“I’m afraid that’s not something we can discuss,” Longley replied.
“More than twenty?” Jack persisted. “I plan to have coffee and sandwiches for your troops. Don’t worry, I haven’t even told Robby.”
“Enough for twenty will be more than ample,” Avery said after a moment. “Just coffee will be fine.” They’d be drinking a lot of coffee, the Secret Service man thought.
“Okay, let’s see the cliff.” Jack went down the steps from the deck to the grass. “You want to be very careful here, gentlemen.”
“How unstable is it?” Avery asked.
“Sally has been past where the fence is twice. Both times she got smacked for it. The problem’s erosion. The cliff’s made out of something real soft — sandstone, I think. I’ve been trying to stabilize it. The state conservation people talked me into planting this damned kudzu, and — stop right there!”
Keaton had stepped over the low fence.
“Two years ago I watched a twenty-square-foot piece drop off. That’s why I planted these vines. You don’t think somebody’s going to climb that, do you?”
“It’s one possibility,” Longley answered.
“You’d think different if you looked at it from a boat. The cliff won’t take the weight. A squirrel can make it up, but that’s all.”
“How high is it?” Avery asked.
“Forty-three feet over there, almost fifty here. The kudzu vines just make it worse. The damned stuffs nearly impossible to kill, but if you try grabbing onto it, you’re in for a big surprise. Like I said, if you want to check it, do it from a boat,” Ryan said.
“We’ll do that,” Avery replied.
“Coming in, that driveway must be three hundred yards,” Keaton said.
“Just over four hundred, counting the curves. It cost an arm and a leg to pave it.”
“What about the swimming pool people?” It was Longley this time.
“The pool’s supposed to be finished next Wednesday.”
Avery and Keaton walked around the north side of the house. There were trees twenty yards from there, and a swarm of brambles that went on forever. Ryan had planted a long row of shrubs to mark the border. Sally didn’t go in there either.
“This looks pretty secure,” Avery said. “There’s two hundred yards of open space between the road and the trees, then more open ground between the pool and the house.”
“Right.” Ryan chuckled. “You can set up your heavy machine guns in the treeline and put the mortars over by the pool.”
“Doctor Ryan, we are quite serious about this,” Longley pointed out.
“I’m sure. But it’s an unannounced trip, right? They can’t –” Jack stopped short. He didn’t like the look on their faces.
Avery said, “We always assume that the other side knows what we’re up to.”
“Oh.” Is that all of it, or is there more? He knew it wouldn’t do any good to ask. “Well, speaking as a has-been Marine, I wouldn’t want to hit this place cold. I know a little about how you guys are trained. I wouldn’t want to mess with you.”
“We try,” Avery assured him, still looking around. The way the driveway came through the trees, he could use his communications van to block vehicles out entirely. He reminded himself that there would be ten people from his agency, six Brits, a liaison guy from the Bureau, and probably two or three State Police for traffic control on the road. Each of his men would have both a service revolver and a submachine gun. They practiced at least once a week.
Avery still was not happy, not with the possibility of an armed terrorist group running around loose. But all the airports were being watched, all the local police forces alerted. There was only one road in here. The surrounding terrain would be difficult even for a platoon of soldiers to penetrate without making all kinds of noise, and as nasty as terrorists were, they’d never fought a set-piece battle. This wasn’t London, and the potential targets weren’t driving blithely about with a single armed guard.
“Thank you, Doctor Ryan. We will check the cliff out from the water side. If you see a Coast Guard cutter, that’ll be us.”
“You know how to get to the station at Thomas Point? You take Forest Drive east to Arundel-on-the-Bay and hang a right. You can’t miss it.”
“Thanks, we’ll do that.”
The real estate agent came out of the office just before ten. It was his turn to shut down. In his briefcase was an envelope for the bank’s night depository and some contracts he’d go over the next morning before going into work. He set the case on the seat beside him and started the car. Two headlights pulled right in behind him.
“Can I talk to you?” a voice called in the darkness. The agent turned to see a shape coming toward him.
“I’m afraid we’re closed. The office opens at –” He saw that he was looking at a gun.
“I want your money, man. Just be cool, and everything’ll be okay,” the gunman said. There was no sense terrifying the man. He might do something crazy, and he might get lucky.
“But I don’t have any –”
“The briefcase and the wallet. Slow and easy and you’ll be home in half an hour.”
The man got his wallet first. It took three attempts to loose the button on his hip pocket, and his hands were quivering as he handed it over. The briefcase came next.
“It’s just checks — no cash.”
“That’s what they all say. Lie down on the seat and count to one hundred. Don’t stick your head up till you finish, and everything’ll be just fine. Out loud, so’s I can hear you.” Let’s see, the heart’s right about there . . . He reached his gun hand inside the open window. The man got to seven. When it went off, the sound of the silenced automatic was further muffled by being inside the car. The body jerked a few times, but not enough to require a second round. The gunman opened the door and wound up the window, then killed the engine and the lights before going back to his car. He pulled back onto the road and drove at the legal limit. Ten minutes later the empty briefcase and wallet were tossed into a shopping center dumpster. He got back onto the highway and drove in the opposite direction. It was dangerous to hold on to the gun, but that had to be disposed of more carefully. The gunman drove the car back to where it belonged — the family that owned it was on vacation — and walked two blocks to get his own. Alex was right, as always, the gunman thought. If you plan everything, think it all out, and most important, don’t leave any evidence behind, you can kill all the people you want. Oh, he remembered, one more thing: you don’t talk about it.
“Hi, Ernie,” Jack said quietly. The dog showed up as a dark spot on the light-colored carpet in the living room. It was four in the morning. Ernie had heard a noise and come out of Sally’s room to see what it was. One thing about dogs, they never slept the way people did. Ernie looked at him for several minutes, his tail gyrating back and forth until he got a scratch between his ears, then he moved off, back to Sally’s room. It was amazing, Jack thought. The dog had entirely supplanted AG Bear. He found it hard to believe that anything could do that.
They’re coming back, aren’t they? he asked the night. Jack rose off the leather couch and walked to the windows. It was a clear night. Out on the Chesapeake Bay, he could see the running lights of ships plying their way to or from the Port of Baltimore, and the more ornate displays of tug-barge combinations that plodded along more slowly.
He didn’t know how he could have been so slow on the uptake. Perhaps because the activity at Camp -18 almost tracked with the pattern that he’d tried repeatedly to discern. It was about the right time for them to show up for refresher training. But it was equally likely that they were planning something big. Like maybe right here . . .
“Jesus. You were too close to the problem, Jack,” he whispered. It was public knowledge — had been for a couple of weeks — that they were coming over, and the ULA had already demonstrated its ability to operate in America, he remembered. And we’re bringing known targets into our home! Real smart, Jack. In retrospect it was amazing enough. They’d accepted the backward invitation without the first thought . . . and even when the security people had been here the previous day, he’d made jokes. You asshole!
He thought over the security provisions, taking himself back again to his time in the Corps. As an abstract battle problem, his house was a tough objective. You couldn’t do anything from the east — the cliff was a more dangerous obstacle than a minefield. North and south, the woods were so thick and tangled that even the most skilled commando types would be hard-pressed to come through without making a horrendous racket — and they sure as hell couldn’t practice that kind of skill in a barren, treeless desert! So they had to come from the west. How many people did Avery say — well, he didn’t say, but I got the impression of about twenty. Twenty security people, armed and trained. He remembered the days from the Basic Officer’s Course at Quantico, and the nights. Twenty-two years old, invincible and immortal, drinking beer at local bars. There’d been one night at a place called the Command Post, the one with a picture of Patton on the wall, when he’d started talking to a couple of instructors from the FBI Academy, just south of the Marine base. They were every bit as proud as his brother Marines. They never bothered to say “we are the best.” They simply assumed that everyone knew it. Just like us. The next day he’d accepted the invitation to shoot on their range and settle a gentlemanly wager. It had cost him ten dollars to learn that one of them was the chief firearms instructor. God, I wonder if Breckenridge could beat him! The Secret Service wouldn’t be very different, given their mission. Would you want to tangle with them? Hell, no!