From the Pulpit, Chapter 35

Chapter 35

The phone on Paul Hogan’s desk rang loudly, waking him out of the deep slumber he was enjoying in his office chair.  Mike Farris rose from the couch along the wall as Hogan answered the call, squinting at his watch.

It was seven am.  They had slept for three hours after spending the night checking reports and surveillance video of the Stadium area with Hilde.

“Yeah.” Hogan said into the receiver.

“Paul its Andy!” Fleiss’ voice was excited. “They came back online a few minutes ago and I also got a signal of a cell phone coming from one of the vehicles that was in a call at the same time the gps came back online.”

“Where are they?”  he asked the technician.

“All three just received coordinates that take them straight to Ohio Stadium.  They will all be coming into the area by around ten thirty, just before kickoff at eleven.”

“All right then, here we go!”  Hogan exclaimed into the receiver. “What was the cell caller saying?”

“I don’t know, I couldn’t get a recorder on it before he hung up.  I am tracing the caller ID though to find out who he was talking to.  I am also listening for that phone to come back online anytime.”

Andy suddenly sneezed into the telephone speaker. “Sorry.  My allergies are acting up and I ran out of meds last night.  Anyway, I did get through a little farther on the search for Mr. White.  I have narrowed the original signal to one of three possible locations.  I’ll let you know more later on that one.”

“Thanks Andy, does Hilde know this?” 

“I’m calling her next.”

“Don’t bother, I’ll go get her from her office.”

“Roger that chief.”

Hogan hung up the phone and turned to Farris who had walked over to the small bathroom at the corner of the office where he was splashing water on his face.

“Mike!  They are all heading in to the stadium.  Let’s go get Hilde and get over there.”

The two men walked quickly into the hallway and down the length of the building to Hildegard Rottbruck’s office.  Hogan knocked quickly then jiggled the handle impatiently.

A moment later the lock clicked open and Hilde was standing there, rubbing the sleep out of her own eyes.

“Find something?”  She asked.

“Andy got their latest signal.” Hogan answered. “They are all headed to the stadium now, let’s get over there ASAP.  I want to be there with your surveillance teams when we nab these guys.”

She grabbed her purse and jacket and followed them out the door.  Twenty minutes later they were walking into a trailer filled with computer and video terminals that were being fed images form cameras posted at every major intersection as well as alleys and pedestrian areas. 

A dozen technicians and agents stared intently into them waiting for the alarms to buzz informing them that one of the faces had a hit on the facial recognition database. 

At eight am the sun was only just coming over the horizon but already hundreds of vehicles of every shape and size were making their way into parking lots for the big game.  There was no sign of the blue van, nor was there any sign Akbar Usein, Cold Bones or Lucas Ring.

Fleiss had managed to get the NSA to park a satellite over the area to scan for radiation from above, supplementing the agents on the ground with their hand held detection units.  Nothing was hitting so far.

Columbus Police and FBI dog handlers were methodically scouring the lines of traffic that were moving through the check points in search of everything from drugs to firearms to conventional explosives.  But only the most routine amounts were being found.

“Man,” said Hogan exasperated at their inability to find anything of substance. “I wonder if we are wrong, if this is not the place.”

“Could be,” replied Farris, “but I am pretty sure this is it.”

Hilde looked up from where she was seated next to a technician going over the live images from some of the surveillance cameras.

“I’d have to agree with Mike, Paul. Everything points to this being the place.”

Paul Hogan nodded and added, “I know, but there is just this bad feeling I have in my gut that something is not right.  Everything is not as it seems.”

”As melodramatic as that sounds, you may be right,” Hilde replied, “but we can only go on what we know so far.”

“Well, let’s keep our eyes peeled, if it is going to happen here, we will certainly catch them.”

“Ma’am!” called out one of Hilde’s surveillance specialists, “We have a hit!  Ring!  It is Lucas Ring.  He got past the checkpoint, but I just saw him cross under our north facing camera in Lot 4E.”

“Are you sure it’s him?”

“Him or his twin!”  Answered the tech.

“Send a unit to his location ASAP!”  Hogan ordered, “Mike let’s go!”

“Don’t lose sight of him!” Hilde added to the order as the two men ran out the door.

Within four minutes Hogan and Farris were with a dozen plain clothes agents moving up to within sight of the last spot the techs had seen Ring.

“Where is he?” asked Hogan into his radio microphone.

The earpieces of the team members answered, “I can see you guys, Ring stepped between two RV’s about forty feet ahead of you Agent Hogan, on your left.  I lost sight of him, so he may be in either of those vehicles or he may have moved past them in my blind spot.”

The agents and Farris moved slowly towards the RV’s, discreetly drawing their weapons out of the holsters that kept them hidden beneath their jackets. 

As the team approached the pair of RV’s between which Ring had disappeared Hilde’s voice suddenly whispered into the earpiece.

“Paul, call me right away on your cell phone.  Andy just called with something you need to hear.”

Hogan nodded to Farris and the pair dropped back from the rest of the group moving about a dozen cars away before Hogan picked up his cell phone and dialed Hilde. 

“Yeah, what is it?”  he asked.

“Paul, I have Andy on conference call. “ she said, “Go ahead Andy.”

“Paul things may be way different then we thought.  I just got three pieces of information come in all at once that are really blowing my mind.”

“Spit it out Andy!”

“OK, first, the Nuclear Regulatory Agency just called to say that a trainload of decommissioned warheads is being transported across Ohio as we speak.  Two I just picked up a call from the cell phone that was with the one gps, he got a change of directions from the African.”

“Shit!”  exclaimed Hogan, “What is the third thing?”

“I found out who the cell phone is calling.”

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