The Second Mouse - Archer Mayor [102]
“But we can’t let Mel blow it up. ’Cause he can if we don’t stop him. If he pulls this latest thing off against the Niemiecs, there’ll be no saving anybody—everyone’ll go down the tubes. You can see that, right?”
She rubbed her face with both hands and spoke through them in barely a whisper. “Yeah.”
Joe dropped his voice a father-confessor notch lower and placed his last bet. “Then let’s talk about what he has planned.”
Chapter 21
At least the weather was cooperating. Warm, no wind, a sky full of stars but no moon, making visibility a perfect balance between seeing and not being seen. That perfection played to the strengths of all three conflicting parties due to arrive.
Joe stood slowly to stretch his legs and readjust his bulky ballistic vest, wishing he had more to do. Unfortunately, it was no longer his show, and although he had a radio whisper mike strapped to his throat, and an ear bud to listen through, he knew there would be hell to pay if he uttered a single word uninvited.
Cautiously, he edged up to the window and glanced out. As before, the place was empty. A few planes were tethered in the large parking area between the taxiways, and beyond them the paved runway shone slightly pale in the starlight. But no one moved among the shadows of buildings, planes, and assorted equipment. The Bennington airport was unmanned during nonbusiness hours, and it was certainly deserted now.
Or was being made to look that way.
In fact, elements of the VBI, the Vermont State Police, the Bennington County Sheriff’s Department, the Bennington police, and the latter’s SWAT team, complete with a sniper, were secreted in nooks and crannies all across the airport grounds, from inside its buildings and on its roofs to along its feeder roads far outside the property perimeter.
And they had all been in place for hours, having infiltrated quietly, discreetly, in small numbers, just to be the first to arrive. The second group due, from what Joe had been told, would be Mel and his team of two, one of whom—Nancy—would be carrying a tiny GPS emitter so they could track at least her on a computer-mounted map. As for how they’d position themselves and what they were planning, Joe and his colleagues had only Nancy’s version. And they all knew how prone to spontaneity Mel could be.
Finally, there was the Niemiecs’ gang, coming in from somewhere inside Bennington to pick up what was sounding like the largest haul of hard drugs ever to be interdicted in Vermont—assuming things worked as planned. And nobody knew what the Niemiecs truly had up their collective sleeve, either, Mel’s self-confidence notwithstanding. Even the choice of this particular night was in some doubt, since it dated back to Mel’s last interview with one of the gang members.
It was very possible nothing would happen at all.
But Joe didn’t think so. He’d spent hours with Nancy Martin on the day of the interview. At one point, he’d even gone on a walk with her, switching the recording from the video at the PD to a handheld unit in his pocket. They’d strolled outside for a time, sat under a tree, taken pauses to hear the birds sing. He’d done everything he could to coax every last memory, reminiscence, and reflection out of her, while maintaining an almost father-daughter tone to the conversation. In a move that had later caused Willy almost to lose his composure, Joe had even bought her an ice-cream cone.
But it had worked. He had learned not just about the raid on tonight’s planned delivery but about the removal of the M–16s from the armory, the practice session with them in the woods outside town, the theft of the bingo money, the killing of High Top, the growing love between Ellis and Nancy, and their screwy plan to throw Mel to the Homeland wolves. He also listened to the all-too-familiar tales of young lives sacrificed for the immediate pleasures of the here and now, to poor choices and bad decisions leading into emotional box canyons offering no options and no escape. And hoping he wasn’t just cynically adding to the latter, he encouraged Nancy