Stuart Woods: D.C. Dead

Teddy got out of bed, took the Colt Government .380, which was a miniature of the .45 Model 1911, and slowly began to walk the perimeter of the little beach house in La Jolla, a San Diego suburb. He and Lauren had left Santa Fe after a CIA officer had tracked them down there. They had been safe and happy in La Jolla for more than a year, but they had to run.

He went, barefoot and silent, from room to room without turning on any lights. There was half a moon that night, and as he looked out every window in its turn, he could spot no one. He went back to the bedroom, where Lauren was sitting up in bed. “It’s time to go,” he said.

“Teddy, are you sure? Do you know something I don’t?”

“No, I’m not sure. The only way to be sure is if someone sticks a pistol in my ear and cuffs me. And I don’t know anything you don’t, except that I do. I just do.”

“All right,” she said.

“Are you with me, sweetie?” he asked. “You can always bail out, if you’re tired of this.”

“I’m with you,” she said. “I’m not tired of you.”

“All right,” Teddy said, looking at the luminous hands on his watch. “We have to be out of here in one hour-say, three o‘clock. That’s an hour and five minutes. Start with what you absolutely cannot bear to leave behind, then widen your circle to include the less essential but important. We’re not going to turn on any lights. We’re going to load the car with the garage door closed and head out.”

Lauren started dressing.

Teddy started with his computer equipment-a MacBook Air-and his printer, and two magic boxes he had built himself and was thinking about marketing. He could forge any document, break into any database, with those. He always kept the original packaging for important things, and he located the boxes and manuals in the dark. Next came his tool kits and weapons-a silenced sniper rifle in a briefcase that he had designed and made for the CIA during the twenty-odd years he had served in the Agency’s Technical Services department. They didn’t know that he had made a duplicate rifle for himself.

He went to the sixty-inch safe, opened it, and took out the handguns and the cash. He already had cases ready for everything. He loaded all these things and put them into the SUV, then he climbed on top of the vehicle and unscrewed the bulb that normally came on when the garage door opened.

He went back to the bedroom and began throwing clothes into a suitcase. “How are you coming?” he asked.

“Pretty well,” she replied, packing a bag. “I’ll be ready by three.”

“Sooner, if you can,” he said, handing her a pair of latex gloves and pulling some on himself. “I’m going to start wiping down the house.”

He started with the bedroom, then went to the bath and kitchen, then to the rest of the house, spraying things with alcohol-and-water window cleaner and wiping with a clean dishcloth. When he finished, Lauren’s things were in the SUV, and she was ready. They got into the car.

“Ready?” he asked, handing her a SIG Sauer P239. “There’s one in the chamber.”

“Ready,” she said.

He switched off the auto-on interior lights. He touched the remote control, and the garage door rose silently. He had aligned and greased it carefully for such a moment. “Let’s give it a push,” he said.

They both opened their doors and got the vehicle rolling, then got back in. As the car rolled down the driveway, he touched the remote again to close the garage door. He had chosen the house, in part, because of the hill, and now the car rolled noiselessly down the street. He was two blocks away before he started the engine, then he used as little power as possible for another three blocks, checking the mirrors constantly for another moving vehicle. Nothing. He finally switched on the headlights.

They drove out to Montgomery Field, eight miles north of San Diego, to a never-used back gate that Teddy had cut the lock and chain off and substituted his own combination padlock. Lauren unlocked the gate and opened it, then closed and relocked it when Teddy had driven through.

The field was dark, except for the runway and taxiway lighting. Teddy drove to their hangar, parked, and unlocked the hangar and opened the door. The two of them pushed the Cessna 182 RG out onto the ramp and quickly loaded their things into it, then Teddy put the car into the hangar, wiped it down, and closed and locked the door. Nobody would bother to look in it for at least another month, when the rent hadn’t been paid. If he had had more time he could have sold it, but what the hell? He could eat the loss.

Teddy had a good look around the field and saw nothing moving. The tower was closed, as takeoffs were discouraged between eleven-thirty P.M. and six A.M. He ran through the checklist quickly, then started the engine, waiting only a moment before moving to be sure it was running smoothly. He taxied across the ramp and straight onto the short runway, 28 Left, at a point that left him 2,000 of its 3,400 feet, more than the airplane needed to get off the ground. Leaving the airplane’s lights and transponder off, he pushed the throttle to the firewall, waited for seventy knots, then rotated. He leveled off at 200 feet, then turned inland.

He had recently installed a Garmin flat screen that was capable of Synthetic Vision, a GPS-generated map of the world that displayed high terrain and obstacles. When he was well inland, he began to climb, so as to clear the Santa Monica Mountains east of Los Angeles. When they had crossed the peaks, he turned north over the desert, avoiding the restricted area surrounding Edwards Air Force Base, on a dry lake bed.

Teddy finally spoke for the first time. “How does San Francisco sound?” he asked.

“Sounds good,” Lauren said. “Do you think you were right about your feeling?”

“I think so,” Teddy said. He altered course, but something still nagged at him. “No,” he said, “not San Francisco. They’ll work {ey>“I thintheir way up the coast, checking every general aviation airport, and they’ll find the airplane.”

“But it has a new paint job and a new legal registration number.”

“They’ll be looking for a new paint job,” Teddy replied.

“Then where will we go?”

“East,” Teddy said, looking at his planning chart. “We’ll overnight somewhere in the Midwest, then tomorrow, into the belly of the beast.”

“Washington, D.C.?” she asked, incredulous.

“Near enough,” he said. “Clinton, Maryland, Washington Executive Airport. As close to D.C. as we can get. They’ll never think of that.”

The team of six men let their vehicles roll silently down the hill, nearly to the house, then they got out and trotted the last thirty yards. Todd Bacon gave them the hand signal that told them to take the positions worked out during their planning session at the motel, none of them on Teddy’s property, which Todd knew would have motion sensors.

When enough time had passed, Todd walked up the front walk at a normal pace, crouched before the front door, and used a professional lockpick to open it, then he unslung his light machine gun and spoke one word into his handheld radio: “GO!”

They came into the house from all sides, kicking doors open. One minute later, Todd spoke again on the radio. “They’re gone,” he said. He was disappointed but not terribly surprised.

“All right,” he said into the radio, “let’s take this place apart. Bag anything that might be remotely of use.”

The team went to work. Two hours later, they had three garbage bags full of what Todd knew was nearly all garbage. Still, there might be that one thing.

“All right,” he said. “I want you to pull out all stops, yank in as many bodies and phones as you can get your hands on. I want a survey of every general aviation airport-nothing is too small-that has had land today a stranger in a Cessna 182 RG with a fresh paint job, and do callbacks from a month ago to now.” Todd clapped his hands together. “Let’s get to work, people.” He got into his vehicle and drove back to the very nice motel that had been home for the past twelve days.