America (44 page)

He left the house just at dawn. The woman stood in the doorway. She didn't wave, just stood there watching as he got out of the car and loaded it and drove away. At the end of the driveway he looked back, and she was gone. The door was closed.

Traffic was light. He had an address in Rosslyn, had a map.…

Jesus, this was half-baked! He had never even been to the address before. For all he knew this guy lived next door to a police station.

He did know what the guy looked like. The Man had given him three photos last week. Just in case. And the guy was in the navy. That meant a uniform, although in that neighborhood there should be a lot of uniforms. He had the best photo with him, if he needed to refresh his memory. He had studied it and shouldn't need it.

Christ, if he were caught! A photo of the intended victim, an unlicensed, loaded pistol, an unlicensed silencer, a rifle … he would be lucky to draw a sentence of less than twenty years.

He knew the city well enough that he didn't make any wrong turns, but he did have to pull over once and consult the map.

The day was going to be gorgeous—the heat of summer had eased and the haze had blown out after the front went through yesterday. On such a day, why was he taking chances like this?

He parked as near as he could to the guy's building—so many dead cars had been hauled away that there were actually parking places—and sat looking things over. The nearest Metro station was two blocks down the street to the north. It wasn't running these days. There was a bus stop there too, and the city had brought in buses from all over. Of course, this guy could be driving one of these cars. Or have a limo picking him up. Or a car pool.

This is where he should be starting several weeks of observation of the subject, not looking for a fleeting opportunity to do him! Even if he dropped the guy here this morning, how was he going to get away? Walk back to the car and drive off? Into rush-hour traffic? In his own car? He certainly didn't have time to steal one.

Matheny put his head on the steering wheel and took a deep breath.

Relax! Just take it easy, watch, see if this guy gives you an opening. If he does, bang. If he doesn't, you'll learn enough so that you can do it safely in a few days. If The Man doesn't like it, tough shit. The bastard can pop this guy himself.

People were coming out of the buildings, streaming along the street. Traffic was building. Probably not as many people as usual; with the electricity off, many people weren't working or had left the city.

Now or never.

Myron Matheny checked that the pistol was loaded, made sure the safety was on. He screwed the silencer onto the barrel and lowered the pistol into the shoulder holster, which had a hole in the bottom to accommodate the silencer. The garroting wire was in his right jacket pocket. He got out of the car and locked it. He inserted four quarters in the parking meter, then walked up the slightly inclined sidewalk to the entrance of the guy's building.

The lobby was dark. Of course, the elevators weren't working. He began climbing the stairs. He would just wait until the guy came out of his apartment and follow him down the stairs. Shoot him in the back of the head and keep right on going. Out and into the car, drive away.

That was a plan. Barring something freaky, he had a fairly decent chance of getting away with it. Car pool, private car, bus, limo—however this guy was going to work wouldn't matter.

On the second flight of stairs he heard someone coming down, looked up … and there the guy was, wearing a white naval officer's uniform.

Two people were following him. Matheny stood aside to let the three men pass. The guy even made eye contact with him. Gray eyes under a naval officer's white hat with black rim, nose a little large. Then he moved by and the next two guys were trooping past. They didn't make eye contact.

Matheny put his hand on the butt of the pistol, trying to decide. All three? Right here?

Then it was too late. The guy in the lead, the guy he wanted to get, went around the landing and disappeared from view. There had been a four- or five-second window of opportunity, and he hadn't been able to make up his mind.

Shit!

There was another flight of stairs! He would do them then. All three. He leaped to follow the trio.

Only at the second floor, more people came through the fire door into the staircase, joined the procession going down. A woman was now in front of the guy, another woman got between the guy and the man behind him, and another man in uniform fell in behind the whole parade.

By the time Matheny exited the stairwell into the lobby, the guy was going through the front door of the building. He had plenty of company. There were a dozen people within thirty feet.

Out on the sidewalk the guy went over to the curb.

Okay, he's waiting for a car pool. Standing there, looking up the street.

This is it! Walk up behind him, gun him in the back. As he goes down put one round into his brain. Then just walk away. Everyone will be looking at him.

Then walk over, get into your car, and drive away.

Myron Matheny was three steps away, his hand on the pistol butt, when a white government pool car slid to a halt on the street, and the guy walked between two cars toward it.

The guy got into the backseat, pulled the door firmly closed, and the vehicle eased away into traffic, leaving Myron Matheny standing helplessly on the sidewalk.

*   *   *

He drove to Crystal City, had a hell of a time finding a place to park. Finally he put the car in a parking garage in a nearby building. He never saw the guy arrive at the building where he worked. Maybe he was there, maybe he wasn't, but Myron Matheny couldn't just climb the stairs and ask.

He stood on the sidewalk out front looking things over. The Crystal City area consisted of a dozen or so medium-sized office buildings, around twenty stories each. Some of them had limited outside parking; most people had to put their vehicles in multistoried garages. The Lee Highway ran north and south along the west side of the area. On the east side was Reagan National Airport. Just to the north was the Pentagon surrounded by several hundred acres of parking lot.

Beneath Crystal City was an underground shopping area, a mall with Metro stops at both ends. Without electricity the underground resembled a coal mine tunnel. The people who were in the buildings—perhaps half the usual number—had to eat somewhere, so one of the underground restaurant entrepreneurs had gotten permission to set up an outdoor eating area.

Myron Matheny watched as a crew of people unloaded two trucks. Barbecue grills were set up, filled with charcoal, and lit. Portable generators to run coolers, folding tables, boxes of food and paper plates, stacks of plastic cups, folding chairs, garbage cans … The crew worked quickly and efficiently, setting up shop in a square between four buildings. Four large trees in planters provided a leafy cover over the area.

Okay, if the guy is up in his building, maybe he'll eat lunch here.

Matheny walked back through the area, trying to figure out how he could escape after the hit. If he could park his car somewhere else, steal a car and park it in one of these outside handicapped spaces …

Lots of military in these buildings. Eating lunch, this guy is going to be surrounded by military. If I shoot him with the pistol while he's sitting at one of these tables, four or five of them could grab me, and that would be that.

If I use the rifle, shoot from up there, on top of that parking garage … well, I might get a shot from there through these trees.

Myron Matheny went up to the top story of the garage and looked down. The tree canopy obscured about half the area. He went down a story. Better, but not good enough. He went down one more level. He was two stories up now. This was about as good as it would get.

Sixty yards or so to the center of the square, an easy shot with a scoped rifle. Hell, at this range he could put one in the guy's ear.

After the shot he'd be standing in this garage with the rifle in his hands. He'd drop the rifle, leave the garage the way he came in, get in the stolen car he had parked in a handicapped spot.

That would work. Maybe.

Hell, that was the only way it could be done.

The alternative was to go back to Rosslyn and wait for the guy to come home tonight. If he came home tonight.

That will be the backup plan, if the guy doesn't come here for lunch.

He walked the escape route out of the garage, then went back upstairs for his car. After he paid the tab on the way out, he headed for Alexandria to steal something wearing a handicapped license plate.

*   *   *

“The minisub can go down to a hundred and fifty feet,” Sonny Killbuck said, as he unrolled his chart for Jake Grafton and Toad Tarkington. “I called New London to confirm that.”

“Okay,” Jake said and adjusted his reading glasses on his nose.

“With that fact in mind, I just ran off the one chart that shows water a hundred and fifty feet deep or less. If you wish, sir, I can do another with any parameters you like.”

The three were looking the chart over when Krautkramer came in with the Jouany file. He joined the three naval officers at the chart, a large computer printout.

“If the killer satellite was put in the ocean for eventual salvage with
America
's minisub, it would have to be in less than a hundred and fifty feet of water,” Jake explained. “Heydrich is an underwater salvage dude, he's aboard … it fits.”

“When I was putting this file together, Admiral, I ran across an interesting fact. It seems that Antoine Jouany is one of the directors of EuroSpace. I don't know whether you knew that or—”

Jake grabbed the file and began digging through it. “Show me,” he said.

Krautkramer found the list of Jouany's directorships and showed it to Jake.

“Heydrich? What do you know about him?”

“That's this next file. He worked for years for various salvage firms, pulling up wrecks and cargoes all over the world. Actually got an ownership interest in the company about ten years ago, just before the insurance recovery business boomed, so he's fairly well off. The Nautilus Company. It owns four ships.”

The four ships were named.

“Sonny, how about seeing if the satellite intel people can find these four ships? I want to know where they are right now.”

Killbuck took the list and left.

Krautkramer talked for a while, then left Jake and Toad to study the map and files.

“An awful lot of the Atlantic is pretty shallow,” Toad said dubiously, looking at the thousands of square miles the computer had colored yellow. “If a fellow were picking a spot to plant a satellite, seems like he has a lot of choice.”

“Not really,” Jake replied. “The missile is coming down without power in a ballistic trajectory. The target area of necessity must be pretty big.”

“But how is the pirate crew of
America
going to find the third stage if they can't use active sonar?”

“I've been thinking about that,” Jake said. “They're going to need a noisemaker, something that puts a lot of noise into the water so Revelation can pick up the reflections off the bottom and, they hope, the lost missile. Something that looks benign.”

“So what is that something?” Toad asked.

“I don't know. I was hoping the recon satellite photos of areas of interest might give us some hints. What you and I need to do is designate areas of interest.”

*   *   *

Myron Matheny had a busy morning. He stole a Ford from a hospital parking lot in Alexandria, successfully got it into a handicapped parking space on the street behind the parking garage, and carried the Remington into the parking garage embedded in green plastic garbage bags. He got it arranged inside a trash can at the entrance to an elevator and finished filling the can with trash from a can near the restaurant operation.

He stood back, scrutinized his can. Few people would pass it outside this inoperative elevator. If the trash people came by while he was downstairs, so be it—he would wait for the guy tonight in Rosslyn.

He checked the shooting position on the second deck again, got a cold feeling up his spine because it was so open. He would be semihidden here behind these parked cars, which would just have to do. He certainly wouldn't have time to dawdle.

When he had done all he could, he went down to the square and walked past the food operation, checking out the customers in line and seated on the planter retaining walls and at the long tables. The guy wasn't here yet.

Matheny bought a fountain soft drink, then sat near the entrance where he could see everyone who came in.

He was nervous. This just didn't feel right—he hadn't done all the planning, hadn't eliminated controllable variables. So much could go wrong. Random chance, the friction of life … and his life was on the line. He was betting his life that the stolen car would start, a cop wouldn't turn up in the wrong place, an accident or construction project wouldn't block traffic … my God, the list of things beyond his control that could go wrong was almost infinite. Knowing, being prepared beforehand, that was how he had stayed alive all these years.

The time was 11:50.

The queue waiting to go through the food line grew steadily longer. From 12 to 1 was going to be the big rush.

At 12:01 two uniformed policemen walked up and got in the queue. Terrific. Those two were going to rabbit after him the instant the rifle cracked.

The queue was moving quickly through the food service line—this entrepreneur obviously knew the food business—yet it was growing as all the people on lunch break in the buildings in the area descended on the square.

And there
he
was, in line with a bunch of other people, a few in uniform.

Myron Matheny forced himself to relax. He must wait until he saw where the group sat before he left. He certainly didn't want to stand up there on the second floor of the parking garage waving binoculars or the rifle around trying to find this guy.