Deadly Dozen: 12 Mysteries/Thrillers (274 page)

Tony traced with one finger an area outlined on the map in red marker and trained his intense stare on Joe-Bob Walton. “What are we looking at here?”

Walton returned Andretti’s stare unblinkingly. “Well, unless I miss my guess, that’s where we’re going to take the Stingers away from the army and make them our own.”

Tony smiled and nodded, and as he did, Dimitrios cleared his throat.

“What is it?” Tony asked.

“Ah, I’m sure you would have considered this,” Dimitrios stammered, “but don’t they deliver those missiles in separate shipments? We might be able to hijack portions of the Stingers Thursday night, but won’t they be useless without all of the pieces?”

“Normally, yes, that is true,” Tony answered, appreciating the question. His men were sharp for soft, spoiled Westerners. “It is rare for Stingers to be shipped intact in one vehicle. In this case, though, the missiles are being delivered in one nearly complete package. This particular transport vehicle will contain everything necessary to fire Stinger missiles with the exception of the guidance system, without which the missiles are useless.”

Dimitiros rubbed the back of his neck and shook his head. “So my question remains the same: What good will they be to us if we have
almost
everything we need?”

Tony chuckled softly. “I said the missiles are useless without the guidance system. I didn’t say we don’t
have
the guidance system. A couple of years ago a similar military transport vehicle was hijacked while driving a similar route between Arizona and Texas. Would anyone care to speculate as to what that truck was carrying?”

A buzz of anticipation filled the room.

“We have the guidance system for the Stinger missiles already,” Joe-Bon said wonderingly.

“Bingo, as you Americans like to say.”

Jackie piped up, his normally high-pitched voice rising a couple of octaves. “So we’re going to use Stinger missiles to shoot down an airplane?”

“That is exactly correct,” Tony answered. “But not just any airplane. The president is flying into Logan International Airport in Boston very early next Sunday morning. We will be removing him from office. Permanently.”

“The president? The president of what?”

“What do you think?”

Stunned silence filled the room as the significance of Tony’s statement began to sink in.

“The President of the United States?” Joe-Bob whispered. “We’re going to shoot down Air Force One?”

Tony’s eyes glittered like hard black diamonds as he turned his cool smile on his small band of revolutionaries—the group that would soon change the course of history. “That is correct. President Cartwright is scheduled to celebrate the reopening of a historic church in Boston, which has been closed for renovations. I have learned that he will be flying into the airport around 5:00 a.m. next Sunday in order to arrive at the church in time to attend a sunrise service. He is then scheduled to lunch in the city with some of his major political contributors before flying back to Washington in early afternoon.

“Of course, as we now know, he will do none of those things, because he will be dead, blown to pieces, lying at the bottom of a smoking hole in the ground just shy of Logan Airport. With a little bit of luck, perhaps people in the city will be killed as well, but that remains to be seen and would only be a bonus.”

Chaos erupted and then died down immediately when Tony help up a hand to silence his men.

Brian shook his head. “But how will we know where the plane is going to be, and when to fire the missile? It’s a big sky up there.”

Tony smiled again. “We’ll know because we’re going to tell the pilot where we want him to go.”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

The full moon shone brightly in the crystal-clear night sky, casting an eerie glow over the scrub brush littering the desert floor. The Arizona landscape was illuminated starkly by the pale moonlight, and although it was past midnight, visibility was close to that of daytime. The Tucson city limits were only few miles northwest, but out here the landscape appeared alien, almost lunar in nature.

Vehicular travel over this portion of the two-lane country road was sparse; most people traveling at this time of night preferred the wide lanes and higher speed limits of the interstate highway following a more or less parallel course just a few miles away.

On this deserted highway, heavy black smoke poured from the scene of a recent automobile accident. Two late-model sedans had collided precisely in the middle of the road, with both cars slewed sideways, apparently from their desperate and unsuccessful last-second attempt at avoiding each other. Now the road was almost completely blocked, with little more than a narrow passageway available on either side.

Two miles east, moving slowly in the direction of the accident, an olive-green military transport truck with a large cargo bed covered by heavy-gauge camouflage canvas lumbered past a roadside billboard advertising
Joanne’s Diner—Bottomless Cup of Coffee with Trucker’s Breakfast Special!
Immediately after the truck rumbled past, two men emerged from behind the sign, walking quickly through the moonlit semidarkness to the center of the highway.

One of the men carried over his shoulder a large Road Closed sign bordered with reflective tape. He placed it in the center of the road, facing east, while the other man carried an armful of orange rubber traffic cones and placed one every six feet along the pavement, moving outward from the large sign in both directions until the entire highway surface was blocked off.

The men worked quickly and efficiently, and inside of forty-five seconds, they had eliminated vehicular access to the crash scene. To the west of the staged auto accident, identical signage had already been erected, complete with rubber cones, blocking access to the four-mile stretch of highway in between.

Their task complete, one of the men pulled a radio from his back pocket and spoke quietly into it. He advised the person on the other end of the call that the transport truck would be arriving at the scene momentarily and that the road was now clear. The entire operation took just over one minute.

The men disappeared into the night behind the billboard.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

“I’m tellin’ ya, the Cubbies are never going to win a World Series.” Private First Class Eric Young pounded his fist on the truck’s steering wheel to emphasize his point to the man in the passenger seat, Private First Class Milt Stanley, who seemed utterly uninterested in the fortunes of the Chicago Cubs, or in anything else Young had to say, for that matter.

“Yeah well,” Stanley said in his distinctive Alabama drawl, “baseball’s a pussy sport, anyway. Who gives a shit about the Cubs? You wanna talk sports, let’s talk Crimson Tide football. Nick Saban’s brought that program back to where they belong, which is on top of the heap in the SEC. They might just be better right now than they have been at any time since the Bear.” He referenced the late, great coach of the University of Alabama football team, Bear Bryant, the way a devout Catholic might discuss the Pope, with awed reverence and maybe a hint of fear.

“You know,” he continued, “I could have played for the Tide if I hadn’t blowed out my knee my senior year of high school.”

Young snorted. “Christ, Milton, you couldn’t have gotten into ‘Bama on the best day you ever had, even considering the virtually nonexistent admissions standards they have for football players, you dumb fuck. I’ll bet you can’t even spell ‘football.’”

Stanley’s expressive black face took on an aggrieved look. “I can spell ‘kick your ass,’” he answered without any real conviction, his attention diverted by what looked like a serious car accident a few hundred yards ahead on the lonely road.

Young slowed the truck as the glare of the headlights brought the scene into focus. There had definitely been a two-car wreck, and it looked as though it must have occurred just moments ago, as acrid black smoke hung thickly in the desert air. It billowed heavily from beneath one or both of the damaged cars.

Standing in front of the accident scene were two men, clearly the drivers of the vehicles that had been involved in the wreck. They were trading punches, completely oblivious to the camouflaged U.S. Army transport truck slowing to a stop a few yards away.

“Just go around these two dumb motherfuckers,” Stanley drawled. “Let them beat the crap out of each other. What the hell do we care?”

“I don’t think I can make it without going off the road and into the desert,” Young answered, “and I don’t really want to take the chance of getting stuck in that sand. If that happens, we’re screwed.”

At that moment, the confrontation between the two men escalated. One caught the other with a roundhouse right and knocked him to the pavement. That man immediately leapt back to his feet, swinging from the heels.

Young reluctantly stopped the truck a few feet away from them. He opened his door, leaving the truck idling, its big diesel engine rumbling softly in the desert night. “What the fuck are you doing?” asked Stanley.

“What does it look like I’m doing? We can’t get around these idiots, so we’re going to have to break up this fight and help them push their cars to the side of the road. It’s either that or be stuck here until one of them kills the other. I like watching mixed martial arts as much as the next guy, but we don’t have time for this.”

Stanley grunted noncommittally.

“You stay here and I’ll be right back,” Young told him, following protocol, which dictated that at least one soldier remain with the vehicle to safeguard its contents at all times. He climbed down out of the cab and approached the two men, barking authoritatively, “Hey!” to get their attention.

It didn’t work, as they continued pounding on each other as if he were not even there.

Young hesitated, placing his hand on his sidearm but leaving it holstered. There was no way on God’s green earth he was going to draw down on two unarmed civilians, especially on two men who didn’t pose any kind of threat, at least not to him. His military training had included nothing even remotely resembling instruction on how to deal with the situation he found himself facing now, and he was unsure how to proceed.

On one hand, this truck and its contents were expected at Fort Bliss, Texas, first thing tomorrow morning, and if it was late getting there, they would catch hell. The circumstances contributing to the late arrival would not be given much consideration, if any.

But on the other hand, getting involved in a fistfight between two civilian motorists would likely be viewed as a mistake in hindsight, especially if he were to injure one of them while trying to break up the fight. And what if one or both of them became belligerent and refused to move their damaged vehicles? What then?

All these considerations ran through Young’s head as he cautiously approached the pair. He considered calling the base for guidance, but finally decided the best thing to do would be to take decisive action and get moving again. It was late, he was tired, and he had no desire to get his ass hauled into the woodshed when he got back to Bliss because he couldn’t decide how to handle a freaking traffic accident.

The problem was these two guys were really going at it. He had mentioned mixed martial arts to Milt and an MMA bout on Pay-Per-View was exactly what the scene resembled. Fists were flying. Now that he was up close, Young could see that both guys were pretty good-sized dudes. Young reluctantly waved Stanley down from the cab to help him subdue the two guys, since it was patently obvious he couldn’t take them both himself, at least not without drawing his weapon, which he had already determined would be a very bad career move.

With Stanley’s help, though, these two clowns would be disabled in a matter of seconds—his partner was six foot six and two hundred eighty pounds of sculpted muscle. Young had no idea whether Stanley had actually received a scholarship offer from Alabama or not, but he was definitely big enough to have been one hell of a football player.

Scowling, Stanley climbed down from the truck’s cab. “Goddamn it, let’s get the fuck out of here,” he complained. As he strode up next to Young, both of them roughly five feet from the fighting motorists, the two men suddenly stopped trading haymakers and pulled semiautomatic pistols from behind their backs, turning in unison and facing the two young Army privates.