Unlocking the gate, he drove back to the warehouse, unlocked the big steel doors and drove inside, parking next to a white Lincoln hearse fitted out to transport two full-sized coffins. He pulled the silk cover off the hearse. The tastefully small logo on the driver’s and passengers’ doors read: THOMAS FUNERAL HOME, WILMINGTON, DE.
SEVENTY-ONE
McGarvey pulled up at the Dover Air Force Base main gate a few minutes before one and presented his ID to one of the air policemen. “General Taff is expecting me.”
“Yes, sir,” the airman said. He wrote something on a clipboard. “If you’ll park in the visitors’ lot your escort will be here momentarily.”
About fifty yards back was a small parking lot and visitors’ center. McGarvey drove over and parked at the same moment Otto phoned.
“Two Bureau guys were here looking for you. Marty told them that you definitely were not on Campus and probably not in the city. I’ll have Page call the White House and cancel the warrant.”
“Don’t do it. If Haaris thinks that I may be arrested at any moment, he might let down his guard.”
“They’ll try to search your apartment, if they haven’t already tried. Are they going to run into any surprises?”
“Nothing dangerous, but they’ll need a damned good locksmith to get in. Any trace of Dave?”
“We’re blind for now, but I put three of Stuart’s people on ex-comms checking every hotel and motel in town, plus the casino and security at the Dover Mall for anything unusual.” Stuart Middler was chief of CIA internal security, and the ex-comms was an extended communications check to places that Haaris might have shown up. “They haven’t come up with anything yet.”
“Where’s the nearest decent-sized civilian airport?”
“Wilmington, about forty miles north.”
“Does he have a pilot’s license?”
“I’ll find out.”
“Extend the ex-comms to the airport; see if anyone has reserved an airplane to deliver something. Maybe automobile parts, something fairly heavy. I’m guessing a twin-engine Cessna or better.”
A plain blue Chevy Impala with air force markings came through the gate and pulled up as McGarvey got out of Louise’s car. A master sergeant whose nametag read, LARSEN, introduced himself.
“I’ll take you to General Taff, Mr. Director. He’s expecting you.”
The sergeant drove directly over to base headquarters. In the distance, on the far side of the main runway, the Super Galaxy was parked on the tarmac in front of a large building at the end of a row of several equally large hangars.
“What’s over there?” McGarvey asked.
“The Carson Center for Mortuary Affairs. Where all the bodies are brought for preparation before their release to families.”
“Civilians?”
“Some.”
Brigadier General Herman Taff was a slender man with ordinary features who could have passed for the CEO of a medium-sized business just about anywhere. When McGarvey was shown in he got up, shook hands and motioned to a chair across the desk from him. He was slightly annoyed.
“It’s been a busy day so far, Mr. Director, so I assume you’re going to explain why you came to visit us.”
“We don’t have a lot of time, General, so I’ll be brief. You have trouble coming your way, and it’ll probably be here within the next half hour or less. We think that as many as three nuclear devices may have been sent to this base from Pakistan, possibly disguised as medical waste, a biohazard of some sort in sealed containers that would likely not be opened by your personnel.”
“Nuclear weapons,” Taff said. “From Pakistan.”
“Someone will be coming here to pick them up. If it is medical waste, what would you do with it?”
“Depending on the hazard level, it would be sent out by air to Nellis in Nevada.”
“What if it were too dangerous to be put aboard an airplane?”
“If it were too risky it would go by truck or unmarked van,” Taff said. “We had an incident three months ago involving medical waste from a pair of Ebola victims in Africa. Someone from the CDC came to pick it up.”
“If someone shows up with the proper paperwork, do you release whatever it is they’ve come to pick up without checking with someone? Say, at the CDC?”
“No need if they have the proper orders, and they’re on our roster.”
“I’d like to see that roster,” McGarvey said. Haaris had made his first serious mistake.
“That’s not going to be possible. I’m sorry, sir, but I’m going to need more than your word.”
“Have your secretary telephone Walt Page, he’s the director of the CIA. But do it now.”
Taff hesitated for a moment but picked up the phone and instructed his secretary to make the call.
“What about civilian bodies?”
“We get them from time to time.”
“Who picks them up?”
“A funeral home sends a hearse.”
McGarvey pulled out his cell phone and called Otto. “They might be in coffins,” he said. “Haaris will be showing up with a hearse to pick them up.”
Taff was alarmed.
“Would the bodies be processed here?” McGarvey asked the general. “Would the coffins be opened?”
“Not if the families requested closed-coffin funerals. We respect their wishes. In any event that sort of processing, identification and perhaps autopsies, would most likely be done before the bodies were shipped to us.”
Taff brought up something on his computer.
Otto was back. “Robert Brewster, Thomas Funeral Home, Wilmington, chartered a DeHavilland Beaver in the land version for a flight to Teterboro Airport in New Jersey. It’s the only plane like that they had. Cargo is listed as two coffins.”
“Only two?”
“Yes. And Haaris is a commercial-rated pilot.”
“One’s missing,” McGarvey said. “Find it.”
“Where do I start?”
“England.”
Taff’s phone buzzed; he answered it and looked at McGarvey. “Get them up here; we’ll wait.”
“Hang on,” McGarvey told Otto.
“There’s a federal warrant for your arrest, Mr. McGarvey. We were told to hold you here until someone from the Bureau shows up.”
“Call Page,” McGarvey told Otto. “It’s time to call the Bureau off. If they come anywhere near this place, and Haaris spots them, he’ll pull the trigger.”
“I’m on it,” Otto said.
“Someone from the Thomas Funeral Home with the right documents will be showing up here to pick up the bodies of two civilians,” McGarvey told Taff. “Only, the coffins won’t have bodies, they’ll each have a Pakistani nuclear device. Probably something in the ten-kiloton range. Actually, warheads for tactical missiles. This guy is well motivated, he knows what he’s doing and the cell phone he’s got with him is almost certainly programmed to detonate both weapons. He doesn’t want to do that here. He means to take one of them to New York City and the other down to Washington. He’s chartered a private plane from Wilmington and he‘s filed a flight plan to fly first to New Jersey.”
The general suddenly didn’t look so sure of himself. He glanced at his computer screen. “A hearse from Wilmington, just the driver, is waiting at the main gate for his escort. We’ll delay him there until I can get some help.”
“You can’t do that,” McGarvey said, jumping up.
“We’ll take care of it,” Taff said.
Two armed air policemen showed up.
“Keep Mr. McGarvey here; the FBI has sent people to pick him up.”