Sampson said, “I promised Billie I wouldn’t play cowboy.”
“And you’re not,” I said. “We’re doing the rational thing, letting the pros handle the rough stuff.”
We trotted down the driveway expecting World War III to erupt at any moment, but all we heard after the grenades was doors and windows breaking and voices calling “Clear.”
The wind had picked up again, and it was starting to rain as we followed Mahoney up into the house and saw the fifteen mannequins arranged around the room in various poses.
Every one of them was connected to electrical lines through sockets embedded in their heels. Their plastic skin was warm to the touch.
97
A RAPID SEARCH of the house revealed a fully equipped gunsmith operation in the basement, empty crates of ammunition, empty cardboard boxes for AR-rifle components, and the empty gun racks of a formidable arsenal.
Outside, in the building wind and rain, we figured out how they’d escaped. Whitaker’s fishing boat was still up on its lift when we went down by the dock, but in the barn we found large, empty raft trailers and empty ten-gallon gasoline cans.
“They went to the waiting rafts the second they got here,” I said.
Sampson nodded. “And they trolled out of here, probably by quiet electric motor and then by heavy outboard. They were probably out on the Chesapeake before the Coast Guard was even notified.”
“Where the hell do they think they’re going?” Mahoney said. “I mean, we’ll have Whitaker’s face everywhere within hours. He will be spotted. They can’t escape.”
“Maybe they don’t mean to escape,” I said. “Maybe we should take the colonel at his word: A fight to the death is how all slave rebellions begin.”
“Then why didn’t he stand his ground here?” Mahoney asked.
“He wants the fight to be somewhere else,” I said.
“What I don’t get is why,” Sampson said. “What did Whitaker say on the phone, Alex? About John Brown?”
“That they had the same goals.”
“Freeing slaves?” Mahoney said.
I thought about that and then did a quick Google search on my phone. After scanning the site that came up first, I said, “Brown was an abolitionist, a radical one who believed the slaves could be freed only through armed insurrection. He attacked a U.S. military arsenal in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, trying to steal thousands of guns he planned to give to the slaves so they could start the rebellion.”
“So, what,” Sampson said. “Was Whitaker telling you he’s going to attack a military installation, steal guns, and give them away?”
“They already built enough guns for a small army,” Mahoney said.
“Any rebellion can use more,” I said. “So if that’s what their intent is, what’s the target?”
“Not Harpers Ferry,” Mahoney said. “There’s no arsenal there anymore.”
“The Naval Academy?” Sampson said. “The Coast Guard base? Or down to Norfolk? It’s not that far south, and a big Zodiac boat with the right engines could handle the waves.”
“Especially if there were ex-Special Forces operators driving,” I said. “Those guys are like ninjas. And we can’t go looking for them from helicopters with searchlights in an area as big as the Chesapeake.”
“We’ll have to wait for them to make a move,” Mahoney said. “At least until dawn. I’ll notify the Pentagon to beef up security at all military posts within five hundred miles.”
“Can’t they activate one of those surveillance blimps that got away the other day?” Sampson asked.
“All the blimps were grounded after that one got loose,” Mahoney said, dialing his cell.
In my mind I saw that image of the bearded Amish man in his buggy looking up at the sky and the pale runaway blimp. And then it hit me.
“Ned,” I said, feeling queasy.
“Hold on,” he said. “The Pentagon duty officer is coming back with-”
I pulled his hand and phone away from his ear and said, “What do you know about that army blimp that got free?”
Annoyed, Mahoney said, “The cable snapped in a high wind. Big embarrassment. Went way up north into Pennsylvania, took out electricity for three hundred thousand people before the army shot it down over a big field.”
“What if it was cut intentionally, Ned?” I said. “What if Whitaker or one of his followers did it so they could land on Aberdeen Proving Ground without being detected?”
98
THE WIND WAS gusting to fifty knots or more. Rain flew horizontally and lashed the windshield of the U.S. Army Humvee that Sampson, Mahoney, and I were riding in. Major Frank Lacey was at the wheel.
Major Lacey was the duty officer that night at Aberdeen. He’d been waiting with the Humvee at the main gate on Hartford Boulevard when we arrived.
“What do you think Whitaker’s after?” Lacey asked as we drove into the proving ground itself.
“What do you have here?” Sampson said.
“It’s more like what don’t we have here,” Lacey said. “We’ve got everything from small arms to ship cannons, and even some real nasty stuff in labs and storage facilities spread out over one hundred and fourteen square miles of terrain.”
I was riding in the backseat with Mahoney. “What’s the nastiest stuff you’ve got here?”
“The chemicals,” the major said without hesitation. “Left over from the old Edgewood Arsenal-the mustard gas, the chloropicrin, and the phosgene-all the way up to Agent Orange and the deadliest nerve agents.”
I thought about Whitaker following in John Brown’s footsteps, trying to arm a rebellion. He could be going for light automatic weapons,.50-caliber machine guns, maybe even rocket grenades and launchers.
But they were all awkward to move in any great quantity, and Whitaker and his followers wouldn’t be able to steal or carry enough of those weapons to make it worth infiltrating a U.S. Army facility. So the colonel must be going for something portable and-
“What’s the deadliest nerve agent here?” I asked.
Lacey said, “Probably a toss-up between VX and sarin.”
Then the major looked at me hard over his shoulder. “You don’t think he’s…”
“Yeah,” I said, feeling sick. “I do.”
“He’ll never get in. That place is a fortress,” Lacey said, but he floored the Humvee and grabbed the mike to a shortwave radio.
He asked to be put through to the shift commander at Edgewater 9.
A few moments later, Lieutenant Curtis, duty officer at base headquarters, reported, “We’re getting no answer from Edgewater Nine, Major.”
“They’re already in,” Sampson said.
“That’s impossible,” Major Lacey snapped, but then he triggered the microphone. “Curtis, ASAP move five platoons in chemical gear south to the Edgewater Nine access off the Old Baltimore Road. Call the Coast Guard. I want Romney, Cold, and Bush Creeks sealed. I want-”
The radio began beeping loud and long, sounding like the beginning of one of those emergency-alert-system drills.
The army major stared at it. “Sonofabitch!”
“What the hell is that?” Mahoney demanded.
The major ignored him. Wrenching the Humvee onto the Michaelsville Road heading south, Lacey barked into the radio, “Report.”
Curtis came back, “Storage bays one, three, and four at Edgewater Nine just opened without authorization, sir.”
Lacey hesitated, and then shouted, “Go to lockdown, Curtis. I repeat, go to lockdown. No one in or out. Alert command of breach and intrusion into chemical sector. Move MPs to block the Old Baltimore Road at Abbey Point and Palmer Roads. And all personnel in that sector are ordered to move north immediately.”
“Sound the general alarm, Major?”