Текст книги "Eye for an Eye"

Автор книги: Ben Coes

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Текущая страница: 12 (всего у книги 28 страниц)

39

RUMIANA FARM

MIDDLEBURG, VIRGINIA

A set of headlights moved down a long dark gravel driveway. On each side of the simple drive was low white picket fence, behind which lay fields of freshly cut grass.

Katie and Tacoma owned the farm, tucked away in the rolling horse country of Middleburg. It housed their consulting firm, which provided various services to government and private industries alike. Those services tended to be top-secret, clandestine activities, categorized under the broad rubric of security.

Until two years before, both Katie and Tacoma had worked at Langley. Katie was the deputy director of Special Operations Group, running covert paramilitary operations across the globe. Tacoma, a former Navy SEAL, who was recruited by Katie to the CIA, had been her deputy.

Their firm didn’t have a Web site, glossy brochures, or a listed phone number. What they did have was the backing of Hector Calibrisi and a reputation for being able to do almost anything, in any country, using its extensive network of former spies, former Special Forces soldiers, and a willingness to bend the rules. But Katie and Tacoma had one overarching rule: they considered themselves proxies for the United States of America. They didn’t do anything that was not in the best interests of the United States. Calibrisi usually had them on retainer, often calling on them when the bureaucracy of Langley threatened to slow him down.

In the circle outside the main house, Dewey, Katie, and Tacoma climbed out of Tacoma’s orange BMW M5, after a hair-raising drive from Andrews Air Force Base. It was almost midnight. The sky was awash in stars as they crossed the driveway toward the front door.

“Listen for it,” said Tacoma, pointing to the sky.

All Dewey could hear was the sound of crickets. A few seconds later, the faint rhythm of a helicopter hit his ears.

“Good ears.”

“You’re just getting old, Dewey.”

“What’s with all the insults?” asked Dewey, grumpily. “I’m really not in the mood for kicking your ass, but I will.”

“You could try,” said Tacoma.

Katie shook her head.

“You two are like children,” said Katie. “I should get babysitting pay.”

The sound of the chopper grew louder. Flashing lights moved across the sky. The wind picked up as a jet-black Bell 525 descended from the sky and landed on the grass next to the driveway. The door opened and Calibrisi climbed out. He walked toward them carrying a steel briefcase.

“Well, look who it is,” Calibrisi yelled, above the din.

Dewey walked toward Calibrisi, putting his hand out, but Calibrisi wrapped his arms around him and hugged him.

“Hi, kid.”

“Hi, Hector.”

“How you feeling?” asked Calibrisi.

“Okay,” said Dewey.

Calibrisi lifted Dewey’s hand and inspected his gashed knuckles.

“That doesn’t look too bad,” said Calibrisi. “Rob told me you beat the shit out of a mirror.”

Dewey laughed, then looked at Tacoma.

Katie and Tacoma walked toward the door and went inside.

“Hold up,” said Calibrisi.

Dewey stopped and looked at Calibrisi.

“I’ve always known it’s part of this business we’re in,” said Calibrisi, putting his arm on Dewey’s shoulder. “I’ve had friends killed standing next to me. But I’ve never felt like this. I can’t imagine what you’re going through.”

Dewey nodded but said nothing.

“If you need someone to talk to—”

“Let’s go inside, Hector.”

“Okay.”

They followed Katie and Tacoma inside. The entrance foyer looked like a weapons room at a large police station. The walls were crowded with gun racks that held a variety of high-powered rifles, assault weapons, submachine guns, and handguns.

They went to the basement, to a large steel door that looked like the door to a bank vault. Tacoma punched a code into the digital lock. The door opened.

Inside was a large windowless basement-level room that housed Katie and Tacoma’s computers, communications equipment, and more weapons. The room was enclosed in walls made of thick steel and was accessible only by the iris scanner outside the steel door. Katie and Tacoma were the only people capable of opening it.

The room itself was sprawling, eighty feet long by forty feet wide. It had been built by KBR, in conjunction with a team of electrical engineers from the CIA, and was linked to the CIA’s powerful mainframes. The room looked like mission control at Cape Canaveral, with walls of large plasma screens, all of which were dark. Long steel desks were lined with computers. But there was one big difference; unlike NASA, the back of the room had a red felt pool table, a Ping-Pong table, and several leather sofas.

On a table near the wall, Calibrisi opened the steel briefcase. He took out what looked like an oversized iPad with a pair of cords sticking out one end. Tacoma plugged one of the cords into the wall. The other he unfurled and plugged into a server in the middle of the room. Calibrisi turned on the biometric scanner. Six of the plasma screens suddenly came to life, lighting up the room.

Dewey handed Calibrisi the dead man’s finger. He took it and pressed it against the green screen. After a few moments, the plasma screens showed large photographs, all of the dead sniper. Two were grainy, in black-and-white. The other three were in color. The center photo showed the man, his face now familiar to them all, with the same thin mustache. He was very much alive. The photo was taken from a distance. He wore sunglasses. He was walking down a busy city street, the word UTRECHT stamped into the upper corner along with a date: 05/2004.

The other photos were both black-and-white. Each was a military photo. The man appeared much younger and was wearing the starched gray uniform of Chinese defense forces.

On the last screen, which the four of them stared at in silence, were the results of the print analysis from the finger Dewey had cut off. The finger belonged to a high-ranking operative in the clandestine paramilitary bureau at China’s Ministry of State Security. His name was Hu-Shao.

ID:

LING HU-SHAO

DOB:

AUG 8 74

BIR:

CHENGDU, PRC

ED:

TAIPEI MILITARY INSTITUTE

CLASS OF 1992

LANG:

MANDARIN

ENGLISH

ARABIC

FRENCH

OCC:

OPERATIVE (LTK BLANKET)

MINISTRY OF STATE SECURITY, PRC

LEVEL: V1 (WITH SILVER SCROLL)

POS:

CARACAS (CURRENT)

MADRID (2009–11)

CAIRO (2007–09)

BUENOS AIRES (2007)

NEW YORK CITY (2006–07)

CAPETOWN (2005–06)

RIO DE JANEIRO (2004–05)

BAGHDAD (2004)

DAMASCUS (2002–04)

BAHRAIN (2000–02)

Calibrisi stared stone-faced at the plasma screen.

He thought back to his conversation with Derek Chalmers. As much as he trusted his counterpart in London, he’d had a difficult time believing China was behind it. Now the truth was irrefutable. It all added up in a single moment, an instant, as if someone somewhere had flipped a switch.

It was China after all. And it was Dewey they were after.

“Why would China want Jessica dead?” asked Katie. “Or Dewey for that matter?”

Calibrisi’s mind raced as it all came together, like pieces of a puzzle suddenly falling into place.

By outing Dillman, Dewey had given Chalmers, Fritz Lavine, Menachem Dayan—and Calibrisi—the means by which to go after their shared nemesis, Fao Bhang. It was they who’d upped the ante, without Dewey’s permission or knowledge. It was they who, in the interest of trying to get at Bhang, had designed an operation that exposed Dewey and Jessica to reprisal. The ax in the head, the Louis Vuitton trunk, Premier Li’s granddaughter—all of it the brainchild of spies who’d failed to see the very simple human beings they had inadvertently placed in the crosshairs of one of the world’s most brutal men.

Calibrisi felt a sudden wave of guilt wash over him. He felt faint. He looked over at Dewey, who stood in front of the plasma screen, studying the dead agent’s background.

Dewey had done his job. He’d gotten the identity of the mole out of Amit Bhutta. They had returned the favor by starting a lethal blood feud against one of the most powerful and ruthless men in the world, which ultimately led back to Dewey.

As far as Dewey knew, Dillman was to be killed by Kohl Meir, then dropped in a Tel Aviv landfill. Clean and simple. Instead, the brightest minds in Western intelligence had used Dillman, just as they used Dewey, and now Jessica. It was their fault. By not seeing it ahead of time, it was his fault.

Calibrisi felt sick to his stomach. A sharp pain stabbed his chest. He put his hand out on the table to steady himself.

Dewey turned and looked at him.

“You okay, chief?” he asked.

Calibrisi knew that if he told Dewey the truth, Dewey would have every justification in the world to kill him, right then and there. He was the one who got Jessica murdered. But what was even worse, Calibrisi knew, was the fact that Dewey wouldn’t blame Calibrisi or Chalmers or Menachem Dayan. He’d blame himself.

It didn’t matter any longer. He had to come clean. Dewey deserved to know.

“It was my fault,” Calibrisi whispered. “I’m the one who got her killed.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Dillman.”

“Who?”

“The Israeli.”

“He’s dead,” said Dewey.

“We used the body. We used it to launch an operation inside China.”

Dewey stared at Calibrisi.

“You what?” he asked, incredulous, his anger suddenly flashing.

“We used the corpse to expose Fao Bhang. To bring him out of hiding so we could kill him.”

Dewey lurched at Calibrisi, grabbing him by the throat and slamming him hard against the wall.

“He was supposed to be killed, then buried!” screamed Dewey, clutching Calibrisi’s throat and holding him against the wall. “You arrogant son of a bitch!”

Dewey felt nothing but anger and betrayal as he stared into Calibrisi’s eyes and listened to him cough. He heard the click of a round being chambered, next to his head.

“Let him go,” said Tacoma, holding a SIG SAUER P226, now trained at the side of Dewey’s head.

Dewey waited a moment longer, then let Calibrisi drop. He stared for a moment longer at him, then turned and walked to the door.

“Where are you going?” asked Katie.

Dewey didn’t answer. At the door, he turned. He had a confused look as he stared across the room at Calibrisi.

“I’m sorry, Hector,” he said.

He walked through the steel door. Katie went to follow him, but he shut the door before she could get to it. When she tried to open it, she couldn’t.

“Goddamn it,” she said.

“What?”

She slammed her fist against the door.

“He locked it. It’s on a timer. We won’t be able to get out for five minutes.”

Five minutes later, the bolts on the vault door made a loud clicking noise and it swung slowly open.

Katie, Tacoma, and Calibrisi ran down the basement hallway, then climbed the stairs. Tacoma sprinted through the kitchen to the entrance foyer, then ran through the open front door. In the distance, two headlights flickered as a car sped down the driveway, out of sight. Tacoma turned around and ran back inside.

“Keys, Hector,” shouted Tacoma as he ran toward the front door.

Calibrisi looked frantically around the kitchen table, where he’d left them. They were gone.

Calibrisi walked to the door as Tacoma sprinted in. Tacoma stopped, then looked at Calibrisi and Katie behind him, all of them realizing at approximately the same time that Dewey had left, had taken Tacoma’s car along with Calibrisi’s keys and God knows what else.

Calibrisi pulled out his cell phone.

“The president?” asked Katie.

“No, that’s my second call,” said Calibrisi, a flash of anger appearing on his normally placid face. He put the phone against his ear. “Control, get me Couture. He’s in Argentina.”

As he waited, Calibrisi looked at Katie.

“It’s time to start hitting back.”

40

SHERATON HOTEL

CÓRDOBA

Couture stood in his Córdoba hotel room, staring out the window, phone against his ear.

“Yeah, I’ll handle it, Hector,” he said, anger sharpening his eyes. “I know precisely who the fuck did it.”

He hung up the phone.

Charlie Couture wasn’t a very complicated individual. Physically, what you saw was what you got—five feet nine inches of raw muscle and bad attitude, weighing in at precisely two hundred pounds. As for Couture’s demeanor, it was a cross between a pit bull and a wolverine. Like many CIA paramilitary, he didn’t have many friends. He’d risen not because of his political skills but because of his lack of political skills. He was reliable, a workhorse, sent to places that were on the cusp of anarchy, where political turbulence was just beginning to boil up and threaten America. Once there, Couture had a relatively straightforward job, and it wasn’t diplomacy.

Buenos Aires was a plum assignment. There was occasional unrest and a strong strain of remnant communist anti-Americanism, but for the most part the country was stable. But Buenos Aires wasn’t about Argentina. It was about the rest of South America, particularly Bolivia, Peru, and Brazil. These were trouble spots.

Couture speed-dialed Timms, his lead investigator in Córdoba.

“We’re leaving,” said Couture into his cell phone. “Have everyone pack up their shit and be downstairs in five minutes.”

Couture stuffed his green nylon duffel bag with all of his belongings. He walked out of his hotel room, leaving the door wide open. He walked quickly down the hall, carrying his duffel bag, and entered the fire stairs. He climbed from the fourth floor to the ninth floor, two steps at a time. He walked down the hallway until he came to room 955. He knocked loudly on the door.

“Colonel, it’s Charlie Couture,” he barked. “Open up.”

He pounded the wood a few more times. Then, from the inside, he heard Marti’s sleepy voice.

“What is it, Charlie? Can it wait?”

“No,” said Couture. “I just got off the phone with Hector Calibrisi. It’s urgent.”

There was a long silence, at least ten seconds. Then Couture pounded the door again.

“Open the fucking door, Colonel,” said Couture. “We found something.”

Couture leaned in toward the door.

“We found evidence linking Iran,” he whispered.

“Really?” said Marti.

The dead bolt turned. The door opened slightly. Marti put his head behind the chain.

Couture kicked viciously, ripping the chain off and slamming the door into Marti’s face, where it struck his nose, crushing it.

Couture followed the door in and leapt at Marti, wrapping his thick muscled fingers around the older man’s neck and tackling him to the floor. He straddled Marti as he choked him.

“Did I say Iran?” asked Couture, gripping his throat and strangling the life out if him. “I meant you, motherfucker.”

Couture felt the weak swings of Marti’s fists against his back. He watched as Argentina’s top law-enforcement official turned reddish blue and suffocated to death.

41

OFFICE OF THE CHIEF OF STAFF

WEST WING

THE WHITE HOUSE

WASHINGTON, D.C.

The White House chief of staff’s office was a stone’s throw from the Oval Office, connected by a short private hallway.

The doors to the interconnecting hallway sometimes stayed open, usually during crunch times, such as just before an important speech, like the State of the Union. During these times, the president, chief of staff, and various senior-level White House and administration staffers walked freely between the two rooms.

Then there were times when the doors between the two offices were shut. Usually this happened when the president needed to conduct a private meeting, outside the earshot of anyone or anything. But for the most part, the president’s life, and consequently the Oval Office, was a relatively open book.

It wasn’t the Oval Office where the shit hit the fan. That took place in the chief of staff’s office.

If the Oval Office was large and fancy, with every inch of space, wall, curtain, fabric, photograph, and painting as orchestrated and thought-out as a symphony, the chief of staff’s office was more private, intimate, comfortable, luxurious in its own special way, with stunning views of the White House grounds.

It was the place where the grittier business of running the hardball, day-to-day, between-the-lines work of the presidency took place. The Oval Office was where hands were shaken; the chief of staff’s office was where arms were broken.

Adrian King Jr. was the White House chief of staff. King, thirty-five, was five feet eight, with brown hair that was as thick as shag carpeting. His trademark feature was a set of bushy eyebrows that looked like some form of rare caterpillar.

King was the most feared man in Washington. He didn’t play politics. He was loyal to a fault and the most hardworking person at the White House. But if you fucked with the president, with anyone under his general purview, or with him, watch out.

King stood behind his desk. In front of him was the complete dossier on Hu-Shao, including photos, a complete biography, and indisputable evidence that placed the Chinese agent in the sniper’s nest in Córdoba.

He pored through the dossier with the speed, thoroughness, and efficiency of a trained prosecutor. When he was done, he put the papers back into the folder.

“Hector, I’m going to ask this once,” said King, looking at Calibrisi, who was seated on the houndstooth sofa against the wall, beneath bookshelves lined with leather volumes and silver-framed photos. “Are you absolutely, positively fucking sure Dewey cut the finger off himself?”

“Yes,” said Calibrisi.

“Would Premier Li have to sanction this?” asked King.

“Not if Dewey was the intended target.”

King breathed heavily. He looked at the other man in the office, Secretary of State Lindsay.

“And was he?”

“Yes,” said Calibrisi. “Dewey exposed the identity of a high-placed MSS asset inside Israeli intelligence. This was payback.”

“Some fucking payback,” asked King. “If this was sanctioned by Li, this is war. If it wasn’t, well, what the hell is it then? They still assassinated America’s top national security official. It’s still war.”

Lindsay put his coffee cup down on the table in front of him.

“We all know that’s not practicable,” said Lindsay.

“Tell that to Jessica, Tim,” snapped King.

Lindsay sat back, chastened.

“What I mean, Adrian, is we can’t just go to war with China. We don’t have the troops. We would have to reinstitute the draft. I mean, it’s an absurd conversation to even have.”

“Oh, yeah,” said King, seething. “We might not have the troops, but we have enough fucking nukes to turn that miserable fucking no-good goddamn rice bog into a glow-in-the-dark cockroach park.”

Lindsay, a former admiral and chief of naval operations, who was almost thirty years King’s senior, nodded calmly.

“I’m angry too, but we’re not going to war over it,” said Lindsay. “You know it. I know it. Hector knows it.”

“The Chinese tried to alter the identity of the dead operative,” said Calibrisi. “They planted prints from a known terrorist with no ties to China. They think we don’t know. They had help from someone inside Argentina.”

“Who?” asked King.

“The head of AFP,” said Calibrisi.

King looked as if he was about to flip his desk over.

“Do you know how much we give those ungrateful bastards!” yelled King, reaching for the speaker button on his phone console.

“Yes, Mr. King,” came the voice of King’s assistant.

“Get me President Salazar down in Argentina,” he yelled at the phone.

He looked at Calibrisi.

“Who is the head of AFP?” asked King.

Calibrisi leaned forward and pressed the speaker button, cutting off the phone.

“You mean, who was the head of AFP?” answered Calibrisi calmly.

King smiled.

Lindsay glanced at Calibrisi, incredulous.

“Your guys killed—”

“Spare me,” snapped King, interrupting Lindsay. “He got what he deserved. As far as I’m concerned, Hector here can do whatever he feels like. But that’s that world. Right now, we’re in this world. And the question is, what do we do?”

“I think it’s appropriate to expel their ambassador from the country,” said Lindsay, “along with the entire embassy staff and the entire staff of the mission to the UN, and any satellite missions—L.A., San Francisco, Chicago, et cetera.”

“That’s symbolic horseshit,” said King. “What about the fuckers who actually did it?”

“It’s Fao Bhang,” said Calibrisi. “It’s his operation.”

King straightened his tie.

“Do you have a recommendation?”

“We need to confront the Chinese,” said Calibrisi. “They might deny it, but they also might administer their own form of justice and remove Bhang. That would be significant.”

“I’m going upstairs to brief the president,” said King. “When I get back, I want the Chinese ambassador in my office.”

King walked to the door.

“One more thing,” he said, looking at Lindsay. “You call Li. You call him or I’ll call him.”

“I’ll call him.”

“Tell Li the president expects him at Jessica’s funeral,” said King. “And tell him to bring Fao Bhang’s head in one of his suitcases.”