The grass field lay quiet under a dark, cloudless night sky. Crickets chirped ceaselessly in a whirring, rising and falling, rhythm.
A light wind rustled through the trees surrounding the open, empty ground. Only a few survey stakes, a darkened construction trailer, and a newly graded dirt road indicated that the field would soon be the site of yet another office complex.
From his position in the treeline just to the north, Rolf Ulrich Reichardt looked down at the luminous dial of his watch again.
Another ten minutes had gone by. He turned to Schaaf. “Anything?”
The taciturn ex-commando flipped down his nightvision goggles.
He scanned the edge of the field where the new road cut through the bordering woods, and then shook his head. “Nichts.”
Reichardt frowned. Schaaf had four men concealed in carefully chosen positions around the empty construction trailer.
Each was armed with a silenced MP5 submachine gun. Once the four Americans arrived, the ambush team had orders to cut them all down as soon as Mcdowell led them toward the trailer. Thorn, Gray, Farrell, and the traitorous FBI agent would be dead before they even hit the ground.
Once they arrived … His frown deepened into a scowl. They ought to have been here by now.
The cellular phone clipped to his belt vibrated softly. He snapped it open. “Reichardt.”
“This is Harzer. I’m at the far end of the dirt road. But I don’t see any sign of the Americans’ car.”
Unbelievable.
“Clear the area, Harzer. Return to the compound.” Reichardt flipped the phone shut and spun toward Schaaf. “Something’s gone wrong. Recall your men. We’re getting out of here — now!”
He moved back deeper into the concealing woods while Schaaf loped across the open ground toward the construction trailer. An instinctive, unreasoning shiver ran swiftly down his spine. Thorn and Gray had obviously stumbled onto his plan to ambush them. But how?
And, more to the point, what would they do now?
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
THE ABYSS
Helen Gray lay flat in the tall grass beneath the spreading branches of a large oak tree. Sam Farrell lay right beside her, studying the main gate of the well-lit Caraco complex through the binoculars they’d appropriated from Mcdowell’s car. They were a few feet back from the verge of the road and roughly fifty yards away from the perimeter fence surrounding the facility.
Peter Thorn was further behind them, deeper in the belt of trees — holding a gun to the still-cowed Mcdowell’s head.
Helen stayed still as a convoy of three vehicles — two four-door sedans and a minivan — swept past them, slowed, and turned into the drive leading to the gate.
“Here we go!” Farrell said. “That’s got to be them.”
Helen nodded. The timing was about right — allowing a certain number of minutes for Wolf to realize they weren’t going to walk blithely into his trap, and more minutes for the Caraco security chief and his men to regroup and drive back here.
One after another, the uniformed guards manning the gate cleared the three vehicles and waved them through. All of them turned left and pulled into a parking lot adjacent to one of the three buildings — the one with a forest of radio and microwave relay antennas on its roof.
“Well, well, well,” Farrell murmured. “There that son of a bitch is — without those fake glasses, too.”
He passed the binoculars to Helen. “Wolf just got out of the first car. Tall. Gray-haired. He’s not carrying anything in his hands.”
She adjusted the focus, zeroing in on the area Farrell had indicated.
The angry-looking face of the man they knew as Heinrich Wolf jumped into view. She gritted her teeth. So this was the bastard who’d arranged the cold-blooded murder of so many people, including that of Alexei Koniev. In that instant, she knew that if she’d been looking through the scope of a highpowered rifle instead of a pair of binoculars, she’d have squeezed the trigger without hesitation.
Satisfied that she would recognize the German when she saw him again, Helen surveyed the others in the group. The rest were dressed in dark-colored clothing and carried black cases — the kind of cases used to carry weapons.
Moving as a group, the Caraco contingent filed into the building and disappeared from view.
Helen lowered the binoculars, tapped Farrell on the shoulder, and then slithered backward until she was out of sight from the road. The general followed her more slowly, making far more noise than she did despite his best efforts. She hid a smile. Sam Farrell was a very good friend and a brilliant strategist, but his tradecraft was a lot rustier than he’d ever admit.
They rejoined Peter near where they’d parked Mcdowell’s Ford.
After filling him in on what they’d seen, Farrell asked the obvious question. “Okay, now that we know for sure Wolf’s one of the bad guys, what’s our next move? We still don’t have enough to go to the FBI or the police.”
“No, we don’t,” Helen reluctantly agreed.
Nothing they’d seen constituted significant evidence, not the kind that would get them safely through the front doors of the Hoover Building, or even come close to winning a judge’s approval for a search warrant against the Caraco facility. That was why she’d argued they should bounce Wolf and his men at the ambush site — a plan both Farrell and Peter had vetoed. Both men pointed out that going up against an unknown number of armed enemies, on ground of their own choosing, and in the dark, could come close to counting as suicide. The clincher was the fact that they couldn’t be absolutely sure the Caraco security chief had told Mcdowell the real location for the ambush. In a treacherous game where double crosses were the basic currency, they couldn’t take anything on face value.
“Fine. We need more hard evidence. Then I suggest we take the steps needed to get it,” Peter said abruptly.
“You have a plan, Pete … or just some noble intentions?” Farrell wondered.
“More a rough outline than a detailed blueprint,” Peter admitted.
He shrugged. “We know there’s one guy who’s got all the answers we need. So I say we wait for Mr. Wolf to leave his lain-and then we arrange a little chat.”
“You proposing a kidnapping?” Farrell asked grimly.
“Call it a citizen’s arrest,” he said, grinning. He nodded toward the assortment of gear they’d found in the Taurus’s trunk and back seat.
“Especially since Mr. Mcdowell here has so thoughtfully provided us with all the essentials.”
Mcdowell opened his mouth to protest, then shut it abruptly when Peter jabbed him lightly with the pistol. He’d been told before to keep his trap shut unless they asked him a direct question.
Helen hated to rain on Peter’s parade, but she had to ask the obvious question. “What makes you think Wolf is going to go anywhere?”
“Educated guesswork,” he said. He ran quickly through his reasoning process. “Look, I don’t think this guy Wolf is the head honcho of this operation. He’s too involved in the detail work.
Somebody else somewhere has to be pulling the strings — looking at the big picture. Now that we’ve slipped the leash, I think Wolf will go running to his master for new instructions. And I don’t think he’ll trust that kind of information to the phone. I think he’ll go in person.”
“To Ibrahim?” Farrell guessed.
“I think so.”
“He’s smart enough. And tough enough,” Farrell said slowly.
