FORTY TWO
“Is Maccabee at home?” Donovan asked the CIA agent. “No sir!”
“Did you check Mrs. Hansen’s on Three?”
“Mrs. Hansen’s in Savannah.”
“Did the lobby guard see Maccabee leave?”
“No. He just came on duty.”
“Check the lobby video.”
“I did. It shows a service guy stepping onto the elevator and heading up about that time you talked to her. But we can’t verify if he’s the AC service guy or not.”
“He probably is. He was heading up to her then. Check all building security cams.”
“We’re checking them now.”
Donovan swallowed a dry throat. “And call me!”
”Yes sir.”
They hung up.
Donovan phoned Maccabee again and was bounced into voice mail. He left another message asking her to call. His sixth call. He tried Doctor Dubin’s office and learned she hadn’t gone there.
Why isn’t she returning my calls? She always answers within minutes. Where is she?
He directed two agents in Manhattan to check with her friends, and ask tenants if they saw her leave the building.
Donovan’s mind was spinning with possibilities. All bad.
He took a deep breath and tried to calm himself as he pulled into The Highwayman Tavern north of Mayfield on Highway 30, a popular hangout for locals.
He hoped someone in the bar saw Nell or the white van. The lot was filled with pickups, four-wheel vehicles, and a 1962 green VW minivan in mint condition.
An FBI team had tracked Nell’s footsteps through the forest to near the Jackson Summit Reservoir where rain washed them out. They found them again alongside a road, but then her steps simply vanished. A vehicle had obviously picked her up. Most likely her abductors, since she hadn’t phoned 911, Jacob, or Lindee.
Worse case scenario, her abductors dumped her body in the forest.
Donovan, Agent Manning, Lindee, and Jacob went inside The Highwayman Tavern. The busy, two-story bar smelled like fried burgers, beer, and spicy nachos. Neon beer signs celebrated Utica Club, Saranac, and Stella Artois. Several customers celebrated a Yankee home run.
Farmers with sunburned faces and white foreheads chatted with men in suits and ties. Construction workers threw darts. An ancient Wurlitzer pumped out Springsteen’s Born in the USA. Some guys looked like they were born in the bar - and never left.
Donovan preferred this kind of cozy saloon, hard to find in chichi, tony Manhattan. Everyone here probably knew everyone. And noticed strangers.
He introduced himself to the bartender whose frizzy silver hair looked like a Brillo pad. Donovan showed him his badge, a photo of Nell and the van, and explained.
The bartender squinted at the photo, shook his head. “Haven’t seen her. But if she or the van’s in these parts, one of these rummies might know.” He nodded toward his customers. “Just ask ‘em.”
He handed Donovan a small microphone. Donovan tapped it and it popped like a firecracker.
The chatter quieted a bit.
“Pardon me folks, but we need your help. My name’s Donovan Rourke. I’m with the federal government.”
Silence.
“Please hold your fire until I finish.”
Some chuckles and smiles.
“This is your basic CIA badge.” He held it up.
The bar immediately got quiet. The CIA badge was a Mute button.
“We’re searching for three men who are middle-eastern looking. They kidnapped a woman, Dr. Nell Northam. They were just seen in this general Park area in a white Chevy van.”
Drew Manning and a police officer handed out copies of Nell’s photo and the van.
“Has anyone seen her or the white van?”
No one answered. Most shook their heads.
“They snatch her?” shouted a skinny older woman with blonde hair stacked up like a beehive.
“Yes. But these men are more than abductors.”
“Rapists?” a young blonde waitress asked.
“Terrorists.”
No one spoke. Someone unplugged Born in the USA.
Donovan didn’t want to incite panic, but he had to level with them. “We think they’re planning an attack.”
“In itty bitty Mayfield?”
“Probably New York City.”
Silence.
“So why’re these bastards way up here?”
“They have a large underground laboratory in the Adirondack forest.”
The customers looked stunned. Clearly, they had no idea a laboratory had been built there.
Donovan continued, “Anyone see anything or anyone out of place, out of the ordinary, anything strange in the area?”
A short guy with a beer belly pushing out his grass-stained Oshkosh overalls stood up. “Name’s Maynard Trott.” His cheeks gleamed like polished red apples.
“I seen a strange truck. Bearded dark-skinned fella driving.”
“What kind of truck?”
“Delivery truck. Gray, mid-sized.”
Maybe the same gray truck the boy on a Schwinn saw, Donovan thought.
“Why strange?”
Maynard Trott spit tobacco into a tin can. “’Cuz where it was at.”
Trott walked over to the wall and pointed to a spot on the Fulton County map.
“This here dirt trail. Ain’t but one place to deliver at. Cabin way at the end.”
Donovan saw it was the same trail to the destroyed cabin they’d just left. “Was the truck heading toward the cabin?”
“Nope. Coming out. Turned left on Tolemantown.”
“What was strange about it?”
“Side of the truck.”
“Why strange?”
Maynard honked a nasty gob of chewing tobacco into a spittoon with the accuracy of a Marine sniper.
“Name on the side.”
“What name?” Getting information from Maynard was like pulling stumps.
“Said Zelda’s Fresh Garden Flowers.”
“Delivering flowers maybe,” Donovan said.
“Nope.”
“Why not?”
“Ain’t no Zelda’s Fresh Garden Flowers store nowheres in the whole damn state of New York. And that’s a true fact!”
“How the hell you know that, Maynard?” A fiftyish red-haired woman shouted.
“’Cuz a my new iPhone, Juwanna.” He pulled it out of his bib overalls and proudly waved it around. “It tells me Zelda’s Fresh Garden Flowers is somewheres else!”
“Where’s it at?”
“El Paso, Texas. Three-thousand-mile flower delivery. Gotta be one of them secret boyfriends you always braggin’ about, Juwanna.”
Everyone laughed. Juwanna threw a stack of swizzle sticks at Maynard.
Donovan knew El Paso bordered Juarez, Mexico, a sometimes US entry location for jihadist terrorists posing as Mexicans.
“We’ll put out a BOLO on the flower truck,” Manning said.
“Trucks!” Maynard said.
Donovan grew more concerned. “How many?”
Maynard closed his eyes. “I seen four trucks, mighta been more. All had Zelda’s Fresh Garden Flowers on the side. Four trucks from El Paso delivering flowers to a New York forest road whut ain’t got but one cabin? Them flowers’d be all shriveled up and dead by the time they got here. Don’t make a lick a sense to me!”
“To me either, Maynard,” Donovan said, as he walked over to the map and placed his finger on the cabin road. “You’re positive this is the road where you saw the trucks?”
“Yep!”
Donovan sensed the fleet of trucks were connected to the attack. Maybe the trucks would release the bio or chemical weapon through their exhaust systems on Manhattan streets.
Or maybe each truck would attack a different city.
Donovan heard Manning call in the description of Zelda’s flower trucks.
“Anything else, Mr. Trott?”
“Nope.”
Donovan thanked everyone and asked them to call him or 911 if they saw Nell Northam, the white Chevy van, or the flower trucks.
His phone rang, he listened a minute, hung up and turned to Manning, Jacob, and Lindee.
“That was my NSA contact, Bobby Kamal. He just listened into another conversation between a man in Yemen and a man in this area . . . a man within twelve miles of us.”
“Did he get a name for the guy here?”
“No.”
“The NSA is also picking up credible buzz about a major attack. And the buzz is growing louder. Bottom line - Washington, Homeland Security, the FBI and NSA, and now the White House, suspect an imminent attack.”
“How imminent?” Manning asked.
“Probably within forty-eight hours. They’re raising the terrorist alert level to HIGH ALERT! Maybe even to SEVERE ALERT - if we find out where, when, and how it’s coming.”
No one spoke.
“Are they still looking for Nell?” Jacob asked.
“Yes. Finding Nell is the key,” Donovan said.
And finding Maccabee is the key to my family, he thought. He checked his calls-received and saw she still hadn’t called or texted him. He dialed her number again. No answer.
He tried to leave a voice message, but the message box was full. Panic was scrambling his brain.
As Manning made a call, Donovan stared across the bar at an old friend of his: Jameson whiskey. He felt incredible pressure to chug some down. Jameson had often eased his panic and pain after his first wife, Emma, was murdered in Brussels because he wasn’t there to protect her. The drinking grew worse until he hit bottom a few months later back in Manhattan. Finally, he got the rehab treatment he needed.
But now, once again, his wife was in danger - because of his job. Namely, protecting America. No small task. But how could he protect America if he couldn’t even protect his wife?
With Maccabee in probable danger and her ovarian cyst fears, he should probably consider asking to be relieved from this assignment.
And looking at the bigger, long-term picture, he should probably consider reassessing his current appointment by the DNI and the President. The job threatened his life and the lives of Maccabee and Tish. What right did he have to endanger his family?
Sooner or later, he’d have to decide about the job.