Cross Down, page 20
Grissom says, “Yes, sir. I’m afraid so. We are at the limit of the powers accorded to us by the Constitution. We have to take the next step, as distasteful as it is, to protect you and the nation.”
The president says, “And what does that entail, martial law?”
“It’s all in that letter, sir. You should consult with the attorney general as soon as you can and make the announcement. It means the suspension of habeas corpus, the arrest and detainment of individuals the FBI and CIA know have connections to various terrorist and extremist groups, travel restrictions, and government oversight of the news media.”
“Oversight?” the president says. “You mean censorship?”
Grissom says, “No, sir. Oversight. It’s the news media’s job to report the news. That won’t be affected. But when you have certain cable networks and their respective talking heads spreading lies, rumors, and absolute bitterness in order to drive up their ratings, that’s not news anymore. It’s inciting hate, inciting violence, poisoning civil discourse.”
“And what about the National Guard?”
“Activated across the nation to support regular army troops, assist law enforcement in making arrests, and provide security for vital infrastructure.”
The president stares at the memo, his eyes welling up with tears. “I can’t do this, General Grissom. I can’t declare martial law and go down in history as a U.S. president who became a dictator.”
Grissom has been expecting this response. “With all due respect, Mr. President, nearly a hundred years ago, another president faced incredible challenges as well. He met these challenges by sometimes skirting the law and issuing executive orders. He even illegally sent more than one hundred thousand loyal Americans of Japanese descent to internment camps, where nearly two thousand eventually met their death.”
Grissom reaches into his trouser pocket, pulls out a handful of change, removes a dime, and slides it across the desk. “But was this president demonized? Impeached? Hated from generation to generation? No, he remains one of our most admired presidents.”
The president shakes his head again. “I can’t do it. I won’t do it. I swore an oath to defend the Constitution, and I won’t violate that oath.”
“Mr. President, one of your predecessors, Abraham Lincoln, once said that the Constitution is not a death pact. He did what he had to do to save the Union.” Grissom reaches across, taps the letter. “You need to do the same.”
The president stares at the sheet of paper, then abruptly pushes it back across the desk. “Take it,” he says. “I won’t do it.”
“Sir, you—”
“That’s all, General Grissom,” he says. “You are dismissed.”
Grissom works his jaw and puts the letter back into his briefcase, picks up his hat, and says, “With your permission, sir, I’d like to dispatch a company of soldiers from the Third U.S. Infantry Regiment at Fort Myers to the White House grounds as an added layer of protection. They can be here within hours.”
“No,” the president says. “This is the people’s house. Not a fortress.”
Grissom sourly thinks, Well, I offered. “Very well, sir,” he says, wondering if he’s talking to a dead man. “The best of luck to you, sir.”
The president doesn’t answer, just stares at his clear desk.
Grissom walks to the door, desperate to get fresh air.
Chapter
93
With Deacon gone, I’m under no illusion that I can win this battle. My little fighting force has lost half its effectiveness, and the enemy—the Taliban, angry tribal members, or farmers who think we stole their goats—is still advancing.
But I’m not giving up. I’m buying time for Deacon to get back to the CIA outpost just over the border, and I plan to join her as soon as I can.
I start to clamber up the small, rocky hill to get a better view of the battlefield below and behind me. I stop halfway, break out a small pair of binoculars, scan the terrain. I see at least six attackers moving toward me slowly and deliberately, taking cover as they approach, and I fire off four three-round bursts to slow them down, then resume my climb upward.
Minutes later, I’m at the top.
My lungs are burning, my legs are aching, and my rucksack seems fifty pounds heavier. The top of the hill is nearly flat, a square stretch about the size of two tennis courts, with dirt and more rocks, boulders, and crevasses.
I drop my rucksack, take aim down below. I see three fighters moving closer to the hill.
I fire until my bolt snaps open and quickly reload, and then I hear the snap of a bullet going over my head and ricocheting off a near rock.
A bullet coming from the opposite direction.
Damn it!
I scurry to the other side, and sure enough, I see the bastards have outflanked me. Two are coming up at me from that side.
Two more bursts from me to slow them down.
I really hope Deacon is running like hell.
What now?
I move and duck; two more rounds slap my way. My attackers have split into three groups, and they’re all advancing on me at the same time. I can hold them off for a while, but eventually they’ll get close enough to pour on the fire and overwhelm me.
I go back to the top of my little command.
I think, Keep running, Elizabeth, keep running safely with that evidence.
I peer again, see movement, fire off another three-round burst. The action to my M4 snaps open and locks. Reloading time.
I drop the empty magazine and slap another one in, noting I have just four more left. I move across the soft bare dirt in the center of this little hilltop, frantically trying to come up with a plan, knowing I owe it to Willow and Alex and the Cross family and everybody else to get out of here alive.
Alive.
I drop my rucksack, get to work.
Billie, I pray again, one more time, that’s all I ask.
Chapter
94
Elizabeth Deacon collapses, breathing hard, legs trembling, thirsty as hell. She pulls out her water bottle, takes a long swallow, puts the cap back on, rolls over among the rocks, and looks at the distance she’s covered.
She grabs her binoculars and looks at the small hill where John is making his stand. She hears the distant echoes of gunfire and sees two figures leapfrogging up the side of the hill.
“John,” she whispers. “Kill them. Kill them all.”
She has a sudden urge to run back and hit John’s attackers from the rear, but she shakes it off. She has to get back to Tajikistan. Has to.
She blinks tears from her eyes, whispers, “Good luck.” The attackers are getting close to the top, and it seems like John’s run out of ammunition.
“Oh, damn it to hell,” she says; she puts the binoculars in her rucksack, gets up, and starts running, not looking back.
Chapter
95
Only a yard or so left before getting to the top of this accursed hill, but Bibi Ahmadi is feeling the taste of triumph. They have chased this tall Black man like an escaped goat, and now he’s trapped on top of this hill. No place to go. Bibi’s cousin Fateh is lying dead back there, a bullet through his forehead, but Bibi envies the warrior. He is now in paradise, enjoying the rewards from Allah.
Bibi stops, takes a deep breath. His own reward will be his in just a few moments. Kill the Black man, then chase after his companion whore.
He takes cover behind two cracked boulders at the top of the hill. He yells out, “Hey, Sampson. Black man! Surrender! You are trapped!”
One by one, his cousins also shout, announcing their advances.
“Bibi, I’m here.”
“Tell us when, Bibi!”
“Ready, cousin!”
Bibi looks around, offers a quick prayer to Allah, and yells, “Now!”
He moves around the two cracked boulders, AK-47 held out in front of him, and sees his cousins emerge from the other side of the rocky hilltop.
No Sampson.
Bibi looks around wildly. Where did he go?
“Bibi,” his cousin Azeez says, looking as puzzled as the other three. “Where is he?”
“Look over there,” Bibi says, “see if he’s hiding in one of these cracks.”
“But he’s so tall, how could he do that?”
Bibi says, “Look, curse you, look!”
Azeez moves about the rocks and boulders. There’s a large bumpy patch of dirt in the center, and Azeez cries out, “Look! Here! He must have run away, but see what he’s left.”
Bibi makes quick time to where his cousin is standing and pointing.
Balanced against a rock is the Black man’s M4, and on the ground next to it is his rucksack. But no Sampson.
How could he have slipped by?
Impossible.
Azeez moves to the rucksack and says, “I saw it first, it belongs to me!”
Bibi sees his cousin kneel down and grab the rucksack, and too late, Bibi yells, “No!”
Chapter
96
I wait, twisted in an uncomfortable position, breathing through my nose.
The voices are getting closer.
I tense up; every nerve ending seems to vibrate with anticipation.
The voices are louder now, and even though I can’t understand their language, I can tell they’re confused, surprised, amazed.
Good.
I’m waiting for another noise.
It comes hard and quick.
Boom!
I uncurl myself from the hidey-hole I had hurriedly dug underneath an overhanging slab of rock, toss off the ground tarp that was about the same color as the surrounding soft dirt; dirt and small rocks slide off the tarp.
I pull out my pistol, and in three long paces I get to where I left my M4, rucksack, and an army-issue M67 fragmentation grenade, pin pulled and placed under the heavy rucksack.
There’s a haze of smoke and the smell of burned gunpowder and blood, and my attackers are spread out, a bloody mess. I do a quick count in the mess of legs, arms, and torsos: there are five heads.
My rucksack is gone, my M4 is in pieces, but it’s a fair exchange.
I still have water, the hand-drawn map, a compass, my pistol, a spare grenade, and three magazines of nine-millimeter ammunition on my MOLLE harness.
That’s all I need for the next several hours.
From the pile of shattered bodies, I hear, “You…you…”
I go over.
It’s what’s left of Bibi. One eye is gone, and there’s blood all over him. It looks like he was shielded by one of his fighters when the grenade went off.
He stares up at me with anger and hate, and I say, “Yep, it’s me.”
I shoot him in the middle of his forehead.
Chapter
97
Elizabeth Deacon fords the Panj River and enters Tajikistan. She’s tired but feels a burst of energy, knowing she’s almost there, almost back to the CIA base, and from there she can get home.
She turns around and looks back into Afghanistan, wondering how John Sampson is doing. Is he still alive, and if he’s alive, how far behind her is he?
Could he have made it?
She doesn’t know.
Waste of time to worry about it, though. Too many other things to think about.
In her rucksack is a sat phone she can use to reach her contact in the air force, who’ll provide quick transport back to DC.
But there’s one more thing she has to do.
Deacon pulls out the broken circuit board Sampson gave her a few hours ago. She stares at it, then gently places it on a rock near the slow-moving and shallow river.
She looks around, finds another rock, and pounds on the circuit board until it’s in pieces, and she makes sure all of the broken pieces are swept into the moving water.
Chapter
98
It’s less than an hour since I crossed back into Tajikistan, and based on the map Gul gave me, I’m close to the airstrip and the small CIA installation.
I scramble up a rocky rise, and at the top, as I catch my breath, I see two beautiful sights.
First, the tents and buildings of the CIA outpost.
And second, a U.S. Air Force SST jet, either the one that brought us here or its twin.
I start running down the hill and think, Where first?
The bird, I decide. Let’s get on the jet and worry about everything else later. Aloud I say, “Bless you, Liz, you kept your word.”
I trot across the cracked runway to a set of metal stairs going up to the smooth fuselage, right behind the cockpit. A senior airman wearing camos and holding an M4 says, “You Sampson?”
“I am,” I say, almost out of breath.
“Come on in,” he says, waving a gloved hand. “We need to get moving.”
I duck into the aircraft and look down the two rows of red webbing seating and the flat bulkhead where gear can be secured.
It’s empty.
“Where’s Deacon?”
“Who?” the senior airman asks.
“Elizabeth Deacon,” I say. “She was with me earlier. She should be here.”
He shakes his head. “Sorry, order we got was to pick up one passenger, and one passenger only. John Sampson. And that’s you, right?”
“Shit,” I say, and I add, “Give me a minute. I need to check something out.”
The air force NCO glances at his watch. “You got your sixty seconds, pal, but not a second more.”
I duck my head, go back to the airstrip, run over to the big tent, and tug open the flap. It looks like the interior of the tent is stuck in time, because I see the same number of guys doing the same things they were doing before: drinking coffee, cleaning weapons, checking the screens on their terminals.
I say to the near guy, “Bobby, where the hell is she?”
He says, “Deacon? She’s been gone for about two hours.”
I don’t know what to say. She left without me. “She leave a message?”
He laughs. “Liz? Would she ever leave a message, leave behind evidence of anything?”
I hear the engines of the SST transport start to whine. Bobby nods in the direction of the tent flaps. “You better get going, Sampson. Your flight back to the promised land is about to leave.”
I don’t argue; I push through the flaps, run back to the aircraft. Dust and gravel are being kicked up, and I go up the collapsible steps and clamber inside. The senior airman says, “Ten seconds to spare. Good timing!”
He pulls the steps in, swings the cabin door closed, and fastens it tight, and I sit back on the red webbing, feeling exhausted, hungry, and thirsty, but most of all…
Feeling betrayed.
I remember Ned Mahoney saying, Don’t trust anyone.
I made a mistake.
I trusted Elizabeth Deacon, a CIA consultant.
The NCO yells over at me, and I fasten my seat belt. The aircraft speeds down the runway and climbs into the Tajikistan air.
I won’t make that mistake again.
Part Five
Chapter
99
Supervising special agent Ned Mahoney is in his office, yawning, trying to concentrate on the various memos and reports scattered across his desk. Right now he’s focusing on three recent reports.
First up is a dispatch from field offices in Oklahoma City and St. Louis. Agents from both offices are concerned that their SACs—special agents in charge—have gone rogue; they’re conducting investigations on their own, keeping everything close to the vest, not bringing anyone else in on the work.
Ned thinks, Is this the real deal or just some disgruntled agents using the current crisis to strike out against their bosses?
The second memo is from the Bureau’s Counterintelligence Division, which—among its many duties—keeps track of foreign diplomats on American soil. This report is troubling as hell—it says that, quietly and unofficially, the Russian and Chinese embassies in Washington have sent most of their staff home.
Meaning?
Maybe that they know the District is going to be attacked in a few days, and they want as few of their people as possible in the target area.
Question: Are they doing this out of caution, having eavesdropped on domestic law enforcement agencies, or because they’ve either planned it or helped support it?
He puts that message aside, resists an urge to rub at the throbbing in his left leg just above his ankle, where two pieces of shattered ball bearings tore up skin and muscle.
Ned grabs the third report, this one from the field office in Cincinnati. Agents had immediately raced to the home of the late Lucille Palmer, whose newly widowed husband, Walter, was in shock. He agreed to give the FBI agents full access to his home and his wife’s possessions. The only interesting fact they discovered was that Lucille had belonged to a local book club whose five other members, both male and female, had disappeared after the news came out about the Union Station bombing. Leads are currently being developed on the background and whereabouts of—
Loud voices are coming from outside his office.
Getting louder.
Ned’s suspicions and paranoia have grown over the summer, and he gingerly slips out his Bureau-issue Glock 19 nine-millimeter pistol as the door opens up. It’s Barry Leonard, his aide, looking flustered. “Excuse me, sir, I told her you were busy, but—”
Barry’s elbowed aside by Her Honor the mayor of the District of Columbia Winifred Crocker, and Ned returns the pistol to its place. “It’s all right, Barry, I’ll see her,” Ned says. “Hold my calls, all right?”
“Yes, sir.”
The mayor strides into his office, dumps her large black leather purse and long tan coat on one of the two chairs in front of his desk, and sits down in the other, hands clasped tightly.
The president says, “And what does that entail, martial law?”
“It’s all in that letter, sir. You should consult with the attorney general as soon as you can and make the announcement. It means the suspension of habeas corpus, the arrest and detainment of individuals the FBI and CIA know have connections to various terrorist and extremist groups, travel restrictions, and government oversight of the news media.”
“Oversight?” the president says. “You mean censorship?”
Grissom says, “No, sir. Oversight. It’s the news media’s job to report the news. That won’t be affected. But when you have certain cable networks and their respective talking heads spreading lies, rumors, and absolute bitterness in order to drive up their ratings, that’s not news anymore. It’s inciting hate, inciting violence, poisoning civil discourse.”
“And what about the National Guard?”
“Activated across the nation to support regular army troops, assist law enforcement in making arrests, and provide security for vital infrastructure.”
The president stares at the memo, his eyes welling up with tears. “I can’t do this, General Grissom. I can’t declare martial law and go down in history as a U.S. president who became a dictator.”
Grissom has been expecting this response. “With all due respect, Mr. President, nearly a hundred years ago, another president faced incredible challenges as well. He met these challenges by sometimes skirting the law and issuing executive orders. He even illegally sent more than one hundred thousand loyal Americans of Japanese descent to internment camps, where nearly two thousand eventually met their death.”
Grissom reaches into his trouser pocket, pulls out a handful of change, removes a dime, and slides it across the desk. “But was this president demonized? Impeached? Hated from generation to generation? No, he remains one of our most admired presidents.”
The president shakes his head again. “I can’t do it. I won’t do it. I swore an oath to defend the Constitution, and I won’t violate that oath.”
“Mr. President, one of your predecessors, Abraham Lincoln, once said that the Constitution is not a death pact. He did what he had to do to save the Union.” Grissom reaches across, taps the letter. “You need to do the same.”
The president stares at the sheet of paper, then abruptly pushes it back across the desk. “Take it,” he says. “I won’t do it.”
“Sir, you—”
“That’s all, General Grissom,” he says. “You are dismissed.”
Grissom works his jaw and puts the letter back into his briefcase, picks up his hat, and says, “With your permission, sir, I’d like to dispatch a company of soldiers from the Third U.S. Infantry Regiment at Fort Myers to the White House grounds as an added layer of protection. They can be here within hours.”
“No,” the president says. “This is the people’s house. Not a fortress.”
Grissom sourly thinks, Well, I offered. “Very well, sir,” he says, wondering if he’s talking to a dead man. “The best of luck to you, sir.”
The president doesn’t answer, just stares at his clear desk.
Grissom walks to the door, desperate to get fresh air.
Chapter
93
With Deacon gone, I’m under no illusion that I can win this battle. My little fighting force has lost half its effectiveness, and the enemy—the Taliban, angry tribal members, or farmers who think we stole their goats—is still advancing.
But I’m not giving up. I’m buying time for Deacon to get back to the CIA outpost just over the border, and I plan to join her as soon as I can.
I start to clamber up the small, rocky hill to get a better view of the battlefield below and behind me. I stop halfway, break out a small pair of binoculars, scan the terrain. I see at least six attackers moving toward me slowly and deliberately, taking cover as they approach, and I fire off four three-round bursts to slow them down, then resume my climb upward.
Minutes later, I’m at the top.
My lungs are burning, my legs are aching, and my rucksack seems fifty pounds heavier. The top of the hill is nearly flat, a square stretch about the size of two tennis courts, with dirt and more rocks, boulders, and crevasses.
I drop my rucksack, take aim down below. I see three fighters moving closer to the hill.
I fire until my bolt snaps open and quickly reload, and then I hear the snap of a bullet going over my head and ricocheting off a near rock.
A bullet coming from the opposite direction.
Damn it!
I scurry to the other side, and sure enough, I see the bastards have outflanked me. Two are coming up at me from that side.
Two more bursts from me to slow them down.
I really hope Deacon is running like hell.
What now?
I move and duck; two more rounds slap my way. My attackers have split into three groups, and they’re all advancing on me at the same time. I can hold them off for a while, but eventually they’ll get close enough to pour on the fire and overwhelm me.
I go back to the top of my little command.
I think, Keep running, Elizabeth, keep running safely with that evidence.
I peer again, see movement, fire off another three-round burst. The action to my M4 snaps open and locks. Reloading time.
I drop the empty magazine and slap another one in, noting I have just four more left. I move across the soft bare dirt in the center of this little hilltop, frantically trying to come up with a plan, knowing I owe it to Willow and Alex and the Cross family and everybody else to get out of here alive.
Alive.
I drop my rucksack, get to work.
Billie, I pray again, one more time, that’s all I ask.
Chapter
94
Elizabeth Deacon collapses, breathing hard, legs trembling, thirsty as hell. She pulls out her water bottle, takes a long swallow, puts the cap back on, rolls over among the rocks, and looks at the distance she’s covered.
She grabs her binoculars and looks at the small hill where John is making his stand. She hears the distant echoes of gunfire and sees two figures leapfrogging up the side of the hill.
“John,” she whispers. “Kill them. Kill them all.”
She has a sudden urge to run back and hit John’s attackers from the rear, but she shakes it off. She has to get back to Tajikistan. Has to.
She blinks tears from her eyes, whispers, “Good luck.” The attackers are getting close to the top, and it seems like John’s run out of ammunition.
“Oh, damn it to hell,” she says; she puts the binoculars in her rucksack, gets up, and starts running, not looking back.
Chapter
95
Only a yard or so left before getting to the top of this accursed hill, but Bibi Ahmadi is feeling the taste of triumph. They have chased this tall Black man like an escaped goat, and now he’s trapped on top of this hill. No place to go. Bibi’s cousin Fateh is lying dead back there, a bullet through his forehead, but Bibi envies the warrior. He is now in paradise, enjoying the rewards from Allah.
Bibi stops, takes a deep breath. His own reward will be his in just a few moments. Kill the Black man, then chase after his companion whore.
He takes cover behind two cracked boulders at the top of the hill. He yells out, “Hey, Sampson. Black man! Surrender! You are trapped!”
One by one, his cousins also shout, announcing their advances.
“Bibi, I’m here.”
“Tell us when, Bibi!”
“Ready, cousin!”
Bibi looks around, offers a quick prayer to Allah, and yells, “Now!”
He moves around the two cracked boulders, AK-47 held out in front of him, and sees his cousins emerge from the other side of the rocky hilltop.
No Sampson.
Bibi looks around wildly. Where did he go?
“Bibi,” his cousin Azeez says, looking as puzzled as the other three. “Where is he?”
“Look over there,” Bibi says, “see if he’s hiding in one of these cracks.”
“But he’s so tall, how could he do that?”
Bibi says, “Look, curse you, look!”
Azeez moves about the rocks and boulders. There’s a large bumpy patch of dirt in the center, and Azeez cries out, “Look! Here! He must have run away, but see what he’s left.”
Bibi makes quick time to where his cousin is standing and pointing.
Balanced against a rock is the Black man’s M4, and on the ground next to it is his rucksack. But no Sampson.
How could he have slipped by?
Impossible.
Azeez moves to the rucksack and says, “I saw it first, it belongs to me!”
Bibi sees his cousin kneel down and grab the rucksack, and too late, Bibi yells, “No!”
Chapter
96
I wait, twisted in an uncomfortable position, breathing through my nose.
The voices are getting closer.
I tense up; every nerve ending seems to vibrate with anticipation.
The voices are louder now, and even though I can’t understand their language, I can tell they’re confused, surprised, amazed.
Good.
I’m waiting for another noise.
It comes hard and quick.
Boom!
I uncurl myself from the hidey-hole I had hurriedly dug underneath an overhanging slab of rock, toss off the ground tarp that was about the same color as the surrounding soft dirt; dirt and small rocks slide off the tarp.
I pull out my pistol, and in three long paces I get to where I left my M4, rucksack, and an army-issue M67 fragmentation grenade, pin pulled and placed under the heavy rucksack.
There’s a haze of smoke and the smell of burned gunpowder and blood, and my attackers are spread out, a bloody mess. I do a quick count in the mess of legs, arms, and torsos: there are five heads.
My rucksack is gone, my M4 is in pieces, but it’s a fair exchange.
I still have water, the hand-drawn map, a compass, my pistol, a spare grenade, and three magazines of nine-millimeter ammunition on my MOLLE harness.
That’s all I need for the next several hours.
From the pile of shattered bodies, I hear, “You…you…”
I go over.
It’s what’s left of Bibi. One eye is gone, and there’s blood all over him. It looks like he was shielded by one of his fighters when the grenade went off.
He stares up at me with anger and hate, and I say, “Yep, it’s me.”
I shoot him in the middle of his forehead.
Chapter
97
Elizabeth Deacon fords the Panj River and enters Tajikistan. She’s tired but feels a burst of energy, knowing she’s almost there, almost back to the CIA base, and from there she can get home.
She turns around and looks back into Afghanistan, wondering how John Sampson is doing. Is he still alive, and if he’s alive, how far behind her is he?
Could he have made it?
She doesn’t know.
Waste of time to worry about it, though. Too many other things to think about.
In her rucksack is a sat phone she can use to reach her contact in the air force, who’ll provide quick transport back to DC.
But there’s one more thing she has to do.
Deacon pulls out the broken circuit board Sampson gave her a few hours ago. She stares at it, then gently places it on a rock near the slow-moving and shallow river.
She looks around, finds another rock, and pounds on the circuit board until it’s in pieces, and she makes sure all of the broken pieces are swept into the moving water.
Chapter
98
It’s less than an hour since I crossed back into Tajikistan, and based on the map Gul gave me, I’m close to the airstrip and the small CIA installation.
I scramble up a rocky rise, and at the top, as I catch my breath, I see two beautiful sights.
First, the tents and buildings of the CIA outpost.
And second, a U.S. Air Force SST jet, either the one that brought us here or its twin.
I start running down the hill and think, Where first?
The bird, I decide. Let’s get on the jet and worry about everything else later. Aloud I say, “Bless you, Liz, you kept your word.”
I trot across the cracked runway to a set of metal stairs going up to the smooth fuselage, right behind the cockpit. A senior airman wearing camos and holding an M4 says, “You Sampson?”
“I am,” I say, almost out of breath.
“Come on in,” he says, waving a gloved hand. “We need to get moving.”
I duck into the aircraft and look down the two rows of red webbing seating and the flat bulkhead where gear can be secured.
It’s empty.
“Where’s Deacon?”
“Who?” the senior airman asks.
“Elizabeth Deacon,” I say. “She was with me earlier. She should be here.”
He shakes his head. “Sorry, order we got was to pick up one passenger, and one passenger only. John Sampson. And that’s you, right?”
“Shit,” I say, and I add, “Give me a minute. I need to check something out.”
The air force NCO glances at his watch. “You got your sixty seconds, pal, but not a second more.”
I duck my head, go back to the airstrip, run over to the big tent, and tug open the flap. It looks like the interior of the tent is stuck in time, because I see the same number of guys doing the same things they were doing before: drinking coffee, cleaning weapons, checking the screens on their terminals.
I say to the near guy, “Bobby, where the hell is she?”
He says, “Deacon? She’s been gone for about two hours.”
I don’t know what to say. She left without me. “She leave a message?”
He laughs. “Liz? Would she ever leave a message, leave behind evidence of anything?”
I hear the engines of the SST transport start to whine. Bobby nods in the direction of the tent flaps. “You better get going, Sampson. Your flight back to the promised land is about to leave.”
I don’t argue; I push through the flaps, run back to the aircraft. Dust and gravel are being kicked up, and I go up the collapsible steps and clamber inside. The senior airman says, “Ten seconds to spare. Good timing!”
He pulls the steps in, swings the cabin door closed, and fastens it tight, and I sit back on the red webbing, feeling exhausted, hungry, and thirsty, but most of all…
Feeling betrayed.
I remember Ned Mahoney saying, Don’t trust anyone.
I made a mistake.
I trusted Elizabeth Deacon, a CIA consultant.
The NCO yells over at me, and I fasten my seat belt. The aircraft speeds down the runway and climbs into the Tajikistan air.
I won’t make that mistake again.
Part Five
Chapter
99
Supervising special agent Ned Mahoney is in his office, yawning, trying to concentrate on the various memos and reports scattered across his desk. Right now he’s focusing on three recent reports.
First up is a dispatch from field offices in Oklahoma City and St. Louis. Agents from both offices are concerned that their SACs—special agents in charge—have gone rogue; they’re conducting investigations on their own, keeping everything close to the vest, not bringing anyone else in on the work.
Ned thinks, Is this the real deal or just some disgruntled agents using the current crisis to strike out against their bosses?
The second memo is from the Bureau’s Counterintelligence Division, which—among its many duties—keeps track of foreign diplomats on American soil. This report is troubling as hell—it says that, quietly and unofficially, the Russian and Chinese embassies in Washington have sent most of their staff home.
Meaning?
Maybe that they know the District is going to be attacked in a few days, and they want as few of their people as possible in the target area.
Question: Are they doing this out of caution, having eavesdropped on domestic law enforcement agencies, or because they’ve either planned it or helped support it?
He puts that message aside, resists an urge to rub at the throbbing in his left leg just above his ankle, where two pieces of shattered ball bearings tore up skin and muscle.
Ned grabs the third report, this one from the field office in Cincinnati. Agents had immediately raced to the home of the late Lucille Palmer, whose newly widowed husband, Walter, was in shock. He agreed to give the FBI agents full access to his home and his wife’s possessions. The only interesting fact they discovered was that Lucille had belonged to a local book club whose five other members, both male and female, had disappeared after the news came out about the Union Station bombing. Leads are currently being developed on the background and whereabouts of—
Loud voices are coming from outside his office.
Getting louder.
Ned’s suspicions and paranoia have grown over the summer, and he gingerly slips out his Bureau-issue Glock 19 nine-millimeter pistol as the door opens up. It’s Barry Leonard, his aide, looking flustered. “Excuse me, sir, I told her you were busy, but—”
Barry’s elbowed aside by Her Honor the mayor of the District of Columbia Winifred Crocker, and Ned returns the pistol to its place. “It’s all right, Barry, I’ll see her,” Ned says. “Hold my calls, all right?”
“Yes, sir.”
The mayor strides into his office, dumps her large black leather purse and long tan coat on one of the two chairs in front of his desk, and sits down in the other, hands clasped tightly.
