I’m Amber Larsen reporting live from Savannah, Georgia. What started as an aircraft accident investigation in Savannah has left a trail of blood leading all the way back to Dallas, Texas. NTSB investigators from the Atlanta, Georgia, Field Office came to Savannah to investigate the crash of the corporate jet carrying the controversial Northern Ireland peace activist Laurence O’Rourke. In a strange twist of fate, NTSB lead investigator Patrick McGill and his cousin, Savannah air traffic controller Jillian Ann Bulloch, along with friend and alleged former Irish Republican Army assassin Ian Collins, plotted the death of Laurence O’Rourke.
According to the FBI, Collins planted an explosive device in the jet with the assistance of a Dallas mechanic, who Collins later shot and killed. He brutally raped the mechanic’s girlfriend.
Savannah air traffic controller Jillian Bulloch detonated the device as O’Rourke’s jet was making an approach into the Savannah airport. The motive is suspected to be a personal vengeance.
O’Rourke was scheduled to make a public announcement here today revealing what he described as “proof of the biggest sham against the people of Northern Ireland,” and denouncing the parties to the New Northern Ireland Assembly as “liars.”
Thus far the death toll has reached a total of ten with three injured. Investigator Jake Pendleton was treated and released for a stab wound and a bruised shoulder. Savannah air traffic controller Gregg Kaplan suffered a gunshot wound to the abdomen and is in stable condition.
Kaplan is reported to be Jillian Bulloch’s long-time boyfriend. His part of this conspiracy is under investigation.
Pendleton’s fiancée, Catherine Elizabeth McAllister, is on life support in a coma after being shot in the neck. The bullet pierced her carotid artery and she suffered massive blood loss. Among the dead are Jillian Bulloch, Patrick McGill, and Laurence O’Rourke’s long-time assistant and bodyguard Michael Sullivan. Other fatalities include Duane Sanders, the Dallas mechanic, and Dave Morris, an NTSB investigator, believed shot by Collins yesterday.
Also killed were two pilots and a flight attendant, all from the Dallas area, and three passengers aboard the jet, including O’Rourke’s decoy double. Identifications are still outstanding for those three, who are also believed to be from Northern Ireland.
At this hour the whereabouts of Laurence O’Rourke and Ian Collins remain a mystery. The FBI believes both to be fleeing the United States and has activated a tight web of surveillance in an attempt to capture them before they can escape the country. Amber Larsen, CNN Headline News, Savannah, Georgia.
Bentley remembered Jake and now understood why he left him the urgent message. He recalled that three months prior to the end of Jake’s tour of duty with the Navy, Admiral Bentley sat him down and confided to Jake that he was about to tender his resignation from the military. That proclamation solidified Jake’s decision not to reenlist.
Jake’s dossier went on to outline how he came to be employed with the NTSB. Within a week of Bentley’s resignation, the chairman of the NTSB offered Jake a position as an accident investigator at the Atlanta Field Office, a less than subtle intrusion into Jake’s affairs by his father.
Less than a year later, Bentley had been named the new Director of Central Intelligence for the CIA in Langley, Virginia, the first African-American to hold that position.
Bentley pressed the buzzer on his phone system paging his secretary and said, “Jean, come in here, please.”
“Yes, sir,” the pleasant female voice replied through the speaker phone.
Jean McCullough walked in with her pencil and steno pad. She raised a hand to flip back her smooth strawberry-blond hair, which bobbed on her shoulders as she walked. At fifty-six, she still had a shapely figure. She wore black dress pants that fit snugly against her hips and a gold leopard-print top underneath her black jacket.
“Yes, sir?” she asked.
“Call Flight Ops and have them prep the jet. Tell them I’m going to Savannah, Georgia ASAP and I don’t know how long I’ll be there. They’ll need to be prepared to stay overnight. Also find out what hospital a Catherine McAllister was taken to in Savannah.”
“Certainly, sir. Will there be anything else?”
Bentley scribbled two file names on a Post-It note and said, “Yes, have Fontaine bring me these two files. I’m taking them with me.”
CHAPTER 58
Collins fled Jillian’s house in hopes of spotting O’Rourke. O’Rourke should be dead, but he was still alive. He had sent Sullivan the message to ensure O’Rourke’s safety, knowing Sullivan would devise a ruse to keep O’Rourke alive.
He also had known he would eventually encounter O’Rourke in Savannah. That’s when he intended to kill O’Rourke, but not before extracting from him the location of the “grey fortress near the ridge of two demons,” the only information one of his employers had given him. He had no idea what that meant but he knew O’Rourke and Sullivan did.
Collins’s plan didn’t go as designed, thanks to the meddling of Jake Pendleton. Revenge will be sweet.
He had watched as his half-brother’s head was blown off in the fire fight at Jillian’s house. He’d wanted to kill Kaplan for shooting his brother, but Pendleton had stopped him.
His ambivalent emotions about his brother and the deaths of his childhood friends had flamed into numbness. Now, he truly had no one. No friends. No relatives. Alone.
His rage had narrowed into a searing weapon aimed at only one person — O’Rourke.
He drove around the Savannah area in his Escalade for nearly an hour trying to spot any sign of O’Rourke. A nearly impossible task with the throngs of revelers leaving town after the festivities. Once again, O’Rourke was a ghost.
He had lost the trail in Savannah but knew where he could pick it up again, Belfast. That’s where O’Rourke would go. That’s where he had to go. He figured he had the luxury of time because O’Rourke was in the same predicament he was in, getting out of the United States and back to Ireland without getting caught. Both of them were now wanted men and no doubt the FBI would turn up the heat at all the airports. His advantage was there were no photos of him. The authorities would be working from sketches. O’Rourke didn’t have that edge.
But Collins knew a way out, a covert way out, a way to avoid the FBI and Homeland Security dragnet. An avenue he had used before and would likely use again. Payment from a past job in the form of a bartered exchange with the client. Paid with transportation. Anywhere, anytime, anyplace — a valued asset in his line of work.
He laid low in a truck stop café near I-95 for a couple of hours while he pieced his plan together and then drove out of Savannah, heading south down U.S. Highway 17.
By midnight, the pain in his shoulder became too unbearable to continue any farther. He stopped at a third-rate motel in Yulee, Florida. Before entering the lobby, he put on a clean jacket to conceal his wound and rang the after-hours buzzer over and over. After three minutes of buzzing, an irritated clerk came out of the back room and checked him in.
In room number seven, Collins cleaned and dressed his wound with the rudimentary supplies he purchased at the convenience store next to the motel. The bullet needed to come out but he wasn’t going to be able to do that by himself, he needed a doctor but that would have to wait. He took a handful of prescription pain pills. He carried with him on all jobs. Then he pulled out his Blackberry. He calculated the time difference and sent a message to a client.