“It’s that woman over there,” he said, pointing to a middle-aged woman at a long table who was a party official.
“I can’t do this.”
“We don’t have a great deal of time here, Esther.”
“Ford is a good man,” she pleaded.
“Okay. Prove me wrong then.”
She stared at him for a beat and accepted the challenge. She headed off to see the lady.
“Can I help you?”
“Hi, I’m from the Washington office.” She pulled her party ID and gave it to her so she could see it was the real deal. “I’m checking to see if there were any reports of electoral fraud today, a high number of rejected ballots, that sort of thing.”
“No, it’s been real quiet-like so far, I mean for an election day. For Florida.”
She snickered and Esther joined in to stay polite.
“So nothing outta the ordinary?”
“No, nothing like that. It’s going to be a real good turnout though. So far 69 percent of the voters came out. That’s real good.”
“Really…” Esther said, her voice trailing off.
“Are you coming to the Diplomat tonight? Ford himself is gonna be there.”
Esther looked back at Spicer. She felt as if she had betrayed her people, forsaken all her beliefs, but she had to trust him. If he was only half right, the world was in jeopardy.
Chapter 27
No one was tailing him, Ned was pretty sure of it. He had only followed a rudimentary course on evasive driving when the CIA had hired him but he remembered the basics. Look for patterns. Look for anything out of the ordinary. So far nothing jumped out at him.
Still, his hands tightened around the steering wheel, his knuckles turning white.
“They’re not gonna get to me. What do I know anyway? They’re doing some illegal shit and they tried to kill Old Spice about it. No big deal.”
The pep talk didn’t work. He looked once more in his mirrors but this time he only stared at himself.
Motherfuckers!
His conscience creeping up on him, he grabbed his phone and hit the first speed dial.
“Honey, it’s me.”
“Ned, what’s going on? Something has to be wrong for you to be calling me in the middle of the day.”
“No, listen. I want you to pack whatever clothes you can grab in 30 seconds. Then, you go to the hotel where your sister stayed on her honeymoon.”
“You mean the…”
“Don’t say it out loud, please,” he interrupted.
“I knew something was wrong! You’ve been acting weird all week and…”
“I love you but don’t argue baby, okay? I can’t explain anything right now. But I need you to leave the house for a while. I’ll call you there tomorrow morning.”
“You’re scaring me. Please tell me what’s going on, Ned.”
“I can’t. I’m gonna hit redial on this phone in one minute. If you answer the phone I’m gonna be real mad.”
He hated doing this to her but he had no choice. His wingman was in trouble. He hung up and threw the phone on the passenger seat.
He grabbed the wheel with two hands, cut two lanes to the left, and made a U-turn.
It took almost an hour to drive to Andrews Field and even though Ned no longer had CIA credentials, he still had his Uniformed Services ID. Getting onto the base proved relatively easy since he’d been here so often lately and he parked at his usual spot at the 89th Airlift Wing.
Heaven was smiling down on him when he made out a young Senior Airman he’d seen half a dozen times through recent transports. He got out of the car and jogged to him.
“Hey man, how’s the new baby? Listen, I need a favor.”
The Air Force man looked around. Was this guy talking to him?
“It’s a big favor that I need. In terms of aircraft, what can you give me?”
The kid’s double take alone had been worth the trip, Ned thought.
Houseman hated going to the subbasement. On the one hand, this excited him because it harkened back to the real shadowy work of the CIA. But on the other hand, the journey down through the long corridors was exhausting. He forgot the weakness of his legs by focusing on the problem at hand.
“How could he commandeer a plane without IDs?”
Dr. Michaels shrugged. “Apparently, they know him.”
“Do we know where he’s heading?”
“Not so far.”
They reached their destination and a security officer checked out their credentials before they were admitted into what everybody called the War Room. It wasn’t much different from the White House’s Situation Room or the Pentagon’s National Military Command Center.
It was here that CIA operations could be witnessed and controlled. Sometimes a high-ranking senator was brought in so he could see a covert drone strike. It never failed to make politicians feel important, like they were part of the action. And when they were pumped up with testosterone, they were much more inclined to approve budget increases or wave oversight on some shady operations.
The room was windowless though extremely bright from both artificial lighting and a dozen large screens. As many technicians were monitoring live satellite feeds and communication channels. Houseman and Michaels walked in but remained on the elevated platform instead of going down into the pit where the action was.
Michaels turned to the supervisor. “Do you have the link up?”
“We are online, sir.”
His own assistant was in communication with the Pentagon. “So far, Andrews is tracking the bogey. Its current heading is one-seven-five degrees. They’ll lose him in nine minutes.”
That wasn’t good news to Houseman. And it was freezing in here.
“Is there an AWACS in the area that can take over?”
The supervisor was prepared for these kinds of questions. “The closest one’s in the Gulf of Mexico, sir. Rerouting it could take a few hours and we’d lose the target in the meantime.”
Michaels muttered a curse and then led his boss to a less crowded area where they could whisper without being overheard.
“Listen, there’s not a hundred ways to look at this. The little bastard’s heading south, probably to the same place we’re going. And if he’s going there, that can only mean Spicer’s already there.”
Houseman nodded somberly. “We really don’t have a choice, do we?”
“I’ll tell Clara to get ready. We have to terminate the problem once and for all.”
“Get that AWACS to track the east coast of Florida,” Houseman said while heading for the exit again.
Michaels turned to the supervisor. “Call me as soon as something pops up. I wanna know where that fucker lands.”
The two men stomped out. They might as well have been charging with bayonets.
Chapter 28
The Opa-locka Executive Airport wasn’t exactly a hive of activity and that’s why Spicer and his two accomplices were here. The sun was going down over the runway and the three of them were leaning against the Audi as they waited. Spicer felt the weight of his gun under his shirt and it offered a small measure of comfort.
They were silent for a long time and then David Weller spoke.
“Somethin’ I don’t get. In this day and age, how could someone go about stealing an election?”
Esther shrugged. “It’s all done with computers nowadays.”
“And we all know computers can’t be hacked, now do we?” Spicer said with a grin. “You put in a few extra votes at each poll. You buy votes from old people who weren’t planning on going. You take the identity of dead people. There’s a million ways to do it.”