Mortal Fear (21 page)

 With that he opens the door and leads me back into the main room. A small crowd has gathered around the video bank, but it parts like the Red Sea for Lenz. I slipstream behind him.

 One of the nerds has taken up station in a chair before the monitor bank, a headset over his ears, both hands on control knobs. I hear a burst of static, then a Southern-accented voice saying, “This is Deke Smith, Dallas SWAT, advising Hostage Rescue has arrived.”

 The acknowledgment is lost beneath Daniel Baxter’s “Okay, let’s do it.” He nods anxiously at the screens. “Did they lock and load in the van?”

 The nerd in the chair repeats the question like a submarine officer relaying the orders of his captain. He listens to his headset, then replies, “Locked and loaded. Approaching the local command post.”

 “Damn it, I want to hear everything,” snaps Baxter. “Put it all on the squawk box.”

 The nerd flips a couple of switches, and suddenly the trailer is alive with the voices of the Dallas FBI SWAT team, the Dallas police, an FBI command post, and the wireless communications of the FBI Hostage Rescue Team.

 “Bravo Leader, checking in. Testes, testes, one, two.”

 Someone behind me emits a truncated laugh.

 “That’s Joe Payne, Hostage Rescue commander,” Baxter says, either for my benefit or Lenz’s. “They’re Bravo Team.”

 The remainder of Payne’s unit checks in, which sounds like between eight and twelve men. It’s hard to tell because they all talk at once.

 “We live to Alpha?” someone asks over the radio. Payne, I think.

 Baxter hits the nerd on the shoulder. The nerd mutters into his headset mike. Someone on-site tells Payne he is live to Alpha.

 “Are we Alpha?” I ask.

 A tech opposite me rolls his eyes.

 “Is the target still on the phone?” asks Payne.

 Someone farther along the trailer yells, “Affirmative. An EROS tech in New York confirms UNSUB interacting with a female subscriber.”

 “Prospective victim number eight,” says Baxter.

 “No point in waiting,” crackles Payne’s voice. “Can’t see anything through the windows. Let’s mount up.”

 “What about video?” asks Baxter. “You got a camera going in?”

 The nerd relays the question, and Payne says, “Camera goes in right after the guns.”

 Unable to bear the delay, Baxter yanks the headset off the nerd’s head and puts it on. “Joe, this is Dan Baxter. You don’t want to slip a pinhole camera under the door and check the layout?”

 “Not this time. Dallas P.D. did a good job staying out of sight. I don’t think this guy knows the cavalry’s here. I don’t want anyone approaching that door until we go up with the sledgehammers.”

 “The manager wouldn’t give up a key?”

 “Sledgehammers are faster,” says Payne. “We’re busting off the hinges in case he has hardened dead bolts. I’m holding a floor plan now. Last-minute advice?”

 Baxter turns to Lenz. “Arthur?”

 “Whoever’s in there,” says Lenz, “I’d like to see them get out alive. We could learn a lot.”

 “I heard that,” says Payne. “You tell your shrink no guarantees. This guy throws down on us, we take him out.”

 “Can they go for a disabling wound?” asks Lenz.

 Baxter starts to explain something about body armor, but Payne’s reply drowns him out. “If my men shoot, they shoot for the head.”

 “Good luck, Joe,” says Baxter.

 “I’ll watch the reruns with you tonight,” says Payne. “You bring the beer.”

 “You’re on.”

 Suddenly the camaraderie is gone. Now the radio exchanges sound like snippets from a World War II combat movie. Curt questions, clipped replies. I hear several sighs of satisfaction around me as a third video screen lights up. On it is a black-and-white image that looks like it’s being shot by a five-year-old. Nothing but black boots. Then the frame rises and focuses on the back of a black UPS-style truck. On the spare wheel housing, stenciled in gold, are six words that make it clear that this truck does not belong to a shipping company:

 BAD COMPANY

ANY TIME, ANY PLACE

 “Jesus,” mutters Baxter, but when he turns to Lenz he is smiling. “The Dallas FBI SWAT motto.”

 The short ugly snout of a submachine gun passes into the frame, wiggles, and disappears.

 “Cameraman’s carrying,” says a tech.

 “Good for him,” says Baxter. “He’s probably seen those Civil War movies where the flag bearer charges with nothing but a flag. At least he learned something.”

 The new video image suddenly begins to jerk. A flash of sidewalk, then I’m moving along it the way you do when you’re watching a horror film. The camera rises, showing us the back and shoulders of a man walking ahead of it. Then others in file ahead of him. Moving quickly now. They’re clad from boots to balaclava helmets in bulky black jumpsuits with ripstop nylon and Kevlar and guns strapped all over them. They look like paratroopers.

 “Go, ninjas,” whispers someone near the video monitors.

 The entire team suddenly appears on one of the static screens. They’re standing behind the wall of the apartment building nearest Strobekker’s, their backs to the camera. Over their shoulders, Strobekker’s front door is clearly visible. It looks no more than twenty feet away, but then I remember how camera angles can distort distance. It’s like watching a baseball pitcher from a camera placed behind the catcher; you think you could reach out and touch him, but he’s over sixty feet away.

 “This is Bravo Leader,” says Payne. “Ten seconds.”

 On the static view the Hostage Rescue Team lines up in a formation not unlike a football team. In front stand two men with black-painted sledgehammers in their hands.

 “Five seconds,” says Payne.

 “Rock and roll,” murmurs Baxter.

 “GO!”

 Payne’s barked command seems to propel the two point men across the open ground by volume alone. They move quickly, but anyone who has ever lifted a sledgehammer knows that a full-speed sprint while carrying one is out of the question.

 “GO! GO! GO!”
someone shouts.

 When the lead agents reach Strobekker’s door, the mobile video camera begins to move. Everyone in the trailer is racing across the open space with the second element of the assault team. On the static image I see the apartment door go down like a piece of styrofoam.

 “FEDERAL AGENTS! FEDERAL AGENTS!”
scream wild voices, and by then at least five men have gone through the door.

 “DROP YOUR WEAPON! ON THE FLOOR RIGHT NOW!”

 “Jesus!” I grab Baxter’s coat. “They got him?”

 “Shut up, Cole!”

 “Camera’s in,” a tech says softly.

 “Holy shit,” someone hisses.

 The mobile camera shows an apartment as bare as a spinster’s cupboard. Men are still yelling “Federal agents!” but as the camera swings around the apartment I see no one but the commandos of the Hostage Rescue Team.

 “Locked door!”
someone screams.

 “Strobekker just went off-line!” shouts a voice from inside the trailer.

 I hear a crash as the locked door goes down, but the camera does not follow.

 “Don’t shoot him!”
shouts Lenz.
“For God’s sake, don’t fire!”

 I am stunned beyond words when Baxter turns and shoves Arthur Lenz out of range of the mike. Brahma’s fate is in the hands of soldiers now.

 “What the fuck?”
says a shocked voice. “Did he go out the window?”

 “Negative!” someone answers. “This is Dallas SWAT leader, no rabbits.”

 “Closet’s empty!” screams a shaky young voice.

 “What the fuck?”

 “Get the camera in there!” yells Baxter. “What’s going on, Joe?”

 “Alpha, there’s nothing in this apartment but a computer and a phone. We’ve been had.”

 “What?”

 “There’s no monitor attached to the computer, but it appears to be powered up. No keyboard either.”

 “Get the goddamn camera in there!”

 Finally the mobile camera squeezes through the crowd of broad black shoulders and shows us the room. Payne is right. There is nothing inside but a harmless-looking white PC sitting on the floor beside a telephone.

 “What good’s a computer without a monitor or keyboard?” he asks.

 “Shit,” I say, not wanting to believe what I am seeing. But I am seeing it.

 “What?” asks Baxter, turning to me.

 “The drive light. The hard drive is active.”

 “Goddamn it,” curses a tech. “The drive’s reformatting itself! Erasing itself!”

 As I watch the tiny flashing dot of the drive light, I know that the tech is wrong. I don’t know why, but I know.

 “Pull the plug!” shouts the tech.

 “Wait!” I say, holding up my hands. “That’s—”

 “Joe!” yells Baxter. “Pull the fucking plug!”

 “No!”
I scream.
“Get your men out! Everybody out now!”

 Baxter whirls on me with fury in his eyes. Then comprehension dawns. He opens his mouth and yells,
“JOE! GET—”

 But he is too late. A black-clad figure has leaped at the electrical socket with his arm extended, reaching into a white flash that seems to sear the screen as it goes blank.

 “Oh my God,” says a flat voice.

 The two static cameras continue recording as yellow flame blasts out the windows on one side of Strobekker’s apartment building. The sound of the explosion is muted after being filtered through countless circuits to arrive here in Quantico, but its effect in the trailer could not be more profound.

 Baxter gapes at the video bank while screams of anguish pour from the speakers. Disjointed voices from the Dallas command post shout at each other to call paramedics and the fire department. Other voices—almost unrecognizable from shock and panic—scream to get the wounded out of the smoke-filled building.

 “What in God’s name just happened?” Baxter asks. Then he snaps out of whatever trance he was in and begins shouting questions and commands over the link to Dallas. The technicians behind him are conspicuously silent. “Was that Joe who reached for the plug?” he asks.

 No one volunteers an answer.

 On the two remaining live screens, wounded or dead men are being dragged from the smoking apartment. I know some are alive, because their agonized shrieks are being transmitted over the radio net.

 “Dan?” croaks a voice. “This is Joe.”

 Everyone in the trailer freezes. Near the apartment building, a black-suited agent has held up his right arm and waved broadly at one of the static cameras.

 “Thank God,” mutters Baxter. “What’s your situation, Joe?”

 “FUBAR. I just wanted to let you know I made it.” Payne rips off his balaclava and bends over to catch his breath. “I’m gonna be busy for a few minutes. I’ll get back to you when I can.”

 “Do what you have to do, buddy.”

 When Daniel Baxter turns around to face the technicians, his rage is fearsome to behold. “What the
hell
just happened?” he asks, his eyes flicking from man to man.

 “He knew,” I say.

 “He couldn’t have known.”

 “Not about this raid. But he knew you’d be coming eventually. And he prepared for it.”

 One of the nerds says, “Tell them to check the front door, chief. Look for an alarm. Trip wire. Something.”

 Baxter turns back to the screens but issues no orders. There’s no point until the tragic opera on the video bank is brought under control. HRT commandos crouch over their prostrate comrades, giving what help they can from first aid kits. The radio chatter focuses on the danger of fire until some Dallas SWAT officers go in with extinguishers and hose down the apartment’s interior with chemical foam. The mood in the trailer reminds me of the hotel lobby I was in when I saw the
Challenger
explode after launch. Suddenly, in a moment of dead air, a broken voice says:

 “He’s gone.”

 The radio chatter stutters, dies. On-screen, a crouching FBI agent wipes a hand across his eyes, then removes his coat and lays it over the face of a man on the ground.

 “God in heaven,” Baxter murmurs.

 As the paramedics arrive and load the casualties into ambulance bays, a black-suited commando with bloody hands and a scorched black face steps up to one of the static cameras. The whites of his eyes seem to give off their own light.

 “Dan?” he says, panting like a man who has run five miles.

 “Right here, Joe. What can I do?”

 “I was about to ask you the same thing.”

 “What’s the status of your men?”

 “Four took shrapnel. We got everybody out, but Pete Carelli died on the ground. If it hadn’t been for the body armor, we would’ve had four KIA.”

 “What about you, Joe?”

 “I was outside the bedroom. I caught some stuff in my arms and hands. Nothing to write home about.”

 “Any way you can get in there to check some things?”

 Payne nods wearily, then turns and hustles five men together using hand signals.

 Baxter says, “We’re looking for trip wires, alarms, you know the drill.”

 Payne grunts into his mike. There is no mobile camera this time, but seconds later we hear him and his men and tearing through the apartment.

 “Son of a bitch!” cries a young voice. “I’ve got it! Photoelectric beam. Standard alarm kit.”

 “We’re following the wire,” says Payne. “Runs along a baseboard.”

 “Got another beam on the bedroom door,” calls out another voice.

 “Window too,” says a third.

 “Okay, Dan,” says Payne. “We got a rectangular black box in the closet of the adjoining bedroom.”

 “Good work, Joe. Gimme a sec.” Baxter turns back to his techs. “Somebody lay it out for me.”

 No one offers anything.

 I guess I have the least to lose here. “That apartment’s nothing but a wire with tin cans tied to it,” I tell him. “A perimeter. Payne’s team broke the beam and the black box alerted the computer. The computer sent out a message to Strobekker, wherever he really is—that’s why it didn’t blow immediately—and then it self-destructed. He knows you’re after him now, Mr. Baxter. Or he will soon.”

 “But how could he not be there? We traced the call to that apartment. He was somewhere else the whole time?”