CHAPTER EIGHTY
“Clusterfuck”
Friday afternoon.
John Bullis arrived at the hospital at two-thirty Friday afternoon. He showed his ID and leather portfolio to the cop and the Fed and was admitted to Otto’s room. Bullis was of medium height and weight with Geraldo--esque brown hair, glasses and a bushy mustache. He wore a light tan cotton sports jacket over khakis, a white shirt open at the neck.
Otto rose from his seat where he’d been watching the news. “Pleased to meet you,” Bullis said, shaking Otto’s hand.
Bullis turned and started to shut the door.
The cop said, “Door has to stay open, Mr. Bullis.”
Bullis framed himself between door and edge. “No it doesn’t. Lawyer/client privilege.” He slipped a surgical mask over his chin and shut the door.
Otto shut the blinds and turned off the lights. It was dark in the room but still visible. Wordlessly they went into the bathroom. Otto turned on the tiny night light by the sink. He turned on the fan, which made a loud mechanical noise.
“You are the fuckin’ bomb, dude!” Bullis said quietly, removing several objects from his briefcase. “I can’t believe I know you!”
“I can’t believe it either. Let’s move”
“Bullis” stripped off his wig, glasses and mustache and handed them to Otto. Kleiser took off his clothes. Otto slapped on the aftershave Kleiser was wearing. Otto’s white cotton turtleneck concealed Kleiser’s tats. They exited the bathroom. Kleiser sat on the bed and Otto sat in the chair. He turned the television to Cajun Pawnbrokers and turned the sound up. Kleiser turned on his laptop and angled it so that Otto could see.
Otto leaned forward and spoke softly. “Dr. Haas usually stops in between four and five. You won’t be able to fool him. What about Bullis?”
Kleiser smiled. “A computer glitch has rerouted Mr. Bullis’ flight to Kansas City. I doubt if he’ll make it here until very late in the evening.”
“Do you know how you’re gonna get out of here?”
“No sweat, Holmes. I’ve done my homework. Do what you gotta.”
“Thanks, Randy.”
“Are you kidding? You the man with the plan!”
They huddled for fifteen minutes going over the plan. Otto put on the white cotton surgical mask that covered the mouth, nose and chin, checked himself in the mirror. They checked each other. Otto opened the door and stepped halfway out.
“I’ll be in touch,” he enunciated carefully and painfully. “You want the door open?”
“Leave it open,” said the fed. Otto walked down the hall to the elevators.
Kleiser opened his laptop and went to work. Fifteen minutes later the fire alarm sounded and the ceiling-mounted sprinkler system turned on. Utter chaos. Two minutes after that, the hospital suffered power failure and was momentarily plunged into darkness.
“Stay where you are!” the fed warned.
“I’m not going anywhere,” Kleiser responded seated placidly in his chair with his laptop open. The fed withdrew muttering into his headset. Kleiser put on a pair of swimming goggles and pulled the tab on the smoke grenade Otto had told him how to make.
Within seconds the room was opaque. Kleiser stood clutching his laptop with his back to the wall just inside the door and when the fed rushed in to save him, slipped out without being noticed.
The generators kicked in when Kleiser was halfway down the staircase. He exited the building into the parking lot along with dozens of employees and visitors, patients being wheeled out on gurneys. He left the hospital grounds as the first fire trucks arrived.
***
CHAPTER EIGHTY-ONE
“Safe House”
Otto had a window of opportunity to return home and grab what he needed before federal agents descended on his mountain. He’d had plenty of time to think out the plan. The battered old Subaru wagon was in the Sav*A*Lot parking lot where Kleiser had left it, the key on top of the left front tire.
Two hours and twenty minutes later Otto drove the exhausted Subaru off his mountain road into the bushes and unlocked the gate to his place. Working his way around the tank trap he came to a pile of two-by-sixes covered with a desert camo tarp. He placed the boards side by side until they completely covered the tank trap leaving him drenched through his shirt and his jaw aching.
He didn’t waste time showering. He went straight to the monster truck, stripping it of its camouflage. He unlocked his gun safe and took what he needed. The truck consisted of an old Dodge Power Wagon mounted above twenty-six inch wheels powered by a twin-turbo small-block Chevy V8 through two differentials to all wheels.
It looked like tens of thousands of monster trucks all over Colorado.
There was no question in Otto’s mind that Hornbuckle had planted a bug. It took him four minutes to find it. Rather than chip away at the epoxy he used a cordless drill to render it inoperable.
Truck loaded with gear he set off down the mountain. Two-and-a-half hours later, he pulled into the strip mall on Colfax housing Casa Bonita. Kleiser emerged from between two vehicles bearing a backpack, climbed up into the truck using the running board and handles.
“Wow,” he said. “Great view from up here.”
“I need this for later but right now we’ve got to drive cross country in something less conspicuous. Any ideas?”
“I boosted that Subaru from Rocky’s Autos. There’s an old Ford we can use.”
“Where?
“At the safe house.” Kleiser gestured toward the restaurant. “You want to get something to eat?”
“I’m still on semi-solids. We need to hit a grocery. I have a list.”
An hour later Kleiser emerged from the King’s Soopers with a shopping cart filled with supplies that they loaded into the truck. Otto drove northwest according to Kleiser’s directions toward Hygiene. In Hygiene, they entered a neighborhood of twisting roads and cul-de-sacs until they came to the address Kleiser had dictated, a rambling two-acre property at the end of Brigham Court. A FOR SALE sign in the front yard named a Denver realtor.
The battered mailbox said “Johnson” in hardware store paste-on letters.
They drove onto the property through the open gate, past the shabby ranch house to an old gray barn. It was dusk and Otto switched on the monster truck’s lights. Leaving the truck idling they climbed down and Kleiser opened the barn’s twin wood doors with a horrendous squeak. The interior was dark and dusty, with old farm implements visible in corners and on the wall. Otto drove the truck inside and parked it next to a battered Ford Taurus SHO covered in dust. Kleiser opened the driver’s door, slid in and released the hood. He got back out, found a trickle charger on a shelf and hooked it up.
“Should be good to go in the morning.”
Otto looked at the plates. They were five years out of date.
“No prob, dude. I got plates in the house.”
“Whose car is this?” Otto said.
“My friend Rich. He owns this place..”
“Who’s Rich?”
“An entrepreneurial type. He invented the computer rat.”
“The rat?”
“Yeah, it’s like a mouse only it sits on the ground and you operate it with your foot. You don’t get that carpal tunnel syndrome. I don’t know how you can avoid the rat, man. He’s been pushing that thing 24/7 for months.”
They carried their groceries into the house through the back door into the kitchen.
Otto went through the darkened house, through the living room where dozens of tiny lights winked at him to the front porch and sat in the rocker. It was the type of shabby genteel neighborhood that fifty years ago represented the American dream. The lots were a little bigger out here and less fussed over with the occasional vehicle visible on blocks; the type of neighborhood where most men had a project car and the women had vegetable gardens.
He heard Kleiser putting the groceries away in the kitchen followed by the thin sound of a classic rock station playing “Black Water.”
Kleiser came out to the porch. “Me and Rich are tight--he lets me use this as a home base. Come on in I’ll show you around.”
No wonder they could never find him, Otto thought. He followed Kleiser into the dark interior, which smelled of dust, stale cat urine and electronics. Tiny lights glowed at him from every corner: red, blue, green, yellow. Kleiser turned on a table lamp. The living room was crammed with servers, routers, hard drives and monitors. It was warm inside. Kleiser went around opening windows.
“Must be a hell of a friend to risk numerous felonies by letting you stay here,” Otto said.
“He’s a good friend. I help him out from time to time.”
“What kind of help?”
“Technical shit.”
“I’ll bet,” Otto said, sitting on the long, low cloth sofa. He picked up a stack of magazines from the dusty side table. The Nov. 12, 2011 issue of
Barron’s
was addressed to Richard Johnson, 14 Brigham Court, Hygiene.
Kleiser went into the kitchen and returned with two Fat Tires. “I got frozen pizza. What do you want, pepperoni or pepperoni?”
“I’ll just have soup. Got a straw?”
Kleiser went back to the kitchen and returned with a straw, which Otto put in his beer.
“Do your neighbors know you’re here?”
“We wave to each other.”
“Can you get into national security from here?”
“Probably. What do you need?”
Otto told him.
“Just let me pop this pizza in the oven and we’ll get started.”
***
CHAPTER EIGHTY-TWO
“Clandestine”
Kagemusha sat on the veranda of his coastal Virginia farm with a Tom Collins in hand, a Tom Clancy on his Nook and feet up on the ottoman, staring out at the blue waters of Chesapeake Bay while Doris fussed in the kitchen. As a young man, Kagemusha had been a field agent in East Berlin tasked with bringing out a Russian scientist, Nikolai Gohnkorov, who had been working on a weapon that caused people to burst into flame at a distance. Gohnkorov had allegedly successfully tested the device on dissidents at Makarov Station above the Arctic Circle.
Kagemusha’s Control had been legendary spymaster George Brodsky, CIA Director under Bush Sr. Brodsky was among the original Cold Warriors including Dulles, McNamara and Kirkpatrick. Their guiding principle was that the Soviet Union was the U.S.’ natural enemy, our greatest enemy, and was to be curtailed, discouraged and resisted on every front.
Operation Wicker Man, as the agency dubbed it, began in the mid-fifties concurrent with secret government programs to develop telepathy, teleportation, and discover alien intelligence. “Black Ops” they used to call them. They’d recruited Control right off the Harvard Quad in his senior year. He’d been active in ROTC--back when Harvard had ROTC--majored in poli sci and minored in Russian.
He’d done two tours of duty in Beirut before being reassigned to Germany, where he received extensive training in spy craft, hand-to-hand combat, improvised explosive devices, spy ware and other tools of the trade. He began a remarkable string of successful missions that soon brought him to Brodsky’s attention. Brodsky flew into Ramstein to personally bring Control up to speed on the Gohnkorov defection.
“The transfer will take place near Neustadt. We will launch a diversion at 0458 a quarter mile north. The diversion will cut power to the fence. You’ll have a twenty-minute window to get your man across. He’ll come alone. He’ll wear a ghillie suit. Here are the particulars.” Brodsky handed him a thick white manila envelope with TOP SECRET stamped in red.
“You’re a young man with a great deal of promise, Brubaker,” Brodsky told him. “I’ve got my eye on you.”
“Yes sir. Thank you sir.”
Three nights later Brubaker found himself freezing his ass off in the tree line in a windbreak on a ridge overlooking a wheat field and beyond that the ten-meter no-man’s-land bordering the fence. Rain limited visibility to the tree line opposite, a quarter klick away. They’d been waiting for just such a night as this. The hurricane fence was eight feet high topped with concertina wire. The fence was electrified. Plowed earth planted with landmines extended ten meters past the fence. A guard tower was just visible a half klick to the north.
Brubaker wore a dark green down-filled parka with the hood up, heavy snowmobile gloves, Schnelling hiking shoes and ski pants and carried an Oakes Night Vision unit, a monocular that weighed four pounds. He also carried a radio but there would be no broadcasts lest he reveal his position. The puncture point was miles from civilization or highways, a fertile valley devoted to hops, wheat and soy production.
He tried walking in place to keep warm and wished he’d brought some of the instant heat packets he’d been offered. His breath hung in front of his face like a word balloon. He checked his watch. Seconds to go.
At exactly 0458 there was a flash to the north followed by a dull whump. A column of flame lit up the sky, toasting the bottoms of the cumulous clouds a marshmallow orange. Brubaker trained his mono on the guard tower. The guy in the tower was trying to phone somebody. He looked frantic. His back was to Brubaker, who retrained his monocular on the field directly before him. Two flashlight blinks--space--followed by a third. Gohnkorov was in position. Now it was Brubaker’s move.
They’d scanned the ground for mines from the trees and from the skies. Brubaker had memorized the route so that he could run it in his sleep. He ran it now, head down, heart pounding, right up to the fence, bolt cutter in hand. He fumbled trying to get the bolt cutter into the first groove but after that it was like slicing salami. The fire to the north burned and burned demanding the attention of the local militia. The lookout had already leaped.
And here came Gohnkorov, breaking from the trees a half klick beyond the fence, wearing his ghillie suit like a great shambling pile of moss, running for the fence.
Then the unthinkable. Rising from the straw and mud like a giant mole an East German op in his own mud-encrusted ghillie bringing up a bizarre apparatus, whipping off a protective tarp and FWOOSH! The flamethrower launched a gout of flame fifty meters, completely enveloping Gohnkorov whose ghillie suit went up like a month-old Christmas tree. He never stood a chance. The screaming would stay with Brubaker forever.
And then, as he watched transfixed, he could have sworn the E. German soldier looked right at him. The barrel rotated his way and Brubaker ran, ran through the rain praying he would make the tree line in time.
As Brubaker collapsed behind the ridge, Ghonkorov exploded.
***