Chicago Assault (10 page)

Megan hadn't returned by supper, so Hawker ate alone, pretending he wasn't disappointed.

When he was done, he returned to his room and called Jacob Montgomery Hayes.

Hayes was both a friend and a business associate.

After Hawker had resigned from the Chicago Police Department because of all the bullshit bureaucracy, Hayes had summoned him to his museumlike lakeside estate in Kenilworth.

It was Hayes's idea that Hawker, who had more than proven himself as a brilliant and merciless terrorist fighter, still had a job to do. All across America, Hayes had reasoned, there were hardworking men sickened by the crime and fear in their own neighborhoods. They wanted to fight back but didn't really know how.

Hayes made Hawker a proposition. If he would agree to become a vigilante, Hayes—America's third richest man—would finance everything.

And Hawker had agreed.

The teaming of Hayes's money and connections with Hawker's firepower had already mounted two successful assaults: one in Florida; the second in Los Angeles.

Now, before he took on Bas Gan Sagart in Chicago, Hawker wanted to tell Hayes of his plans.

Hawker didn't need Hayes's blessings to act. But he might need his help.

Hayes's acid-witted butler, Hendricks, answered the telephone. Hendricks had worked in British intelligence during the war, and Hawker was beginning to realize that the old Englishman served as more than just a manservant around the Hayes estate.

Hawker had a suspicion that much of the tactical information Hayes gave to him actually came from some of Hendrick's old intelligence methods—or even sources.

“Hendricks, old buddy,” Hawker said into the phone. “It's me!”

“How pleasant,” said the cold, formal voice. “But I'm afraid we don't know any ‘me' here, sir, so, if you don't mind we shall hang up.”

“Come on, Hendricks.” Hawker laughed. “It's James.”

“Yes. The manners should have told me as much.”

Hawker's voice grew serious. “I need to talk to Jacob. Can he come to the phone?”

“He's in his study tying bits of hair to a hook, I'm afraid. Deadly serious business.”

“And you can't interrupt him? It's important.”

“Of course we can interrupt him, sir. But we prefer you come in person.” Hendricks hesitated, then added, “The telephone is such a public instrument, you understand.”

Hawker was surprised by the implications. Someone had bugged the phone of one of America's richest men?

“I'll be right out, Hendricks.”

“We shall be waiting on tenterhooks, sir.”

Hawker wrote a note to Megan telling her to wait until he got home, then caught the expressway to Kenilworth.

Hayes's mansion was built of native rock, and set deep within a rolling park of trees at the edge of Lake Michigan. It looked more like a museum than a house. The entire estate was encircled by a high black wrought iron fence.

At the gate, the electronic surveillance system studied him for a moment, and then the gates swung open. Hawker drove slowly down the winding, asphalt drive. There was the nutlike odor of fallen leaves, and the wind carried the smell of wood smoke across the lake.

Hendricks greeted him at the door. He wore a flawless black tuxedo, and Hawker realized that he had never seen him dressed any other way.

“Mr. Hayes is waiting for you, sir,” he said.

“What was that business about the phone, Hank?” Hawker asked as he followed him down the marble hallway. “Does someone have a phone tap on?”

“We will let Mr. Hayes tell you, sir.”

“But you're the one who worked in intelligence, Hank.”

The butler's eyebrows raised slightly. “Is that so? Yes. We had almost forgotten.” Hendricks knocked and opened the study door, announcing Hawker's name as if he were entering a formal ballroom.

Jacob Montgomery Hayes looked up from his fly-tying vise and smiled. He was a chunky, balding man in his early sixties. He wore gold wire-rimmed glasses, and there was a briarwood pipe clenched between his teeth. His clothes all looked like they came right out of an L. L. Bean catalogue. Khaki slacks. Pendelton wool shirt. Vibram-soled walking shoes.

“Going on another fishing trip, Jacob?” Hawker asked as they shook hands.

“James,” he said warmly. “It's good to see you—and convenient, too.”

“Oh?”

Hayes waved Hawker into a leather chair beside the fireplace, then sat down across from him. “Yes, it's convenient because I was going to send you a message tonight, anyway.”

It was one of Hayes's idiosyncrasies. He never called. He always sent a messenger, as if it were the 1890s and the telephone was just a passing fancy.

“What about?” Hawker asked.

Hayes smiled and shook his head. “No, we'll save that for later. You've come to see me, and Hendricks said it was important. How can I help, James?”

Hawker shrugged. “I'm not sure you can. There's a small terrorist organization operating in Chicago, and I'm going to hit them. It's my problem, and I think I can handle it. But since you are the closest thing I have to an employer—as well as being a friend—I thought you should know about it.”

Hawker grinned, trying to make light of what he said next. “Besides, you never know—these guys might get lucky and put me out of commission before the job is done. If that happens, someone should know what's going on. It would take the police a year to run them down legally, and another year to put them away. But, if I fail, the next logical step is to let the authorities know about it. And someone needs to know enough about this terrorist group to talk sensibly to the police.”

Hayes nodded and lighted his pipe. “I see. By all means, tell me about it. It sounds serious.”

So Hawker told him about Beckerman and O'Neil, and about Bas Gan Sagart. Leaving out his own emotional involvement, he even told Hayes about how the Irish Republican Army had sent Megan Parnell after the three renegades.

As Hawker talked, he noticed Hayes grow increasingly interested. He no longer toyed with his pipe, or the deer-hair streamer he had been attaching to a hook. He sat hunched toward Hawker, listening intently, asking only for an occasional clarification about something he didn't understand.

When Hawker had finished, Hayes restuffed his pipe with tobacco from the walnut humidor on his broad desk. He lighted the pipe and exhaled smoke that smelled of maple trees. “Your story interests me more than you might think,” he said. “And I assure you, if there's any way I can help, I will. We will treat it as a joint venture. All of my resources are at your disposal. I will assign Hendricks to get whatever information he can on these people”—his smile was thin and knowing—“not that you require much help when it comes to collecting important data. In fact, on this particular campaign, your sources may be better than ours, and you certainly have more mobility.”

Hawker nodded. “Hendricks didn't say it, but I got the impression someone had a tap on your telephone. Is that why you suddenly lack mobility?”

Hayes looked amused. “Until you stopped by, I didn't know why I lacked mobility. Now it's suddenly very clear to me.”

“I don't follow you, Jacob. What do you mean? Does it have something to do with why you wanted to see me?”

Without answering him, Hayes pulled open a desk drawer and handed Hawker a neatly folded note. It was written in plain, block letters to disguise the handwriting. Hawker read it, shocked.

“They came to the chairman of my corporation,” Hayes explained. “They wanted to see me, but I'm necessarily hard to reach—on a business basis, anyway. When the chairman passed on news of their visit to me, I saw it for what it was: an attempt at extortion thinly disguised as a business offer. We refused them, of course. Hendricks found the note tacked to the front door today. How they got through the security system, not to mention the attack dogs which roam the grounds at night, I'll never know. That's why I wanted to see you, James. I wanted to see if you had any ideas on how to deal with these people.”

“I have plenty of ideas on how to deal with them,” Hawker said between clenched teeth as he read the note for a second time:

Chicago can be a dangerous place for a rich man. No fence can keep out a murderer. You should reconsider our offer. Bas Gan Sagart.

eleven

That night, Hawker carried the same weapons he had taken from the secret cache in the back room of the Ennisfree.

The Colt military .45 was a good weight in the holster on his belt. The Uzi submachine gun, freshly oiled and armed, was behind the seat. From his own small arsenal, he had added two AM-M14 TH3 incendiary hand grenades.

Hawker wore a black Aran Island sweater to keep out the cold, and a black wool watch cap.

Megan Parnell rode beside him, surprisingly calm considering they were about to break into Bas Gan Sagart's heavily armed headquarters. He had warned her more than once that, if they were caught, the chances were slim of them having enough firepower to fight their way out.

Not if Bas Gan Sagart's twenty-man army happened to stumble on them, they wouldn't.

She had acted like she hadn't heard the warning. “I still think it's too early to attack them,” she had said flatly.

“We're not attacking them, damn it, Megan,” Hawker argued. “I just want to get into their headquarters and plant some eavesdropping devices. Hell, I hope we don't have to fire a single shot. Not tonight, anyway. But we need more information. We need to know the specifics about Thomas Galway and Padraic Phelan, the two leaders. Where do they live, by what routes do they travel? And I'd like to hear how their men talk when the two leaders aren't around. If the men aren't happy with Galway and Phelan, Bas Gan Sagart should be an easy nut to crack.”

“It doesn't matter if they're happy,” Megan insisted. “They're all getting rich. That's all they care about—money. And they'll fight to the death for it.”

Hawker had to force himself not to reply. She had a way of infuriating him, and the most infuriating thing of all was, he knew he reacted to her barbs all out of proportion to their intent because he was falling more deeply in love with her.

But more than that, he owed her a great debt.

During her month in Chicago, she had done a professional job of gathering information on the terrorist group. Without drawing any attention to herself, she had uncovered a wealth of valuable data.

She had found out several names and addresses of group members. She had compiled a list of twenty-five businessmen who had been pressured into making payoffs. She had connected four murders and seven fire bombings directly to Bas Gan Sagart.

But the prize of all her work was locating the group's headquarters: a grim, abandoned factory building off Joliet Road on the polluted Des Plaines River.

The one thing she hadn't been able to discover was where the two leaders, Galway and Phelan, lived. She had tried everything, she said, including covering almost every likely street in Chicago by car or on foot.

Their residence remained a mystery.

Hawker couldn't fault her initiative. But that didn't make their relationship any less antagonistic—on Hawker's part, anyway. For Megan seemed to refuse to allow herself to be tricked into any meeting of emotions. Aside from a few tender looks Hawker caught her giving him (her eyes darted away the moment she realized he was observing her), she remained professionally aloof.

Hawker drove in silence. He turned north on Ninety-sixth Avenue, and followed it over the river. The sooty foundry lights reflected dully off the water, as the smokestacks spouted smog.

They rode in Jimmy O'Neil's Mercedes. Hawker had carefully dabbed the license plates with mud so they were unreadable.

There wasn't much chance the police would be looking for O'Neil's car—not this soon, anyway.

But Hawker didn't want to take any chances.

The Bas Gan Sagart headquarters was part of a short chain of deserted steel mills, the corpses of big city industry.

The factories loomed over the narrow side street like canyon walls. In the sweep of headlights, Hawker could see there had been a feeble effort to board the doors. NO TRESPASSING signs had been posted, then partially ripped away by vandals. The windows had been broken out on the first two floors of most of the buildings.

“It's that one,” Megan said, pointing toward the last building in the line. It was set apart from the others, looking like some gigantic abandoned car on its lot of weeds, raw earth, and rusted junk.

“You've been past it before?”

Hawker could see her face in the green glow of the dashboard lights. She nodded. “Twice.”

“In this car?”

“And would I be letting you drive by it again if I had?” She indulged in a private smile. “I'm not dumb, James. Each time, I hired a taxi. The drivers both thought I was quite mad. I had them driving all over this part of Chicago, pretending to be looking for the house of a long-lost relative whose address I'd lost.”

Hawker chuckled. “I've got to stop second-guessing you, Megan. I'm beginning to think you know more about this business than I do.”

“Do you mean you doubted it?” she asked wryly.

Hawker drove past the abandoned factory, noting there was one dim light burning on the second floor. He circled back on Joliet and backed the Mercedes into a quick-sell car lot on a side street.

“When we walk back to the factory, just act like you own the city,” Hawker said to her as he locked the car. “Nothing draws attention faster than someone trying to look innocuous.”

“I think I can handle that.”

“And if a squad car patrols past us, press the Uzi against your hip, so it blends in with your legs as you walk. And if the squad car slows, pretend like we're—”

“Really, James,” she sputtered, “I've been through this sort of thing before.”