But this one kept going. Out of nowhere, the wind began to gust, driving the rain nearly sideways. My windshield wipers were flipping at maximum speed but I could still barely see the road. The other cars began to skid, then slowed to a crawl, and a few pulled over to wait it out.
Normally I enjoy dramatic weather, but not then. It seemed to echo the strange, unaccustomed feeling of anxiety that had come over me.
My instinct told me that this was not going to end well.
SO I blasted music. Few tunes pump me up like the twangy guitar licks and huge, booming, diesel-fueled rockabilly sound of Bill Kirchen, the Titan of the Telecaster, the guy who did “Hot Rod Lincoln” years ago. I played “Hammer of the Honky-Tonk Gods” and then his live version of “Too Much Fun.” By the time I reached the New Hampshire border, I was feeling like my old self.
Then I had to hit MUTE to answer the phone.
It was Diana, with directions to the SWAT staging area. “We’re mustering at a parking lot two miles from the house,” she said. “You’re going to join me on the perimeter surveillance team. But that means staying outside the hard perimeter.”
The highway had gotten narrower, down to a two-lane road with steel guardrails on either side. I passed a BRAKE FOR MOOSE sign.
“Works for me. Are we going to be in a vehicle or on foot?”
“In one of their SUVs, thank God. I’d hate to be standing around in weather like this. Is it raining where you are?”
“Pouring. I’m maybe thirty miles away, no more.”
“Drive safe, Nico.”
88.
Forty-five minutes later I was sitting in the passenger’s seat of a black Suburban. It had been specially modified for the SWAT team with roof rails and side rungs, though it wasn’t armored. We were outside the crisis area. We weren’t supposed to get hit.
Diana was behind the wheel. Under her FBI sweatshirt she was wearing a level III trauma vest, a concealable ballistic garment fitted with a trauma plate.
Rain sheeted down. The windshield wipers whipped back and forth like a metronome at top speed.
We were parked at the end of the woods, just off a narrow winding asphalt road, stationed at what the SWAT team called “phase line yellow,” the last cover-and-conceal position before the action started. Phase line green was the imaginary line around the house. Phase line green meant game on.
Supposedly we were part of the perimeter team, at the point of egress, but in truth we were nothing more than observers. My role was limited and quite clear: If they were able to take the Russian alive, and if he resisted cooperation, I was to be put on the radio to communicate directly with him. Not in person, on the radio.
Surrounding us were various American-made SUVs-Ford Explorers and Blazers and Suburbans, also fitted with roof rails and side rungs. SWAT operators hung off the side, wearing two-piece olive drab suits with armor that was supposed to withstand a rifle round, ceramic trauma plates inside. They wore ballistic helmets and eye protection and FBI signage everywhere. They carried M4 carbine rifles equipped with red-dot optical sights. In their side holsters they had pistols, to be used only if their machine guns jammed. Snipers in ghillie suits were secreted in the woods, in the shadows cast by the trees, within range of the house.
For a long while we sat in silence, listening to the exchange on the dash-mounted radio.
We waited. Everyone out there seemed to be waiting for a signal. The air was charged with tension.
I said, “If he shows his face-”
“The snipers will take him out. Deadly force has been pre-authorized.”
“Is that FBI protocol?”
“Only in circumstances where we believe the target has the means and the probable intention to kill his victim, yeah, killing him is considered legally justified.”
“And if he doesn’t show his face?”
“They’ll attempt a silent breach of the house from two points and go into hostage-rescue mode.”
After sitting in silence a while longer, Diana said, “You want to be up there, don’t you? Admit it.”
I didn’t reply. I was still mulling things over. Something seemed somehow off about the whole situation.
She looked at me. I said, “Can I borrow your binoculars?” I hadn’t grabbed mine from the Land Rover. I didn’t think I’d need them.
She handed me a pair of army-green Steiners, standard SWAT-team issue, full-size, a PROPERTY OF FBI SWAT sticker on one side. I dialed in the focus until the house came into view: a small, neat, white-painted clapboard house with dark green shutters. It wasn’t a farmhouse at all but a house in the woods. The land surrounding it was surprisingly small, given the size of the property. The grass was overgrown and wild, probably waist-high, as if no one had been looking after it for a year or more.
It was dark. No car or truck in the driveway that I could see.
Then I handed the binoculars back to her. “I don’t think we’re in the right place,” I said.
“How so? It’s his phone number that came up, no question about it.”
“Look at the egress. Only one way in or out, and we’re sitting at it. The woods in back of his house are overgrown, choked with underbrush and vine. He can’t walk for two minutes through that without getting stuck in thorn bushes.”
“You saw all that?”
“Good binoculars.”
“Good eyes.”
“He’s trapped. This isn’t the sort of property he’d ever pick.”
“Maybe he didn’t pick it. Maybe Navrozov’s people chose it for him. It’s been abandoned for a year and a half.”
“I don’t think he’d ever let someone else make that kind of decision for him. He doesn’t like to rely on anyone.”
“That’s your assessment, based on a thirdhand evaluation in some old KGB file.”
I ignored that. “Did anyone check the utility bills on this place?”
“It’s been empty for eighteen months.”
“I don’t see any generators, do you? So how the hell does he get on the Internet?”
She shook her head slowly, considering.
“Or a satellite dish,” I said.
She continued to shake her head.
“Also, it’s sloppy,” I said.
“What’s sloppy?”
“Using his mobile phone. He shouldn’t be using it again.”
“He doesn’t know we have his phone number.”
“This guy never underestimates anyone. That’s why he’s still alive.”
I took out my cell phone and hit the speed-dial for Dorothy.
“Where are you, Heller?”
“New Hampshire.”
“Right. Where?”
“In the middle of what’s beginning to feel a lot like a diversion,” I said. “West of Nashua.”
“Nashua? That’s… something like forty miles south of the flight path area.”
“Can you send me the GPS coordinates?” I said.
“Done.”
“How large an area are you vectoring in on? I wonder if we can narrow down the possibilities. Look at terrain and available properties and-”
“I may have one more data point.”
“Let’s hear it.”
“I’ve been combing NCIC for anything coming out of New Hampshire, and I came across a possible homicide.”
The National Crime Information Center was the computerized database of crimes maintained by the FBI and used by every police force and other law-enforcement agency in the country.
“How is that connected?”
“The code on the report was 908. A premeditated homicide of a police officer by means of a weapon.”
“And?”
“So a rookie police officer was found in his car at the bottom of a ravine in New Hampshire. At first it looked like he drove off the road. But the local police chief strongly suspects homicide.”
“Why?”
“Because of the victim’s injuries. According to the county coroner, they’re nothing like what you’d expect to see in a car accident. For one thing, all the internal organs in his chest cavity were destroyed. Like someone detonated a depth charge down there.”