the Plan (1995) (44 page)

Chapter
61.

THE BIG HOWARD JOHNSON'S

THE PHOTO ALBUMS WERE ON THE COFFEE TABLE IN MIsha's sitting room and Lucinda flipped through them while Kaz, Cole, and Ryan moved through the house looking for the missing contents of the Haliburton suitcase. There were lots of shots of the grandchildren. Somebody, probably Misha, had written an identifying line under each one and dated it.

The photos were well organized. On a whim, Lucinda started searching for the album that contained pictures taken in 1971. She found it in its logical place, between 1970 and 1972. It started with January but she skipped to March, the month the trial had taken place, where she saw a handwritten caption that said, "Gav builds 'crooked' pillars after Lansky trial." These shots showed Gavriel Bach stripped to the waist and grinning at the camera. In several pictures, he was troweling concrete onto a large pedestal at the head of the drive, next to the house. Lucinda moved with the album out into the living room. She could hear the men somewhere in the house, opening and closing drawers.

"Could you guys come here a minute . . . ?" she called. Ryan came first, moving out of a guest room. "What is it?"

"I may have found something," she said.

Within seconds, they had all gathered in the living room. Lucinda held the open photo album out to them.

"These were taken right after the trial."

They huddled around the album and looked at the photographs of Gay working on the pedestal.

Kaz was already moving to retrieve the empty Haliburton suitcase from the pantry where Ryan had left it. He returned with it and set it on the coffee table, opened it, and started to look carefully at the inside.

"What're you doing?" Ryan asked.

"If he took the tapes out of here and put them into that pedestal, I was wondering if he got any plaster dust in here." Kaz licked his finger and pressed it on several specks of white powder in the bottom of the case. He pulled his finger out and showed it to the others. "Like this . . ."

They all smiled at Lucinda.

"Pretty damn sharp, honey," Kaz said and Lucinda blushed. Cole had seen some tools in the garage and he and Kaz went off to get them. Ryan was waiting at the open front door. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw movement. He swung just in time to catch a glimpse of a man in a white shirt and khaki shorts running down the drive. Kaz and Cole reappeared with a. hammer and tire iron.

"Somebody was just here. I saw him running down the driveway," Ryan said.

"What'd he look like? Was it the guy in the ball cap?" Kaz asked.

"I hardly saw him. He looked slender. . . . In a T-shirt and shorts."

"Let's go check it out," Cole said.

"No," Kaz said softly. "Always assume the worst. That way we don't get surprised. Let's assume we were followed from Jerusalem. If we go down there, they're gonna know we saw him and we're gonna lose what little advantage we have. Hang on a minute." He moved to the taxi and started to look at it carefully. When he got to the front , he saw a handprint on the dusty chrome bumper. Kaz lay down on his back and slid under the car to examine the frame. Wedged in next to the gas tank, he saw about two pounds of plastic explosives connected to a detonator. He carefully reached up and pulled the detonator out of the plastic. It was a sophisticated radio unit with a "hot" wire that ran into the explosives. Kaz took his beeper off his belt. It was a state-of-the-art satellite communication system used by the federal government. He had stolen it when he'd been fired and faithfully replaced the battery every two weeks. It had never rung, but he was ready if they ever needed him. He knew it was stupid but it felt good riding on his hip. He removed the back of the instrument, yanked the hot wire off the detonator and twisted it onto the battery pole of his beeper. He pushed his beeper and the wire back into the plastic, shoved the detonator into his pants pocket, and shinnied out from under the car.

"Find anything?" Cole asked.

"Nope. Let's get that pedestal down."

While each took a turn holding the Uzi and scanning the driveway, the others went to work with the hammer and crowbar.

Little by little, they exposed the core of the pedestal. Finally, there was an opening big enough to reach through. Ryan had the longest arm and he stuck his hand down and grabbed hold of a bag, but he couldn't get it through the hole they had made.

"There's something in here," he said. "Get some more bricks out."

They worked until finally the hole was large enough and Ryan could pull out a large canvas sack. They rewarded the find with tight smiles.

"Let'sget inside," Kaz said, his eyes searching the perimeter as they moved back into the house and closed th
e d
oor.

Even with binoculars, the Ghost could see only the front door through a growth of ficus trees on the west side o
f t
he property. He had decided the best way to eliminate all four was to get them into the taxi and take them all out at once. He looked at Yossi Rot and Akmad Jarrar.

"I'm gonna move up and see if we can snipe at them through the windows," the Ghost said. "That oughta get 'em moving. Yossi, once the cab starts to move, blow it. When it goes, we gotta be out of here in seconds."

The Ghost moved to the Mitsubishi, opened the trunk, and took out a blue steel Charter Arms Explorer-II .22-caliber pistol. He thought it was almost as ugly as the old broom-handle Mausers, but the Explorer-II was surprisingly easy to handle. The Ghost liked it because it could be silenced without distorting the shot. He secured the eight-inch silencer onto the threaded barrel, grabbed the twenty-five-shot ramline clip full of dumdums, and slammed it in. Then he attached the scope. He turned his ball cap backward, then jumped the wall, and moved toward the house.

In the living room, they examined the contents of the bag while Kaz kept an eye on the yard through the plate-glass window. The audiotapes, big and unwieldy, were on six-inch plastic reels. Cole remembered the old reel-to-reel odd-size tape recorders from the seventies. There was also some 16-millimeter film on four 800-foot reels. None of it was labeled. Cole held one of the reels up so he could try to see who made them, hoping it was government issue. "I'm really gonna feel like an asshole if these are movies of some kid's birthday party." The light wasn't very good on the far side of the living room, so he moved to the plate-glass window.

Just then, Kaz caught a flash of movement out beyond the pool. Then he saw the Ghost step out from behind a low wall on the far side of the pool with a deadly-looking scoped pistol. Flame shot from the muzzle.

"No!" Kaz yelled, throwing himself in front of Cole, pushing him as the window shattered and they both went down in a shower of glass.

Ryan leaped over the sofa and landed on his bad leg. It crumbled and he rolled on his shoulder. Regaining his feet, he grabbed the draperies and yanked them across the gaping opening, cutting off the Ghost's field of vision.

Cole was sitting up, a puzzled look on his face. He had blood all over him. He looked down at it, dazed, then slowly realized it wasn't his.

Kaz was lying on the floor, his legs splayed out in front of him. Blood was coursing out of a huge hole in his chest. He had taken the .22-caliber dumdum in the back. It had broken up on impact. The fragments traveled through his upper lung at the manufacturer's guaranteed velocity and exited in a five-inch pattern right below his collar bone. The wound was pulsating with thick arterial blood, draining Kaz's life down his shirt and onto the floor. Ryan pulled the Desert Eagle, scrambled to the window, and cracked open drapes. He saw nobody out there.

"Get a towel," Cole screamed, and Lucinda ran to the bathroom and grabbed some bath towels. On her way back., from the hall window she saw the man who had called himself Jerry Paradise running down the driveway, a baseball cap on backward. She ran into the darkened living room and thrust the towels at Cole.

"I saw him running down the driveway! It was him, Ryan. . . . It was Jerry Paradise!"

"Leaking like a Mexican fishing boat, ain't I?" Kaz's speech was coming slowly.

"Why'd you do that? Why'd you do that!" Cole kept saying over and over.

"I ain't gonna make it. Goin' to the big Howard Johnson's . . ."

"Bullshit," Cole said, desperately.

"Get the car into the garage. Get me in . . . I'll smash into 'em. Give you a chance." He was talking throug
h c
lenched teeth.

"No, no, you're going with us," Lucinda said. "Dyin'," Kaz said, slowly. "Got one thing left t
o d
o . . . "

Cole had been in the Marines and there was a moral commandment that you didn't leave a soldier in the field to be scavenged by the enemy.

Kaz knew what Cole was thinking, so he pulled his backup piece and pointed the nine-millimeter Beretta weakly at them. "You get the car." Kaz knew they had one chance to win the game, but he was running out of time. He could feel the strength draining from him. "Do it," he said, thumbing back the hammer.

Ryan looked at the dying ex-fed. Something caught in his throat. He couldn't let Kaz die, but he knew he was powerless to save him. All he could do was grant his last wish.

"I'll get the cab," Ryan said.

"You got a bad leg," Cole said.

"Even with a bum wheel, I'm faster." Ryan knew the keys were still in the taxi, so he threw open the front door and ran the short distance across the drive, keeping the car between him and the bottom of the driveway. His leg was throbbing, but as long as he ran straight, it felt pretty solid. He dove into the cab, got the engine going, then backed it into the open garage, and hit the automatic door closer. The garage door came down, cutting the open drive from view.

The Ghost saw the garage door coming down through his binoculars. He summoned Yossi and Akmad. 'They're gonna be coming out. Get ready."

Yossi held the detonator and they waited.

Ryan and Cole got Kaz into the front seat of the car. He was propped behind the wheel and looked frighteningly pale. When he coughed, blood oozed through the towel they had pressed over the wound.

"Move over, I'm going with you," Ryan said

"Listen, damn it. We got what we came for. Mickey's plan is history." His voice was now a faint whisper. They had to lean in to hear him. "This is for our country," he said proudly.

They could take his badge and his life's work, but the
y w
ould never change what he was inside. He just wanted good to triumph over evil.

"Let's get it done." He faced forward, leaning against the door as Cole turned the ignition. Then, with the taxi idling, Kaz looked at Lucinda. "Gimme your cell," he croaked. There was a death rattle now. His lungs were filling with blood.

She handed him the phone and he punched in the area code and the number for his beeper which was jammed into the C4 directly under him. "That's my sister's number. Tell her I love her," he said and hit the send button on the phone. He handed it back to Lucinda and then, with his eyes half-closed, floored the gas pedal and drove right through the wooden garage door, turning it into splinters.

Lucinda could hear the cell phone dialing. She was holding it stupidly in front of her as she watched the taxi speed down the driveway. She heard some clicks and then a cable hiss.

The signal shot through the transatlantic cable at the speed of light.

Kaz drove sloppily, his head spinning, his eyes blurring, his hands numb and lighter than air.

The phone call was relayed in Denver and streaked off toward Las Vegas where it went to the FBI Western Regional Exchange, then was routed up to the Telstar geosynchronous satellite that transmitted to all federal agents working in the Northern Hemisphere.

Kaz saw the Mitsubishi parked with three men standing near it at the end of the driveway. Yossi pointed his detonator at the car and Kaz saw him push the button. Nothing happened.

The Telstar satellite shot its ten-volt message down from space toward Kaz's beeper under the stolen taxi just as it jumped the low curb on the driveway and bounced through the trees heading for the Mitsubishi. The three men were scrambling to get into the car when Kaz accelerated. He T-boned the door, rocking the Mitsubishi up on two wheels. The Ghost raised his Explorer-II and fired a strea m o f .22-caliber yellow jackets into Kaz's face, turning his head to red mist.

"You flicker," the Ghost said, his heart racing. He was wondering what to do next.

The decision had already been made for him.

Kaz's beeper rang.

They felt the concussion all the way across Jaffa Harbor. When the C-4 detonated, it shot fiery parts of both automobiles a thousand feet into the air. Debris was later found a quarter mile from the explosion. . . . But nobody ever found the remains of the Ghost or his associates. And nobody ever found Solomon Leeland Kazorowski. He was gone--off the planet. He was in the crowded bar at the big Howard Johnson's, waiting for his check-in, a smile on his face, having his first Jack Daniel's in ten years.

Chapter
62.

THE BLAST KNOCKED OUT SOME OF THE WINDOWS IN THE
Bach house. Cole and Ryan had watched from the garag
e d
oor. One graphic detail would haunt both of them for th e r est of their lives. High above the colony of houses, th e b lack and green hood of the taxi shimmered in the sun , twisting and turning, caught in a terminal updraft. It kite d o ut over the harbor.