The Templar Conspiracy (21 page)

35

“I’m getting too old for all this,” Holliday said with a sigh. He and Peggy were sitting handcuffed on opposite sides of a metal desk in an interrogation room not much larger than a toilet cubicle. It smelled that way, too, pine disinfectant not quite masking the tang of old urine, passed gas and drunkards’ vomit.

It appeared that Winter Falls liked its interrogations straight and to the point. There was a retro video camera with a built-in mike looming down from a bracket in the corner and a piece of one-way glass that was so old the aluminum film was wearing off and you could see a ghostly image of what passed for the Winter Falls PD squad room.

The scene on the road leading into town had been like something out of a Bruce Willis movie. Cops of all shapes and sizes pouring out of cars and vans, some in uniform, some plainclothes, and some very definitely Feds of one kind or another. At one point they were standing handcuffed, freezing in the falling snow, while Homeland Security, the New Hampshire State Police and the FBI argued over jurisdiction.

Finally a cop in a dress uniform appeared, bundled them into a Winter Falls cruiser and gave everyone at the scene the hairy eyeball before he whisked them off to the station. It was a show of very large and very brass cojones, and no matter what the interrogation room smelled like, he found himself if not liking, at least respecting the grizzle-haired cop. Holliday was willing to bet that there was either the Marine Corps or the Rangers in the man’s background.

“Now what?” Peggy asked.

“We get quizzed by the locals and then passed up through the chain of command until we get to the big guys. Either that or we get sent to Gitmo.”

“I thought it would be closed by now.”

“Hard to keep a good idea down,” said Holliday.

“You know anyone who can get us out of this?”

“I know lots of people.” Holliday shrugged. “I just don’t know which side anyone is on anymore.” He looked around the room. “We’ll just have to wait it out, I guess.”

“I’ve never been in jail before. Don’t we get a lawyer or something?”

“We’re way past lawyers, kiddo. We are now deep in the swamp of National Security.”

The cop in the dress uniform appeared, minus his brass-buttoned jacket. He shut the door behind him and sat down in the only other chair in the room.

“Comfy?” asked the policeman. He looked irritated.

“Peachy,” replied Holliday.

“Which one of you can tell me why I’m not sitting with the President of the United States, watching a hockey game and having my picture taken?”

“Because something terrible is about to happen to your town if you don’t get really busy right now,” Holliday said bluntly.

“Is that right?” the cop said.

“That’s right.”

“Explain.”

“A man I know named Max Kessler, who has been an adviser to every president all the way back to the first Bush, said your town was the likely target for a major domestic terrorist attack, which is actually a front for an eventual takeover of the presidency and the country itself by Kate Sinclair; her son, the vice president; and Army Chief of Staff General Angus Scott Matoon, all of whom are members of a semisecret religious organization known as Rex Deus. They were also behind the assassination of the Pope by an American triggerman.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” said the cop. “That’s a Dan Brown novel. Tom Clancy on steroids.”

“Not even a little bit,” said Holliday. “It’s
very
real. All of it.”

“You expect me to believe that?”

“No,” said Holliday. “Which doesn’t change the fact that it’s true. Lots of people didn’t believe Paul Revere, either.”

The cop sighed and rolled up the sleeves of his dress shirt. Cop body language for “Now we get down to business.” Holliday burst out laughing. It wasn’t the reaction Lockwood had expected.

“What’s so funny?”

“I was right.”

“About what?”

Holliday nodded his head at the ribbon-and-death’s head tattoo on the man’s forearm. “Rangers lead the way,” he said.

“I was First Battalion,” said Lockwood.

“Lurp,” said Holliday. Which meant LRRP, or Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol.

“Where?”

“Chu Lai, Ah Shau Valley. Those nice beaches at Nha Trang.”

“Same here. You must have known Nyguen Coung, then.”

“Kit Carson Scout—one of the best. Sure, I knew him.”

Peggy was lost.

“You’re the real thing, then,” said the police chief.

“I am,” said Holliday. “
Sua Sponte
and all that. Eighteen and full of beans.”

“So, then, what’s this about you and your friend here being tagged as all sorts of terrorists and killers? Bodies everywhere. Shoot on sight; federal warrants.”

“Long story,” said Holliday.

“I don’t have time for long stories. The Feds are going to come barging in here any minute now and I’ll have to hand you over. No choice. Just give me a condensed version and I’ll see what we can do.”

“You ever hear about a guy named Billy Tritt?”

Malcolm Teeter had seen the cop bolting out of the Denny’s and he didn’t wait around to see who he was going to take down. As quietly as he could he climbed down out of the cab and booked out of the neighborhood. There was no doubt he was deserting his post and that he’d catch hell from that guy Barfield, but he knew perfectly well that this was just a dry run, anyway, so what did it matter? The first ass you saved was your own.

When nothing happened after ten minutes, he started to rethink his position, huddled as he was in somebody’s backyard behind a fence, freezing half to death and smoking his last three cigarettes. He knew there was a pack of Luckies in the glove compartment and in the end that’s what took him back to the truck, not fear of Barfield’s wrath.

He got real lucky then. He’d just eased himself back into the seat when the cell phone rang. If he’d waited another minute he would have missed the call. He let out a long, relieved breath, picked the phone up off the dash and flipped it open.

Twenty-two and a half inches from the back of Malcolm Teeter’s head, the cell phone-activated initiating explosion ignited the twenty-seven tons of ANFO, turning the tanker truck into an enormous grenade that vaporized Teeter before he had a chance to say hello.

The shock wave expanded exponentially, flattening the supermarket and the rest of the shopping center within less than a second. Shrapnel from the blasted stainless-steel truck leveled trees and cut through the surrounding houses like mutilating scalpel blades, killing anything alive within a thousand feet of the detonation.

A monstrous fireball blossomed like some brilliantly colored tumor, suddenly erupting from the snow-covered ground as the secondary blast wave expanded. The sound was like a crack in the world, a freight train rushing into a tornado, Joshua’s trumpet at Jericho shattering windows for a mile in every direction. The earth literally shook. The two-way mirror in the interrogation room at the Winter Falls Police Station cracked from side to side and then crashed to the floor as the entire building shook.

“Christ!” yelled Lockwood, who’d almost been thrown from his chair. “What the hell was that?”

The overhead light dimmed, flickered and died. Everything went dark.

“The beginning,” said Holliday, out of the blackness. “Now get us out of these cuffs before it’s too late.”

36

The positioning of the first of the tanker trucks beside the shopping center had not been accidental. A hundred feet away, tucked in behind the P&C supermarket, was the main substation off the 132-kilovolt grid that powered the entire town of Winter Falls. The eight-foot-high chain-link fence topped with razor wire was no protection at all from the ANFO bomb and was obliterated during the first seconds after the explosion.

Unfortunately for the residents of the town, the main switching station for Granite State Telephone stood fifty feet from the electrical substation and transformer, and the two nearby cell phone towers on Pine Hill Road were also rendered inoperable. Within an instant almost all methods of communication in Winter Falls were destroyed.

The sound of the explosion even penetrated the hockey arena at the Abbey School, the arched rafters shaking as the pressure wave rolled over the town. Within seconds the Secret Service had begun their standard extraction procedures for the president, but they were startled and more than surprised to find themselves pinned down by what sounded like small-arms fire coming from the woods. The president and his party were taken to the Abbey dressing room, a below-grade concrete bunker where they would be safe.

“Where’s the president right now?” Holliday asked as they struggled to find their way through the squad room. Half the ceiling had collapsed and the air was full of plaster dust. They could hear voices and the sound of coughing, but they couldn’t see anything. Holliday and Peggy kept close on Chief Lockwood’s heels as he followed the wall around toward the entrance to the squad room.

“Hang on,” wheezed Lockwood, trying to spit out the cloying, ancient plaster from his mouth. “I’ll get a handheld.” The policeman reached out blindly, his hand finally finding the rack of charging radios the officers used when they weren’t in their cruisers. He hit the ON switch but there was nothing but static. “What the hell?” He hammered the radio set with his palm but there was still nothing. They could hear the sounds of people trapped in the rubble from the fallen ceiling. “Flashlights,” said Lockwood numbly. “We need flashlights so we can get these people out of here.”

“There’s no time!” Holliday insisted. “That was just the start! You think it’s a coincidence with the president here?” He clutched at Lockwood in the darkness. “Where would he be?”

“The rink. The Abbey School.”

“Where would the Secret Service take him in an emergency? A blackout?”

“Back here.” Lockwood said. “His chopper’s on a temporary pad in the park.”

“We’ve got to stop him before it’s too late,” Holliday said firmly. He tugged hard on Lockwood’s arm. “Get us out of here. Now.”

“There are people injured here. My people. I can’t just leave them.”

“You can’t help them, either. This son of a bitch murdered the Pope and blew up the vice president. He just took out all your lights, power and communications, and I guarantee you, he’s not finished yet.”

Lockwood stumbled out into the hallway with Holliday and Peggy close behind. Plaster dust hung like a cloud and in the haze shadowy figures made their way to the shattered glass-front door. Finally they stood outside the building in the blowing snow. The entire town was dark except for the headlights of slow-moving vehicles across the park. There was no sign of the presidential motorcade.

“We’re going to freeze to death like this,” said Holliday, shivering.

“Come on,” said Lockwood. He led them down the street that ran in front of the building to a row of shops on the square. Lockwood stopped at the largest one and Holliday read the old-fashioned sign on the front: UNCLE JIMMY’S SPORT PARADISE. Lockwood didn’t hesitate. He put his boot through the metal-and-glass-front door, reached in and twisted the lock, then stepped inside. Holliday and Peggy followed. The place was dark and silent, a wide, long, low-ceilinged room divided into aisles. Lockwood found a big twelve-volt lantern and swung the beam around the room. Racks of antlers, a moose head, a stuffed lynx head and a lacquered blue marlin hung from the walls.

Lockwood shone the light down the middle aisle. At its end there was a rack of orange and camo quilted hunting jackets. They followed the policeman down the aisle and each of them pulled on one of the jackets.

“Now what?” Peggy asked.

“Weapons,” said Holliday.

“I’m not sure I want you armed,” said Lockwood.

“I don’t care what you’re sure of. I’m not going after Billy Tritt without something with a very large caliber in my hand.”

“I could lose my job,” said Lockwood.

“I could lose my life.”

“Point taken,” said Lockwood. “Gun up, I guess.”

Holliday chose a secondhand AR-15 with a sling and put it over his back. He stuffed his pockets with magazines, then chose a Mossberg 12-gauge autoloader, crammed five slug shells into the automag and stuffed his pants pockets with twenty more. For a handgun he chose a Colt M1911 .45-caliber semiautomatic pistol exactly like the one he’d used in combat from Vietnam to Somalia. He found a web belt with a pouch and loaded half a dozen magazines, while Peggy and Lockwood armed themselves.

“This is like an audition for
Rambo Six
,” Peggy said, choosing a rather unladylike Ruger Blackhawk. “What kind of bullets does this thing use?”

Lockwood had picked a Remington 480 Bushmaster to go along with the Walther on his hip. “Casulls, .454-caliber. You fire that thing, young lady, you be sure to hold it in both hands. He handed her a box of the large shells and she methodically began to load the cylinder.

“Young lady, my ass,” she muttered.

“What if the good guys see us wandering around like this?”

Lockwood took out his badge and ID wallet, slipped out the badge and pinned it on the front of the camopatterned hunting jacket. “This will have to do,” he said. “Now, what exactly are we looking for?”

“The explosion was a distraction,” said Holliday. “It’s almost certainly designed to draw away local law enforcement and get the Secret Service to exfiltrate the president. That means they’ll bring him back to the chopper and get him the hell out of here. That’s the obvious protocol.”

“So you think this Tritt character will be close by?”

“I can almost guarantee it.” Holliday nodded. “He’ll have night-vision equipment and something big enough to bring the helicopter down before it gets very far off the ground. A Stinger or something like it. And that won’t be the end of it, either.”

“That’s not enough?” Lockwood said.

“The whole idea is to create enough chaos to justify Matoon pressuring the White House into declaring martial law. I’m guessing Tritt’s got more truck bombs that he’s going to let off, probably using some kind of remote detonator.”

“Cell and radio are out. How’s he supposed to set these things off?”

“Cell phones are out, but satellite phones aren’t.”

“How do we know this guy if we see him?” Lockwood asked. “My town’s being blown to hell and its pitch-dark.”

“Look for the guy carrying a surface-to-air missile,” said Holliday.

“This is just like the good old days,” grunted Lockwood. “Trying to kill an enemy you can’t see.”

“I hated the good old days,” said Holliday.

“Me, too,” answered Lockwood. They went out into the cold again.

At the Abbey School the Secret Service had found and routed the half dozen men in phony National Guard uniforms, killing four and wounding two, who were now being held prisoner. The two survivors quickly told the Secret Service about the plan to blow up the entire school with an ANFO bomb, and the president and his entourage were immediately removed from the premises, leaving the evacuation of the other people at the stadium to the local police. Twenty-five minutes after the explosion that had turned out the lights all over Winter Falls the presidential limousine was on its way back to the center of town and the waiting Marine One helicopter.

Billy Tritt sat in his room in the inn and tried to control his anger. The first explosion had gone off perfectly, sending Malcolm Teeter to whatever hell awaited his shriveled, mindless soul.

Windows had blown out in half of Winter Falls, there was panic everywhere and a huge fire was developing on the eastern edge of town. It had been distraction enough to draw the fire trucks out of their hall on the west side of the Municipal Building and from the looks of it from his position, part of the roof of the police department had collapsed. With the cessation of communication resulting from the triple threat of the destruction of the electrical substation, the telephone switching hub and the two cell towers serving Winter Falls, both the Headquarters Emergency Management unit of the New Hampshire State Police in Concord and the F Troop station in Twin Mountains would have automatically been alerted, but F Troop was sixty miles away and Concord ever farther. At the very least it would take F Troop the better part of an hour to appear and the HQ SWAT team about half an hour longer.

However, the second truck bomb at the Abbey School had not detonated for some reason and Tritt had been forced to go to his Plan B alternative. The second bomb should have demolished the main building of the school, the stone debris in turn destroying the relatively flimsy construction of the arched shell enclosing the hockey rink. By now Tritt should have been halfway across Lake Winnipesaukee, riding on the snowmobile he’d left behind Gorman’s Restaurant earlier in the evening.

Reaching the other side of the lake and his rental car, Tritt would have detonated the other four truck bombs spread around the town via satellite phone, and while Winter Falls burned he’d be climbing aboard the little Cessna he’d chartered at Laconia Airport and heading into oblivion once more.

Instead he was on the third floor of an old brick bed-and-breakfast in a snowstorm, awaiting the inevitable arrival of the president and his retinue. It would make his own exfiltration considerably more dangerous, but he’d contracted for the president’s death and, if nothing else, he always fulfilled his contracts.

Tritt shifted slightly in his chair beside the window. They’d be coming from the west and they’d be coming fast, lights flashing and sirens wailing. The security they used for once-upon-a-time presidents was definitely second-tier—new Secret Service types as well as old burnouts—but it was enough to give him trouble. There’d be a few local cops and a squad of state police from the VIP protection bunch, but that would be about it.

They’d all heave a sigh of relief once the chopper rose into the snowy air, and that’s when he would strike. He reached over and laid his hand on the tube of the ATC Confined Space Anti-Tank weapon. Unlike the weapon he’d used in Italy, the ATC was unguided, but from his window the chopper was no more than 150 meters away. He could hardly miss. The two-kilo, high-explosive warhead would turn the VIP helicopter into scrap metal in a split second.

He had timed it roughly and it would take him about thirty seconds to get out through the main-floor kitchen of the hotel and another minute to reach Gorman’s Restaurant and the dock that ran out to the ice beside it. It was really the only way out.

Whatever was left of the Maine’s Right Arm bunch he’d brought with him were to escape by road, but if the state police were any good at all they’d have expanding perimeter roadblocks established very quickly, especially with a President of the United States involved, soon-to-be-ex or otherwise.

If the MRA types were dumb enough they’d try to shoot their way out, which would mean even more fuel to Matoon and the Sinclair bitch’s fire. The whole plan was insane, of course, but so was Hitler, and it didn’t matter, anyway, since they paid well. He could and would retire on what they were paying him for this night’s work.

He heard the sirens now, approaching fast. He parted the curtains slightly and opened the old-fashioned casement window. He picked up the antitank weapon from the side table on his left, balanced it on his right shoulder and used the index finger of his right hand to disengage the two safeties. He moved the index finger from the safety switches on the side of the tube and laid it firmly on the firing button that was located just in front of the optical night sight. He waited and for a moment he let himself see the clear Caribbean blue of the water just offshore from his place at Lyford Cay. He slowly let the air out of his lungs, imagining himself snorkeling above a school of darting spotted drums. Below him the motorcade came into view. They were here and it was time to end it.