Double Blind (47 page)

"Far as I know, that's already part of the game plan. But I'll verify it when I talk with Rustman," the politician assured his old friend genially.

"Then I'm satisfied. Make it happen, and you'll never need to worry about campaign funds again," the wealthy industrialist promised.

Smallsreed turned toward the figure sitting in the shadows, the fearsome chairman of the ICER committee, who simply nodded his head.

"All right then." Regis J. Smallsreed opened his hands in a benevolent gesture. "You've got yourselves a deal."

"But how will you get word to Rustman's team about the changes if you can't find Whatley?" the shadow-man's voice echoed hollowly in the large room.

"Don't worry about that." The veteran congressman smiled broadly. "An old poker player like me's always got an extra ace or two up his sleeve. You just never know when you might need to fix a temporary run of bad luck."

Chapter Forty-six

A beep from the pager on Lt. Colonel John Rustman's belt interrupted him as he methodically cleaned one of his favorite over-and-under shotguns, using a fine-wired brass brush meticulously to loosen the seared gunpowder residues that had collected under the twin extractors.

Frowning, he set the small implement aside, extracted the pager from his belt with his free hand, briefly examined the digital message, and blinked in surprise.

Approximately forty-five minutes later, at precisely twelve noon Pacific standard time, the retired military officer stepped into a phone booth at a gas station located just across the Jasper-Jackson County border, punched in a long-distance number, waited, fed the requested number of quarters into the slot from the open roll in his jacket pocket, and waited again.

"Hello?"

"I got your message," Rustman replied in a neutral voice. "What's up?

"We have a change in plans," Regis J. Smallsreed announced casually.

Smallsreed surveyed the area surrounding the public phone booth located in the basement of the Longworth House Office Building one more time, making sure no one paid him any special attention. Then he outlined the new scheme that he, Sam Tisbury, and the chairman of ICER — the notoriously misnamed International Commission for Environmental Restoration — had agreed upon earlier.

After going through the new plan in some detail, Smallsreed paused for a moment, then asked, "What do you think?"

"No problem at our end," Rustman replied cautiously. "But what happened to our mutual friend?"

Translation: "Why isn't Simon Whatley making this contact, in person, the way we agreed, instead of you — which is a risky idea under the best of circumstances?"

"We don't know where he is."

"What?"

As a highly competent and experienced combat officer long accustomed to recognizing—and reacting to — potentially hazardous situations at a moment's notice, Lt. Colonel John Rustman immediately realized that Simon Whatley's disappearance posed a significant threat to his operation . . . and to his men.

"I have no reason to think it's serious . . . yet," Smallsreed cautioned the other man. "There were scheduling problems with his flight to DC this morning, and he might have missed one of the connections."

"But he hasn't called in."

It wasn't so much a question as an accusation.

"No, he hasn't," Smallsreed admitted.

Rustman slowly inhaled, then released a deep breath.

"We need to find him, immediately," he insisted after a moment's reflection on the impact Whatley's defection could have on the remaining years of his life. It had already occurred to him that Smallsreed probably didn't know about the summary execution of Lou Eliot; otherwise, he wouldn't be nearly so calm about his underling's disappearance.

"Yes, we do need to find him . . . and we will," the powerful congressman hastened to reassure Rustman while he continually scanned the public access area around the isolated phone booth. "But in the meantime, we need to put the new plan into motion right away."

Rustman hesitated.

"Are you sure that's wise right now?" he finally asked.

"Yes, I am . . . financially and otherwise."

Smallsreed's insistence certainly arose from his awareness of Sam Tisbury's promise of political funding, not to mention the deadly consequences that would befall him if he failed to meet his promises to Aldridge Hammond, the shadow-dwelling chairman of the ICER committee.

However, Lt. Colonel John Rustman considered quite different consequences — such as the financial impact of the loss of Smallsreed's operational payout on his future retirement plans. While significant, however, it paled beside the thought of spending the rest of his life on the run from federal or state prosecution for the murder of Lou Eliot.

Even though they approached it from two quite different standpoints, both men realized that, in the context of the financial issues and otherwise, Simon Whatley had become a very expendable resource.

Resolving the expendable part was easy.

But they had to find him first.

"How do you intend to handle it?" Rustman finally asked.

"What?"

"The search."

Meaning don't sic a private investigative agency — much less a federal government law-enforcement agency — on Whatley, because even if he didn't talk, someone was bound to make the connection.

"We'll handle it in-house," Smallsreed replied evenly.

"What does that mean?"

The congressman sighed heavily.

"It means" — an audible edge crept into his gravelly voice — "that if the members of my Washington Office staff would like to remain attached to the public tit, then they'd better find the son of a bitch before I do."

It took Rustman another three hours to arrange a face-to-face meeting with Wintersole.

They sat sheltered in a small grove of evergreen trees and undergrowth on a low hill overlooking the Chosen Brigade's hidden training compound. The Army Ranger first sergeant listened carefully as Rustman detailed the change in plans.

"We can handle our end just fine," he assured Rustman when the latter concluded his recitation. "Fact is, the new plan makes everything a lot easier all the way around. Only problem is, we're still waiting for those agent profiles."

That final remark brought Rustman's head up in surprise.

"Did you remind Whatley?"

"I sent him two separate messages through the drop box," Wintersole reported. "One last Thursday, then a reminder with the surveillance photos over the weekend. Haven't gotten a thing back."

Rustman cursed, and then considered this latest revelation carefully.

"Do you really need the profiles?" he finally asked.

Wintersole shrugged. "We do if we want to be sure about Lightstone. Based on that 'male white, medium height, medium weight' description, we can narrow it down to one out of two, but we've got a lot of bonus money riding on that videotape," the hunter-killer team leader reminded him. "It'd be nice to have a photo confirmation before we set something into motion we can't stop or correct."

"I'll see what I can do," Rustman promised.

Wintersole nodded agreeably, then stared at the narrow valley for a long moment before turning back to his trusted commander.

"What are we going to do about Whatley?"

Wintersole asked the question knowing he and Rustman would be the first ones hunted down if Whatley had lost his nerve and run to the FBI. And neither man maintained any illusions of their limited ability simply to disappear into the countryside. If Whatley talked, both of them — along with the rest of their rogue team — would immediately become the targets of nearly a million federal, state, and local law- enforcement officers, not to mention the more focused and very personal targets of the US Army Ranger MP teams, who would not take kindly to the assault on their own hard-earned reputations.

If Whatley had talked, or intended to, they needed to get out of the country . . . fast.

But to do that, they needed the money — which meant they needed Whatley and his access to the payoff and bonus accounts.

"Smallsreed says not to worry about it," Rustman replied. "He intends to find the son of a bitch himself."

"You think he can?"

"I think a man like Regis J. Smallsreed can do damned near anything he wants to do, especially to save his own ass."

"But does he know his ass is on the line?" Wintersole asked pointedly.

"Oh, I think the congressman understands that very clearly." Rustman nodded his head solemnly, a deadly look narrowing his eyes. "Very clearly, indeed."

Wintersole waited until Rustman disappeared. Then he took the long, narrow, and winding path down to the training compound where, one by one, he contacted the members of his team and relayed the change in plans and related instructions.

Set the bait tonight, at 2100 hours.

Spring the trap tonight, at 2300 hours.

Note the important change in plans: unless absolutely unavoidable, do not kill the agents.

Withdraw all escape-route sets of explosives except one for use in the planned obliteration of the Chosen Brigade's compound.

And under no circumstances harm the female agent or either of the two medium height, medium weight, male Caucasian agents tentatively identified as Henry Lightstone. They needed them to earn the bonus.

One by one, the members of the hunter-killer recon team at the training compound withdrew to their new assignments, until finally only Wintersole and the man he knew as Henry Randolph Lee remained with his nearly exhausted — but still visibly enthusiastic — students.

Wintersole waited until the almost-too-painful-to-watch session finally ended with some futile attempts by the trainees to apply some of their new skills against each other. Then he walked into the open-sided barn as the members of the Chosen Brigade of the Seventh Seal began staggering down the hill toward their waiting trucks.

"Well, how did it go?" Wintersole asked as he helped his new martial-arts instructor roll the mats into the center of the open barn.

"Pretty much the way you thought it would," Lightstone admitted with a wry smile. "The only ones with decent potential are the two kids. They need more discipline, but that will come with the training. The rest of them will be lucky if they make it all the way through the course without making a couple trips to the emergency room."

"They are a pretty sad lot," the hunter-killer recon team leader conceded thoughtfully.

"You know, I really don't get it," Lightstone ventured as he covered the mats with a waterproof tarp.

"What?"

"You said these guys plan to confront the feds someday. That's a joke, right?"

"You don't think they can pull it off?" A slight smile appeared on Wintersole lips.

"Pull it off? Are you kidding?" Lightstone scoffed. "They might be able to hold their own against a bunch of paper-pushing federal bureaucrats . . . if you could limit the fight to paper targets and theoretical bullshit. But if you're talking about them facing down a bunch of federal agents — or even regular police officers, for that matter — it wouldn't even be funny. More like suicide, if you ask me."

"Then maybe what we really need to do is open their eyes a bit, in terms of the real world," the hunter-killer recon team leader suggested.

Henry Lightstone eyed his new employer.

"I take it you have something in mind?"

"As it turns out, I've got an interesting field exercise planned for this evening," Wintersole explained. "Something my associates and I dreamed up the other night to give these people a little better grasp of reality. It's a little complicated, and we could use some help with the logistics if you're free tonight."

"Well . . ."

"And if you do have other plans for this evening," — the hunter-killer team leader smiled knowingly — "you might be interested to know that our employer authorized a thousand-dollar bonus for each participating instructor."

"A thousand dollars?" Lightstone blinked. "What would you expect me to do? Shoot a couple of those jokers?"

Wintersole chuckled. "Actually, something a little less violent, but equally instructive."

"No actual wounds. Just scare the hell out of them?"

"Something like that."

"But a thousand dollars for one night's work?" Lightstone pressed, remembering to stay in character. A thousand dollars was a hell of a lot of money for a man supposedly in between jobs who had just spent a goodly amount of his reserve funds on a used motorcycle.

"Actually, probably only five or six hours, max. I plan to start at 2100, sharp, and finish around 0200 in the morning. Payment in cash, on the spot, assuming everything goes okay," Wintersole added helpfully.

Lightstone smiled.

"Where do I go, and what time should I be there?"

"Be at the entrance to their main compound at, oh, say 2000 hours — 8:00 P.M. I think that would work out just about right. Plan on doing a lot of moving around in the dark, minimal noise, maximum concealment, then all of a sudden popping up out of nowhere to mess with their minds, that sort of thing. We'd be looking for you to take a couple of them out of the picture silently with some quick take-downs and choke-outs if you can get into the right position. Basic psy-ops stuff. Make them sweat a little when their teammates start disappearing, and they don't know why. You ever use any night-vision gear?"

Lightstone shook his head. "Nope. Matter of fact, I don't think I've ever even seen any night-vision gear."

"No sweat. The new-generation stuff is real easy to use. We'll run you through the drill, get you qualified in fifteen minutes. Just make sure you bring a good pair of boots — high-tops if you've got 'em, lot of rocks and holes in the area where we set this up — wool socks, gloves, long johns, and a warm jacket. We'll supply everything else."

"Why do I get the strange feeling I'm being recruited?"

Wintersole smiled. "By the Brigade, or by us?"

"All things considered, I'll be a hell of a lot safer working with you. Especially if these Chosen Brigade characters are really serious about taking on the feds."