The Tin Man (42 page)

“His internal clock should be running on
our
timetable soon-r-that was programmed when, we convinced him he was in the water for ninety minutes, not the fifteen it actually was. And as soon as that occurs, it will be easy to get the information we need.” Townsend walked over to the rack and
examined the BERP suit hanging there. “You have not succeeded in discovering how it works?” he asked Faulkner.

“I discovered how to plug in the power and turn it on from the outside, and how to keep it recharged,” Faulkner said. “There are sensors inside the helmet that activate functions that are displayed inside. But I’ve got to figure out how to break the code. Well, we can probably get it from him. The way it’s going, you’ll have him babbling like a kid and squawking like a parakeet in no time.”

“There’s no certainty about that,” said Townsend sharply. “These misinformation and psychological techniques are not foolproof. I am relying on
you to
break the code and activate that suit. Masters can then fill in the pieces. You had better get back to work. We’ll discuss our next scene with Masters when that is done.”

He turned to Reingruber.
“Gute Arbeit, Herr Major.”

The major clicked his heels and bowed. “Status of the target?”

“Still under full security, Colonel,” Reingruber replied. “Departure has been delayed because of the explosion at the ranch. Security has been increased slightly, but not with any specially trained forces.”

“We may have to implement Phase Three of our plan after all,” Townsend said. “We must be sure the targets are not in ferry or decommission configuration. The weapons systems must be in maintenance preload status or else we may not be able to upload all the weapons we require.”

“I understand,
Herr Oberst.
Our informants are keeping close scrutiny on the targets at all times. The weapons systems remain in full maintenance preload status, and are not expected to go to ferry status until just prior to departure.”

“Very good,” Townsend said. “Keep me advised. Have you been able to get me confirmation on Mc-Lanahan’s death? Is it accurate that he was killed by a Satan’s Brotherhood member in the Sacramento County Jail?”

“It is accurate,
Herr Oberst.
It has been confirmed. The county coroner pronounced him dead this morning, and a state justice-department official also examined the body as well.”

“But not an independent report? I had hoped for word from an outside source, Major,” Townsend said. “Well, we cannot spare the manpower or risk discovery. But it does not seem he was an important factor in any case—without the suit, simply another desk-bound engineer.”

“I do not understand why we are wasting any time with Masters and his suit, sir,” Reingruber said. “It is not essential to our purposes.”

“Because it represents another profit opportunity for us,” Townsend said. “You need not worry, Major. It will not interfere with our timetable. Masters and his contraption are distractions; at best, the suit will prove to be useful. Your task is to keep careful watch on the targets and advise me as soon as they are ready.”

W
elcome to hell, General.”

Patrick McLanahan opened his eyes, blinking through the pain. He saw Hal Briggs’s face beaming at him. “Where am I?”

“Dead,” Briggs replied. “How do you feel?”

“Dead.” Patrick touched his face gingerly and winced at his broken nose. Briggs helped him sit up on the table. “What happened?”

“What happened was either the most elaborate ruse ever created, or the strangest set of circumstances I’ve ever witnessed, General,” said another voice. Patrick was startled to see Sacramento Police Chief Arthur Barona standing next to him. “I’m still trying to make up my mind which is which.”

“You’re at the county morgue, Patrick,” Briggs said. “We set the whole thing up after we listened to your wiretap tapes and heard Captain Chandler talking to Gregory Townsend—that British guy who confronted you …”

“Townsend got to
Chandler?”
Patrick said.

“Looks like it. He found out about Chandler’s gambling debts, and he got Chandler to grab Jon Masters and the suit. No one’s seen Masters since he was released from jail yesterday morning. He never met his assigned driver.”

“Police security cameras photographed him getting into a car,” Barona added. “We couldn’t identify the driver or the passenger in the car, but we think it must have been Chandler—we haven’t been able to contact him. I notified your legal team of Dr.
Masters’s disappearance, and they contacted your guys Briggs and Wohl at the facility out at the airport.” He looked at Briggs and Wohl suspiciously and said icily, “Colonel Briggs then told me of his plan to spring you from the jail.”

Patrick looked at Briggs, who grinned. “Hey, nobody tries to frame my friends. What we decided was to give the chief your wiretap tapes. Then we let him know of my plan, and he got the sheriff on board. We had Sergeant Wohl dress up as a biker—how’d you like those tattoos?—and we planted him on your floor to ‘kill’ you.”

Patrick felt his nose again. “Good job, Chris. Very realistic.”

“My pleasure, sir,” said Wohl, looking pleased with himself.

“With a little help from some theatrical blood and a mild nerve agent that slowed down your breathing and heart rate enough to pass you off as dead, we got you out of there,” Briggs finished up. “But Jon’s disappeared. If he’s in Townsend’s hands, that’s bad news—we’ve got to find him and Chandler.”

“We can find Townsend,” Patrick said. He struggled shakily to his feet. “He probably took all of Jon’s gadgets away from him so we can’t use them to locate him, but we can use the suit’s tracking system to locate
it.
Assuming Jon stays near the suit.”

“I still find it hard to believe any of this,” Barona said. “The suit Jon Masters created makes the wearer almost invulnerable. He’s part of your team. Why would he go off with it to a guy like Towns-end, who’s got some kind of secret organization? He’s a madman—he was associated with Henri Cazaux, And if it’s his operation that’s attacking the
city and the motorcycle gangs, for what purpose? What’s he up to?”

“We don’t know yet,” said McLanahan. “I was told that Townsend and his so-called Aryan Brigade are not what they appear to be, but my informant died before he could tell me more than that. He’s a dangerous bastard. It’s urgent to locate Jon; that’s where we’ll find Townsend. Hal, I need one of your Pave Hammer tilt-rotors out at McClellan. What’s their maintenance status?”

“They haven’t started yet,” Hal said. “They’re just finishing work on the F-117 Night Hawk stealth fighters out there. Whatever you need, you got.”

“I want one MV-22, armed and ready to fly,” McLanahan said. “I’ll mount a locator unit to find the suit. Once we pinpoint it, we’ll send a Skywalker reconnaissance drone overhead to scope out the hideout, then hit it.”

“Hold it, hold it!” said Barona. “What are you jokers talking about? First of all, McLanahan, you’re not going anywhere, especially not on some secret armed aircraft. If you disappear, my ass is in deep trouble. Second, I can’t allow you to use any of these men, these
commandos
, to stage an operation in the state of California without coordination and permission of the proper authorities. Third …”

“You can stop right there,” McLanahan said. “In case you haven’t figured it out yet, Chief,
we’re
in charge of this operation, and we’re going to do whatever it takes to get our friend back, and that suit. If you continue to tell us what we can’t do, we’ll be happy to lock you in a nice cozy room in some undisclosed location until we’re finished. Or, you can cooperate.”

“Don’t you dare threaten me, mister,” Barona said. “I’m risking my career to help you. But I can’t
stand by and watch you take the law into your own hands.”

Patrick considered it for a moment; then: “All right, Chief. We’ll cooperate as much as possible. Tell us what you want us to do. But you need to know I will not allow anything or anybody to get in the way of this rescue. That’s firm.”

Barona nodded. He spelled out what McLanahan needed to do so that this could look like an officially sanctioned joint law-enforcement operation. Then they all went on the phones to the various agencies, sometimes literally begging for cooperation and clearance. Patrick hung tough, and eventually they got what they needed.

“One more thing, McLanahan, and all of you,” Barona said sternly. “I need results, and I need them right away. My ass is already on the line for you. We could have prevented all this if you’d brought me the wiretaps on Chandler earlier. I’m going to have to explain not only why McLanahan is not in jail, but why he’s not dead as well. I’m going to give you twenty-four hours to wrap this caper up, and then I’m going to the district attorney and attorney general, tell my story, and let the chips fall where they may. If that’s the way I end up, I guarantee you I’ll do everything in my power to fry you all. I’ll come away with an embarrassing bloody nose for trying to cooperate with you—but you: You’ll all be in prison.”

T
hose brutal sons of bitches, Tom Chandler thought.
This
he’d never anticipated. Someone needed to teach those assholes a lesson.

When Chandler had heard that some woman was here to see Jon Masters, he figured it was his wife or girlfriend. He’d make up an excuse, maybe flash his badge, and send her on her way. When it turned out she was a high-ranking company officer, he shifted gears: She might prove useful for putting the pressure on, make a pretty good hostage, someone to help guarantee their safety until they made their escape. But Townsend’s men had different plans for her, once they too learned she was the corporate vice president, and they notified Townsend in Newcastle.

Chandler had listened to the sounds of Kaddiri’s cries echoing through his closed door from the chief-engineer’s room across the corridor until he could stand it no longer. He was barred from the scene, but it took no imagination to work out what was going on. He broke communications silence, picked up the telephone, and called the Newcastle number.

“Hey, Townsend, I am not going to be your goddamn wet nurse for another day.” He was calling from Patrick McLanahan’s office. Outside the office, several of Townsend’s people were hunting through the computer files at the workstations. But the heavy-duty work was going on in the office opposite, where two of the soldiers were busy working
not on computer workstations, but on Helen Kaddiri.

When Townsend learned that the woman Chandler had captured was the company’s vice president—that this was the organization that had developed the astounding weaponproof suit—he had given orders to postpone the evacuation of the R & D center. If threats, torture, or bribes succeeded in pressuring Kaddiri
to
unlock the company’s extensive computer flies, he would have access via the Internet to thousands of companies and government agencies all over the world. One password from Kaddiri—that was all it would take—to open many of the West’s most critical engineering and research files: data on weapons, aircraft, new designs in the pipeline, intelligence information. And there it would be, at Gregory Townsend’s fingertips.

“Your soldiers are going to kill Kaddiri if they keep this up,” Chandler warned. “For Christ’s sake, pull them out of there.”

Townsend was furious. “You are not in charge; Chandler. I am! I must have access to those computer files before we evacuate. I need access long enough to change the password or enter in my own back-door password.”

“We can’t wait. This is Masters and McLanahan’s company. Look at the charges against them! I can hold off the sheriff’s department and DA investigators only so long,” Chandler warned. “In case you’ve forgotten, I’m out of my jurisdiction. What do we do when more investigators show up? And Masters has government military contracts here—we’re likely to have the FBI and the Defense Investigation Service here any minute.”

“Then I’ll turn Kaddiri over to you.
You
get across to her the grave situation she’s in. You get
her to cooperate. Tell her anything you want, but
get that password.”

“You’re going to kill her anyway, aren’t you?” Chandler asked.

“Once I have what I want, Kaddiri is free to leave,” said Townsend. “I prefer not to kill women, but I will do anything necessary to protect my organization. Now go!”

Chandler slammed down the receiver. Bullshit, he thought. Kaddiri was going to die—and probably so was he—the second they got access to those files. In fact, Kaddiri was far more valuable to Townsend than he was. He had twenty thousand dollars waiting for him in a Cayman Islands bank account—not nearly enough. For another hundred thousand it had seemed worth the tricky effort of keeping the DA and the sheriff’s department out of the facility, but now that he’d actually seen Townsend in action, he realized he wasn’t likely to live to get his hands on the money. Past time to get the hell out.

He dialed the number for the Sacramento office of the FBI. It rang once, then a voice with a German accent came on the line: “Who are you trying to call?” He slammed down the receiver. Shit! Towns-end’s men were monitoring all phone calls from the security office. His life span was even shorter than he expected. He had to get a message out to somebody,
fast!

Looking at the phone at McLanahan’s desk, Chandler saw a button marked
WENDY VM.
He picked up the phone and hit the button. It was a direct computerized link to Wendy McLanahan’s voice-mail system—it could not be intercepted or cut off by the security office. He spoke fast into the recording. “This is Tom Chandler. I’m at the Sky Masters research facility at Mather Jetport. Townsend’s men are trying to break into the company’s computers.
You’d better get someone out here, right now, or Helen Kaddiri is dead. There are twelve of Towns-end’s men here. They’re …”