Homeland Terror

3

McLean, Virginia

Three hundred yards from the lean-to rooftop where Edgar Byrnes lay peering through the night-vision scope of his M-136 AT-4 rocket launcher, Roberta Williamson was finishing another routine workday on the sixth floor of CIA headquarters. Yes, she’d put in overtime, but that was the norm for her these days. She’d only been at the Langley facility ten months, and she still felt the need to do extra work to prove herself worthy of the promotion she’d received after five years of field work with the Agency’s Paris bureau. She was now an intercept analyst for the Company’s counterterrorism division, part of a thirteen-person team charged with ferreting out communication links between al Qaeda sleeper cells in the States and their overseas contacts. It was demanding work, but Williamson loved the challenge.

For Williamson, the biggest downside to her job was its sedentary nature. She’d put on twelve pounds since reporting to Langley, and long hours at the desk had given her lower-back problems, as well. She knew more exercise would help on both fronts and she tried, whenever possible, to leave time at the end of the day to do some stretches and then jog around some portion of the facility’s 130-acre grounds. This night it was snowing outside, so Williamson figured she had an easy excuse to skip the workout. When her phone rang, however, she suspected her boss had other ideas. She smiled ruefully as she picked up the receiver. “Williamson here.”

“Hey, Robbi. It’s your conscience.”

“I figured as much,” Williamson replied.

“So, whaddya say? Up for a jog?”

She chuckled, “Do I have a choice?”

“Be right there.”

“Bastard,” Williamson teased before hanging up the phone. She was still smiling as she pushed away from her desk and kicked off her pumps.

Her “conscience” was former Army Colonel Felix Garber, the fifty-seven-year-old California native who’d recommended her for the job with counterterrorism and had served as her mentor these past ten months. Before joining the Company, Garber had put in twenty years with the XVIII Airborne Corps, concluding his service as the officer in charge of demolition operations in Khamisiyah following the Gulf War. He was now deputy director of the CIA’s counterterrorism division, and Williamson suspected it was only a matter of time before he took over the top position. She and Garber had worked alongside each other several times when the colonel had come to Paris on assignment, and they’d struck up a friendship based on their mutual passion for country music, haute cuisine and the Los Angeles Lakers. Working in adjacent offices now, they’d drawn even closer the past few months, and another incentive Williamson had for losing weight was her anticipation of the day when their relationship led to the bedroom and Garber would have his first look at her without her clothes on.

She had changed into her jogging sweats and was tying her running shoes when Garber appeared in her doorway, wearing rubberized biker shorts and a sleeveless ski vest. He was in good shape and had a better physique than most men half his age.

“You want to go running dressed like that?” Williamson said. “You’ll freeze!”

“Wimp,” Garber said with a grin. “It’s not cold out—it’s brisk.”

“Yeah, right.” She laughed.

As they left the office and headed down the hall, Garber floated the idea of having dinner together after their run. He mentioned a new sports bar that had just opened up across the river in D.C. They’d have the Lakers game on, he told her, and their crab cakes had just gotten a good write-up in the Post.

“Can’t say no to a good crab cake,” Williamson said.

They were waiting for the elevator when Garber snapped his fingers.

“Damn!” he groaned. “I forgot to update Tangiers on that cable intercept we just cracked.”

“Go ahead and fax them,” Williamson told him. “I’ll hold the elevator and get in a few stretches.”

“Be right back,” Garber said.

Williamson watched Garber head back down the hallway, admiring his legs. And that ass, she thought to herself, smiling.

The colonel had unlocked his office door and was heading into his office when a sudden explosion shook the building. The floor beneath Williamson’s feet shuddered with so much force she lost her balance and bounced off the elevator doors, then fell as if struck by an invisible force. By the time she’d landed, the floor had stabilized, but a deafening alarm had gone off in the hallway and the ceiling-mounted safety sprinklers had been activated. Water showered down on Williamson as she slowly sat up, mind racing, trying to make sense of what had just happened.

Like Garber, Williamson was a California native and her first thought was that there’d been an earthquake. But then she smelled smoke and heard the unmistakable crackling sound of racing flames. Alarmed, she glanced down the hallway leading back to her office.

“No!” she gasped.

The inner walls of her office, as well as Garber’s and the office next to hers, had all but disintegrated, and a portion of the ceiling had collapsed into the flames engulfing the corridor. A woman’s body hung eerily out over the edge of the overhead cavity, then tumbled down to the hallway floor, joining three other corpses strewed about like discarded dolls. The fire had begun to devour the victims, and Williamson’s stomach clenched at her first whiff of burning flesh.

“Felix!” she called out, staggering to her feet.

She cried out Garber’s name again as she tore off her sweatshirt and soaked it beneath the ceiling sprinklers. Pressing the makeshift mask to her face, she headed down the hall. Smoke stung her eyes as she leaned over the first body she came to—Roger Olsen, a colleague she’d shared coffee with in the cafeteria just a few hours ago. The man’s clothes were torn, and he was bleeding from deep cuts sustained when he’d crashed through the office wall that now lay smoldering in broken chunks on the floor around him. His jaw had been dislocated and his mouth hung open, slack and off-center. His eyes were open but there was no life in them.

“No,” Williamson repeated, her voice reduced to a hoarse whisper.

The next two bodies she passed were in even worse condition, but neither they nor Olsen’s corpse adequately prepared her for the horror that awaited her when she came upon the remains of her mentor.

Felix Garber’s office had taken the brunt of the 84 mm warhead fired from Edgar Byrnes’s AT-4 rocket launcher. When he’d returned to his office to send his fax, Garber had walked directly into the spalling effect achieved after the rocket had penetrated the outer wall of the building. Garber had been killed instantly and then cast back out into the hallway by an incendiary barrage of projectile fragments that had left his body charred and mutilated. His right arm was missing along with half his left leg, and his torso had been rent open and seared beyond recognition. His nearly severed head hung twisted from his shoulders in such a way that even though he lay on his back his face was turned to the floor.

Williamson’s legs weakened and she dropped to her knees, unable to take her eyes off the grisly remains. She lowered the dampened sweatshirt and opened her mouth as if to scream, but all that came forth was a strained mewling. She became oblivious to the rank stench of burning flesh and the ominous approach of flames consuming those areas in the hall where the safety sprinklers had been rendered inoperable.

Someone appeared at the far end of the hallway and called out to Williamson, but she remained transfixed, overwhelmed by the horror around her. Two co-workers—men who’d rushed up to the sixth floor after feeling the explosion—scrambled down the corridor and pulled Williamson to her feet. She numbly allowed them to lead her beyond range of the flames. It was only when they’d reached the elevators that she found her voice. When she spoke, however, it seemed to her as her words were coming from somewhere far away, being mouthed by someone else.

“Who?” she moaned. “Who did this?”

“EASY, BOY,” Edgar Byrnes called out as he slipped on his backpack and opened the corral gate at Conlon Farm. “Easy, Jefferson.”

The roan horse had been spooked by the rocket launcher and neighed loudly as it clomped in circles around the corral. Other animals were making a racket inside the lean-to, and several chickens had squawked their way outside and were scurrying in all directions. Byrnes strode toward Jefferson, holding his arms out before him. In one hand he held a salt lick, in the other a carrot.

“Come on, Jefferson,” he pleaded. “We don’t have time for this.”

The horse charged blindly past. Byrnes turned and jogged counterclockwise in hopes he could intercept Jefferson during the horse’s next lap around the corral. He continued to call out, trying to calm the beast. Finally Jefferson slowed to a trot and then came to a stop in front of Byrnes, choosing the carrot.

“Good boy.”

As he waited for Jefferson to consume the snack, Byrnes glanced through the woods. It had stopped snowing, and he could clearly see flames spewing from the sixth floor of CIA headquarters. A trio of helicopters hovered above the carnage, searchlights raking the surrounding grounds. Byrnes knew it would only be a matter of time before the search widened to include the farm.

“Okay, boy,” Byrnes said once Jefferson had finished the carrot. “It’s time.”

Byrnes had already saddled the horse and strapped on the reins. He slid one foot into the nearest stirrup and hoisted himself up onto Jefferson’s back, then slapped the beast’s flank with the flat of his palm.

“Let’s go!”

Jefferson bolted from the corral and carried Byrnes deep into the woods leading away from the CIA facilities. Byrnes had ridden this stretch countless times over the past few weeks, including the previous night, when he’d gone to pick up the weapon from his AFM contacts. The route was ingrained in Jefferson’s mind and the horse retraced it at full gallop, threading between trees with relative ease. The woods were dark, but the horse forged on unerringly.

Once they reached the cloverleaf ramp leading under the George Washington Expressway to Turkey Run Park, Byrnes slowed Jefferson to a trot. There were a few other riders out, as well. The militiaman composed himself, then joined them, expressing puzzlement.

“I heard some kind of crash,” he told the others.

“Something going down at Langley,” one of the other riders explained, pointing out the helicopters in the distance.

“Sounded like a bomb,” another rider said with a trace of anxiety. “I hope it’s not terrorists.”

“It’s probably nothing,” Byrnes reassured the other man. “That place is like a fortress. No way is anybody going to be able to attack it.”

“I hope you’re right.”

“Me, too,” Byrnes said. “Hell, if somebody can attack CIA in their own backyard, nobody’s safe.”

4

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Senator Gregory Walden had just nodded off to sleep when the phone rang on the nightstand beside him. The vice chairman of the Joint House-Senate Intelligence Committee groaned and opened one eye, inspecting the luminous readout on the digital clock next to the phone. It was nearly midnight.

“What now?” Walden groaned. The senator had already been interrupted twice tonight, once by a Post reporter looking for the inside scoop on confirmation hearings for the President’s latest Homeland Security nominee, the other time by an aide who was having trouble transcribing some notes Walden had barked into his Dictaphone before leaving the office. He reached for the phone as it continued to ring. Beside him, Nikki, his wife for the past seven years, stirred beneath the sheets.

“Gregory, would you please get that already, for crying out—”

“I just did!” Walden snapped at her. He sat up in bed and vented further into the phone, yelling, “This better be goddamn important!”

There was a pause on the line, then a woman replied to him in a soft voice void of emotion. It was Joan VanderMeer. “Greg, it’s me. I know it’s late, but—”

“I’ll call you right back,” Walden interrupted. He hung up the phone and swung his feet to the floor and rubbed his fists against his temples.

Nikki turned to him, her peroxide hair matted flat on the side she’d been sleeping on. The covers clung as tightly to her silicone breasts as the skin did to her cheeks after her most recent facelift.

“What is it?” she asked.

“The world’s coming to an end,” Walden deadpanned as he stabbed his feet into his bedroom slippers. “Go back to sleep.”

“Always with the sarcasm,” Nikki complained.

“I love you, too, honeybunch,” Walden said flatly. He grabbed his robe from the overstuffed chair next to the bed and put it on as he headed out of the room. The November elections were eight long months away. Walden wondered how the hell he was going to keep the divorce on hold that long. He’d come to hate his wife with a passion, but he knew this year’s campaign would be a tight one, and he couldn’t afford to lose votes by presenting himself as anything other than happily married.

The Waldens lived on the eighth floor of an upscale high-rise located just off the river between Drexel University and the train station the senator had made heavy use of years ago when he was new to Capitol Hill and needed a cheap way to commute between Philadelphia and his office in Washington. Nowadays he could afford a chauffeur. He could also afford the two million dollars’ worth of professional redecoration the apartment had just undergone. The completed results would be featured in the November issue of Architectural Digest, just in time for the election. The photo shoot had already taken place, and Nikki, who’d made most of the decorating choices, had made sure to worm her way into a few of the shots, another reason Walden felt the need to keep up pretenses. Of course, since the photo shoot, Nikki had changed her mind about a few things and had brought the decorators back in for a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of “tweaking.” And she wasn’t done yet. The interior decorator was due back in the morning with swatches for the dining room’s third paint job in as many months.

As he dialed a number on one of his never-ending supply of prepaid cell phones, Walden stared at an obscure Jackson Pollock painting that hung over the den fireplace. Walden hated the piece; to him it looked like something a second-grader had painted. Nikki, of course, thought it was a masterpiece. Which was good for her, Walden thought, because it was probably the most valuable thing she’d be taking away from the marriage when he threw her out after the election.

“Okay, which is it?” Walden said once VanderMeer had picked up. “The Feds are on to you or there was a problem with the gun heist.”

“The gun show,” VanderMeer told him. “They got hold of both semis but ran into a buzz saw trying to get away.”

“You want to translate that for me?” Walden said. He could already feel his blood pressure rising. First that business at the fantasy camp in Sykesville, and now this. This bungling not only jeopardized his master plan, but it also increased the chance that his cover would be blown. If that happened, he would be as good as dead.

“I don’t have all the details yet,” VanderMeer confessed, “but apparently BATF showed up along with some other Feds. Our people were stopped cold, and from what I’ve heard, it was pretty ugly. One of the trucks was blown up, so the place is crawling with media and lookie-loos.”

“Shit,” Walden murmured. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms was one of the few investigatory agencies he hadn’t yet managed to infiltrate with his own people.

“Who were these other Feds?” Walden said as he made his way to the wet bar and poured himself a drink.

“I think they were from Justice,” VanderMeer said. “Special agents.”

“Figures.”

Walden had used his connections to try to find out who’d blown up the weapons cache at the Wildest Dreams Fantasy Camp but had run into a dead end once the trail led to the Justice Department. It turned out that there were some levels of confidentiality even he could not bypass. And now it looked as if the same operative who’d brought down Jason Cummings and Mitch Brower had played a hand in thwarting the AFM’s attempt to replace the arms that had gone up in smoke back in Sykesville. Not knowing who he was up against left Walden feeling vulnerable. But, as with the incident at Wildest Dreams, his foremost concern was that he remain above suspicion.

“Did they take anyone into custody?” the senator asked.

“I don’t think so,” VanderMeer reported. “I think everyone was killed.”

Walden drained his drink and quickly poured another as he assessed the situation. He’d been lucky in the case of Sykesville, since neither Louie Paxton nor Xavier Manuel had known anything about the weapons stolen from Aberdeen, much less Walden’s role in enabling the theft. Both men had protected VanderMeer’s identity, as well, but he knew there was a chance their tongues could be loosened in the interrogation room. In Georgetown, at least, it appeared there were no survivors capable of ratting him out. Some consolation, he thought to himself.

“There’d better not be a trail leading back to us,” he warned.

“We should be okay,” VanderMeer assured him. “I’m on my way to the compound as we speak. I’ll make sure our tracks are covered.”

“Good. Once that’s settled, we need to come up with a way to spin this whole mess in our favor,” Walden advised. Already his mind was sorting through options. Making snap decisions while under duress was a skill he’d mastered over the years; it had helped him immeasurably in his rise through the ranks on Capitol Hill.

“Greg, listen to me,” VanderMeer said. “Bad as the news from Georgetown is, I’m afraid that’s not the worst of it. It’s not the reason I called.”

“What?” Walden was taken aback. “What are you talking about?”

There was a pause on the line, then Joan VanderMeer dropped the bombshell.

“It has to do with Edgar Byrnes,” she said. “You remember him. He’s the older brother of Wallace and Harlan—”

“I know who he is,” Walden interrupted. “We’ve got him planted at that goddamn farm next to Langley with that rocket launcher from Aberdeen. Once we get all our pieces in place, he’ll—”

“He’s not at the farm anymore,” VanderMeer interrupted. “Apparently he snapped tonight.”

“Snapped? What do you mean? He offed himself?”

“Worse,” she said. “He went ahead with the plan. On his own.”

Walden let out a deep breath and sank into chair behind him. This couldn’t be happening. “He fired at Langley?”

“Afraid so. Last I heard, there are eight confirmed dead. They’re still fighting the fire.”

Walden finished his drink, then hurled the shot glass across the room, shattering it against the flagstone hearth. He already had his hands full trying to figure out a way to put a spin on Sykesville and the gun-show fiasco in Georgetown. Now this.

“Please tell me he put a bullet through his head afterward,” he muttered into the cell phone. “Please tell me he’s in no position to talk.”

Once again, there was a moment’s silence on the line. Then VanderMeer warily confirmed Walden’s worst fears.

“I’m sorry, Greg, but he’s still out there somewhere.”

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