Стюарт Вудс - Choppy Water

“I heard the White House report on TV.”

“That was about making them think they had succeeded.”

“Well, it worked. Now what?”

“Did anything happen at Sykes’s compound that would stand up as evidence for an arrest?”

“Just what I told you.”

“When are you going back out there?”

“This weekend.”

“Sykes clearly doesn’t trust you.”

“That’s because I’m not sleeping with him. I told him I’m a lesbian.”

“And he wouldn’t trust a lesbian?”

“Not in a century. But I wasn’t willing to fuck him to gain his trust. I’m a lousy undercover agent, right?”

“I like you better lousy. Keep me posted over the weekend.”

“It’s not easy. There’s no cell service, and Wi-Fi is only turned on a couple of times a day, to receive messages.”

“Do the best you can.” They both hung up.

Stone and Holly were having breakfast when Bill Wright came into the residence. “You folks ready?”

“As soon as we’ve finished breakfast,” Holly said.

“The Lincoln is waiting for you. I’ll get your luggage. Don’t forget your disguise. And the walker.”

Holly sighed. “You haven’t convinced me about the disguise. After all, they found me.”

“They found a dummy, ma’am. They don’t know where you are.”

They took off shortly after eleven. Bill came and sat down with them. “I want to bring you up to date.”

“Thank you,” Holly said. “I’d like that.”

“We think we know who did this, but we can’t prove it, I’m sorry to say. We have a mole in their camp, but they don’t trust her enough to tell her these things in advance.”

“It’s a woman?” Stone asked.

“It is. She’s an FBI agent who’s been assigned to the Justice Department for several weeks. There’s no cell service at the colonel’s compound, but she managed to get a garbled message out about the attack.”

“And who are the group?”

“The top man is a retired Army colonel named Wade Sykes.”

“I’ve heard that name before,” Holly said. “He left under some sort of cloud, didn’t he?”

“Yes. He was charged with distributing white-supremacy materials on several Army bases, but he agreed to resign if they didn’t prosecute him. He’s quite well connected in Washington, especially among the right-wingers in Congress.”

“Will he keep trying?” Stone asked.

“I will be surprised if he doesn’t,” Bill replied. “Pretty soon he’ll find out that his attempt failed, and I expect that will humiliate him.”

“I think you’d better stay at my house,” Stone said.

“No,” Holly replied. “I’m not going to run from this bastard.”

“We’re working with the FBI on this,” Bill said, “and they’re going to set up surveillance on Sykes’s compound. If he or anyone else leaves the place, he’ll be followed. I’m working with Tom Blake, the assistant director, and he’s setting up the surveillance. He’ll also have some people on the street for you.”

They began the descent into Teterboro, and Bill went back to his seat.

They met at a restaurant in Georgetown. “When are you going back out there?” Tom asked Elizabeth.

“Tomorrow,” she said.

“Has he asked you to be there at that time?”

“No, he just asked if I’d be back for the weekend, and I said I would, if he wanted me to be. We didn’t mention a time.”

“How many vehicles live at the place?”

“Sykes drives a silver Ford Explorer, pretty new. There’s a van, and Eugene seems to drive that more than anyone else. The cook, Elroy Hubbard, drives a Toyota station wagon, but I don’t think he’s really a part of the group. Sykes won’t talk about anything when he’s in the room.”

“All right,” Bill said, placing a leatherette pouch on the table. “There are two trackers in this package. I want you to place them on Sykes’s Explorer and the van.”

“All right.”

“They have lithium ion batteries and only operate when they detect movement. Don’t place them in the wheel wells; they’re too easy to find there. Wait until dark, then crawl under each vehicle and place the trackers where they can’t be seen by just bending over and looking underneath. Somewhere around the gas tank might work; it’s up to you. They’re marked number one and two, and there is an on-off switch on each. So turn them on; they’ll stay dark until there’s movement.”

“All right.”

“Do you still have your burner phone?”

“I hid it on the hilltop when I tried to call you from there.”

“Here’s another one,” Tom said, handing it to her.

“Okay. Sykes turns on his Wi-Fi a couple of times a day, so if you send me a message, I’ll get it eventually. I like the way you did it the last one; keep being Dad.”

“If there’s an emergency, I’ll use the word ‘may’ in a message, meaning ‘mayday.’ If you get one like that, get out, and do whatever you have to do to protect yourself. You still have a gun?”

“Yes.”

“If you have to think about whether to shoot somebody, shoot him. Thinking time is dangerous. If somebody is a threat, shoot him in the head. You don’t want him to get up and start shooting at you.”

“I wasn’t trained to shoot people in the head,” she said.

“It’s just common sense. You’re still using the .380, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“It doesn’t carry the kind of punch that a .40 or .45 caliber would, so if you have to shoot, shoot to kill.”

She nodded, but she didn’t mean it.

Eugene left the table, got into the van, and went to retrieve his rifle case, which was hidden at a rest stop a mile or so from the turnoff to the compound. He took it back to his room, assembled the rifle, and slung it over his shoulder. “I’m going to do a little shooting,” he said to his roommate.

Eugene went outside and began the climb to his perch on the hilltop. After resting for a couple of minutes, he set down the rifle and began his search for a cell phone. He walked in a circle around the hilltop, widening his path on each circuit, kicking at rocks and other debris as he went, looking into nooks and crannies. He sat down on a boulder and rested again before walking back down the path.

As he got up, he noticed that the boulder was loose. He pushed it over with a foot, and there, dug into the dirt, was a cheap cell phone. Sykes would be pleased.

Bess was driving down to Virginia when she passed a liquor store and remembered that Sykes’s bar was out of Knob Creek. They had all been drinking it. She parked, went inside, and bought three bottles of the bourbon.

At the compound she took her suitcase in one hand and the shopping bag from the liquor store in the other and went inside. She left her suitcase on the stairs, then knocked on the door of Sykes’s study. No answer. She knocked again, then went in and left a bottle of Knob Creek on the butler’s tray that he used for a bar, then took the other two into the dining room and put them with the rest of the booze.

“That’s very generous of you,” a voice said from behind her. She turned and saw Sykes standing in the doorway.

“Well,” she said. “I’ve been drinking a lot of it, so I thought I’d return some to the fold.”

“Thank you. I’m sure we’ll all appreciate it.” He beckoned her into the study. “Sit down.”

“I put a bottle with your stock, too,” she said, nodding at the butler’s tray. Then she sat down. “What’s up?”

He set her burner phone on the table between them. “What’s this?”

She picked it up, opened it, tried to turn it on, and failed. “It’s a throwaway cell phone,” she said. “The old-fashioned kind, not a smartphone. Dead.”