Authors: John Gilstrap

At All Costs (22 page)

BOOK: At All Costs

6.1Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub

ads

Paul Boersky slammed the phone down hard enough to knock a book off the desk. “They lost the call.”

Irene, on the other line with the West Virginia State Police, told them to hold on for a minute. “Come again?” she said.
I dare you
went unspoken.

Never a great one at temper control, Paul launched a trash can across the conference room with his foot. “They’re onto us. As soon as they took the call, they scrambled it. I don’t know how, exactly, but they busted the tap. We got nothing.”

Irene set her jaw, then shook it off. Murphy’s Law governed all investigations to one degree or another, but never before had she handled one where Murphy was this much in command. She said nothing to Paul, whose tantrum seemed to have peaked, and turned her attention back to Sergeant Bower in West Virginia.

“I’m sorry, Sergeant,” she said heavily. “We just got a bit of bad news on our end. Here’s your opportunity to cheer up my day. Found the number yet?”

She heard some paper-shuffling on the other end before Bower spoke up. “Got it,” he said. “Homer and Jane’s Roadside Diner. I can have a unit there in twenty minutes.”

Irene cringed. “Twenty minutes? Is that the best you can do?”

Bower chuckled. “This ain’t the big city, Agent Rivers. Things take time out here. I can guarantee we’ll do our best for you, how’s that?”

Irene smiled. “I never doubted that for a moment. Tell your folks to be careful, though. The Donovans are slippery and they’re desperate.”

This time Bower laughed out loud. “My troopers work real hard to make our
customers
be careful around
us,
ma’am.”

“Okey-doke, Sergeant. Then you just have your folks go do what they do best.” She looked at her watch.
No chance,
she thought. Jake and Carolyn were specialists at staying ahead of the law. Christ, they’d already made it from Phoenix, South Carolina, to Winston Springs, West Virginia. If nothing else, they knew how to stay out of reach. No way would they still be there in twenty minutes.

Hanging up the phone, she turned to the task of calming Paul. Poor guy was working like a galley slave to keep his career afloat, and every time he fixed a leak, they took on another torpedo. Amazing how fragile a career could become. Like it or not, his was tied to hers, and hers was cloaked in a suit of eggshell.

“There are grown-ups waiting to use the phone, young man.” It was Peggy, now sporting a brand-new grease stain on the front of her apron, and an expression like she’d just drunk a quart of lemon juice.

Travis covered the receiver and tried his best to be polite. “Tell them to wait a minute,” he said. Okay, so much for polite.

Peggy made a face, then flashed a two-fingered “V” in front of her nose. “Two minutes, smart mouth,” she warned. “Two minutes, then you’re off the phone.” As she stormed away, Travis successfully fought the urge to flash a onefingered wave of his own.

“Listen carefully, boy,” Harry said. “Tell your parents that the FBI knows where you are. No need to panic, but they’ll be on their way soon, I’m sure.”

“I gotta go, then,” Travis said hurriedly. Need or no need, the panic came, anyway.

“Wait!” Harry commanded. “I only need a half minute. I’ll see what I can do about convincing this friend of your parents’—Nick Thomas, right?—to cooperate. For the time being, though, we’ve got to figure out a way to get you and your folks out of there. Are there any landmarks? A place where we can meet?”

Travis leaned away from the wall, trying to get a look out of the front windows, but all he saw was Peggy, who’d stationed herself in the middle of the aisle, fists planted on her hips. “I—I don’t know.”

Harry sighed heavily. “Okay, do you know which way the roads run? North-south? East-west?”

Travis shook his head, feeling embarrassed; like he showed up for a test without studying. “No, I don’t.”

Another sigh. Actually, this one sounded more like a growl. “All right. Listen. Here’s what I want you to tell your parents. At midnight tonight, a white car will pull off to the side of the road, precisely two miles to the right of the diner where you’re calling from. Got that?”

Travis wasn’t sure. “To the right?”

“Yes, dammit, to the right. We don’t know north and south, so we’re doing left and right. You stand out on the road
facing
the diner and hold out your right hand. Exactly two miles in that direction.”

“Okay.”

“Don’t say okay unless you’ve truly got it,” Harry warned.

“No, really. Two miles. Got it.” Sensing that Peggy was listening to every word, Travis pivoted back toward the stink of the rest rooms as he spoke.

“Okay, boy, now you all need to find a place to hide for the rest of the day. I don’t care where it is, but when I say hide, I really mean hide. Until midnight, when you need to be at the rendezvous point. Are you still with me?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Don’t grunt at me, kid. I need yeses or noes.”

“Yes, I’m with you.”

“Wonderful. Now, pay very close attention to this part. At midnight tonight, a white car will pull up at the rendezvous point. That’ll be your ride. The driver’s name is Thorne, and he’ll take care of you. When he gets out of the car and lights a cigarette, that’ll be your signal to approach. Have you got all of that?”

Travis was terrified that he’d forget some detail, but he didn’t dare ask him to repeat himself. “I think I can handle that,” Travis said.

“Okay, then,” Harry concluded. “Now, go back and tell your parents to get the hell out of there. Fast. If you’ve got a car, ditch it as soon as you can. And be in the right spot at midnight. Sharp.”

Travis nodded. “We’ll be there.” He couldn’t wait to get moving. “Anything else?”

Harry was quiet for a moment while he thought. “Yeah,” he said at length, lowering his voice. “Tell your folks to be careful when they approach Thorne. Sometimes he misinterprets sudden moves.”

From the tone of voice alone, Travis understood this to be perhaps the most important detail of all.

Harry pushed the disconnect button and relayed the details to Thorne—his personal assistant for nearly thirty years now. In order to survive in the business world, Harry firmly believed that you needed a watchdog—an attack dog, even. Somebody on the payroll who could discover the kind of information about competitors and politicians that could be used to keep them under control. You needed somebody to whom you could make a request, and never question that there’d be results. In Harry’s company, that man was Thorne. Loyal as a lapdog yet fierce as a tiger, Thorne’s unspoken job was to occasionally stack the deck a little. Only rarely did Harry have to rein him in anymore.

“Do they have a chance?” Harry asked when he was finished regurgitating his niece and nephew’s latest plan.

Thorne shrugged. “I think it’s risky as hell, but yeah, sure. Why not? There’s always a chance. It’ll take some time, though. A lot of logistics.”

Harry shook his head. “We don’t have time.
They
don’t have time. We need to move quickly. Who do we know in Little Rock?” Washington contacts were a nickel a dozen, as were friends in Chicago, New York, and all the other major cities. Out in the boonies, though, pickings became awfully slim.

Thorne chewed on his lower lip and scowled. “I can’t think of a soul. No, wait! Didn’t that dermatologist friend of yours—Tim Vincent—move down there after they yanked his license in Wisconsin?”

“Oncologist,” Harry corrected. “Cancer specialist.” And yes, that did ring a bell. A friend from his college years, Tim Vincent had lost focus for a while about a decade ago and was nailed by some mutilated patients for all kinds of misdiagnoses, a few of which, it turned out, had resulted in the surgical removal of perfectly healthy body parts. The very thought of it turned Harry’s stomach, but Vincent insisted in one tearful telephone call that it was all an accident, and he pleaded for help. Harry had waffled before finally caving in to his sense of loyalty. Leveraging some very generous gifts he’d made over the years to the Midwest’s most prominent universities, Harry had been able to talk a few of Vincent’s peers into taking it easy on him. He got to keep his license, as long as he agreed to take his practice someplace where they’d never have to clean up after him. Last Harry had heard, Tim had sobered up and was doing very well.

“Okay,” Harry instructed, “give Tim a call. Tell him I send my regards and that I’ll need him to put up some friends of mine in the next couple of days.”

Thorne jotted notes on a scrap of paper.

“And if he can manage to make himself scarce while they’re there, so much the better.”

Thorne smiled. “Want me to roust your pilots and get the planes ready?”

Harry had to think for a moment on that one. “No, we’ve got the FBI watching us,” he mused aloud. He snapped his fingers as the solution came to him. “Tell you what. Does Universal Waste still owe us a favor?”

Thorne laughed. “Didn’t we guarantee Peter van der Horst’s debt?” He didn’t wait for a response. “I’ll give him a call and see if he’ll let us borrow a couple of planes and pilots.”

“Just the planes,” Harry corrected. “We’ll use our own pilots.”

Thorne nodded approvingly and jotted some more. “I trust you want me to go to Washington?”

Harry shook his head. “No. I’ll go to D.C. I want you to make the pickup in West Virginia.”

Thorne seemed appalled. “You’re going to talk to the EPA guy yourself? Forgive me, sir, but I don’t think—”

“There’s no choice,” Harry interrupted. “You can’t be in two places at one time, and I want the fewest possible people involved in this.”

Thorne shook his head vigorously. “With all due respect, Mr. Sinclair, I’m much more persuasive than you—”

“And much more
resourceful. I
need you to be with Sunshine.” Harry ended the conversation by turning away, his ample gut heavy with the press of time. “I want to be in Washington this afternoon.”

Thorne considered arguing but knew better. There was much to do.

“Oh, and Thorne?”

“Yes, sir?” He’d already stepped into the hallway but now returned.

Harry regarded him for a long moment. “You know how much Sunshine means to me . . .”

“I’ll take care of everything . . .”

“No, listen to me. Don’t go overboard, okay?”

Thorne bristled. He knew how to do his job. He said nothing as he left.

Alone again, Harry tried to sift through it all. It had been fourteen years, for God’s sake! Without a snag. Now, at the first glitch, Sunshine and her dipshit husband wanted to throw everything away on this crazy plan. Unbelievable. Maybe it was just the panic talking. If he could just speak to Carolyn personally, then he’d be able to talk some sense into them.

But, of course, he could do no such thing. As much as he wanted to see his niece again—what did she look like now, as she closed in on middle age?—he understood that such a meeting was out of the question. Maybe if the kid hadn’t called the house directly, but certainly not now. With the connection made at the FBI, the risk was too great.

Jake started the van as soon as he saw Travis walk back outside. He considered driving up to meet him but didn’t, fearing that it might somehow attract attention.

“Where have you
been
?” Carolyn barked, the instant the door slammed shut. “We were almost ready to go in there after you.”

“Sorry,” Travis replied with a patently unsorry shrug. Over the next ten minutes, as they searched with progressively greater urgency for a place to ditch the van, Travis told them every detail of his chat with Uncle Harry.

C
HAPTER
N
INETEEN

Special Agent John Carnegie shifted position uneasily, daring to look away from his scope for just a few seconds.

He liked his work, on balance. It reminded him of his teenage years, when he and his father found true camaraderie hunting deer in the fall. Every Thanksgiving, they arose in the middle of the night and drove for hours before dawn, finding a spot to sit and wait, remaining still for hours at a time until their prey wandered in close enough to be taken.

So it was this morning, in every detail but the prey and the weaponry. From his spot on the edge of the woods, he sat perfectly still, watching the Sinclair compound for unusual movement or activity. Several cars had arrived over the course of the morning, but none of them contained anyone remotely fitting the description he’d been given of the Donovans. Those same cars had subsequently left, only to be subjected to a search a mile or so down the road. So far, the Donovans remained invisible.

By ten o’clock, he’d been on station for six hours, and his mind was beginning to play tricks on him. He’d heard noises that didn’t exist; seen flashes of light in his peripheral vision. He knew that such things were merely meaningless exercises commenced by otherwise unchallenged senses, yet they unnerved him, anyway. These were the times he hated most—when he’d been on for longer than his attention span, yet still was several hours from relief. Back in the old days, when he did similar stints for the Marine Corps—only then with a rifle—he enjoyed the benefits of a young man’s brazen cockiness. Now, as he approached his thirty-fifth birthday, he worried about what might get past him as his mind wandered.

His legs and his back screamed for relief, for a brief stretch; but Carnegie was too well trained for that. Harry Sinclair—paranoid tycoon that he was—enjoyed a reputation for countersurveillance, and he was manic about personal security. If Carnegie moved, he knew in his heart that Sinclair’s men would see him.

To keep his mind active this morning, Carnegie had practiced his times tables, through 25 times 25. When that grew boring, he tried factoring four-digit numbers in his head. After a while, though, that one gave him a headache.

About forty-five minutes ago, he’d been told on his radio that the targets had contacted Sinclair by phone, bringing a brief rush of hopefulness, but now the adrenaline had bled away, and he was bored all over again.

Movement. Carnegie rolled his wrist to get a glance at his watch and marked the time at 10:24. Returning his eyes to his spotter’s scope, he watched in fifty-power magnification as Harry Sinclair himself walked out of the front door of his mansion and lowered himself into the waiting limousine. Three staff members climbed in with him, and the vehicle took off for the gate.

Carnegie thumbed his radio mike. “Target is moving toward checkpoint one,” he whispered. Despite the four hundred yards separating him from the compound, he feared that the fall breeze might carry his voice across the field.

“Checkpoint one’s direct,” a voice crackled from his earpiece. “Attention all units, you’re cleared to follow but not to intercept.”

Way to go, Sinclair,
Carnegie thought.
Be as stupid as you look.

BOOK: At All Costs

6.1Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub

Read Book Download Book

ads