The Abduction (44 page)

Pete O’Brien was really pissed!

We wear our cammies and face paint and body armor and pack MP-5s and M-16s and 9-millimeter semis but we don’t do a goddamned thing! We got Bradley armored vehicles and helicopters, we got night-vision goggles and binoculars and scopes, we got flash-bang grenades and explosives to blow doors, we got black paramilitary outfits and polypropylene panties, we got .50-caliber rifles with bullets that’ll blow your head clean off—but we got no balls.

We’re a bunch of goddamned career bureaucrats scared shitless of fucking up and facing an administrative review or a criminal investigation or a Congressional hearing and losing our jobs and our pensions instead of doing the right thing: taking a chance and saving lives.

This is wrong!

Pete O’Brien touched the rifle beside him. He was a trained FBI sniper, qualified at the Marine Sniper School, although he had yet to pull the trigger with the cross hairs on a human being. Sniper School had taught him to stalk a target without detection, to lie in wait for days if necessary for a shot opportunity, to camouflage himself so that to the world he was the mud, the swamp, the trees, the bush, anything but an FBI sniper, to wait for that one moment when the target presented himself, to take the shot, to kill the bad guy, and to save lives. All Pete O’Brien wanted was a chance to do what he was trained to do better than anyone else in the world.

He felt something cold against his cheek, cold like steel. Like the barrel of a gun.

“That’s her,” the FBI agent said.

Agent O’Brien was looking at the photo of Gracie illuminated by Ben’s flashlight. Ben turned the light on the agent’s map of the camp. The agent pointed at the main cabin with both hands, which Ben had bound with duct tape. He never left home without duct tape.

“She’s in that cabin, last we saw her.”

“When was that?”

“Seventeen hundred hours, day before yesterday. She tried to escape. She didn’t make it.”

“You people didn’t help her?”

The agent sighed. “No, sir.”

“Why not?”

“Orders from the top. The very top.”

“How many men?”

“Eleven, all tucked in for the night. Couple of the men got into a fight yesterday, one left, never came back. We don’t know what happened to him.”

“We do. Agent, why does the FBI want these men bad enough to sacrifice a ten-year-old girl?”

The young agent shook his head. “Honest to God, I don’t know. Need-to-know basis, and I guess I don’t need to know. But they’ve stockpiled enough weapons in the main cabin to start a war. And they look like real soldiers.” He shook his head. “Whatever they’re up to, it must be something real important.”

Ben doused the flashlight.

“Son, there’s nothing more important in the world than getting my granddaughter out alive.”

“Eugene, she’s alive!”

“Who?”

“Gracie! I called eight times yesterday to your cell phone.”

FBI Special Agent Jan Jorgenson had finally reached Agent Devereaux at his Des Moines hotel on a land line.

“Just a second,” Eugene said. Then: “Shit, the battery on the cell’s dead. We worked late, got our man up here. All right, now what’s this about Gracie?”

“She’s alive.”

“Start at the beginning.”

“Okay. After Major Walker was discharged from the Army—”

“Stop. You went ahead with the search on Walker?”

“Eugene, I had a bad feeling.”

“All right, Jan. I’ve had those feelings, too.”

“Anyway, he holed up on a mountain in Idaho, got married, had a son. He was plotting a military coup. We received an anonymous videotape twelve years ago. We got lucky, apprehended him in Idaho ten years ago. Top secret.”

“Must be why I never heard about it.”

“Must be. Anyway, before he could be tried—oh, Elizabeth Brice was one of the Justice Department prosecutors on his case—his followers took a hostage and threatened to return her in pieces unless Walker was released.”

“Let me guess—Elizabeth Brice was the hostage.”

“Yep. So McCoy released Walker, and Walker released her.”

“And what happened to Walker?”

“Died in Mexico. Heart attack. Probably precipitated by a few CIA bullets.”

“Probably. Point is, he’s history.”

“Except he had a son, fourteen at the time, makes him twenty-four today. Blond hair, blue eyes. We captured Walker when he took the boy to a hospital. They had to amputate his right index finger, spider bite. After Walker was arrested, the boy disappeared. Doctor assumed he died up in the mountains.”

“From a spider bite?”

“Hobo spider, like the brown recluse. It can be fatal if untreated.”

“Did you run a search on him?”

“Nothing.
But there’s more. Every person involved with Walker’s prosecution—the judge, three Justice lawyers, including your friend, James Kelly, and two agents—are dead. Everyone, Eugene, except—”

“Elizabeth Brice and Larry McCoy.”

“Yep.”

“Jesus.”

“There’s more.”

“I was afraid of that.”

“Our ID on the abductor, Gracie’s soccer coach, remembered something about the abductor that he didn’t disclose after Jennings hung himself.”

“What’s that?”

“The abductor was missing his right index finger.”

“Damn.”

“There’s more. The call-in from Idaho Falls positively ID’d Gracie in a white SUV with two men, one with a Viper tattoo.”

“Stop. I had an agent in Boise—”

“Dan Curry.”

“Yeah, Curry. He went to that source and showed him the blowups. His 302 said the guy could
not
ID Gracie or the men or the tattoo.”

“That’s what his 302 says, Eugene. But I called the source. Curry never visited him.”

Eugene was silent for a moment. “I smell a rat.”

“You got a bad feeling?”

“Yeah, I got a bad feeling. We’re officially reopening the Gracie Ann Brice investigation—and if they took her across state lines, that gives us federal jurisdiction. It’s my case now. I’ll notify Washington, right after I call Stan.”

“The director?”

“The one and only. What else?”

“Colonel Brice and the father have tracked these men to northern Idaho, a mountain called Red Ridge outside Bonners Ferry. Place is a national campground for these Aryan Nations types and militias and other assorted wackos. That’s real close to Ruby Ridge.”

“Great. Two things, Jan: First, if Walker’s son is killing everyone he figures is responsible for his father’s death, is he after the president?”

“Agent Curry didn’t suppress evidence in a kidnapping case on his own.”

“Yeah.”

“Eugene, if they’re after McCoy and we know it, we’d have that mountain under round-the-clock surveillance, right?”

“Absolutely.”

“With HRT?”

“Yeah.”

“What’s the second thing?” Jan asked.

“Why’d they take Gracie?”

Four years before he will become President of the United States of America, FBI Director Laurence McCoy is having breakfast in the Senate Dining Room with the Majority Leader, trying to convince the senator that the Bureau’s budget should be increased despite the FBI sniper killing that woman at Ruby Ridge. An aide hurries over and whispers in his ear. McCoy excuses himself. A situation has arisen.

Director McCoy is briefed on his way out of the Capitol. Elizabeth Austin, an Assistant U.S. Attorney on the Major Charles Woodrow Walker prosecution team, was kidnapped when she returned home last night. A handwritten note states that she will be returned in pieces unless the major is released from the maximum-security prison in Leavenworth, Kansas. They gave him twenty-four hours. The Hostage Rescue Team has been mobilized.

Abductions of federal judges and prosecutors by drug lords and terrorists are daily occurrences in Colombia and Mexico and other third-world countries. But not in the United States of America. That cannot be allowed to happen here; for if it does and if the government gives in to the abductors’ demands, the rule of law in America will die. And if it happens on the current FBI director’s watch, his dream of living in the White House will surely die as well.

“I won’t do it!”

Director McCoy is back in his office at FBI Headquarters, surrounded by the Assistant Director, the Special Agent in Charge of the Critical Incident Response Group, and the leader of the Hostage Rescue Team.

“Release Walker,” HRT leader Tom Buchanan says. “We’ll plant a transponder in his shoe, we’ll track him until he releases the hostage, and then my snipers will kill him.”

“Like they killed that mother at Ruby Ridge? Shit, Tom, I’ve got two Congressional investigations and a fucking federal lawsuit over your goddamn snipers! And the Majority Leader said to forget a budget increase!”

Larry McCoy turns and stares out the window. He can see the White House in the distance, just city blocks away geographically but close enough to touch politically. And the decision he makes at this moment will determine if Laurence McCoy ever inhabits that house. He turns back.

“Walker stays put.”

Larry McCoy drops the small zip-lock evidence bag.

He didn’t think they’d really do it. If the press gets wind that a federal prosecutor—a young woman, no less—is being held hostage by former black ops soldiers and dismantled and sent to Washington in plastic baggies, his political career is over. On the other hand, if he releases Walker and Walker kills other innocent citizens, his political career is over. The classic Washington lose-lose situation.

“They pulled them out with pliers,” the Assistant Director says.

McCoy looks down at the evidence bag holding Elizabeth Austin’s molars.

Hostage Rescue Team operator Frank Kane is sitting in his idling sedan outside the maximum-security federal prison at Leavenworth, Kansas. For the first time in his ten-year FBI career, he is unarmed. He will drive the prisoner to the release point. Transponders have been placed in Kane’s shoe, in the vehicle, and in the prisoner’s shoe. At that very moment, HRT’s C-130 transport loaded with a dozen operators and enough weapons to overthrow a small country is flying overhead at twenty thousand feet; they will track the prisoner with the transponders, they will land on a goddamn highway if they have to, and they will kill Major Charles Woodrow Walker and his co-conspirators.

After, that is, Elizabeth Austin is released.

“Pull over,” the major says.

They have driven twenty-seven miles west of Leavenworth on various farm-to-market roads per the major’s directions. Kane turns into an abandoned roadside vegetable stand. A late-model black Suburban is parked out front; a young Hispanic male is perched on the hood. They’re switching vehicles.

Kane exits the sedan, unconcerned about abandoning the vehicle and its transponders. They had anticipated the major’s move; the transponders in their shoes will still lead the HRT team above.

They walk over to the Suburban.

“Keys,” the major says, holding his hand out.

Kane tosses the sedan’s keys to the major. The major says something in Spanish to the young man and hands him the keys. The young man jumps down, walks over to the sedan, gets in, and drives back toward Leavenworth.

“Drive,” the major says. Kane nods, opens the driver’s door, and steps up onto the running board. “Naked.”

Kane freezes. “
What?
”

The major rips his shirt off and tosses it to the ground.

“Remove your clothes.”

“You want me to drive naked?”

“I’m pretty sure you didn’t stick a transponder up my ass. Beyond that, I can’t be sure where you planted them. Don’t worry—this vehicle’s got a good heater.”

Kane’s face betrays his thoughts. The major chuckles.

“How do you think we tracked downed pilots in North Vietnam?”

They did not anticipate this move. Kane tries to think of a way out but nothing comes to him. He unzips his jacket.

Frank Kane laughs. Not at the fact of two grown men driving naked through Kansas farm country on a Sunday morning in February but at the major’s sex and war stories from Vietnam.

“Three Viet women at a time?”

The major shrugs. “If you were man enough.”

An hour later and Frank Kane finds himself admiring Major Charles Woodrow Walker more with each mile. The major is a hell of a man. What would make this man turn against his own country? The major reads his mind.

“Betrayal. You know something about that, don’t you, Frank?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Ruby Ridge. You were there, doing your duty for your country, defending your country against all enemies, foreign and domestic. But things went wrong and your country blames you.”