Terror in D.C. (15 page)

“Yes?” said Mosul Aski, irritated that the sudden confrontation with the American had startled him. “What do you want from us?”

“I want nothing from you,” said the reddish-brown-haired man easily. “I'm sure you heard how some vigilantes shot up Ambassador Shiraz's place last night? Apparently these killers have a real grudge against Iranians. I've been sent to offer you our protection. We're offering it to Iranians all over the city.” He shrugged. “But it's strictly up to you. I can stay or I can leave—”

“Oh, stay,
stay,”
pleaded the fat Iranian, Karaj Khunsar. “We are very frightened, are we not, Mosul? You have said so yourself—”

“Silence!” interrupted the young leader. “Are you a baby that you should cry?” He looked at Hawker, saying, “Normally, we would refuse such an offer. We are not children. We can take care of ourselves, and there are few things that we fear.” His face filled slightly with contempt. “Unfortunately, in this imperialistic country, you allow madmen to roam the streets, killing innocent Iranians. Because of that, we reluctantly accept your offer of protection.”

Hawker nodded. “In that case, I am supposed to transport you to our training station near Fort Stanton Park. You won't need extra clothes or money, and food will be provided by the United States Government.”

“But why must we go there?” Mosul asked suspiciously. “Why can't we stay in our dorm and have you stand guard?”

“Because,” said Hawker with a touch of impatience, “the people who are killing Iranians don't have much respect for guards. I heard they killed several last night while forcing their way onto the property of Ambassador Shiraz. At the training center, though, there is a complete security system. It's the only place large enough to handle the number of Iranians we expect to arrive—close to a hundred.”

“A hundred?” Zanjen smiled. “So many people from the homeland, Mosul, imagine! What a party we will have—and all at the expense of the Americans!”

Mosul Aski continued to stare at Hawker. “Beneath my jacket I am carrying a gun for my protection—a .38 revolver. Will your people allow me to continue to carry it?”

Hawker nodded his head. “Do what you want, Mr. Aski. Actually, I prefer that you hold on to it. It takes some of the heat off me. An extra gun might help if we get caught in a jam.”

The Iranian thought for a moment, then nodded his head abruptly. “Good. We will go then! Karaj, Zanjen, come!”

Mosul got into the passenger's seat of the Ford rental car, as Hawker was sure he would—the kid's ego demanded it. The other two Iranians got into the back. As Hawker started the car and pulled out onto the street, he thought,
You stupid bastard, you've played right into my hands. You not only told me that you're carrying a weapon, you told me where you're carrying it. When you die
—
and you will not die pleasantly
—
you will curse your own stupidity
.

Hawker drove southwest on Pennsylvania Avenue. He knew it would be the last time he'd see the nation's Capitol as a free man, and he let his eyes linger on the Washington Monument and the stolid dignity of the White House. At Minnesota Avenue he turned north, then drove until he came to a secluded asphalt road fronted by woods and bleak fields. At the first dirt tractor trail beyond a curve, he turned off and stopped the car.

The vigilante had been watching Mosul Aski carefully out of the corner of his eye, and when the Iranian, sensing that something was wrong, reached beneath his jacket, Hawker backhanded him and jerked the little .38 from its shoulder holster.

In his other hand he held the Colt .44 Magnum, which he had hidden under the seat.

“Get out of the car, you scum,” he ordered, waving the weapons at them. “Get out and do exactly as I say, or I'll blow your faces off.”

The three Iranian students got out of the car in a horrified daze. The fat student, Karaj, began to sob, then began to bawl out loud. Hawker kicked him in the side. “Keep the noise down, asshole!”

The fat Iranian took one look at Hawker's eyes, then began to gag on his sobs. “He's … he's going to kill us, Mosul!” he cried. “Do something, oh,
please
do something!”

Mosul Aski's tough facade had disappeared when Hawker first struck him. The Iranian student held his hands out, as if trying to fend off the inevitable. “You're … you're
him
, aren't you? You are the one who killed Isfahan—”

“Right,” said the vigilante in a deadly calm voice. “I'm the one who killed Isfahan and his men. And let's not forget that you are the twerps who killed Chester Rutledge, his wife, and three children.” Hawker slapped Mosul again, hard. “How many others did you kill, you obnoxious little asshole? Just those four? Or maybe twenty-two other defenseless men, women, and children?”

Hawker's blow had knocked the Iranian to the ground. The vigilante expected him to at least try to fight back, but he didn't. He stretched his hands out toward Hawker in an attitude of prayer, saying, “I will do anything for you.
Anything!
Just spare me, please! I will tell you anything you wish to know!” On his knees, pleading for his life, Mosul Aski also began to cry.

The vigilante looked at the three of them, and he felt neither pity nor triumph. He simply felt sickened by them, sickened by their murderous deeds, and now by their behavior in the face of death. Hawker thought about young Luke Rutledge, alone in a psychiatric ward, living with the horror of his family's death, and he knew he must carry out his careful plan. The punishment of the Iranians had to be equal to their crime, and it also had to say something to the world. It had to tell the world that there were still Americans who could fight back just as viciously as the terrorists who looked upon other Americans as ready prey.

“Take your pants and underwear off,” Hawker ordered coldly, pointing the two revolvers at their heads.

“What are you going to do to us?” Mosul demanded to know in a shrill voice.

James Hawker almost smiled. “Nothing you bastards wouldn't do if the circumstances were reversed.”

It took him longer than he thought it would to get the three Iranians tied to the tree, gagged and properly wired. Hurrying now, he took the three wires that he had attached to them and bound two of the wires to a stainless-steel ring.

The third wire, the one that was twisted around the small, shrunken scrotum of Karaj Khunsar, the vigilante attached to a bush.

The other side of the stainless-steel ring was already attached to 150 feet of high-tensile-strength airplane cable. Hawker unrolled the cable as he went, then he pulled it across the open road tightly enough so that any car coming around the curve would hit it.

The impact would be so slight and brief that the driver would no doubt continue on, unconcerned.

Of the three Iranians, only Karaj Khunsar, the weakest of them, would survive. Only he would be spared the searing pain and the agony of bleeding to death. But he would live in horror for the rest of his life—just as Luke Rutledge would. More important, though, he would live to return with his story to Iran.

When the cable was set Hawker checked his knots a final time, then got into the rental car and headed back to Washington, where two planes, on separate airfields, waited for him. In one plane Lester Rehfuss would be waiting. Rehfuss would not worry about Hawker's being late at first—after all, hadn't the vigilante already sent his baggage and equipment, along with the briefcase carrying the half-million dollars, to be loaded? Hawker pictured Rehfuss opening the briefcase later and taking the note he had written from among the bricks of money:

Lester: Grant a hunted man a final wish. Take this money and set up a trust for the relatives of the people killed by the Iranians. Also, take whatever funds necessary to make sure Luke Rutledge gets the best care, and the best education, available. Your friend and adversary, Hawk.

Two miles up the asphalt road, Hawker passed a delivery truck speeding inexorably toward the cable he had stretched across the road. He tried to picture the looks of terror on the faces of the Iranians as they heard the first rumble of the truck's approach, imagined the way they would struggle frantically but uselessly as their destiny and death sped ever closer.

How painful would such an end be?

No more horrible than pieces of dead children scattered across suburban lawns.…

The vigilante shrugged off any thoughts of guilt, and turned his attention to the person who awaited him in the second plane. Because authorities would allow any guest of a VIP to board without question, it was an ideal means of escape for a man now hunted by the CIA. But it would also be a very pleasant means of escape.

But where would they escape to?

Hawker thought about it as he drove. No place in the United States would be safe. How about Little Cayman Island? Or Guatemala—where was there a country more beautiful than Guatemala? Hawker paused for a moment, thinking. What about
Ireland?
His later father would have friends there, and they would take him in, hide him when need be, and he could live pleasantly, flirting with the country girls, exploring the ancient ruins, fishing the fast rivers as they rolled down out of the green hills. It would be pleasant, indeed—until the CIA found him, which it inevitably would.

James Hawker's face brightened as he settled upon his destination. What would it matter to Senator Thy Estes? She had promised to take him anywhere he wanted to go in her government plane.

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Chapter One

The woman who met him at the Fort George Hotel in Belize City, Belize, Central America, told him that she was a whore. She said it with a toss of her head, a quick, penetrating glare of contempt, an expression of aloof indifference that effectively communicated that she didn't give a good goddamn what James Hawker thought of her, anyway, so why try to hide anything?

Hawker sat at the bar and studied the label on the bottle of beer he was drinking. Belikin Beer, Belize Brewing Company, Ltd. Nice drawing of a Mayan ruin on the label. Hawker had studied many labels of many varied beers in the last year. He had been traveling almost continually. When a man is being hunted by the United States Central Intelligence Agency, travel becomes a way of life.

For the last two months he had been living in a seaside estate in Puerto Cabello, not far from Caracas, Venezuela. In South and Central America, Hawker had discovered, a man is asked only one question of importance: Can you pay? If that question is answered satisfactorily, there are no more questions. On the strength of his portfolio at the Swiss bank of Grand Cayman Island, Hawker had always answered satisfactorily.

So lately he had been living the fast, elaborate life of the wealthy American expatriate. Rented villas overlooking the sea. Maids and man-servants. Invitations to strange, formal dinner parties peopled with swarthy men in white tuxedos and beautiful, dangerous-looking women. It was the kind of life that international spies lived. And escaped Nazis. And international drug runners. And businessmen from places like Toledo or Dubuque who embezzle the cream off the second set of books, abandon the wife and kids, and run off with the gum-chewing secretary.

But it was not James Hawker's kind of life. He had had enough of isolation. He had had enough of cryptic conversations with people he did not trust and did not like. He had ridden with too many lunatic women in fast sports cars and bedded enough Latin beauties to last a lifetime.

Hawker had had enough of running and enough of living the soft life. That's why now, now for the first time in months, he was happy. He was happy because he had another mission.

Hawker put the bottle of beer on the counter and considered the woman who sat next to him. She was of the long, lithe, tropical variety: finely grained mahogany skin; pale brown eyes; a touch of Mayan ancestry in the high cheekbones; a blend of slave ancestry in the ripe hips and jutting breasts; a solid dash of Spanish-European in the delicate nose, mouth, and the dark spill of black hair that framed the beautiful duskiness of her face. Her speech was articulate, accented with Spanish, but touched with the cool English of British boarding schools, not the inarticulate street slur of Belize. And the white blouse, tropical-print skirt, and gold jewelry she wore all had the crisp aura of money. If she was a whore, Hawker decided, she was a damn expensive whore.

Hawker said, “I came to Belize because it was my understanding that Colonel Wellington Curtis of Atlanta, Georgia, was going to meet me here. At the bar of the Fort George Hotel. At eight
P.M.
on this particular Tuesday in June. It is now eight twenty-three
P.M.
, and I really don't care if you are a whore or a secretary or a prima ballerina. All I am asking is: Why did Colonel Curtis send a messenger instead of meeting me as had been arranged? Why did he send you?”