Dead or Alive - Tom Clancy [269]
They were out in three minutes. Clark dialed The Campus as they walked back to their car. “They’ve got four more credit cards and three passports each,” he told Rick Bell. “E-mailing the details to you now.”
A side from their new hotel in Virginia Beach and yet more meals from McDonald’s and Frappuccinos from Starbucks, the Salims had only one other charge: a rental car from Budget. Jack and Clark drove back to the Holiday Inn and found the platinum Intrepid in the rear parking lot.
“Now we wait,” Clark said.
Shortly before two p.m., Citra and Purnoma came down the hotel’s back stairway and got into the Intrepid.
From Virginia Beach they got on the 264 heading east, through Norfolk, then into Portsmouth on the 460 before turning north and taking the tunnel across Hampton Roads Bay. On the far side, they got off at Terminal Avenue then Jefferson to King Lincoln Park at the southern tip of Newport News Point. Clark followed them into the parking lot and watched the Salims climb out and head into the park. They gave the Salims a hundred-yard head start, then got out, separated, and followed.
The park was only a quarter-mile long. At the halfway point, Clark and Jack met back up at the basketball courts, where a shirts-skins pickup game was going on.
“Where the hell are they going?” Jack asked. The park was bracketed on two sides by water. “They just traded the sun and surf capital of Virginia for this.”
“Doesn’t feel right,” Clark agreed.
The Salims reached the far edge of the park where it formed an arrowhead between the beach and Jefferson Avenue. As they watched, the girl got out a camera and started taking pictures—not of the ocean but across the highway.
“The cargo terminal,” Clark muttered.
They’re doing reconnaissance,” Clark told Hendley and the others over the phone an hour later. They’d just followed the Salims’ Intrepid back to the hotel; now they sat on Atlantic Avenue, a block away, where they could see every car coming and going. “The Newport News Marine Terminal. What exactly they’re interested in, we don’t know, but they took dozens of pictures.”
“Any military ships berthed there? Chemicals, fuel depot?”
“Nothing,” Clark said. “Already checked. Mostly box ships with dry cargo. We’ve been on them since this morning. Aside from the pool and the terminal, they haven’t gone anywhere, and no one’s come up to their room.”
“If they’re scoping out targets,” Granger said, “this could go on for weeks. We’re not really set up for extended stakeouts. I say we tip the FBI and let them have it.”
“Give us another day,” Clark said. “If nothing pans out, we’ll pull the plug and come home.”
At the Claridge Inn in Saint George, Utah, Frank Weaver was showering off a day’s worth of grime and looking forward to a Law & Order mini-marathon on TNT when he heard a knock on his door. He wrapped himself in a towel and padded across the room. “Who is it?”
“Front desk, Mr. Weaver. We have a problem with your credit card.”
Weaver unlatched the door and opened it a crack. The door flew open and banged against the wall. Two men stepped inside, one shutting the door, the other taking two quick strides at Weaver, who began backpedaling across the room but not fast enough. He felt something hard pressed against his solar plexus, then felt a hammer blow, then another. He felt himself falling backward. He bounced once on the edge of the bed, then rolled to the floor on his back. He lifted his head and looked down at his chest. Just below his sternum, two pencil eraser-sized holes were bubbling blood. The man who shot him walked forward and stood over him, one leg on either side of his chest. Frank Weaver saw the gun’s muzzle lowering toward his face, and he shut his eyes.
83
THE SALIM SIBLINGS left the hotel at nine p.m., and almost immediately Jack and Clark realized they were retracing their earlier route to the Newport News Marine Terminal. In Portsmouth they turned off the highway and drove to a U-Haul Storage on Butler Street. Clark kept going past the entrance,