Homeland Terror

“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.