Legends

Sweeping the ground before them with blinding hand-held klieg lights, a line of armed men wearing black windbreakers started advancing through the hangar. When one of them turned to shout an order, Lincoln noticed the large white letters “FBI” on the back of his jacket. “Wait till we can see the whites of their eyes,” Leroy whispered to Lincoln, who was hiding behind a stanchion next to the crouching Texan. “I’ll plug the one who’s leading the pack.”

The FBI agents drifted past the van, the beams of their klieg lights spearing the darkness ahead of them as they closed in on the sheets of corrugated roofing at the rear of the hangar. Lincoln thought he recognized the stumpy figure of Felix Kiick in the lead, hunched low with a bullhorn in one hand, a pistol in the other. When Kiick was fifteen yards away he brought the bullhorn to his lips. “This is your last chance—Leroy Streeter, Lincoln Dittmann, you can’t escape. Come out with your hands over your heads.”

Kiick took several more steps as he spoke. Leroy, steadying his shooting arm with his left hand, his left elbow locked into his gut, raised the Webley and Scott and took careful aim at Kiick’s head. Lincoln had hoped they would be captured without a fight, but the timing of the raid on the hangar had gone wildly wrong. The op order had called for the agents at the campfire in the field to arrive at the back of the hangar as the headlights coming off the Pulaski ramp became visible. Leroy and Daoud, distracted by the approaching automobiles, would be easily overpowered before they could put up a fight. Now there was nothing for Lincoln to do but save Kiick from the bullet. In one flowing gesture he raised his cane and brought it crashing down on Leroy’s arm, shattering his wrist. Kiick jumped when he heard the bone splinter. Leroy gazed up with more pure hate in his eyes than Lincoln had ever seen in a human being. His lips moved but no words emerged until he managed to croak, “You’re one of them!”

“Felix, we’re over here,” Lincoln called, stepping around the corrugated sheeting into view.

Kiick came over and played his light on Leroy, who was gaping in astonishment at his right hand hanging limply from the wrist. The wooden-handled Webley and Scott lay on the cement. Two FBI agents gripped Leroy under his armpits and dragged him toward the automobiles. Using a handkerchief, Kiick retrieved Leroy’s weapon and held it by the barrel. “Something tells me I owe you one,” he said.

Lincoln and Kiick walked over to where Daoud and his grandson lay. Medics were kneeling next to both of them, listening with stethoscopes for any signs of life. The medics looked up at the same moment and shook their heads. Someone illuminated the corpses with a klieg light and started taking photographs from different angles. Other agents covered the corpses with lengths of silver plastic. An agent wearing elastic surgeon’s gloves brought over the handgun that had been retrieved from under the corpse of the fat Egyptian boy. He held it out, grip first, so Kiick could get a better look at it.

“Holy mackerel,” Kiick said. He shook his head in disgust. “It sure looked like the real McCoy to me.”