Severe Clear sb-24 Read online

  The man put his foot down.

  Stone watched the clock count down. His mouth was dry, and his hands were sweating. Thirty-seven, thirty-six…

  “Can you stop it?” Rifkin asked the bomb crew chief.

  “Unlikely,” the man said, “but I can try.” He found a screwdriver and began removing screws from the panel.

  “This isn’t going to happen fast enough,” Dino said under his breath.

  Twenty-five, twenty-four, twenty-three… “Give me the jimmy,” the chief said. He accepted the crowbar, placed its edge under the rim of the front panel, and with great force, pried it open. He took hold of the top edge of the panel and put all his weight into bending it down to the perpendicular. Now some of the inner workings were exposed, including the wiring. The chief began sorting through a bundle of wires. “Most of these do nothing,” he said. “They’re camouflage for the active wires.”

  Ten, nine, eight…

  Stone was salivating, now, and he swallowed hard. He thought of his son, Hattie, and Ben. Everyone he loved would die in six seconds. “Dino,” he said, “give me your gun.”

  Dino handed over a snub-nosed. 38. “If you’re going to shoot yourself, shoot me first.”

  Stone raised the revolver. “Out of the way, Chief,” he said, and cocked it for emphasis.

  The chief turned and stared at him. “You can’t-”

  Stone fired twice at the rapidly changing numbers.

  “-do that,” the chief continued. The clock stopped at four seconds. “It might still blow.”

  Then a voice came from the doorway. “I’ve got the key.”

  Mike shoved the chief out of the way, inserted the T-shaped key he had taken from Rick into the slot, and turned it left, ninety degrees.

  Three seconds remained on the clock. The numbers went dark.

  “Okay,” the chief said, “one of those actions worked-I’m not sure which one.”

  Stone handed Dino’s revolver back to him. “Thanks.” He looked around the room for a wastebasket, found one and threw up into it.

  Kelli Keane’s knees gave way, and she fell onto the carpet, out.

  A few minutes later the chief had disconnected everything inside the trunk, and he began to give his audience a tutorial on the device:

  “There’s maybe three kilos of fissionable material,” he was saying. “That would have caused an explosion that would have leveled everything and killed everyone within a two- or three-mile radius. It would also probably have brought the Stone Canyon reservoirs above us down the canyon.”

  “How many dead?” Steve Rifkin asked.

  “A million, maybe two-lots more over a period of weeks and months. It’s simply but ingeniously designed. The builder would have sent drawings of various machined parts to several suppliers, who wouldn’t know the purpose of their work. Then they would have assembled the device in a safe house somewhere. They could have brought it here in a van, a station wagon, even, or a light airplane.” He looked around the room. “Unless we find these people, they could do it again in a matter of weeks.”

  Hamish McCallister’s aircraft stopped at the gate. His briefcase was already in his lap, and the moment the flight attendant opened the door he got up, strode forward, and walked into the boarding tunnel, and looked for the door. It was dead ahead, at the first turn. He opened it and looked outside; no stairs, but a white van with a yellow flashing light on top was parked immediately below. To his right, people with guns were running down the tunnel. Hamish took a deep breath and jumped, landing on top of the van and rolling off onto the tarmac. He got up, opened the passenger door, and got inside.

  Mo was at the wheel, and he drove away quickly. “There’s a gate about a quarter of a mile away,” he said.

  “Are you armed?” Hamish asked.

  “Yes.” He handed Hamish a pistol. “Here’s one for you.”

  “If necessary, shoot anyone who impedes our progress.”

  Mo drove on. A gate loomed ahead, one man in a small guard booth.

  Mo stopped and flashed some sort of ID card. The guard nodded, and the gate slid open slowly.

  “Not too fast,” Hamish said.

  “Right.”

  “Where do we exchange cars?”

  “A couple of miles, at a rest stop on the Van Wyck.”

  “Good.”

  Lance Cabot jumped from the boarding ramp onto the tarmac below, spraining an ankle. He raised his gun to fire, but the van had disappeared behind another airplane. Lance grabbed at the radio on his belt. “Seal the airport,” he said. “Intercept a white van with a yellow flashing light. I need transport at gate ten right now!”

  59

  Lance leaped into the front passenger seat of the black SUV. “Nearest exit gate!” he yelled. Two more of his people, carrying submachine guns, jumped into the backseat.

  “Got it,” the driver replied, stomping on the accelerator.

  “Lights!” Lance yelled, and the car lit up.

  “Gate dead ahead,” the driver said.

  “If that jerk in the booth doesn’t open it, knock the fucking thing down!”

  The driver increased his speed, and the gate rolled open just in time for him to miss it. He screeched to a halt. “Which way?”

  “Van Wyck! They’ve gotta be headed for the city.”

  The driver made the turn and accelerated. “Do we want the NYPD?” he asked.

  “No,” Lance replied, sounding calm but determined. “This guy is ours.” He pointed ahead. “Half a mile up there,” he said. “Flashing yellow light. Turn off our lights.”

  The driver did so.

  “Try not to kill any innocent bystanders,” Lance said, “but I don’t give a shit what you do to the guys in the van.”

  “Look, they’re pulling over,” his driver said.

  “Car switch. Block it!”

  “Got it!” the driver shouted back. The white van had pulled into a rest area behind a black Mercedes. He drove around both vehicles and slid to a halt in front of the Merc. The inside lights were on, revealing two men.

  Lance yanked open his door. “Fire at will!” he shouted, and he hit the pavement with his. 45 semiautomatic pistol up and firing at the Mercedes. His two colleagues opened up with their submachine guns, and the black car’s windscreen evaporated. The two men inside were jumping like puppets on a wire.

  “Cease fire!” Lance yelled. It took a moment, but his two men stopped firing. Lance walked forward, his gun held out, ready for any twitch. His two men yanked open both front doors and inspected the two bloody forms.

  “No pulse or respiration here,” one man said. “Pupils blown.”

  “Same here,” the other man replied.

  Lance raised his radio to his lips. “This is number one. Cleanup crew to the first rest stop on the Van Wyck, flatbed to the same location to take away a black Mercedes. Move it!” Then he leaned against the car and took deep breaths.

  Finally, he got control of himself and produced his cell phone, pressing a speed dial number.

  “Yes?”

  “Number one. Status there?”

  “Pending, estimate six minutes.”

  “Report back.” He ended the connection.

  In Dubai, a gala was under way at the Burj Al Arab, the huge, sail-shaped hotel on a bridge-accessed island off the city.

  A Rolls-Royce glided up to the main doors, and a uniformed doorman opened the rear door.

  Dr. Kharl, dressed in a tuxedo and blinking in the camera lights, put a foot onto the red carpet. As he did so, he was momentarily blinded by an intense red flash, and in the following second his head exploded.

  Lance watched as the bodies were put into a van, and the Mercedes loaded onto a flatbed recovery vehicle.

  “I want the bodies and the car minutely examined for any relevant evidence,” he said. “Get it done.” As he spoke, his cell phone rang. “Number one,” he said.

  “Status report, Dubai,” a voice said.

  “Go ahead.”


  “Subject is down and permanently out. Our executive has left the scene, headed for his departure point.”

  “Let me know when he’s in the air,” Lance said, then hung up. He pressed another speed dial button.

  “Holly Barker.”

  “Scramble,” he said.

  “Scrambled.”

  “The situation is finalized,” Lance said. “Two down and out in New York, bodies being taken to our morgue for postmortems. One down and out in Dubai, our man on his way out of the country.”

  “That sounds like a clean sweep,” Holly said.

  “It doesn’t get any cleaner than this,” Lance replied.

  “Will you call Tom Riley in London and let him know the search for Hamish and Mo is canceled, though I’d still like to have any information about them that he can turn up.”

  “Will do.”

  “The director will be very pleased, Lance. I think you just got a leg up on replacing her.”

  “That would be nice,” Lance said. “Good night.”

  “Good night.”

  Holly hung up, walked across the room, and whispered in Kate Lee’s ear. “It’s done,” she said. “A clean sweep in both New York and Dubai.”

  “And the aftermath?”

  “The bodies in New York are en route to our morgue for postmortem, our man in Dubai is clear.”

  “You know,” Kate said, “I think that this is the most exciting night of my life that I’ll never be able to talk about. I’ll tell the president. You go thank everybody for me.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Holly said, and left the cottage.

  60

  Stone Barrington sat in the study of his cottage at The Arrington, a brandy snifter in his hand. Kelli Keane sat in the chair opposite him; there was a snifter in her hand, too.

  “How are you feeling?” Stone asked.

  “Much better, thanks. You’re going to ask me not to write about this, aren’t you?”

  “I’m going to ask you not to breathe it to a living soul, magazine, news service, publisher, or TV news station for as long as you live. If you can’t accept that, then others will ask you, and less politely.”

  Kelli held up a hand. “I know, I know. Can I ask some questions?”

  “I don’t have all the answers,” Stone replied, “but I’ll do the best I can.”

  “When did you-and those other people, the Secret Service and all-know about the nuclear thing?”

  “Not until the moment you mentioned the trunk,” Stone said. “There had been some very slight indications that something was afoot, but not enough to alter what was happening here for the past couple of days. A thorough search for something as big as a trunk had been conducted, but it seems that the trunk was brought from an airport to The Arrington in a hotel vehicle and deposited in McCallister’s suite without the knowledge of the bell captain, who keeps a log of every piece of luggage brought into the hotel.”

  “Did the explosion at Santa Monica Airport have anything to do with this?”

  “Yes. There were indications of three bombs: one was found by Rifkin’s people in a liquor storage room yesterday. The chief bartender has been arrested in connection with that. A second was found by Mike Freeman in the Strategic Services security monitoring room, and one of his people arrested. The police found a car door at Santa Monica Airport, a hundred yards from the scene of the explosion, that had an Arrington logo painted on it. A hotel employee had checked out the car, and it’s thought that he detonated the third bomb, perhaps accidentally.”

  “What happened to Hamish McCallister?”

  “His flight was directed to land at Kennedy, ostensibly for refueling because of headwinds, but Hamish must have become suspicious, because he ran from the airplane to a waiting car driven by his brother. It’s my understanding that they escaped the airport but were caught nearby and didn’t survive the encounter. Something similar happened to the man who built the bombs.”

  “So all the bad guys are dead?”

  “All except the two who were arrested, Wynken and Nod.”

  “And they’re in jail?”

  “Sort of,” Stone said.

  “What does that mean?”

  “I believe they’re en route to a secure facility. And that’s all I know about this.”

  “Just one more question,” she said. “What made you shoot at the device with Dino’s gun?”

  “I reasoned that if the clock would set off the device, maybe disabling it would stop it from going off.”

  “And that worked?”

  “While you were still… indisposed, I asked the bomb chief about that, and he said the chances were about fifty-fifty that it worked.”

  “So you might have made it go off early?”

  “Four seconds early. Fortunately, Mike Freeman arrived with a key from the bomb found in his surveillance room, and that worked, too.”

  “All right,” she said, “I promise never to communicate what happened here to anybody, ever.”

  “That would be best for you,” Stone said. “No one would corroborate your story. As far as the rest of the world is concerned, the presidents of the United States and Mexico had a highly successful conference, resulting in a comprehensive new security treaty between the two countries, and The Arrington had a hugely successful opening that went incredibly smoothly, without a single hiccup. The concert, too. Be sure and mention in your piece how much you enjoyed Immi Gotham’s encore with Hattie Patrick at the piano.”

  The following morning, Stone sat in the jump seat of the Gulfstream 550 and watched the takeoff. Twenty minutes later they were at forty thousand feet, headed east with a hundred-knot tailwind.

  Stone looked out through the windshield at the clearly etched landscape of the Mojave Desert, dead ahead. “Severe clear,” he heard the captain say. “I love that.”

  I love that, too, Stone said to himself, then he got up and went back to join his friends for brunch and champagne. He took a seat next to Holly Barker.

  “Congratulations on a successful opening,” she said. “I’m sure the hotel will do well.”

  “Mort, the executive director, told me they’re sold out for months ahead,” Stone said. “I think that you and I can both take some pleasure in the fact that your people and mine did a fine job.”

  “I saw the president and the first lady this morning, before they left for the airport,” she said, “and both of them expressed their extreme satisfaction with how things went. They asked me to thank you for your part in it.”

  “Sometimes everything goes right,” Stone said.

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