36: A Novel (37 page)

“What’s your name?”  I asked, meeting his eyes in the mirror.

“Trip.  Trip Cummins,” he said after a pause.

“Well, Mr. Cummins, I’m afraid you’re going to have to come with us for the moment.  That was our plane that blew up.  We’re trying to stop some terrorists who are planning to attack Washington, and we may need your help.”

“My help?  Look, mister.  I’m just the assistant administrator of a hospital.  Was on my way to work when I saw the fire.  I can’t help you.”

“Yes, you can,” I said.  “And the first thing I need is for you to tell me how to get to DC from here.”

“You’re FBI and you don’t know how to get to DC?”  He asked in disbelief.

“I’ve been there,” I said.  “But I’m assigned to the west coast and always fly in.  I have no idea idea where I am other than west of the city.  Now, which road do I need to take?”

He was quiet for so long I thought I was going to have to ask again.  Finally, he heaved a big breath and gave me directions to a highway.  We made a series of turns, each new road slightly wider than the last, then came to US Highway 50.

“Go east,” he said.  “This’ll take us right into DC.”

I glanced down at the dash before turning, not happy to see the gas gauge flirting with the E.  Ahead, a large truck stop lit up the whole side of the road and I headed for it.  Pulling in, I bypassed several idling big rigs and stopped at a row of pumps designated for passenger cars.  Turning the engine off, I twisted around and looked at our unwilling passenger.

“I need your credit card, Mr. Cummins,” I said.

“What?  Are you kidding me?  You don’t have a credit card or any money to buy gas?  What kind of FBI agent are you?”

“I do have a card, as well as cash.  But I don’t want to use my card and don’t want to go inside to pay with cash.”

I tried to put the right condescending tone in my voice.  The tone of a federal agent talking to a citizen.

“Here,” Julie said.

We both turned to see her holding a hundred-dollar bill out towards him.  His eyebrows went up in surprise, but he didn’t reach for it.

“Take it,” she said.  “Gas can’t cost more than fifty bucks to fill this thing up.  Consider the rest a nice profit for your inconvenience.”

After a long stretch of silence, he leaned to one side and pulled his wallet out of a back pocket.  Taking the cash, he slipped it inside before handing me a Visa card.  I stepped out and swiped the card, then filled the Ford’s tank.  I made sure to retrieve the receipt and handed it and the card back when I was behind the wheel again.

“I’ve helped you out.  Stay on 50 and it’ll take you straight into DC.  Why don’t you just let me out here?”

“Mr. Cummins, I wish I could,” I said, starting the engine and shifting into drive.  “But I can’t have you calling anyone.”

“You’re not FBI,” he said, a note of certainty and resignation clear as he spoke.  “Don’t want to use your card and don’t want to go inside where a security camera would get your picture.  What the hell’s going on?  You going to kill me?”

“If I was going to do that, I’d have done it back at the airport,” I said, pulling out onto the road.  “Now, relax and enjoy the ride.  This will all be over in a few hours and you’ll be on your way, safe and sound.”

Merging onto the highway, I began driving east.  The horizon had been lightening for a while, and as I crested the onramp the sun peeked above the low, forested hills.  It was dazzlingly bright and I wished for a pair of sunglasses as I drove in the heavy traffic heading towards the capital.

I looked at my watch once I was comfortably in the middle lane and moving with the flow of morning commuters.  -13:27:11 until the President was assassinated.

44

The drive into DC took every bit of three hours.  Traffic was bad.  Worse than bad.  Frequently we’d come to a complete stop for minutes at a time.  When the flow resumed we’d cover several miles, never seeing anything to explain why.  And the closer we came to the capital, the more often it happened.

I’m not patient by nature, and the stop and go of the congested highway was almost more than I could take.  But, we finally made it.  Once we crossed the beltway, the large freeway that circles DC, traffic improved slightly.  We would only slow to five miles an hour instead of coming to a full stop.

With all the time spent crawling along, I’d taken the opportunity to figure out the navigation built into the Ford’s dash.  I’d used it to pinpoint the restaurant where the attack would occur.  Gratefully exiting the highway, I worked across the madness of the surface streets that is DC.  Finally, I turned a corner and two blocks ahead was the building. 

I had been worried about being able to cruise the area slowly enough to check it out without being noticed by the Secret Service teams, who were almost certainly already in place.  But I didn’t need to be concerned.  Traffic was clogged with far too many cars.  The area was defined by bars, restaurants and night clubs, and it seemed every one of them had a double parked box truck in front, making a delivery.

It took nearly twenty minutes to cover the two blocks and I was able to scope out the entire street.  Low buildings built tight against each other.  Lots of rooftops and plenty of narrow alleys.  Too many places for a ground team to set up.  I needed to walk the area to get a better feel for it. 

I remembered what laser designators looked like from my time in Iraq.  I’d seen a few of the Special Ops guys heading out on missions, frequently toting one along.  They’re not big, but they aren’t exactly compact, either.  They won’t fit in your pocket.  More likely, whoever was going to paint the target for the missile launch would have a large back pack or duffel with the device inside.

The bag to carry it wouldn’t necessarily pique anyone’s interest.  That wouldn’t happen until it was taken out and set up.  Then, anyone who saw it would be looking, wondering what the hell the person using it was doing.  That eliminated the possibility of it being deployed at ground level.  Too great of a chance of discovery.

Assuming that Carpenter was right, and wasn’t involved with Johnson and flat out lying, the three Secret Service counter-sniper teams were in the clear.  They would be the guys with the best, concealed view of the front of the restaurant, but I was going to take it on faith they hadn’t been co-opted by the conspirators.  With that in mind, all that was left was a window or door in a building that had line of sight to the target. 

Not too close, however, I reminded myself.  The ground team would want to be out of the blast radius of the warhead.  These weren’t radical jihadists that were willing to sacrifice themselves for the furtherance of their cause.  These were Americans, probably military or military trained, and they would want to walk away in one piece.

So I was looking for a building with a rear or side exit, and the location for the laser had to be far enough away to ensure a high probability of survival for the ground team.  That meant on the opposite side of the street.  And it eliminated the two buildings directly across from the restaurant.  Both had taken heavy damage, and the crew manning the laser would have discounted them right off.

What I needed to do was walk the street.  Get a feel for the angles.  Get a good look at each of the buildings.  I’d been shown a detailed map that included the location of the three Secret Service teams, and I wanted to be sure to identify those as well.  While not impossible, I was willing to bet those locations were avoided due to the risk of detection.

Traffic finally opened up and I cut off a minivan with Kansas plates as I changed lanes.  Ahead and to the right I’d spotted a Hilton hotel, and we needed a place to work out of.  I also needed to do something with our passenger. 

Bypassing the valet stand, I turned into the underground parking, drove down a short ramp and found an open spot near the elevator to the registration desk.  I would have liked to go farther into the bowels of the structure, but a security gate blocked the way.  Probably needed the key card for your room to get it to open. 

“What’s happening?”  Cummins asked fearfully.

Poor bastard probably thought I was taking him somewhere that I could put a bullet in his head and dump the body without being noticed.  I turned off the engine and looked into the back seat, meeting his eyes.

“Relax,” I smiled, hoping I wasn’t overdoing it.  “Nothing is going to happen to you, but I need one more thing.  Do this, and I hand your keys back and thank you for your help.  All I ask is that you agree to not tell anyone about this.  Like I said, it’s a national security matter and we can’t have it being discussed.”

“I don’t know anything, so you don’t have to worry about me,” he said, hope flaring in his eyes.  “What do you want me to do?”

“You and I are going upstairs to registration.  You rent a room in your name, with your credit card.  Once you have the key, we go up to the room to check it and make sure the key works.  If it doesn’t, it will need to be you that asks for a replacement.  If it’s all good, we come back down here.  I hand you the car keys, you give me the room key and she and I are gone.  You drive away.  And, agree to keep your mouth shut.”

“That’s it?”  he asked, not trying to hide his disbelief.

“That’s it,” I smiled and nodded, pulling out some of the cash liberated from the two FBI agents I’d left in Julie’s apartment.  “Here’s three hundred bucks.  That should more than cover the cost of the room, and hopefully compensate you for the inconvenience.”

He stared at me for a long pause, turning to look at Julie.  She met his eyes, nodded and smiled.  And, in what I thought was a masterful touch, tucked her pistol away so that he no longer felt he was being held at gunpoint.

“I want to ask what the hell’s going on, but it’s probably better that I don’t know.  Isn’t it?”

“Yes, Mr. Cummins.  It is.  Now, will you help us with this final thing.  Please?”

“What the hell,” he said after a moments thought.  “Why not?”

I motioned for Julie to stay in the car and climbed out, waiting for him to join me.  We rode the elevator up, stepping out into the lobby.  A large sign with an arrow pointed the way to registration, and we walked in the indicated direction.  When we were a hundred feet from the large desk, I placed my hand on his arm to stop him.

“Mr. Cummins, I understand this is all very odd.  It is for me too.  I just wanted to convey the Bureau’s thanks for your assistance.  Because of your help, I have a chance to stop a terrorist attack and root out a traitor in our midst.”

I’d been thinking, and decided I needed to give him a little bit of a patriotic push, and an acceptable explanation for why I needed him to use his credit card.

“So that’s why…”

I made a production of shushing him, giving him a look that said I’d just revealed inside information.  He nodded and smiled, straightened his back and marched up to the registration counter.

As I watched him approach the young woman standing behind it and ask for a room, I could tell by his body language that he’d bought in to my ruse.  Another lesson from the con-man instructor.  Give people a reason to want to help you.  I’d treated him well, been polite, and now I’d let him get a peek behind the curtain.  He’d responded exactly the way the instructor had described.

A couple of minutes later he walked back over to where I was waiting, plastic key card in his hand.  He held it up and smiled as he approached.

“No problems?” 

I lowered my voice and looked around, playing my role to the hilt.  He saw what I was doing and mimed my actions by speaking quietly and checking around himself.

“Not at all.  Room 1223.  Let’s go check it out.”

He was fully committed now, leading the way to the elevator and pushing the up button.  It took a while for one of the two doors to slide open and we had to step back to allow a pair of harried looking parents with four children to exit.  The mother had a fistful of tourist brochures, and when I looked at her my heart skipped a beat.

It was Monica.  A little older and a little thicker after having more kids.  Her hair was cut differently, but there was no mistaking her.  And she was still a beauty.  I looked for Manny, her son from a relationship before she and I had met, but didn’t see him.  Doing the math, I realized he was probably old enough by now to either be working or in college.  Or the Army.  Too old to join his young siblings on a tour of Washington DC.    

Monica saw me looking and smiled a greeting, then had to turn away when one of the boys pushed his little sister against the elevator door.  She scolded him in rapid fire Spanish before smiling and kissing him on the forehead and scooping the little girl into her arms.  Her husband herded the other children past, a boy of about 10 or 11 sulking and staring at an iPhone.  He was dragging behind, on purpose.  Monica turned to him as she followed her husband into the lobby. 

“Roberto, keep up,” she smiled and reached out to wrap her free arm around his shoulders.

I was rooted in place, staring at the woman I had loved and the boy who was already nearly as tall as her.  She pulled him close and together they hurried to catch up with the rest of the family.

Roberto?  Could it be?  He was the right age.  And as I watched, I noticed his skin was several shades lighter than his mother’s and his hair wasn’t as thick as either of the adults.  I glanced at her husband, who was obviously of Latin descent.  He was a darker bronze than Monica.  I’m not a geneticist, but…

“You OK?  Look like you just saw a ghost,” Cummins said, tugging on my arm to pull me into the waiting elevator.

Without taking my eyes off of Monica and Roberto, I followed Cummins into the car.  Just before the door shut, I saw her move next to her husband and playfully bump his hip with hers.  He looked at her, smiled and leaned close.  The last thing I saw before the doors slid shut was their lips meeting in a kiss.

It took me a moment to get over the impact of seeing Monica and a boy who I’d already convinced myself had to be my son.  Finally, I shook my head and turned to see Cummins watching me intently.