Capitol Punishment (An Art Jefferson Thriller Book 3) Read online

  “Jefferson,” Orwell began, sliding frustration aside. Making people understand the potential danger of these weapons was never easy. They weren’t nukes, after all. Nowhere near as sexy as a mushroom cloud, but every bit as deadly. “Do you know where the technology to make VX came from? To make most nerve agents, in fact?”

  “Where?”

  “Pesticides. Because that’s basically what nerve agents are: pesticides for humans.” Orwell briefly recalled a poster from a class some years earlier depicting a cartoonish bulldog in an Army uniform utilizing an old pump fogger to spray retreating mice wearing Red Army uniforms. The caption below read It’s that simple. “Think of what happens to a bug when you zap it with an insect killer. It becomes confused. Falls over. Twitches. Then it dies. See the similarity? All VX is, is a very potent pesticide designed to exploit the weaknesses of the human nervous system. What it does is attach itself to an enzyme our central nervous system relies on to maintain our basic life functions. It cuts off the transfer of necessary neural information. Without that control you get the spasms and the collapse of the respiratory functions.”

  “You’re telling me this stuff is a bug killer?”

  “No, but that’s what British chemists were looking for when they stumbled upon VX in the fifties. And that is precisely why it is so easy to manufacture.”

  “But how does someone know how to do it?” Art pressed, still incredulous that anyone not connected with making these agents for military use could do so.

  “Organophosphorous chemistry,” Orwell said. “That’s a sub discipline of organic chemistry that deals with chemicals and their effect on life forms. Take that one step further and you know how to make chemicals that affect life forms. Plus the general formula has been published quite a number of times in journals over the years. If you’re a good chemist you can figure out how to make VX without the formula. If not, you can just look it up.”

  How could anyone do that responsibly? Freedom of speech, maybe? Bullshit, Art thought. It was worse than publishing the designs for a nuclear bomb, even. You couldn’t readily get plutonium or uranium, but you damn sure could buy any chemical you wanted. Even those who made narcotics illicitly bought their bulk chemicals from reputable supply houses. Idiocy!

  “Hey, I agree with what you’re thinking,” Orwell said. The agent’s reaction to the revelation was quite clear through his faceshield.

  The heavy release of breath crackled through the amplifier in Art’s mask. “Well, Allen may have known how to make C4 or Semtex, but I doubt he could have either dreamt this up or carried it out himself.”

  “No noise factor,” Frankie said in agreement. But why was Allen involved in this then?

  “Where’s the other guy?” Art asked.

  “Come on.” Orwell led them into the blacked-out house.

  Art followed the captain’s lead and turned on his flashlight, as did Frankie. They turned right at the first hallway and immediately came upon the body.

  “Do you have a name on him?” Frankie asked.

  “I’m too busy worrying about the contamination,” Orwell answered. “Maybe the sheriffs department does.”

  Art sidestepped by the captain and knelt next to their one unknown victim. Next to the fiftyish male body was a stainless-steel cylinder about a foot long and two inches across. Both ends were rounded, with a squarish valve assembly at one. “This is it, right?”

  “From what I can tell it has to be,” Orwell said. “There’s a lab set up in one of the back bedrooms, but I haven’t been able to find any other signs of the agent. No other containers. Just supply bottles and condensers with residue. I’ll have those analyzed by morning to be sure that this was it, but best-guessology is yes, that’s it.”

  “Did you see anything else of interest?” Frankie asked.

  Orwell’s head moved up and down behind the face shield. “A bunch of cash in a bedroom. One of my men did a quick count—twelve thousand.”

  “I’m not surprised,” Frankie said.

  There was no need being delicate now, Art figured. He rolled the man sideways in the cramped hallway, but found nothing in his pockets. Easing him back, Art next picked up the cylinder, testing its weight with small tossing actions, “This thing is small.”

  “It doesn’t take much,” Orwell commented.

  Art thought on that for a moment, looking around the confined hallway. “How did all this happen?”

  “An accident,” Orwell said. “It has to be. Probably when this guy was handing it off to your fugitive. That valve on top probably also activates the mixer.”

  “You say ‘probably’ a lot,” Frankie said from behind the captain.

  “We prefer absolutes,” Art said. “It makes the report writing a whole bunch easier.”

  “What else could it be?” Orwell wondered. “This guy here prob— makes a batch of VX for Allen, then, when he’s giving it over something goes wrong. It makes sense.”

  Art nodded halfheartedly and set the cylinder down. He could feel the sticky liquid even through the sensation-numbing gloves. “Probably.”

  “Can we get a forensic team in here tonight?” Frankie asked.

  “Sure, but they won’t be able to take anything out. We’ve got a camera the haz-mat team set up that can feed pictures back to the van. That’s about the extent of what they’ll be able to take—pictures.”

  “We’ll take that,” Art said, standing and pulling back.

  “Ten minutes’ lead time,” the warning came over the radio on Orwell’s belt.

  “Sarge is on top of the time,” Orwell explained. “Time to start heading back.”

  This time Frankie was in the lead as they left the house, but Art and Captain Orwell almost ran into her as they came through the door.

  “What is it, partner?” Art asked, knowing Frankie’s I see something posture even through the added layers of protection.

  “Allen’s waistband,” she answered, walking toward the fugitive as the artificial rain pelted her from above.

  Art came around the captain and joined his partner once again next to Allen’s body, still rolled on its side. That had not changed. But something had. The thoroughly soaked jacket, which had clung to his body, had slid under the weight of the continuing downpour to the ground, revealing the back of Frederick Allen’s waist.

  Frankie eased the pistol from its place tucked in the small of Allen’s back. It was a .380, she saw. Then she saw its other distinctive feature.

  “A silencer?” Art said, cocking his head to look at Frankie. “Why the hell...”

  “Maybe he was planning to use it,” Frankie suggested. “Freddy liked noise, but maybe this needed to be used quietly.”

  “Against John Doe inside,” Art added. “He makes the stuff, then when Freddy comes to pick it up he also plans to cut the trail off by killing him. But the guy decides to use the stuff on Freddy when he gets wise to what’s going to happen.”

  “That makes more sense than an accident, considering Freddy’s nature,” Frankie said. Allen was a thug, pure and simple, and he preferred to solve situations with force. That fit the scenario they were envisioning, but not his involvement in the bigger picture. There was almost too much finesse in all this. Too neat for Allen.

  “A gun,” Orwell said, looking over their shoulders.

  Art stood up again. “I think your accident theory needs reworking. But we may be glad Freddy acted true to form.”

  Even Frankie didn’t follow Art’s line on that comment. “How do you figure?”

  “If he had just been an honest thug the transfer might have gone down without a hitch,” Art posited. “Then this shit would be out there somewhere. And I gather from what you’ve said, Captain, that he could have killed a hell of a lot more people than we lost here.”

  Orwell nodded. “Many more.”

  “Let’s hope this was all they were able to make,” Frankie said.

  “It probably is,” Orwell semi-assured her.

  “Make
sure,” Art said. “Allen may be dead but he hung with some folks who wouldn’t hesitate to use any weapon they could get their hands on. I want to be damn sure none of this stuff got into the wrong hands.”

  “I’ll know by tomorrow afternoon,” Orwell promised.

  “Good.” Art looked down at the grouping of bodies one more time, focusing on the youthful face of Luis Hidalgo, Jr. He saw a bright, smiling, eager expression that practically screamed at the world to Watch out, I’m coming! That was the day of the young man’s college graduation, Art remembered. That face now was locked in a grimace, its mouth, eyes, and nose blotched with purple discoloration around their edges. But that was not how Art wanted to remember him. Unfortunately, it was probably all that Luis Hidalgo, Sr., was able to think of right now.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Art said, taking the lead this time. Frankie and the captain immediately had trouble matching his pace.

  * * *

  Bud DiContino pulled the mouthpiece of the phone away and sipped his coffee from the mug emblazoned with the unit flash of the 358th Tactical Fighter Wing. The reunion of his old buddies from those “interesting” days flying suppression in Nam was four months past now, but he still felt a grin coming whenever the mug they’d presented him neared his lips. Awarded to him for being “Most Likely to Suck Seed,” it was ostensibly an informal commendation for being remembered as the lowest of the low when it came to flying, precisely where the Wild Weasel pilots had to drive their Thuds. Bud thought there might be something else in the wording of the award, though. Something to do with his present position in the West Wing. Something much less flattering.

  Position did have its price. Ribbing from former buddies who had been with him in his paddy-pounding days he would accept any day as atonement for the “sin” of reaching the West Wing. Brass heaven, they called it. A job, Bud knew it truly to be. National Security Adviser to the President of the United States. He chuckled softly. Brass heaven, indeed.

  “Did I say something funny?” FBI Director Gordon Jones asked over the phone.

  “Not you,” Bud said, continuing the mild laugh. “It’s this cup my old unit gave me last summer.”

  “The ‘sucking seed’ trinket?”

  “Yeah. Damned nostalgia.” Bud set the mug aside and tore the top sheet off his legal pad. “So this chem thing looks wrapped up?”

  “Jerry Donovan in L.A. thinks so,” Jones said. “Everything points to a botched transfer of goods.”

  “Greed paid off in our favor this time,” Bud observed.

  “Freddy Allen played the game that way. We’d been on him for a while. He killed a Treasury agent a year and a half ago.”

  Bud swiveled his chair to look out toward Old Executive. “Nothing on the other guy yet?”

  “Later today, but, like the brief from CIA said, it does not take a rocket scientist to make this stuff.”

  “Then why hasn’t anyone until now?” Bud asked.

  “Someone did, five years ago,” Jones revealed.

  “I didn’t hear about that.”

  “Good. This is the kind of thing that is better kept in the dark. Can you imagine the copycats we’d have trying to cook up nerve gas in their basements and their garages if this was all general knowledge?”

  “It is in the open,” Bud pointed out.

  “So are the plans for H-bombs,” Jones countered. “But your average Joe can’t get the stuff to make it work. In this case, your average Joe can get the stuff but he’s more likely to kill himself than anyone else. That’s what happened five years ago. Some stupid college kid thought it would be neat to make some VX. He decided to do it small, just an ounce or so, and before he knew he’d done it he was flopping on the ground like a fish. Dead by the time a buddy who’d been helping him got up the nerve to call the authorities. They did the smart thing and sealed it all off until the Army could get some people there. Stupid kid.”

  Bud could imagine the FBI director rubbing his temples as he shook his head. “It’s still scary that someone could produce this stuff if they wanted to.”

  “I know. But the genie is out of the bottle, Bud. We just have to make sure no one without any real compunction to use it ever gets near it.”

  “Sounds more like a hope than a plan,” Bud said.

  “We have to start somewhere.”

  The NSA tapped his pen on the blank legal tablet and turned back to his desk. “Well, the president will be glad to hear that everything is under control.”

  “Is he getting any more sleep?” the director inquired.

  “With a baby that just started crawling?” Bud asked rhetorically. “You should see it sometimes, Gordy. The little guy is scooting around the Oval Office like there’s no tomorrow, all while the man running our country is on the phone with Konovalenko or some other world leader. It makes for some interesting background noise.”

  “I bet.”

  “Anyway, thanks for the update. If anything new comes up let me know right away.”

  “Will do.”

  Bud placed the handset back in its cradle and brought both hands behind his head. He leaned back and turned again to gaze upon the gray monolith across Executive Avenue. The faded light of the late autumn morning was not flattering to the old building. Some days it looked quite nice; others, like this, it was a drab reminder of what was possible.

  So similar to the way the political landscape appeared, Bud thought. His position did not normally lend itself to internal punditry, but no one in the West Wing could deny that the president was suffering from being cast in an unflattering light, much like Old Executive. The vibrancy of a new baby in the White House aside, there was trouble on the homefront. The economy was still sluggish. Jobs had not materialized fast enough for those who were planning to challenge the president in the election the following year. And increasingly the media was focusing on those efforts that were directed at dealing with issues on the international stage and asking, Why not focus on what needs attention at home?

  As if the world would just wait until everything improved at home, Bud thought. Still, the president was in a precarious position to begin in earnest his campaign for reelection. He needed to convince the American public that he was making significant strides in putting the domestic economy on a track of long-term growth. The problem with that was that it would yield little in the way of tangible results to hold before the voters as proof. Image and snippets drove elections now. And too often the voter was the recipient only of a filtered, packaged view of what was really happening on the political playing field. That was the way the pendulum had swung, Bud admitted reluctantly.

  “Thank God this thing didn’t blow up in our faces,” the NSA said to the empty interior of his office. All the president needed was a crisis in the states. He would have dealt with it, and the media would have crucified him for spending too much time doing so. It was a no-win situation that they would not have to live through now. Bud had no doubt the West Wing was going to be breathing a little easier because of a crisis that entered the arena stillborn. This one was dead on arrival.

  * * *

  Captain Orwell finished decontaminating for the second time since leading the guided tour for Art and Frankie. An hour after their departure it had been for a two-man FBI forensic team, and this last time to finish the work he needed to complete. He stepped out of the containment suit that was like a sauna under the noontime sun and was checked by one of his team for any residual contamination. With a clean bill of health, and still in MOPP suit and breathing gear, he trekked a quarter-mile more to the set of Humvees.

  “Damn, it’s hot in this,” he exclaimed as the mask finally came off.

  “Just think what it would be like here in summer,” the sergeant said.

  “Did you get a good download?” Orwell asked. He had just completed sampling residues in the containers that had once held several dozen chemicals using a remote analyzer. That information was then fed to a computer via a landline stretching more than a hal
f-mile from the lead Humvee to 1212 Riverside.

  “Perfect. She’s crunching the numbers right now.”

  Orwell pulled his legs out of the MOPP suit and stuffed the sweat-soaked garment into a sealed drum adjacent to the Humvee. “Let’s take a look at what we’ve got.”

  The two men climbed through the rear door into an electronics-crammed workspace smaller than the dressing facility of the Humvee one back. Several banks of computers and their associated equipment were mounted against one wall, with two chairs facing them. Orwell took the one with best access to the keyboard.

  “She’s done,” the sergeant observed.

  “Let’s print some hard copy while we see what we found,” Orwell said. A few keystrokes sent a report to the printer, which began spitting the pages out with just a whisper. The captain, meantime, pulled the identical data up on the screen for viewing.

  “Diisopropylamine,” the sergeant read from the screen, noting the presence of the colorless, ammonia-smelling chemical. “There’s the base ingredient for the base of the binary.”

  “So it was made as a binary,” Orwell commented. “Interesting.” He looked back to the screen. “Ethyl alcohol, dipropylene glycol monomethyl ether, and phosphine. There’s the whole base.”

  “The guy was able to process it?” the sergeant wondered. “I would have bet he’d skipped the phosphine and used the extrusion method. This guy took risks.”

  He sure did, Orwell agreed. Using phosphine, a gas that had the potential to spontaneously ignite on contact with air, put their man a step above advanced chemist. You had to have balls to play with this stuff in a crude environment. Balls and confidence. Strange. He chose to use a more difficult method of making the VX binary base. The only reason to do that was...quality control? The simpler method sometimes yielded inferior, even ineffective product because of the potential for poor manufacturing of the several reagents. Processing with phosphine was more dangerous, but it gave the chemist more control over the finished product. Very strange, Orwell thought.