Cross the Line

  “No one’s moving inside and no one’s posted outside,” the tactical agent in charge said over the radio.

  “All in one room,” Mahoney said. “Take them before they fan out.”

  “Roger that. We are go.”

  Mahoney’s blue sedan soon squealed out of the barnyard with us behind, tearing up the country road toward Whitaker’s place. We stopped in front of the driveway, barring any exit, and got out, drawing guns even as the first flash-bang grenades went off.

  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.

  Chapter

  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?”

  Chapter

  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.”

  Lac
ey 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?”

  “Affirmative,” Lacey said.

  “What’s in those open bays?” I asked.

  “The nerve gas VX,” Lacey said. “Think of it as a pesticide for humans.”

  The Aberdeen Proving Ground’s alert system began to groan and bray around us. It was like nothing I’d ever heard before, a two-tone blast and blare from the deepest and loudest trumpet you can imagine. Large amplifiers set up across the military base took up the alert. The sound seemed to vibrate through the Humvee and our bodies as we reached Palmer and then the Old Baltimore Road.

  As we hurtled south in the Humvee, we were buffeted by building winds and rain. Blue MP lights flickered behind us as we bore down on Edgewater 9 and the country’s deadly reserves of VX.

  Tasteless. Odorless. A weapon of mass destruction. A pesticide for humans. The most deadly substance on earth.

  What in God’s name would compel Whitaker to take such a drastic step?

  And why in God’s name was I going to Edgewater 9 to stop him?

  Chapter

  99

  With the alarms blaring all around him, Lester Hobbes calmly peered through a jeweler’s loupe and dismantled a warhead built in the 1960s.

  Three of the warheads had already been taken apart. Four sealed steel canisters containing a total of one gallon of VX were already tucked into Colonel Whitaker’s knapsack.

  A gallon already, Whitaker thought. Consider the destruction a tenth of a teardrop of VX could cause. Consider what a quart could do in DC.

  If they were going to clean house, they had to begin with the politicians and the lobbyists, didn’t they? K Street and Capitol Hill. The lackeys of the slavers, Whitaker thought. The den of the slavers. They’ll get a taste of their own weapons. By our sacrifice, the country will be forced to reboot and start all over—

  “Got it,” Hobbes said, extracting the fifth canister of VX and lobbing it to Fender, who caught it and stuffed it into his pack.

  Whitaker wasn’t happy. He’d planned to control every drop of the nerve agent himself, but he didn’t have time to argue.

  “Move,” he said. “We’ve got a tide to catch.”

  They left the army sentries bound and gagged on the storage facility’s cement floor and exited the building, coming out in the driving rain. Moving in a pack with Whitaker at its center, they ran hard. The colonel’s knee immediately began to throb. He gritted his teeth and hobbled on. Nothing was going to stop him now.

  “Do you want me to take the pack?” Cass asked.

  “No,” Whitaker said. “It’s mine.”

  The first shot rang out from the woods back by the Old Baltimore Road access. One of Whitaker’s men fell. Two more shots. Another collapsed.

  Hobbes, Fender, and Cass turned and opened fire, spraying bullets at their unseen enemies in the trees.

  Chapter

  100

  I shot. Mahoney shot. So did Sampson.

  We all hit our targets before a modern John Brown and his Regulators returned fire. I had to dive behind a log to protect my head. All we had were pistols and Major Lacey’s M4. They had rifles equal to Lacey’s as well as a weapon of mass destruction.

  Major Lacey seemed unfazed at the idea of facing a WMD. He jumped up, aimed, and shot again, attacking the retreating Regulators with short bursts that took down three more of Whitaker’s people. Sampson and Mahoney broke out onto the lawn surrounding the facility.

  I charged after them with Lacey just as the rain finally stopped. One of Whitaker’s soldiers turned and opened up. A bullet hit Mahoney’s left arm, broke bone, and knocked him down.

  “Go!” he yelled when I got to his side.

  I spotted an AR rifle by one of the dead Regulators, grabbed it, and kept on in a full sprint toward Sampson, who was peeking around the corner of the building. He had one of the ARs too and when I got to him he said he’d just seen the colonel and a woman running toward the sea marsh behind the storage facility.

  As he swung his body around the corner, Sampson pulled the AR’s trigger. I jumped out after him in time to see Whitaker vanish into the swamp. The woman, however, lurched and stumbled before she disappeared after the colonel.

  “I think you hit her,” I said.

  I flipped on my Maglite and gripped it beneath the fore stock of the rifle. Sampson and Lacey joined me. We quickly spotted splotches of blood on the lawn. The blood flow was small but steady until we reached a maze of reeds, cattails, and towering marsh grass.

  We lost the blood trail there. We cut back and forth along the edge of the marsh, seeing where the group had split up and gone in, breaking reeds. When we located the most pounded-down trail through the cattails, we took it and found blood again.

  Mud sucked our shoes off in the first hundred yards, but we kept after them, Major Lacey calling in our location and direction of travel over a two-way radio.

  “Coast Guard has birds in the air,” Lacey said with a gasp as we fought to stay somewhere in range of Whitaker’s band of fleeing Regulators.

  “Here’s big blood,” said Sampson, shining light on a splash near a tan reed. “And more there. She’s really starting to throw it now.”

  Chapter

  101

  Cass was struggling. Colonel Whitaker could hear the liquid building in her lungs with every breath.

  “Leave me, Jeb,” she said. “I don’t think I can make it.”

  Squinting to adjust the fit of his night-vision goggles, Whitaker grabbed her under the elbow. He ignored the fire in his knee and fought forward through the muck, following their back trail through the reeds as well as Hobbes and Fender, who’d gotten ahead of them.

  “We just have to make the Zodiacs, Cass,” Whitaker said. “Even if they bring in a Coast Guard cutter, they can’t cover the whole mouth of that creek. We’ll sneak out running electric. We’ll disappear in the storm.”

  Cass stumbled and went to her knees. She coughed, and through the night-vision goggles, Whitaker saw black sprays of blood blow from her lips.

  “Jesus,” he said, starting to panic. “Jesus.”

  “Leave me, Colonel.” Cass gasped.

  “Can’t do that, Captain,” he said, trying to get her up.

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “They’ll find me. They’ll make sure I live.”

  After a beat, Whitaker let her go. He took one long last look at Cass in the green hazy light of his goggles, pointed his rifle, and shot her through the head.

  Chapter

  102

  We heard the rifle shot loud and clear, so close it helped get us back on the track when we’d lost it. I cupped my hand over the Maglite to keep it from being seen and pushed on until I heard a sudden choked cry behind me.

  I twisted around and saw Sampson about six yards back, struggling, his right leg buried to the thigh in the muck.

  “I’m stuck,” he said, grimacing. “Shit. Some kind of root. Go!”

  “We’ll come back for him,” Lacey said, pushing by me.

  The rain began again, and the major and I forged on through the sea of reeds, seeing blood every six or seven yards until we came upon the woman we’d seen in the images from the Guryev massacre. Blond now. There was a bullet hole in her skull.

  “Whitaker can’t be far,” Lacey said and took off in front of me again.

  I wanted to tell him to slow down, not to let his headlamp dance so far ahead of him. But the major was a man on a mission, driven to stop that nerve agent from leaving his army base.

  After another hundred yards of slogging on, Lacey disappeared around a dogleg bend in the stomped-down trail through the marsh.

  I reached the turn and heard the major yell, “Put
down your weapons, or I’ll shoot!”

  I ran forward in time to hear close gunfire and see Major Lacey knocked off his feet. He landed in the trail ahead of me and lay there, unmoving.

  I shut my light off and listened.

  “Got that bastard,” I heard one of them say.

  “Nicely done, Lester,” another said. “Let’s get out of here.”

  “Fender, I need that fifth canister,” Whitaker said.

  “When we’re at the rendezvous, Colonel,” Fender said.

  Keeping the light off, I groped my way forward as if reading Braille, feeling the walls of cattails to either side of me and almost tripping over the major’s body. A powerful outboard engine fired to life. Then another.

  “Use the electrics!” the colonel said.

  “Sorry, Colonel,” Hobbes said. “Fender and I are going for distance, not stealth. Come with us. Leave that raft for the others.”

  “I’m right behind you,” Whitaker said.

  The first raft roared off, and through the rain I could tell they were not far ahead of me. It sounded like Whitaker was stowing and strapping gear, and he was doing it with no discernible light source.

  Night-vision goggles, I thought, and in my stocking feet I carefully stepped free of the reeds and onto a sand bar with an inch of tidal water on it.

  The colonel grunted with effort. I heard the raft slide.

  He grunted again, and I heard the raft slide a second time, gritty, like coarse sandpaper on soft wood.

  Whitaker couldn’t have been more than ten or fifteen yards from me, by the sound of it. So I eased into a crouch, raised my gun and flashlight, and whistled softly.