The Artifact (25 page)

Andrea began wheeling toward Sammy’s car parked in a handicapped space nearby. “Come on, Sam, they’ll be slowed by traffic, we can follow.”

Sammy ran ahead to his SAAB, and was standing beside it with hands on hips frowning at his right rear tire when Andy arrived, breathless, from jolting along the cement path. “Open the door,” she told him.

“Might as well. It’ll take me a while to fix the flat.”

On the way back to her condo, they agreed that Callaghan had not only been lying to keep the artifact secret, but was personally involved in its theft. Since he was now the single best lead they had, Andy called Ft. Bragg again, this time posing as the general’s mother, anxious to learn the whereabouts of her son because his father had just had a stroke. She was finally put through to Callaghan’s battalion adjutant, who reluctantly divulged that his boss had ordered his early retirement kept from the media and their annoying questions regarding the artifact theft. Where he had gone was anyone’s guess, but if he or Major Geoff contacted Bragg again, the acting battalion commander would have him call home immediately.

It sounded as though Geoff had accompanied Callaghan to wherever they had gone, and might be on their way to their artifact hideout. Sammy reasoned the thieves had probably picked some remote location from which to await verification of the artifact contents by experts and avoid the curiosity of inquisitive neighbors. Geoff’s army pilot’s license would enable the two officers to fly direct to that site without the encumbrance of commercial airline schedules, rental cars and stopovers.

Sam used her condo phone and Andy her cell, to canvass private airports around DC to determine if Geoff had chartered or kept a plane there. When they had exhausted the private facilities in the area, Sam suggested that Andy call Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland, about 15 miles southeast of the Capital, using the same subterfuge with the dispatcher there as she had at Ft. Bragg. Her inquiry regarding Geoff’s flight plan was met with a sympathetic response to Callaghan’s father’s stroke, asserting that the Army Major had filed Machias, Maine as his destination.

That evening, they watched the retrospective of the twenty-three year news career of Andrea Madigan, aired as a low-key half hour simulcast program by most of the major news networks in the country. In deference to the tragic end to her renowned contribution to investigative reporting spanning almost a quarter of a century, competitive news organizations ran her video narrative in a positive mode, concentrating on the highlights of her exclusive interviews with national and international politicians, dictators, military personnel and celebrities. Most stations offered only a brief rationale for the Madigan program, stating that illness had forced her to leave the profession, with best wishes for good health and luck in the future.

The exception to this upbeat, congratulatory attitude was her own network, NNC, who not only reported that Andrea had been fired for irresponsible on-air comments, but had a mysterious, debilitating terminal disease, accompanied by a series of unflattering still photos of Andy in her wheelchair coming and going from her condominium and doctor’s appointments at the hospital

“That bastard,” Sammy said.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Machias, ME

November 2004

When he heard the distinctive whupp, whupps of the approaching helicopter, Callaghan issued several instructions, including an order to extinguish all the lights in the house. Then sent Franks out to the front porch to observe the landing, and the two gray figures silhouetted by a beam of light sweeping a narrow path before them as they approached the house across the covering of pristine snow. The ex-airborne trooper put down his M-16 rifle as Samarri ordered, when he realized Sammy was advancing toward him with an Uzi machine pistol prodding his back, one hand on his head, the flashlight in the other.

The trio entered the living room, and the wild-eyed Iraqi pushed Sammy against the parlor wall, ordering Callaghan, Alvarez and two other troopers to turn on the lights, drop their weapons and lie on the floor.

“Madigan’s in the chopper?” Callaghan asked from his prone position.

Sam turned to face his captor, Sadiq Samarri. “I need to get her in here before she freezes!”

The Iraqi jabbed Sam in the ribs with the barrel of his Uzi. “Shut mouth!” He kicked Callaghan in the head. “Where is artifact?”

Sammy’s brain had been reeling for the past five hours since he had used his Marine Corps reserve pilot’s license rated for fixed wing and the helicopters he had flown in the Gulf War to charter the six-passenger Sikorsky S-76C+ on open-end contract from Butler Aviation at National Airport.

After filling out the rental forms and checking the aircraft, Sammy went back to his car to get Andy, who had insisted on going with him despite her wheelchair confinement. When he approached his SAAB he noticed a distressed expression on the usually composed face of the investigative reporter in the passenger seat. It wasn’t until he leaned down to her open window that the gunman on the floor of the rear compartment raised his head. Sadiq Samarri pressed his automatic to the back of Andrea’s neck as he spoke to Sam. “Get in car.”

Sammy felt a presence behind him and turned to confront the anxious visage of Amar Razzaq, his right hand bulging meaningfully in the pocket of his black raincoat.

“You must know our beliefs,” Razzaq said. “If you resist or call out we kill you, then ourselves to the praise of Allah.”

Andrea had sized up the situation as soon as the dark-skinned, mustachioed men had approached, but could do nothing more than frown and bite her lip. When Sam got into the car behind the wheel, Razzaq joined his partner in the back seat. Samarri threatened Andy with a curved eight-inch blade forcing Sam to reveal Callaghan’s destination and his own plans to follow him. Razzaq called an associate on his cell, speaking rapidly in Farsi. The only words Sam recognized in the short conversation were ‘Machias,’ then the repeated the cities of ‘Augusta’ and ‘Bangor,’ leading to his assumption that the Iraqi had called for reinforcements to meet them in Maine.

The two Arabs followed Sam and Andy into the chain-link enclosure where Sammy explained to the manager the unexpected addition of two more passengers. After takeoff, buckled in the two center seats of the helicopter, the Iraqis demanded silence from their hostages, occasionally uttering terse comments to one another in Arabic.

It was dark when Sammy touched down at 1730 at the Machias airfield, just before the manager turned the lights out and closed the office. When Sam inquired about Geoff’s recent flight in, the airfield manager pointed to the four-passenger single-wing Cessna tied down on the tarmac banked with cleared snow from an earlier storm. He accepted Sammy’s allusion to a weekend army reunion without suspicion and gave Sammy directions to the secluded farmhouse occupied by friends that Geoff and his tall passenger had been visiting off and on for the past several months. Assured that there was an open field near the house on which a helicopter could land, Sammy took off again for the secluded retreat of the artifact thieves.

The chopper hovered over the clearing next to the old farmhouse as Sam inspected the snow-covered ground in the harsh glare of its landing lights before setting the aircraft down two hundred yards from the sturdy old structure of white clapboards to which compatible additions had been attached over the years. The Iraqis were clear and quick in what they were about. Samarri made a brief phone call, then instructed Sam to shut down the engine and precede him into the farmhouse. Razzaq remained in the chopper with Andy.

Eddie DiBiasio had known that the guards at the entrance to Arlington would have prevented them from following Sammy’s car into the Cemetery even if the roadblocks around it did not. He had instructed Johnny Shiv to circle the area until the internment of the Preacher Lady seemed complete, then follow the GPS homing device in Andrea’s wheelchair that lead them to National Airport.

Eddie told Johnnie to keep an eye on the Madigan woman in Simkowski’s black SAAB parked at the private Butler facility while he followed Sammy into the Butler office where he overheard his negotiation for a helicopter rental to Machias, Maine. From the office window, he observed the Iraqis accosting the two news people in the SAAB, then shepherding them back through the gates. Eddie made his second call that day to his uncle Vinnie requesting the immediate availability of a local pilot and plane from that facility. His third phone call was made from the right-hand seat of a Cessna Skyhawk to request several Mafioso in northern Maine to meet him as soon as possible at the Machias airfield with appropriate transportation.

In retrospect, Paula Najarian would take full responsibility for allowing her agents to concentrate on looking in the gay world for their elusive quarry and failure to pursue more aggressively the false flight plan filed by Geoff from Grannis Field in Fayetteville, NC to Augusta, Georgia, where her local agents had reached a dead end.

In her intensive search for the ex-army officers, she had simultaneously thrown a broad net over every mode of public, commercial and private transportation facility in the northeast, concentrating on the few known habitats of Callaghan and Geoff to no avail. They were both professional career soldiers whose social life seemed limited to military functions, whose hobbies consisted of competing on the Ft. Bragg rifle and pistol team and occasional fishing trips off the outer banks of North Carolina.

Their virtual inseparability on the fort, in the officers’ mess and elsewhere on base became evident, as did their apparent caution in never leaving the base together. The assertion of Geoff’s landlord that a man of Callaghan’s description had visited his tenant regularly, supported the early presumption that the two men were lovers. Paula’s gut intuition, however, demanded a deeper background profile of Callaghan’s personal life, which revealed a brief, though childless marriage in his twenties, and several close, relatively long-term female relationships, the most recent ending the previous year. This information derailed their assumed homosexuality of the general, and clarified his relationship to Geoff, who apparently remained a closet gay in the army under the prevailing concept, ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ and Callaghan’s protection thereof. As it was, Paula’s frustration and anger were mounting with the uneasy feeling that her efforts were quite a few steps behind the general: if she did not catch up quickly, he would accomplish whatever he had planned for the artifact before she found them.

When she had finally initiated a computer search for Geoff’s past flight plans and found a preponderance of trips to Machias, Maine from Manassas’ Whitman Strip private airport, a few miles off Route 66, south of the Capitol, her spirits had soared from the depths of impotent anger she had experienced upon learning that the agents on the detail to apprehend the Preacher Lady’s killer at Arlington had not been briefed on the priority search for Callaghan.

The day after the funeral, Paula commandeered a Bureau Gulf Stream jet from Dulles Airport in DC that was cleared for takeoff at 1630 with a team of twelve SWAT agents. During their flight north, she had ordered a dedicated computer team at WFO to conduct a wide-sweep probe of all case elements, which had determined that Samuel Simkowski had chartered a helicopter from Butler Aviation at National Airport and had filed a flight plan for Machias, with a handicapped woman and two other passengers.

Although electronic tracking equipment on the Gulf Stream allowed her to determine the location of Andrea’s cell phone when active, her signal was weak due to either low battery or spotty coverage of her target area. As soon as they were airborne, Paula called ahead to their Bangor office to order all federal agents in the area on alert; to provide them with transportation from Machias; locate the airport manager, real estate brokers or anyone else who could tell them where several men had bought or leased a home in the area within the past two years; and/or specifically, where Geoff or Simkowski had gone after landing that afternoon. She was due to land in twenty minutes.

At the sight of the reflection of their headlights on the chrome bumper of a vehicle ahead on the rutted road through the woods, Johnnie Shiv switched down to the parking lights of the Jeep station wagon, killed the engine and stopped about 50 yards in back of it. A late-model Cadillac sedan behind them carrying six men followed suit. The six Mafiosi emerged from the two vehicles just as a single shot echoed through the cold night air. A battered Peugeot parked beyond the SUV came to life with racing motor, its headlight beams thrusting suddenly into the darkness reaching halfway up the rutted drive toward the house.

Eddie jabbed a fist against Johnny’s bicep. “Stop him.”

The placid-faced ‘made’ mafia soldier flicked his right arm at the ground to slide an eight-inch stiletto into his hand as he jogged hunched over to the left side of the van behind the Peugeot. He looked inside then continued to the little vehicle ahead, pulled the door open and thrust his right hand into the car. He turned off the headlights and engine before bending down to wipe the length of his switchblade on the wet snow, a local Iraqi slumped over the steering wheel.

“The shot came from there,” Eddie told Johnny when he returned, pointing toward the woods to their left with the unlit flashlight. “See what’s up.”

“Zannelli,” Eddie addressed the tall young man standing next to him in Irish tweed cap and double-breasted navy overcoat that reached his ankles. “Check the whirlybird, but quiet-like.”

The young man nodded, pulled a sap from his pocket and trotted up the path. The remaining men in dark car coats and caps gathered around their young leader with somber expressions.

Eddie squinted through the penumbra extending over the treetops of the horizon created by the reflection from the canopy of brilliant stars thousands of miles above on the glistening snow and the impenetrable darkness of thick woods on either side of the road. Six-hundred yards ahead, the silhouette of the farmhouse was enhanced by interior lights streaming through the ground floor windows in elongated patches on the white surface below.