The Ajax Protocol-7 (19 page)

"I don't hear them," Stephanie said.

"That doesn't mean anything," Elizabeth said. "They're not going to come up the trail whistling Dixie."

"I hate this," Stephanie said. "This is what they do all the time, isn't it?"

"Pretty much. I don't know how Selena does it. I know I couldn't."

"I heard something," Stephanie said. "It came from that way."

She pointed at the path that led down to Emile's small boat on the west side of the island.

"Nick cleared that," Elizabeth said. "There's nobody in that direction."

Even so, Elizabeth pulled back the hammers on her shotgun. The double-click of the hammers sounded loud in the humid night.

"Careful," Emile said. "The triggers are very sensitive."

"Oh, hell," Stephanie said under her breath.

Five men dressed in black and wearing berets and body armor emerged into the clearing in front of the house. They fanned out. Two came toward the porch.

Elizabeth put her mouth next to Stephanie's ear. "The others don't know they're here." Her voice was hardly a whisper. "They'll come up here and walk into an ambush."

Stephanie looked around. "Where's Emile?" She said.

The old man was gone, vanished somewhere in the growth.

"We have to try and stop them," Elizabeth said.

"How?"

"Wait till you can't miss. I'll shoot at the ones closest to the house. Make it count."

Stephanie lifted the rifle to her shoulder and took aim. The movement caught the eye of one of the men. He shouted. His gun came up.

Elizabeth fired. The 12 gauge kicked back hard into her shoulder. A swarm of buckshot caught the first man in the chest and throat and lifted him off his feet. The tiny report of Stephanie's .22 registered somewhere in the back of Elizabeth's mind. A second man went down. Elizabeth fired the other barrel at the third man. His head vanished in a reddish cloud of blood and bone. The body stumbled and fell. Elizabeth had the shotgun open and was fumbling with shells, trying to reload.

The fourth man swung his weapon toward her. She froze, the shells motionless in her hand. Her mind stopped.

Emile appeared behind him. His machete swept across in a gleaming arc that took the man's head from his shoulders. Blood fountained high into the air. The last mercenary fired. Emile jerked and stumbled backwards and fell to the ground. As the old man's killer turned toward Elizabeth and Stephanie, a volley of shots from the trail sent him reeling sideways. He collapsed into the undergrowth.

Nick and the others ran into the clearing.

"Jesus," Ronnie said, staring at the slaughter. Two of the bodies were headless. The ground in front of the house was wet with blood.

"Selena, you stay here," Nick said. "We need to clear that trail."

The three men disappeared down the path.

Stephanie stood holding the 22, grim faced. Elizabeth looked at the headless corpse of the man she had killed. The shotgun was still broken open in her left hand. She bent over and vomited .

Selena went over to Emile. His eyes were wide open, the front of his chest covered with blood. She knelt by him. He'd been her friend. She had always felt safe with him and now, because of her, he was dead. She had brought death with her to the island. Her eyes filled with tears. She brushed them away.

She was 14 years old, away from the island in Emile's small boat, the first time she'd gone out fishing with him. The sun was half risen, the first light of day gleaming in a golden white path along the blue Caribbean waters. Emile was showing her how to bait her hook.

"Like this, you see? The hook is very sharp. Be careful with your fingers."

"Will we see a shark?" she asked.

Emile nodded in a serious way. "It is possible. If we see a shark, we will stay inside the boat and we will be fine."

"I would like to see a shark," Selena said.

They had stayed out all morning and come back with several fish for dinner. They had not seen any sharks.

"Emile," she whispered, "I'm sorry."

She reached out and closed his eyes. She got up and went to Elizabeth and took the shotgun from her hands. "Are you all right, Director?"

Elizabeth throat was dry. She wiped her lips and swallowed. "Yes. I'm fine."

"They must've landed after Nick checked out that side."

Elizabeth's milk white skin was even whiter than usual.

"You'd better sit down," Selena said. "You look pale."

"I'm all right," Elizabeth said.

"You're sure?"

"It was his head," she said. "I wasn't ready for what it looked like when I pulled the trigger and his head disappeared. I'll never forget that."

CHAPTER 42

They buried Emile near the house where he'd spent most of his life and marked the spot with a wooden board. Selena stood at the foot of the new grave.

She looked down at the fresh earth and sighed. "I don't know what to say. He was a good man."

Nick put his hand on her shoulder. "That's as much as any man can hope for," he said. "You don't need to say anything else."

The bodies of the men they'd killed presented more of a problem. Selena showed them a deep cleft that ran like a scar across the land, a few hundred yards from shore. Nick heard a faint sound of water lapping somewhere below.

"There are old lava tubes filled with water under the island," Selena said. "This opens onto them. We can dump the bodies in here and they'll feed the sharks."

Ronnie and Lamont looked at each other. Selena's voice was cold.

They dropped the bodies into the cleft and went back to the house. The team met around the dining table.

"I've found out where those signals came from," Stephanie said. "I traced them to the Denver International Airport."

"You're joking," Nick said. "DIA? How could they be based at the airport?"

"I know a lot about DIA. It's at the heart of one of the major conspiracy theories floating around the internet. Most of them are really off the wall but I like to keep track, just in case one of them turns out to be more than a theory. I think that's what's happened here. Do you know anything about how DIA was built?"

"Why don't you enlighten me?"

"The project went way over budget, I mean
way
over, hundreds of millions, maybe a billion."

"That's a lot of over," Ronnie said.

"Where did the money go?" Selena asked.

"Part of it was ripped off, like it always is in big construction projects like that. But a big chunk went into constructing buildings that were buried under tons of earth."

"Why would they build them and then bury them?"

"The reason given at the time was that they were in the wrong location," Stephanie said. "Everyone made noises about waste, a few wrists got slapped and that was the end of it. Construction went on. What's even more interesting is that the story about the buried buildings changed."

"Changed to what?"

"Instead of buildings, the structures that had been buried never existed at all. Then the story was put out that the pictures of excavations and construction were really pictures of the underground tunnel system."

"Is there a tunnel system?" Ronnie asked.

"Yes, for the rail line that goes between concourses. There's also an abandoned baggage system that didn't work. It was supposed to be state-of-the-art but it never worked right. When they fired it up, it destroyed bags and threw them into the air. They finally gave up on it and sealed it off. It takes up a lot of space under the airport."

"Well, it was a government project," Lamont said. "Sounds like another bureaucratic screw up."

"That's just it," Stephanie said. "It wasn't a government project. The airport was privately funded. It was built by something called the New World Airport Commission."

For a moment, nobody said anything.

"Not another conspiracy," Ronnie said.

"Like I said, DIA is at the heart of a lot of conspiracy theories," Stephanie said. "There are some crazy ideas out there. But the buried buildings exist."

"You're sure the signals came from there," Nick said.

"Certain, yes. The buildings make a perfect underground bunker."

Elizabeth drummed her fingers on the table top. "It's time for us to get off this island," she said. "If they sent that signal to Alaska from DIA, that's where the control center for the weapon must be. We have to destroy it, and we have to do it without causing a lot of collateral damage."

"Let me make sure I understand you," Nick said. "You want us to find a way into secret bunkers under one of the busiest airports in the world. That's if we can get past whatever they've got for security without killing a lot of civilians. Then you want us to locate a hidden control center and blow it up. That about right?"

"Do you have a problem with that?"

Nick sighed and pulled on his ear. "We'll need equipment. Communications. Weapons, IDs, all that. DIA has a lot of security surveillance. We're going to need gear to jam it or take it out of commission."

"Langley could help," Stephanie said. "Hood isn't part of this."

"Two years ago I never would've thought of asking the CIA for anything," Elizabeth said. "It just shows how much things have changed. I can probably get Hood to give us what we need, but he needs plausible deniability. The less he knows, the better. Asking him to help us launch a raid against DIA might be a bit much."

Lamont started to laugh and broke into a fit of coughing.

"You gotta do something for that cough," Ronnie said.

"Yeah, I'm on it." Lamont held up a package of cough drops. "Menthol," he said. "Want one?"

Ronnie shook his head.

"Everyone agree it's time to go?" Nick said.

No one objected. "Let's get the boat loaded and get out of here." He turned to Selena. "What about this place?" He waved his hand in the air, taking in the house and the whole island. "With Emile gone, there's no one to look after it."

She brushed a lock of hair from her forehead. "I'll close everything up. When we get back to the mainland, I'll get somebody out here. It will be fine until then."

Lamont began coughing. He ate a cough drop.

Nick went around the house with Selena, helping her close the storm shutters. They latched the last one into place.

"That ought to do it," Nick said. "You ready for an ocean cruise?"

"I wish I could joke about it like you do," she said.

"It's the way I deal with the stress," he said.

"I know." She looked out at the ocean. "I've always loved this place," she said, "but it's different now. With Emile gone it won't be the same."

Nick took her hand. "I'm sorry about Emile," he said.

"I always thought that if I ever got married, I would come here on my honeymoon."

He kissed her. "There are plenty of islands we can go to for a honeymoon," he said, "but we probably ought to get married first."

"Jerk," she said. She was smiling.

CHAPTER 43

They sailed past Martinique and St. John's. They passed north of the British Virgin Islands and set a course for the US mainland. Four days out from Selena's island, Puerto Rico lay off the port bow, a blue-green haze in the distance. 

The boat was named
Island Angel.
She was powered by a single Caterpillar diesel that drove them at a steady nine knots. The
Island Angel
was double decked, with a glassed-in bridge that provided a sweeping view. She had a raised, flush foredeck and a high, sharp prow. There were three small staterooms on the main deck. Nick and Selena were in one, Stephanie and Harker in the second and Ronnie and Lamont in the third.

Lamont's cough was worse, a racking, heavy sound. Ronnie had taken over the wheel. Lamont was in his room, lying down. The others were in the main cabin.

"He needs a doctor," Selena said.

"It's that hit he took in Jordan," Nick said. "He didn't have enough time to get over it before everything went down."

"I think he has an infection," Harker said. "Maybe pneumonia. He's running a fever."

"We're still at least a week out," Stephanie said. "Nick, what are we going to do?"

"Hope he gets better," Nick said. "There are antibiotics in the medical kit. Start feeding him pills and aspirins and soup. He'll get through it."

"What if he gets worse?"

"We'll deal with that if we have to," Nick said.

Elizabeth said, "I sent a copy of the Ajax protocol to Hood. It shook him up. He decided to take a look at the Pentagon."

"That's domestic surveillance," Nick said. "He could get in a lot of trouble for that."

"It wouldn't be the first time Langley overstepped the bounds," Stephanie said. "But at least this time there's a damn good reason to do it."

"Has Hood found anything out?" Nick asked.

She nodded. "There is a small group of senior military officers, politicians and bankers who call themselves the Augustans. They meet for drinks and conversation on an irregular basis, a few times a year. All of the members have expressed dissatisfaction at one time or another with something President Rice has done."

"That doesn't mean much. Sometimes I don't like what Rice has done."

"Yes, but Hood thinks there may be more to it. Several judges and CEOs are part of the membership as well. "

"It sounds like a typical Washington power group," Nick said. "There are dozens of them."

"That's true," Elizabeth said. "Except that the chief figure in the group is a four-star general in charge of SATWEP and the station you raided in Alaska."

"What's his name?" Ronnie asked.

Elizabeth drummed her fingers on her knee. "Westlake. Louis Westlake. I want you to run a full background on him, Steph. Find out if he has any connection with Edmonds. Can you hack into the White House computers?"

"Sure. Compared to the Pentagon, it's easy. I've done it before."

"Get into the visitor records and see if Westlake has visited Edmonds recently. He could be the one who told Edmonds we were interfering with a secret military project. It would take someone with a lot of rank to put that story across."