Taylor: Nice. You got the money?
Gross: Right here. Fifty thousand cash. I’ll have the other half waiting as soon as we hear the awful news.
Taylor: It should be a real show. You guys ought to pick a spot nearby and watch the fireworks. Three a.m. this Saturday morning.
Gross: Thanks. I’ll pass it along. I’m usually asleep at that hour.
Taylor: It’s always fun to watch.
Gross: I take it you found the explosives.
Taylor: Got ’em. Let’s meet Saturday afternoon for the rest of the cash. I’ll call when it’s over.
Gross: Sounds like a plan.
They watched J.W. leave the motel, then waited two hours for Taylor to emerge with his small overnight bag. They followed him to the town of Pulaski, Tennessee, where Nevin Noll was waiting in the parking lot of a busy grocery store. He was smoking a cigarette, listening to the radio, watching the traffic, waiting for a blue Dodge pickup truck. In his trunk were five pounds of Semtex purchased on the black market near Keesler.
They were watching, and the sight of Noll casually smoking and flicking ashes on the pavement, with a bomb in his trunk, made them uneasy. They kept their distance.
The blue Dodge arrived and parked next to Noll. He got in the truck and the two talked for a few minutes. They got out and Noll opened his trunk. He handed a box to Taylor, who placed it in a metal container in the bed of his pickup. Noll closed the trunk, said something to Taylor, then started his engine and drove away.
Taylor’s plan was to drive all night and stay with a friend near Knoxville. His explosives were safely tucked away in an airtight, waterproof metal box, one he had built himself. It would take about an hour to assemble the bomb.
So much for plans. Five miles outside Pulaski, the highway was suddenly blocked with blue lights and there were even more racing toward them. He was arrested without a word, handcuffed, tossed in the rear of a Tennessee State Police car and driven to Nashville.
They waited patiently for Nevin Noll to amble back onto Mississippi soil. No need to mess with extradition if it could be avoided. When he crossed the state line near Corinth, some idiot ran up behind him with his lights on bright and wouldn’t go around. Then the lights turned blue.
Chapter 46
Of course there was no Mr. Getty, no wayward wife, no lover, no love nest in need of detonation. J. W. Gross was a real character who played himself brilliantly and collected a nice fee from the FBI. He enjoyed the adventure and said he was available for the next one. The entire $50,000 in marked bills was recovered.
Jackson Lewis reveled in the success of his undercover operation and knew it would make his career, but there was little time to celebrate.
* * *
After a few hours of fitful sleep on a dirty mattress, bottom bunk because the top one was the territory of Big Duke, Henry Taylor was removed from the cell, handcuffed to a wheelchair, shrouded with a black hood, and rolled without a word to a windowless room in the basement of the jail. When he was situated at a table, the hood was removed but the cuffs were not.
Special Agents Jackson Lewis and Spence Whitehead faced him, both frowning.
To lighten an awful moment, Taylor began with “Well, boys, don’t know what’s going on but you got the wrong man.”
Neither smiled. Lewis said, “Is that the best you can do?”
“For now, yes.”
“We found five pounds of plastic explosives, military grade and highly illegal, in the bed of your truck. Where’d you get it?”
“News to me. Somebody must’ve put it there.”
“Of course. We picked up your pal Nevin Noll last night in Mississippi. He says you paid him ten grand for the stuff. Coincidentally, he had ten thousand cash in his pocket.”