.

“All set,” Collier said as he joined Wilmot on the balcony. “Christ, it’s cold out here.”

“I didn’t even notice,” Wilmot said.

“Are you hungry?”

“I am,” Wilmot said, not looking at the young man. He wished Evan were here. The truth was that whatever anger he had once felt toward his son had faded long ago. The young man had made a choice, a courageous choice, certainly not one that many people in his shoes would have made.

“Should I order room service?” Collier asked.

Wilmot realized that the last person he wanted to share his last meal with was Collier.

“If you don’t mind, John, I think I’ll dine alone,” Wilmot said.

“Sure. Yeah. Okay.” Collier’s voice was etched with disappointment, but Wilmot didn’t care a tinker’s damn how John Collier felt. He was now, as he’d always been, an ugly, stunted person—angry, vicious, and weak.

Wilmot went down to the Lafayette Room. It was full of people he’d seen on television, even a few he’d met in person. But nobody approached him, nobody asked him how he was doing. Which was just as well. At the moment Wilmot preferred his own company.

Normally, he was a beer man, but tonight he was in the mood to celebrate. He called over the sommelier.

“Suppose this was your last meal,” he said. “What would you drink?”

The sommelier didn’t miss a beat, and suggested a Château d’Yquem ’61.

“No. Something American.”

“I see,” the sommelier smiled conspiratorially. “Because of the State of the Union tomorrow. I have just the thing.”

The sommelier brois aelier brought out a big cabernet bottled in 1983 by a Napa Valley winery Wilmot had never heard of. He almost sent it back when he was told that it cost nearly six hundred dollars. But then he thought, what’s the point of being rich if you were too cheap to blow a few hundred bucks on a bottle of wine on the most important day of your life?

Wilmot ate a steak, a bone-in filet, very rare, with a baked potato drenched in sour cream and butter, and declined the salad. Only a squirrel would eat a pile of leaves for a last meal. He smiled to himself. He had never enjoyed a meal so much in all his life.

The sommelier refilled his glass until the bottle was empty. He didn’t feel drunk, but he noticed he had trouble holding his fork steady. He ate a slice of apple pie with vanilla ice cream for dessert, but the magic seemed to have drained out of the moment. He asked the waiter to scare him up an Opus X cigar, then paid his bill with a generous tip, and went for a walk along Pennsylvania Avenue.

Low, ragged clouds covered the moon as he walked past the White House and lit the Opus. Normally it was his favorite cigar, but today it tasted harsh and sour. Looking at the Capitol in the distance he felt suddenly impatient. He wanted to get the show on the road. He tossed the cigar onto the street, where it skittered across the asphalt with a shower of sparks. A pencil-necked geek in a Prius cursed at him as he slowed for a red light.

He felt the low flame of anger kindling inside him. When he was a young man he would have run up and given the little shithead a beat-down. Something in Wilmot’s smile must have scared the driver, though, because he peeled out of there as soon as the light turned green.

Wilmot started back to the hotel, feeling ready. It was time to teach a lesson to the people who had taken everything from him. It was time to change the country. It was time to make history.

When he entered the lobby, he withdrew the letter he’d written to Evan, and reread the last paragraph.

As horrible as the events of this day have been, they were also necessary. The corrupt and cynical gang of thieves and madmen who call themselves our government have grown like a cancer that will kill its host unless it is removed. Today we, the people of the United States of America, have finally been given a chance to remove this cancer and to reclaim this great nation as our own. I hope that, in time, you will come to understand why I have done what I have done, and that you will be as proud of me as I have been of you.

With love,

Your father

He put the letter back in the envelope and addressed it to Evan. Then he handed it to the clerk.

“Would you mail this for me in the morning?” he asked.

“Certainly, sir.”

“And I’ll need a five AM wake-up call.”

“Of course.”

Then Dale Wilmot went upstairs to bed.

34

TYSONS CORNER, VIRGINIA

Dr. Nathan Klotz slept soundly in the king-size bed next to his two daughters. With their mother working double shifts providing security for the State of the Union address, the girls insisted on a sleepover. He had not objected because it was easier to have them in the bed than to wake up every two hours when they called out for Mommy. He missed his wife, too, but the pride he took in her job made him miss her a little less.

Downstairs, the remains of the meal they had defrosted and cooked were still on the table. Dr. Klotz had been too tired to clean up after bathing and reading to the children, so he left the dishes and planned to deal with them in the morning. There was very little left over anyway; his wife was an excellent cook. Even the girls had polished off their plates.

Had he been awake and clicked on the real-time surveillance monitor his wife had installed on their desktop computer, he might have seen the old Honda that had passed before his house three times before finally stopping.

35

TYSONS CORNER, VIRGINIA

Tillman knew he’d have to make a decision sooner than later.

Until now, he had smiled and nodded at Verhoven’s crazed political observations and had followed his orders without questioning them. But if he went much further, he’d be committing crimes that could get him sent to prison for the rest of his life.

Verhoven drove by the house slowly in the old Honda. It was like a dozen other houses on the same street in Tysons Corner: two-car garage, two stories, dormer windows, wood siding painted in one of the three colors of beige approved by the neighborhood association. They planned to invade it and hold its occupants hostage. Tillman’s heart was thumping uncomfortably as he weighed whether to go through with the operation or turn his gun on Verhoven and Lorene.

The problem was that he had still not learned enough about how the principal attack would go down, and the part they were supposed to play in it. Would the plot fail or be aborted if Verhoven didn’t execute his part of the plan? Or would the plan just have to be adjusted in some minor way? Could Tillman stop the killing of hundreds of people if he preempted whatever was about to go down in the home of Dr. Nathan Klotz?