The Last Family (42 page)

“What’s up?” Sierra asked.

“We need to get someone to the sky cart that’s picking her up.”

“What do you mean?” Sierra asked.

“She asked for a sky cart,” Stephanie said.

“Okay, guys,” Joe said. “Stay alert. Larry, watch for the sky cart. Stephanie, you tell her when it arrives.”

Joe had taken a seat and was watching with interest. Larry and Walter were standing together acting like traveling partners. They carried small, stowable bags. Larry turned so he could watch for the sky cart.

“How’d she look in there?” Joe asked.

“Bad. She’s either one ace actress or she’s in some sort of physical distress.”

“Think she’s onto us?” Joe asked.

“I don’t think so. She told the stew she’s catching another flight and she wanted the sky cart, so she can’t be going to Denver—that gate is close by. I’m betting the Miami flight. Tell the others. I think she was going to try to lose us and then jump the plane at the last minute.”

Stephanie went back into the bathroom to discover that the room, though filled with moving people, was empty of Eve. She almost panicked until she moved down the line of stalls and saw Eve’s leather orthopedic shoes under the door. She tapped at the metal door.

“Somebody’s in here!” Eve shouted.

“The lady outside called you a cart. They’ll be right here. Are you all right?”

“It’s just indigestion. I’m feeling better now,” she said. “Thank you so much. You’re very thoughtful. Most people aren’t, you know.”

“I can see you to the cart,” Stephanie said.

“No, I’ll get there fine. Thank you again.”

The sky cart was just stopping outside the door when Eve exited. All the passengers were agents. Walter Davidson helped her aboard, a Walter Davidson who had made sure he looked nothing like the way he had at her house when he and Sierra had installed the camera optics and transmitter. As Eve stepped into the cart, Walter dropped a beacon into the pocket of Eve’s plaid coat. Now they could track her from over a five-mile distance by car and as much as twenty by helicopter.

“Where to?” the driver asked.

“Gate seven,” she said.

The cart pulled away and Stephanie had to trot along to keep it in sight.

When the cart pulled up to gate seven Eve climbed down, toddled over to the counter, and presented her ticket. Sierra got in line behind her. The cart pulled away, went thirty feet, and Joe McLean and the other agents got out and grouped as Stephanie walked up to them.

“Stephanie, you’re staying back here for safety,” Joe said. “We’ll go from here without you.” He scribbled a number. “Call Paul that she’s on the flight to Miami. Tell him we’ve got a beacon in place so they can pick her up at the airport.”

Joe and the other agents slipped through the gate after Eve. Eve took her aisle seat in first class and didn’t look up at any of the agents as they filed on board and went back into the coach section to their seats and settled in for a long flight.

As the other passengers were filing past, Eve slipped out of the outer plaid jacket, pulled another scarf out of the purse, and slipped it on over the one with the violets. She stood, looked behind her at the riot of bodies filling the aisles, tucked her head in, and hurried off the plane.

The flight crew were in the entrance. Eve stepped through the bodies and spoke to a stewardess.

“Dear, I’m in first class and I have decided I need more sessions with the doctor before I actually do it.”

“Do it?”

Eve frowned. “Fly in a plane. It’s all right to leave without me. I’ve done this before. I’ll get the refund later.”

She turned and started walking briskly toward the gate.

As the last of the passengers passed through the first-class section, Joe watched one of the stewardesses pick up Eve’s plaid coat and take it toward the closet to hang. So she was getting comfortable. He exchanged glances with the other agents and smiled at Sierra. Great!

After the flight attendant went through the standard instructions, the curtain closed and the agents in the rear
of the plane settled in for the flight to Miami. Larry Burrows looked at the dial on the tracking device as the plane taxied toward the runway and was pleased with the strength of the signal.

Joe took his cell phone out and dialed Paul to tell him they were on the way.

Stephanie had walked a few feet away and was lost in thought when Eve emerged from the walkway. She had left behind the plaid coat and was wearing a thin raincoat with a hood and a dark scarf over the floral one. Stephanie saw the reflection of movement in the window—someone walking from the companionway—and turned a bit, instinctively, but nothing alerted her to the fact that there was anything unusual going on. She was listening to the idle chatter that filtered through the microphones.

Stephanie watched as the plane was towed out to the tarmac and began its warm-up. “Have a good trip, guys. See you in Miami after the hammer drops. Call me, okay? Soon as something happens.”

“Roger that,” Joe said. “Thanks for everything.”

“Good hunting,” Stephanie said. As she removed her earpiece, she was starting to tear up. All that work and she was going to miss the payoff. She knew she might live her entire professional life and never get a shot at this kind of action again. People like Joe would always have her doing shit work, meanwhile taking the credit for her successes. Maybe they’d put her behind a counter or something. Maybe she’d leave the DEA and see if she could move into the FBI. She watched the runway until the plane sped down it, sailed up, and began its climbing right-hand turn. “ ’Bye,” she said sadly.

As Stephanie was passing the rest room, someone moved quickly into the corridor and bumped into her. Stephanie felt a jolt when she looked up and realized that she was staring into Eve’s face. The white makeup was off, the sunglasses had been replaced with her thick bifocals, and she was wearing a different coat. Stephanie’s mind seized for a second, and Eve glared at her, angrily.

“Watch where you’re going,” Eve snapped.

Stephanie’s eyes were locked on the large woman’s.

“Well?” Eve said.

“Excuse me,” Stephanie squeaked.

“I swear …” Eve turned and trudged off back toward the terminal. Stephanie followed.

Stephanie had to call Paul Masterson and warn him. Somehow Eve had slipped off the plane without anyone’s seeing her. Stephanie had no idea how she had done it—not that it mattered now. They’d have to figure it out later.
Is Martin here in Dallas? What if he is? How will I know? I’m swimming in shit
.

Eve stopped at a bank of telephones, and Stephanie was smart enough to figure that she would look to see if she had a tail. Stephanie didn’t know what Eve’s long-range vision was like, but sure enough, Eve did take a sweeping look down the concourse. By then Stephanie had stepped into the doorway of a shop. While she watched, Eve put on her reading glasses, reached under a phone with her right hand, and retrieved something that had black tape on it. Stephanie couldn’t see what it was.
A message? No, a car key. No, she doesn’t drive
.

Eve glanced around as she pretended to look through the small purse she had hidden in the folds of her clothing. She waited a couple of seconds and took off again, with Stephanie following. Stephanie reached into her purse and felt the handle of her nine-millimeter.
I’ll know Martin when I see him. I
have
to. I have to stop him
.… She remembered Paul’s warning: “… 
the single most dangerous man I have ever known. Do not engage him one on one. If he is identified … shoot to kill … shoot to kill … shoot to …”

Eve stopped at a row of lockers and looked around again. Stephanie averted her eyes and quickly stepped into the cocktail lounge, taking a seat at a table.
What if Martin’s watching me right now?

Stephanie held her phone down in her lap and dialed Paul Masterson’s number, which they had all memorized on Joe McLean’s orders.

She looked up to see that Eve had opened the locker
door with the key she had retrieved and was staring right at Stephanie, her eyes huge through the lenses.

Stephanie averted her gaze again, took a count of six, and when she risked another peek, Eve was reaching into the locker, her attention focused on something inside. Stephanie tried to figure out what Eve was doing as she pressed the send button on the cell phone. At that instant there was a brilliant flash and ear-closing pressure—everything in the world went white as the wave hit Stephanie. She realized, in that euphoric and detached state of shock, as she was floating backward on the wave, that something wasn’t exactly right. That Eve was vaporized. Then there was just darkness … and silence.

45

T
HE GROUP WAS GETTING COMFORTABLE IN THE LOUNGE OF THE
Shadowfax
while Laura set about checking the stocks and selecting a couple bottles of wine from the cabinet.

Alton Vance and Tom Nelson were standing in the galley door, which opened to the cockpit, in still-dripping rain gear. They had Uzi machine pistols hanging in plain sight under their arms.

“Woody, do you or the other men want a drink—a beer or a coke?”

The agents shook their heads.

Alton Vance turned to Woody. “We’ll cover the pier,” he said. “If someone made a pot of strong coffee, I imagine we’d drink it.”

“It’s going to be wet out there. I’ve got a couple sets of foul-weather gear in the hall storage closet,” Reid said.

“These coats are fine,” Alton said. The two agents disappeared up the ladder to the cockpit. Their feet could be heard as they walked aft.

“Hard shoes,” Reid said, frowning. “They’re scuffing the deck.”

“Sorry,” Woody said. “They weren’t thinking they’d be walking on boat decks when they chose their shoes.”

Reid went out to the hall closet and brought back a yellow rain jacket and a pair of pants. “Gore-Tex,” he said. “If I need to go outside.”

Woody waited for the coffee and then stepped out to deliver it to the guards on the pier.

Wolf sniffed at the door, then turned three tight circles before lying down at Reb’s feet.

Thorne and Sean were in position across the marina, Thorne scanning the piers through binoculars and Sean waiting his turn at watch. He saw Woody hand the steaming mugs to the agents on the pier. The rain was falling harder, and Thorne turned up the collar of his coat to help keep out the wind.

“I guess we can relax a bit. I mean, there’s a fucking army out here,” Sean offered. “Man’d be nut cakes to try anything.” He looked again at the sniper on the roof of a boathouse and at the one directly across, set up in the flying bridge of a fifty-foot powerboat moored less than one hundred yards away.

“The man is nut cakes, kid. The sniper on the boat there has a Winchester model seventy, looks like,” Thorne said.

“A two-seventy you reckon?” Sean asked. “That’s a flat shootin’ round. At this range I’d imagine thirty-oh-six with a one-hundred-eighty-grain boat tail would be perfect.”

Thorne exhaled. “For deer hunting, maybe. They use three-oh-eight, kid. Every sniper on earth uses a three-oh-eight. He can pierce your earlobe at five times that distance and not even make a heat line on your cheek.”

“I used to hunt. Growing up, I mean,” Sean said, trying to make conversation. “I used a thirty-oh-six.”

“And one-hundred-eighty-grain boat tails, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Was a sniper in Nam I knew. Marine Corps fellow.
Sheriff now in Utah. This guy took a VC’s head right off his shoulders. Shot measured out to a quarter mile. VC never knew what hit him.”

“You an atheist?”

“I’m a Libra,” Thorne said dryly.

“It’s almost like hunting from a stand.”

“Right,” Thorne said. He trained the binoculars on the diver who was surfacing beside the Coast Guard launch and the men on the aft, standing under the awning, looking miserable in their rain gear. God, I’d hate to have that fucker’s job, he thought to himself. He watched as the diver said something to the guardsmen. One of them handed him a set of fresh tanks and took the old set up onto the deck. Then Thorne watched as the bubble trail headed toward the Hatteras where the prone SWAT sniper watched the
Shadowfax
through his scope.

All evening, swimming in that murky shit. Like being a friggin’ earthworm
.

46

T
HE
F
ALCON WAS ABOVE TWENTY THOUSAND FEET MAKING A BEELINE
for Miami. Paul’s telephone buzzed from inside his briefcase. It was Tod Peoples.

“Where are you?” he said.

“Tod, we’re over the Gulf, headed for Florida. My shadow team should be landing there right before we do.”

“A bomb went off at a DFW terminal a little while ago. Just getting the update. Looks like … okay, ten dead, no telling how many wounded.”

“Bomb? When?”

Rainey sat on the edge of his seat, the Bible in one hand. “What?” he asked. “What bomb, where?”

“Went off fifteen, twenty minutes ago,” Tod said.

“A diversion maybe?” Paul wondered if the bomb was to help Eve lose her tail.

“What bomb, where?” Rainey repeated.

“DFW,” he said to Rainey. Then he spoke to Tod again. “That was after Eve’s flight took off—Joe called me on his cell phone when they took off for Miami. This is not good. Maybe the bomb was just late going off? Maybe it was supposed to be a diversion while Eve sneaked on the Miami flight?”

“Martin twenty minutes off with a bomb?” Tod’s voice was full of skepticism. “Man’s very accurate, but it’s too coincidental not to be Martin.”

“A bomb is too overt for a diversion with his mother in the place. Maybe the flight was originally scheduled to be loading later and he set the device before the schedule change. Can you check that original schedule from where you are? When he bought the ticket.”

“Sure,” Tod said. Paul heard keys clicking in the background. “Just a minute.”

There was a click alerting Paul that he had another call coming in.

“Believe this shit? Hold on, Tod. Got a call on the other line.”