The Last Operation (The Remnants of War Series, Book 1) (35 page)

"Yeah."

"Good to hear it. You're a real trooper. You deserve this little reward. Here's where you get the bacon. Go South on Oxon Hill Road for about a mile. First right you come to is Alley Road. Take it to Industrial Park Drive. Make a left then make your third right. It's a warehouse. Pull into the parking lot and walk into the front door. Its open and I'll be waiting. Remember one thing, if you so much as look at me cross-eyed, all your nasty information goes right to where it'll hurt you the most. I've got you by the short hairs, understand?"

"I understand. There's no problem Richard. We have a deal and I will hold my end of the bargain."

"Glad to hear that, old buddy. Now there's just one more thing."

"What?"

"Don't forget the cash."

Chapter 55

Twenty minutes after Daniels' last phone call, Taylor and Conboy walked up to the door of the warehouse. Baker followed them with the metal suitcase. His eyes flicked back and forth like a serpent's tongue tasting the air, every sense alert. If he had to, he could drop the suitcase and place a five round, nine-millimeter cluster thirty yards away, all under three seconds and neat as a pin.

As they approached, Taylor could see Daniels through the window, sitting on a desk, a cup in his hand. Every bulb was on and the interior of the warehouse was awash in bright white light from the arrays of fluorescents bolted to the high ceiling. He was about to pound on the door when Daniels voice reached him from inside.

"Come on in. Its open."

The three men walked inside the warehouse and stopped. They were in a long rectangular room, empty except for two large planters on both far corners. Plastic palms jutted out from the planters, their artificial leaves bright green like Day-Glo under the white lights. Along the far walls, two doors opened into smaller storage rooms. A couple of newly constructed walls jutted out behind Daniels at ninety degrees to the rear main wall. The new walls started halfway to the top of the ceiling and slanted down at forty-five degree angles until they ended eight foot from the rear wall. The sloping walls had tracks fastened into the sides until they touched the floor. Overhead were stored several large construction sheets of steel and asbestos held in place by metal wires. The air smelled of fresh cement and wet dirt.

Daniels got up and walked around the desk and stopped behind it, facing the three men. He stood between two jutting walls with his back to the rear main wall. The desk surface was clear except for a dozen or so sheets of paper and two computer discs. Daniels' voice echoed in the cavernous empty warehouse as he spoke.

"Evening William. Glad you could make it. Got the cash?"

William Taylor felt a small ripple of fear going through his psyche. Just the tiniest whisper of doubt as he thought how easy this was turning out. But was it really easy or was this the beginning of a chain of blackmail in which Daniels would pull his strings like a puppeteer? It all hinged on the material Daniels held. Taylor felt confident that he had sufficient firepower inside and out to handle whatever Daniels might come up with.

Conboy and Baker moved slightly on either side of Taylor as they faced Daniels across the desk.

"Show him the contents Baker," Taylor said.

Without taking his eyes from Daniels, the young killer brought the suitcase to waist level. He pushed a button on the side and the metal top sprung open revealing an interior filled with tight stacks of thousand dollar bills. Daniels looked at it from across the desk without moving.

"For the moment William, I'll just take your word that it's all there."

"Five millions, like we agreed," said Taylor as he pointed to the papers and computer discs on the table. "Is that the material?"

"That's all of it," replied Daniels, "But first let's review some ground rules. I'm scheduled to make calls every ten minutes until I reach my extraction point later tonight. The calls are taken by one of my people and routed through the latest high tech voice-analysis software. There are specific code words followed by a minimum of five sentences. The software identifies my voice and searches for stress patterns. If I am even moderately upset, packages identical to what you see are immediately mailed to the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and USA Today. In addition the Justice Department, the FBI, the White House, the Senate leaders and House leaders and Committee chairmen each receive a package."

"Richard, I intend to hold my end of the bargain."

Taylor walked the several steps that separated him from the desk. He picked up the papers and began to read. Daniels stepped back until his back was a scant ten inches or so from the main wall. He was within the eight-foot alcove formed by the two sloping walls.

Silence filled the warehouse until it became a thick, tangible presence as Taylor read each sheet. A slight rustling followed as he placed each page down and started the next. Every twenty seconds a drop of water fell from a pipe somewhere in the rear of the warehouse with a plinking noise. Baker was like a silent coiled snake, his eyes steady on Daniels, the metal suitcase now on the ground. Daniels shifted his foot slightly until he felt the raised bump in the cement under the toe of his leather boot.

Taylor finished reading the last sheet of paper. He shuffled through the dozen or so sheets and reread a few paragraphs before he put the stack back down on the desk. Daniels broke the silence first.

"Before we close out our business, I want to know something," Daniels said. "That operation in Mexico you sent me on ten years ago. Was that Rollie's idea to waste the entire team or did that come from you?"

"Roland Washington was an idiot. Too much muscle and not enough brains for the nuances of delicate covert operations. He had orders to kill you all, a tragic but necessary sacrifice for the greater good. He let you live and as a direct result, he died."

For the first time since he had first received Daniels' E-mail, Taylor smiled, a happy, satisfied smile. A small sound escaped his lips, a chuckling sort of low laughter.

"Now about closing our business," Taylor continued, "closing it indeed, a very realistic turn of words. Tell me Richard, have you ever heard the term plausible denial?"

Richard Daniels shifted his weight imperceptibly, the toe of his boot resting lightly on the raised bump in the floor. He stared without answering as Taylor continued.

"You see Richard, plausible denial is a concept we have used for decades. This information, you probably somehow got from one of our technicians on the Bio-Soldier project. We discovered that young man's treachery and terminated him. Our tracks have been well covered on that score. The same thing applies to what happened in Mexico. A bungled operation, tragic casualties to be sure, but nothing that couldn't stand the scrutiny of our covers. As far as your personal notes and memos, they will simply be disregarded as the ramblings of a disillusioned, somewhat psychotic ex-special forces soldier. When this is received, it will be seen as one of a number of interminable attempts to undermine those ascending to power."

Taylor stepped back, his eyes still on Daniels. He stopped when he was a few feet from Baker and continued talking.

"So you see Richard, our business is truly and finally over."

As Taylor turned toward Baker to give him the kill signal, Daniels stepped hard on the switch imbedded in the cement under his foot.

A sharp, cracking explosion burst above Daniels' head. It echoed loud and sudden in the empty warehouse as cables securing three large panels ruptured by explosive bolts. Daniels dropped to the ground as the panels, eight foot by six foot, two inch thick steel, sandwiched between eight-inch thick slabs of hardened asbestos crashed down.

The panels followed the loose guiding tracks on the sloping walls flanking Daniels. As the panels reached the end of the tracks, they slammed into the concrete floor, forming a tight seal. Daniel was now encased inside a sort of lean-to, composed of the two concrete walls, the heavy panels on top and the main wall behind him. The whole thing had taken about one second.

Baker had reacted amazingly quick, but in the wrong direction. The customized weapon had appeared in his grip as if conjured by a magician. He'd pointed it at the upper wall and ceiling where the explosion had occurred. In the second or so it had taken for him to scan overhead and level the weapon back toward Daniels, the heavy panels had smashed into place. Baker turned toward William Taylor who had taken a jumping step backward. He opened his mouth, but before any sound could come out, there came four simultaneous explosions.

The first two explosions detonated tubes of C-4 coated, Thermite heat explosive that had been secured within the two twenty five gallon drums that Bobby-Ray had purchased from the Alabama Militia. The two drums were hidden inside the planters on opposite sides of the warehouse.

The drums were filled with napalm, jellied gasoline.

Two tremendous fireballs erupted from both sides of the warehouse with devastating force. The orange fiery clouds instantly reached temperatures of thousands of degrees and pushed waves of scorching air in front of them at near supersonic speed. It would be impossible to know what William Taylor, Conboy and Baker felt as the intense searing heat consumed their bodies, changing all flesh and fluids to gaseous matters in a blinding second.

The force of the fireball blew out all the windows and doors of the warehouse. Great spires of incandescent flames erupted up to fifty feet from every apertures of the building in glowing tongues that overshadowed the bright lights of the parking lot. Chunks of roofing materials were propelled upward, erupting like a volcano under the pressure of the fireball within. A thick cloud of black smoke billowed out like a noxious mushroom. The booming noise of the explosion rolled over the peaceful suburbs as the covert assassination teams outside scrambled away from the sudden inferno.

The heat was so intense that the steel girders melted, the concrete collapsed and any material less tenuous dissolved into gas and molten liquid. By the time the first fire unit arrived some ten or twelve minutes later, the warehouse had collapsed, turned itself into piles of giant white hot flaming rubble.

The investigations that followed found only the barest traces of human remains. It was known that William Taylor, nominated to be America's first Czar of the new combined intelligence cabinet, had died within the conflagration. His car had remained in the parking lot and witnesses in the agency had reported his movements. Outside of that, precious little information was uncovered and for years the investigation went nowhere until it was quietly shelved.

Conspiracy buffs would gleefully seize on the case for years to come, linking it to everything from international terrorism to UFO's and the Kennedy assassination.

Inside the concrete, steel and asbestos lean-to, Richard Daniels was protected from the initial fireball. This protection however, could only last five or six seconds under the intense heat.

It was all that Daniels needed.

Chapter 56

There'd actually been four explosions, all simultaneous. The first two detonated the drums filled with napalm, the third had been the Primacord woven into the cinderblock behind Daniels, the main wall of the lean-to. A five-foot high by three foot wide oval appeared as the hollow concrete crumbled under the explosive charge. Daniels dove through the opening as the fireball raged outside his temporary shelter. He dove into the adjoining small storage room through the blasted opening and into the results of the fourth explosion.