"Now what?" Peggy asked.
"Weapons," said Holliday.
"I'm not sure I want you armed," said Lockwood.
"I don't care what you're sure of. I'm not going after Billy Tritt without something with a very large caliber in my hand."
"I could lose my job," said Lockwood.
"I could lose my life."
"Point taken," said Lockwood. "Gun up, I guess."
Holliday chose a secondhand AR-15 with a sling and put it over his back. He stuffed his pockets with magazines, then chose a Mossberg 12-gauge autoloader, crammed five slug shells into the automag and stuffed his pants pockets with twenty more. For a handgun he chose a Colt M1911.45-caliber semiautomatic pistol exactly like the one he'd used in combat from Vietnam to Somalia. He found a web belt with a pouch and loaded half a dozen magazines, while Peggy and Lockwood armed themselves.
"This is like an audition for Rambo Six," Peggy said, choosing a rather unladylike Ruger Blackhawk. "What kind of bullets does this thing use?"
Lockwood had picked a Remington 480 Bushmaster to go along with the Walther on his hip. "Casulls,.454-caliber. You fire that thing, young lady, you be sure to hold it in both hands. He handed her a box of the large shells and she methodically began to load the cylinder.
"Young lady, my ass," she muttered.
"What if the good guys see us wandering around like this?"
Lockwood took out his badge and ID wallet, slipped out the badge and pinned it on the front of the camopatterned hunting jacket. "This will have to do," he said. "Now, what exactly are we looking for?"
"The explosion was a distraction," said Holliday. "It's almost certainly designed to draw away local law enforcement and get the Secret Service to exfiltrate the president. That means they'll bring him back to the chopper and get him the hell out of here. That's the obvious protocol."
"So you think this Tritt character will be close by?"
"I can almost guarantee it." Holliday nodded. "He'll have night-vision equipment and something big enough to bring the helicopter down before it gets very far off the ground. A Stinger or something like it. And that won't be the end of it, either."
"That's not enough?" Lockwood said.
"The whole idea is to create enough chaos to justify Matoon pressuring the White House into declaring martial law. I'm guessing Tritt's got more truck bombs that he's going to let off, probably using some kind of remote detonator."
"Cell and radio are out. How's he supposed to set these things off?"
"Cell phones are out, but satellite phones aren't."
"How do we know this guy if we see him?" Lockwood asked. "My town's being blown to hell and its pitch-dark."
"Look for the guy carrying a surface-to-air missile," said Holliday.
"This is just like the good old days," grunted Lockwood. "Trying to kill an enemy you can't see."
"I hated the good old days," said Holliday.
"Me, too," answered Lockwood. They went out into the cold again.
At the Abbey School the Secret Service had found and routed the half dozen men in phony National Guard uniforms, killing four and wounding two, who were now being held prisoner. The two survivors quickly told the Secret Service about the plan to blow up the entire school with an ANFO bomb, and the president and his entourage were immediately removed from the premises, leaving the evacuation of the other people at the stadium to the local police. Twenty-five minutes after the explosion that had turned out the lights all over Winter Falls the presidential limousine was on its way back to the center of town and the waiting Marine One helicopter.
Billy Tritt sat in his room in the inn and tried to control his anger. The first explosion had gone off perfectly, sending Malcolm Teeter to whatever hell awaited his shriveled, mindless soul.
Windows had blown out in half of Winter Falls, there was panic everywhere and a huge fire was developing on the eastern edge of town. It had been distraction enough to draw the fire trucks out of their hall on the west side of the Municipal Building and from the looks of it from his position, part of the roof of the police department had collapsed. With the cessation of communication resulting from the triple threat of the destruction of the electrical substation, the telephone switching hub and the two cell towers serving Winter Falls, both the Headquarters Emergency Management unit of the New Hampshire State Police in Concord and the F Troop station in Twin Mountains would have automatically been alerted, but F Troop was sixty miles away and Concord ever farther. At the very least it would take F Troop the better part of an hour to appear and the HQ SWAT team about half an hour longer.
However, the second truck bomb at the Abbey School had not detonated for some reason and Tritt had been forced to go to his Plan B alternative. The second bomb should have demolished the main building of the school, the stone debris in turn destroying the relatively flimsy construction of the arched shell enclosing the hockey rink. By now Tritt should have been halfway across Lake Winnipesaukee, riding on the snowmobile he'd left behind Gorman's Restaurant earlier in the evening.
Reaching the other side of the lake and his rental car, Tritt would have detonated the other four truck bombs spread around the town via satellite phone, and while Winter Falls burned he'd be climbing aboard the little Cessna he'd chartered at Laconia Airport and heading into oblivion once more.
Instead he was on the third floor of an old brick bed-and-breakfast in a snowstorm, awaiting the inevitable arrival of the president and his retinue. It would make his own exfiltration considerably more dangerous, but he'd contracted for the president's death and, if nothing else, he always fulfilled his contracts.
Tritt shifted slightly in his chair beside the window. They'd be coming from the west and they'd be coming fast, lights flashing and sirens wailing. The security they used for once-upon-a-time presidents was definitely second-tier-new Secret Service types as well as old burnouts-but it was enough to give him trouble. There'd be a few local cops and a squad of state police from the VIP protection bunch, but that would be about it.
They'd all heave a sigh of relief once the chopper rose into the snowy air, and that's when he would strike. He reached over and laid his hand on the tube of the ATC Confined Space Anti-Tank weapon. Unlike the weapon he'd used in Italy, the ATC was unguided, but from his window the chopper was no more than 150 meters away. He could hardly miss. The two-kilo, high-explosive warhead would turn the VIP helicopter into scrap metal in a split second.
He had timed it roughly and it would take him about thirty seconds to get out through the main-floor kitchen of the hotel and another minute to reach Gorman's Restaurant and the dock that ran out to the ice beside it. It was really the only way out.
Whatever was left of the Maine's Right Arm bunch he'd brought with him were to escape by road, but if the state police were any good at all they'd have expanding perimeter roadblocks established very quickly, especially with a President of the United States involved, soon-to-be-ex or otherwise.
If the MRA types were dumb enough they'd try to shoot their way out, which would mean even more fuel to Matoon and the Sinclair bitch's fire. The whole plan was insane, of course, but so was Hitler, and it didn't matter, anyway, since they paid well. He could and would retire on what they were paying him for this night's work.
He heard the sirens now, approaching fast. He parted the curtains slightly and opened the old-fashioned casement window. He picked up the antitank weapon from the side table on his left, balanced it on his right shoulder and used the index finger of his right hand to disengage the two safeties. He moved the index finger from the safety switches on the side of the tube and laid it firmly on the firing button that was located just in front of the optical night sight. He waited and for a moment he let himself see the clear Caribbean blue of the water just offshore from his place at Lyford Cay. He slowly let the air out of his lungs, imagining himself snorkeling above a school of darting spotted drums. Below him the motorcade came into view. They were here and it was time to end it.