After an agonizingly long minute, Leiter raised his eyes from the report. He scowled. “Damn it. This situation is completely out of control, Mcdowell. What the hell were you thinking about?”
Mcdowell decided to play dumb. “Sir? I’m not sure I understand you completely.”
“You violated my orders, damn it!” the FBI Director growled.
“I told you specifically that I didn’t want Special Agent Gray or Colonel Thorn arrested!”
“You told me not to have our people arrest them,” Mcdowell fudged. He licked his lips. “The German police took matters into their own hands.”
“Cut the crap!” the other man snapped. “You set this whole thing in motion.”
Mcdowell spread his hands. “To be honest, sir, I really don’t see that I had any other choice — not after Agent Gray briefed me on their illegal actions in Wilhelmshaven. The German authorities already had good descriptions of them.” He shook his head sorrowfully. “I’m sure you wouldn’t have wanted me to condone possible manslaughter and flight to avoid prosecution.”
Leiter pursed his lips. “That’s how it’s stacking up?”
“The situation is … ambiguous,” Mcdowell suggested artfully.
“Certainly, Thorn and Gray’s overreaction last night suggests either guilt — or complete paranoia. Both the German policemen they attacked are in the hospital suffering concussion. And one of them has a broken jaw.”
The FBI Director frowned. “You should still have cleared this with me, Mcdowell. Damn it, you’ve completely overstepped your authority here.”
“Under the circumstances, sir, I thought it best to handle this matter at a lower echelon,” Mcdowell replied. “Given the current climate in Congress, it seemed unwise to give your critics any more ammunition. This way whatever happens to Special Agent Gray is my responsibility — and not yours.”
That should hit a nerve, he thought.
Fed up with a succession of FBI blunders, overreaching, and unproven allegations of corruption in some of the Bureau’s administrative sections, several congressional committees were conducting in-depth probes of the organization. In fact, the Director had spent most of the previous day testifying under oath — and in front of television cameras — about several of those incidents. Having a senior field agent on the run from German law enforcement agencies would be the icing on the cake for the Bureau’s hungry congressional watchdogs.
For a terrifying second, though, he was afraid he’d pushed the wrong buttons. Leiter’s face reddened dangerously.
Mcdowell decided to play his last card. “If you wish, sir, I’ll be happy to submit my resignation over this whole affair …” He let his voice trail off, leaving the rest of his intentions plain, but unspoken: If you don’t back me up, I’ll go running to those same congressional committees — and I’ll tell them the Director of the FBI was willing to turn a blind eye to potential felonies committed by one of his agents while overseas. Given all the toadying he’d done to ingratiate himself with the ranking members in both political parties over the years, Mcdowell was confident they’d listen to him.
He watched the Director’s anger fade into resignation and breathed an inward sigh of relief. The other man must have made the same calculations and come to the same conclusion.
“All right, Assistant Director Mcdowell,” Leiter said slowly. “We’ll play this your way — for now. Your actions regarding Agent Gray are, reluctantly, approved.” He scrawled a signature across the bottom of the report in front of him.
“Thank you, sir.” Mcdowell paused briefly to savor his win before continuing. “I do have two other suggestions.”
The Director’s eyes narrowed. “Go on.”
“I think it’s time we revoked Agent Gray’s law enforcement powers and issued our own arrest warrants for her and for Colonel Thorn. The odds are the Germans will pick them up sooner rather than later — but it would look better if we were moving off the dime on this end.”
Leiter sat stone-faced for a moment, and then nodded abruptly. “Very well, Assistant Director Mcdowell. Get it done.”
Mcdowell left the Director’s office with a heady sense of relief and triumph. He’d survived Heinrich Wolf’s little ploy — survived and come out on top. And now, with Thorn and Gray almost out of his hair forever, he could concentrate on finding some way to free himself from that blackmailing bastard’s clutches.
Leiter’s voice stopped him in his tracks. “Mcdowell.”
He turned. “Yes, sir?”
The Director glared back at him. “From now on you keep me fully informed. I don’t want any more ugly surprises like this. Is that clear?”
Mcdowell smiled blandly. “Of course, sir. You can count on it.”
The two-story concrete-block building leased by Caraco Transport — one of Caraco’s several subsidiaries — was close to Galveston’s waterfront.
It had a three-bay loading dock at the rear, a single steel door in front, and glass-block windows high on three of the walls.
Like all the other buildings in the area, Caraco Transport’s warehouse was surrounded by a fence topped with razor wire. Security lights and cameras covered every approach. None of the neighboring businesses found that at all unusual. Port warehouses were a magnet for thieves.
The extraordinary security measures were kept inside — well out of public view.
The building’s front office had been taken over by a highly trained eight-man security force. A gun rack on one wall held half a dozen H&K G-3 automatic rifles. Other weapons lockers held grenades, Russian-made RPG rocket launchers, and handguns for a dozen men.
The security troops were all Germans — veterans of East Germany’s now-disbanded People’s Army or the Border Command denied further gainful employment after the Wall fell. Their commander, a taciturn ex-commando named Schaaf, was a specialist in urban combat tactics — especially SWAT assault methods and other raiding team techniques.
His expertise was reflected in the facility’s defenses. Although already considered burglarproof, the warehouse doors had been strengthened with welded metal plates and steel bars. They would resist any battering ram attack indefinitely. Demolition charges and directional mines were deployed to cover the major avenues of attack.
His men were equally well protected. Masks were provided for use against tear gas. Helmets with built-in hearing protection offered a defense against the flash-bang grenades favored by Western counterterrorist forces.
Four of the eight were always on duty. One continuously monitored a battery of police scanners, intrusion alarms, and TV surveillance cameras. Another patrolled the building — looking for signs of intrusion, whether physical or electronic. The rest were stationed to watch the work on the warehouses’s vast, open main floor.
All of them ate, slept, and lived in the building. And, according to Schaaf, if they failed to protect its secrets, they’d be buried in it as well.
Werner Kentner took a quick break from his work, flipped the goggles off his face, and glanced up at the catwalk above the main floor. One of Schaaf’s men was in view there — prowling back and forth with an assault rifle cradled casually in his arms.
Kentner mopped his sweating face with a rag and turned back to the job at hand.
One of his men, a young Palestinian from the Gaza Strip, gave the ready signal and scrambled out of the large metal shipping container.
Kentner nodded. “Hoist away.”
A third man, this one a fellow German, spun the controls of the overhead crane poised above the open container. Chains tightened as the slack came off hauling a jet engine into view.
Almost as soon as it was clear, the fourth member of Kentner’s team, an Egyptian by birth, moved in with a cutting torch.
Sparks flew as he attacked the shipping container, slicing it into irregular shapes of random size — all of which would be too small to give any clue to the container’s original identity. As the pieces dropped free, the fifth man, an older Palestinian, checked them, and then tossed them into a man-high bin to one side. A dozen similar bins were already full.
