She decided on a small U-Haul van, the same-size vehicle as that used for mini-buses or small business deliveries. A larger truck, she thought, would take too long to fill with the proper boxes. These she picked up an hour later from a business called the Box Barn. It was something she’d never had to do before—all of her information transfers had been done with film cassettes that fitted easily into one’s pocket—but all she’d needed to do was look through the Yellow Pages and make a few calls. She purchased ten shipping crates made with wood edges and plastic-covered cardboard sides, all neatly broken down for easy assembly. The same place sold her labels to indicate what was inside, and polystyrene shipping filler to protect her shipment. The salesperson insisted on the latter. Tania watched as two men loaded her truck, and drove off.
“What do you suppose that is all about?” an agent asked.
“I suppose she wants to take something someplace.” The driver followed her from several hundred yards back while his partner called in agents to talk to the shipping company. The U-Haul van was far easier to track than a Volvo.
Paulson and three other men stepped out of the Chevy Suburban at the far end of a housing development about two thousand yards from the trailer. A child in the front yard stared at the men—two carrying rifles, a third carrying an M-60 machine gun as they walked into the woods. Two police cars stayed there after the Suburban drove off, and officers knocked on doors to tell people not to discuss what they had—or in most cases, hadn’t—seen.
One nice thing about pine trees, Paulson thought one hundred yards into the treeline, was that they dropped needles, not the noisy leaves that coated the western Virginia hills which he trudged every autumn looking for deer. He hadn’t gotten one this year. He’d had two good opportunities, but the bucks he’d seen were smaller than what he preferred to bring home, and he’d decided to leave them for next year while waiting for another chance that had never presented itself.
Paulson was a woodsman, born in Tennessee, who was never happier than when in the back country, making his way quietly through ground decorated with trees and carpeted with the fallen vegetation that covered the untended ground. He led the other three, slowly and carefully, making as little noise as possible—like the revenuers who’d finally convinced his grandfather to discontinue the production of mountain-brewed White Lightning, he thought without smiling. Paulson had never killed anyone in his fifteen years of service. The Hostage Rescue Team had the best-trained snipers in the world, but they’d never actually applied their craft. He himself had come close half a dozen times, but always before, he’d had a reason not to shoot. It would be different today. He was almost certain of that, and that made his mood different. It was one thing to go into a job knowing that a shooting was possible. In the Bureau that chance was always there. You planned for it, always hoping that it would not be necessary—he knew all too well what happened when a cop killed someone, the nightmares, the depression that rarely seemed to appear on TV cop shows. The doc was already flying out, he thought. The Bureau kept a psychiatrist on retainer to help agents through the time after a shooting, because even when you knew that there’d been no choice at all, the human psyche quails before the reality of unnecessary death and punishes the survivor for being alive when his victim is not. That was one price of progress, Paulson thought. It hadn’t always been so, and with criminals in most cases it still wasn’t. That was the difference between one community and the other. But what community did his target belong to? Criminal? No, they’d be trained professionals, patriots after the fashion of their society. People doing a job. Just like me.
He heard a sound. His left hand went up, and all four men dropped behind cover. Something was moving . . . over to the left. It kept going left, away from their path. Maybe a kid, he thought, a kid playing in the woods. He waited to be sure it was heading away, then started moving again. The shooter team wore standard military camouflage clothing over their protective gear, the woodland pattern’s blend of greens and browns. After half an hour, Paulson checked his map.
“Checkpoint One,” he said into his radio.
“Roger,” Werner answered from three miles away. “Any problems?”
“Negative. Ready to move over the first ridge. Should have the objective in sight in fifteen minutes.”
“Roger. Move in.”
“Okay. Out.” Paulson and his team formed line abreast to get to the first ridge. It was a small one, with the second two hundred yards beyond it. From there they’d be able to see the trailer, and now things went very slowly, Paulson handed his rifle to the fourth man. The agent moved forward alone, looking ahead to pick out the path that promised the quietest passage. It was mainly a question of looking where you walked rather than how, after all, something lost on city people who thought a forest floor was an invariably noisy place. Here there were plenty of rocky outcroppings, and he snaked his way among them and reached the second ridge in five minutes of nearly silent travel. Paulson snuggled up next to a tree and pulled out his binoculars—even these were coated with green plastic.
” ‘Afternoon, folks,” he said to himself. He couldn’t see anyone yet, but the trailer blocked his view of where he expected the outside man to be, and there were also plenty of trees in the way. Paulson searched his immediate surroundings for movement. He took several minutes to watch and listen before waving for his fellow agents to come forward. They took ten minutes. Paulson checked his watch. They’d been in the woods for ninety minutes, and were slightly ahead of schedule.
“Seen anyone?” the other rifleman asked when he came down at Paulson’s side.
“Not yet.”
“Christ, I hope they haven’t moved,” Marty said. “Now what?”
“We’ll move over to the left, then down the gully over there. That’s our spot.” He pointed.
“Just like on the pictures,”
“Everybody ready?” Paulson asked. He decided to wait a minute before setting off, allowing everyone a drink of water. The air was thin and dry here, and throats were getting raspy. They didn’t want anyone to cough. Cough drops, the lead sniper thought. We ought to include those in the gear . . .
It took another half hour to get to their perches. Paulson selected a damp spot next to a granite boulder that had been deposited by the last glacier to visit the area. He was about twenty feet above the level of the trailer, about what he wanted for the job, and not quite at a ninety-degree angle to it. He had a direct view of the large window on its back end. If Gregory were there, this was where they expected him to be kept. It was time to find out. Paulson unfolded the bipod legs on his rifle, flipped off the scope covers, and went to work. He grabbed for his radio again, fitting the earpiece. He spoke in a whisper lower than that of the wind in the pine branches over his head.
“This is Paulson. We’re in place, looking now. Will advise.”
“Acknowledged,” the radio replied.
“Jeez,” Marty said first. “There he is, Right side.”
Al Gregory was sitting in an armchair. He had little choice in the matter. His wrists were cuffed in his lap—that concession had been made to his comfort—but his upper arms and lower legs were roped in place. His glasses had been taken away, and every object in the room had a fuzzy edge. Thai included the one who called himself Bill. They were taking turns guarding him. Bill sat at the far end of the room, just beyond the window. There was an automatic pistol tucked in his belt, but Gregory couldn’t tell the type, merely the unmistakable angular shape.
“What—”
“—will we do with you?” Bill completed the question. “Damned if I know, Major. Some people are interested in what you do for a living, I suppose.”
“I won’t—”
“I’m sure,” Bill said with a smile. “Now, we told you to be quiet or I’ll have to put the gag back. Just relax, kid.”
“What did she say the crates were for?” the agent asked.
“She said that her company was shipping a couple of statues. Some local artist, she said—a show in San Francisco, I think.”
There’s a Soviet consulate in San Francisco, the agent thought at once. But they can’t be doing that . . . could they?
“Man-sized crates, you said?”
“You could put two people in the big ones, easy, and a bunch of little ones.”