The map appeared on the display and showed he was near Quantico Creek, which was partially on the Marine Corps Base Quantico. The western portion of the base included the FBI Training Academy. It was a discreet location, one that Bronson would have thought of using either to secure him and Hinojosa or to dispose of them. He didn’t believe Bronson had turned, but at the moment, everyone was suspect to him.
He powered off the GPS, knowing he may well have given away his location, but he didn’t plan on staying in one spot too long. He had to get to the source of who was framing Samuelson and why.
Twigs snapped above him. Then the sound of two whispering voices was just around the corner from his hide site. Younger voices. Not anyone looking for him, he didn’t believe. The couple turned the corner and began kissing. Two teenagers going for a quickie before school.
“Hurry up,” the boy said, removing his letterman’s jacket. They dropped their backpacks and began undressing. The boy removed his jeans as a text came into the girl’s phone.
“It’s Sandy, I told her to give me a ten-minute heads-up before she got to the house.”
“Only need five,” the boy said, smiling.
“Don’t I know,” she said, rolling her eyes. She put her phone on her backpack as she removed her skinny jeans and black Disturbed T-shirt.
Harwood waited until they were engaged in sex before he bolted from his camouflaged hide site, raced past them, snatched the girl’s phone, and scrambled down the trail.
The girl, who had been leaning forward over a rock formation, screamed, “Hey!”
The boy, who was focused on what most teenage males would have been concentrating on, took a second too long to figure out what was happening.
Harwood was in the bush before either of them could possibly identify him, which would be easy enough once he made his call. He dashed another two hundred meters, found a cave, maybe even a tunnel, and hid for about a half an hour. Reemerging from the cave, he checked for a signal, knowing that he had a limited time to use the phone. He was banking on the teenage girl not wanting to report that she and her boyfriend were having a quickie in the woods before school.
The signal was good, and he dialed Bronson’s number from memory, having earlier seen it appear on Hinojosa’s phone.
“Bronson,” he answered.
“It’s Harwood.”
After a pause, Bronson said, “Reaper, good to hear from you. Was concerned you were fish bait in the Potomac. Is Valerie with you?”
“Valerie is supposed to be with you. Didn’t the helicopter arrive?”
Bronson said, “Not yet.”
It didn’t make sense. Enough time had elapsed where Hinojosa should have been safely delivered back to the FBI Training Academy, where he presumed Bronson was taking them.
“What happened?”
“I lost comms with the helicopter and it hasn’t come to this side of Quantico yet. I’m concerned.”
They had squared off before, when Harwood had been on the run, accused of murdering army generals and politicians. Bronson had been on his trail and they had ultimately established an armistice. Neither was one hundred percent comfortable with the other, but there was a bond there that neither could quite identify, also. Perhaps even a brotherhood. Maybe it was that both had served in combat, or maybe it was because they were both black. Harwood wasn’t sure. It probably had something to do with both.
“Before we talk about anything, I need you to get a team in Columbus, Georgia, down to check on Monisha.”
“Already done. She’s fine. It seems the same bad guys that tried to break and enter your house before you left tracked Monisha from school, followed Murdoch’s parents home, staked her out, and then got the go order.”
Harwood exhaled, long and steady, releasing compartmentalized anxiety. He felt a weight lift from his shoulders.
“Murdoch’s dad was a paratrooper and drill instructor. His house was outfitted with layered security cameras and sensors. He saw the two-man team coming, got Monisha to a safe spot, and then dispatched the two intruders.”
“Dispatched? Either still alive?” Harwood asked.
“One is, but he’s in a coma. Hoping he comes around. Meanwhile, we’re exploiting their phones. One of the numbers leads to the same burner that called MS-13 last night and this morning.”
“We’re getting somewhere,” Harwood said. “Where is she now?”
“Safe with the Murdochs.”
“Okay, Hinojosa?”
“Not on the phone.”
“Fair enough. Why are you making Samuelson for this thing, Bronson? You know he had nothing to do with it.”
“I know now,” Bronson said. “So, Reaper, where are you? Quantico Creek? We need to talk face-to-face.”
He knew the FBI, among others, was tracking him but didn’t care. He would be gone before they could react. He didn’t want to wait for a meet that might never happen, though, so he pressed on. “Explain how you know Sammie had nothing to do with this,” Harwood replied.
“Again, not on the phone. I’ll come get you. This thing is coming to a head in the next twenty-four hours. I’ve got your location. Move up four hundred meters to the west and you’ll be on Possum Point Road. Throw something on the road as a marker, go hide, and I’ll find you.”
Harwood clicked off, walked until he found the road, and broke a small tree limb in two pieces. He laid them across each other on the desolate, uneven pavement framed by scrub brush on the creek side and thick forest on the north side.
X marks the spot. Not original, but sufficient. He moved north about one hundred meters and then west, found a good sniper hide, and aimed his SR-25 at the X. Then he scouted to the west. Within thirty minutes a tan military Humvee was moving slowly along the road. Bronson’s shaved head was visible through the windshield. The Humvee stopped at the X and Bronson stepped out. Bronson held his arms wide and lifted his sunglasses. After a few minutes, Harwood picked a path to the road and kept his SR-25 trained on Bronson. He was wearing a black windbreaker with gold FBI letters on the back and left breast, black cargo pants, and tan combat boots. Harwood remembered that he was usually a dapper dresser and guessed that Bronson was in tactical mode given the situation.
“Reaper, good to see you, too. Lower the weapon,” Bronson said.
“Just a second,” he said.
He inspected the rear of the Humvee and then the two seats, which were empty. He tossed the girl’s phone in Quantico Creek and slid into the rear left seat.
“Okay, let’s roll,” Harwood said. They drove forty-five minutes not to a wooded area on the FBI Training Academy grounds, as he expected, but to Aquia Harbour Marina. Bronson parked the Humvee and opened Harwood’s door.
“Bring your stuff,” he said.
Harwood had first met Bronson when he was on a boat in the salt marshes of Savannah, Georgia. Perhaps he was being nostalgic. Dozens of sleek white speedboats of varying sizes were moored to the wooden piers, lines secured around metal cleats. They walked to the end of one of the piers and stepped into a Formula 310 with twin MerCruiser engines. Harwood scanned and there was nowhere to go belowdecks other than a small equipment hold. A Y-frame sunken boat trailer modification was secured to the starboard and port corners of the aft. A Sea-Doo jet ski was lashed to the metal trailer floating in the water.
“Figured you for something a little more roomy … and private,” Harwood said.
Bronson smiled. “That one is up by my place at the Wharf. Just use this for hitting the beaches on the bay and buzzing around in that jet ski.” He chinned toward the rear of the vessel.
Harwood should have guessed the playboy would want to be able to take women onto the boat to impress them. He dropped his ruck while Bronson stood at the console.
“Undo the lines and pull in those fenders,” Bronson said.
Harwood did as Bronson asked. No time to get in an ego match with a man whose ego was larger than the boat engines. Bronson backed the boat out of the slip a
nd motored into Aquia Creek toward the Potomac River. The banks on either side surrounded them with tall hardwood trees and steep ravines that fed into the widening creek.
As he steered the vessel, he sped up when they left the no wake zone.
“Moving target is always harder to hit. Right, Reaper?” Bronson shouted above the buzz of the motor.
“You know it,” he said, but wasn’t sure if Bronson heard or cared to hear.
They cleared the mouth of the creek and were soon in the middle of the Potomac River. Bronson sped across the full breadth of the river, maybe two miles, approached the Maryland side, and slowed as they entered a small creek that narrowed quickly. It turned hard left where Bronson shut the engine.
“Also, when you don’t have privacy on board, well, you find your own,” Bronson said.
Harwood had little time for Bronson’s theatrics, but played along.
“I get it. This is where you bird-dog some chicks. What are we doing here?”
“Talk. Tell you stuff. And see if you can’t tell me stuff.”
“All this time we’ve known each other, Bronson, and I still don’t know what team you play for,” Harwood said.
“I’m one of the good guys,” Bronson said.
“So you say. Are you on Team Bronson? Team USA? Team Brookes? I’ve learned that ‘good’ is mostly in the eye of the beholder.”
“Fair enough. Not on Brookes’s team, though I did tap that just for sport. Pretty cool to say I bent a senator and potential president over my balcony.”
“I’m sure you were the one who was played, based on what I’ve heard,” Harwood said.
“Huh. Hadn’t thought of that,” Bronson said.
“Just brace yourself for the pictures. If she’s under investigation, those will come out at an opportune time. I have no real information, but I’ve been dealing with these people for a few days now. It’s all about the power and they will stop at nothing to gain it.”
“You’re probably right, but I’m not part of all that. Might have still been worth it, even if.”
Harwood shook his head. “You’re a good agent, as far as I can tell. Nothing worth throwing away your career.”
Bronson was sitting opposite him in the white cushioned seats. “Maybe so,” he said, looking away at the trees above them.
“Tell me about Sammie. Hinojosa. That’s what I want to hear. Not about some piece of ass,” Harwood said.
Fish smacked at the surface. A copperhead snake was coiled tightly on some gray rocks about ten yards away. The cove came to a tight V where the creek was nothing but a trill some fifty yards away. Steep banks dove in from all directions. There was no long-distance shot and if someone had been following Bronson in Virginia, they would have to swim or jump in a boat to find them.
“Okay. We interrogated Malik Sultan, the one we captured at Dulles,” Bronson said. “He had nothing to do with the ambush at Camp David. Was here on a business deal, but his counterparts never showed up.”
“Lured here just to be seen and be captured?” Harwood asked.
“Bingo.”
“Okay,” Harwood said. “But Sultan and Perza were legit bad guys, correct?”
The morality of killing the right person was important to him.
“Yes, they were funneling funds from the U.S. to help build nuclear weapons in violation of the new president’s foreign policy.”
“Okay, go on. I’m solid.”
“The expended brass you found in the next room over? Fingerprints belonged to Stone, from Team Valid. Someone had planted Sultan’s fingerprints in the database to appear if we queried Stone’s. Max made the wrong call initially, but he cross-checked against the international database in West Virginia and they were different. We had Sultan’s prints from IEDs in Crimea. And the more I dug, the more it was clear that Team Valid is not a presidential order. It came from Kilmartin, the director of the FBI. Completely rogue and off the books.”
“Let me guess. Stone and Weathers did the ambush to kill Carly Masters. They framed Samuelson and implicated the Sultans and Perzas. Someone needed the Sultan and Perza families killed and this gave that person the catalyst for establishing Team Valid,” Harwood said.
Bronson chuckled. “I guess we’re done here. You got it figured out.”
“I’ve been living it, Deke.”
Deke. Building the trust.
“Well, Vick, we have more to learn, but it appears there is a group of people from the previous administration that opposes the current administration. Imagine that. And some of that group have been conducting a shadow series of negotiations and diplomacy to keep alive canceled treaties such as the Iran nuclear deal. And it’s one thing to express support, but an entirely different thing to keep financing going in violation of U.S. law.”
“A deal got canceled. No biggie. How is that worth killing for?”
“If these people’s identities are revealed in any kind of credible forum other than Maximus Anon’s Twitter page, then they have a serious problem. It appears top-secret comparted and Q-level classified secrets were being sold to Iran as well. Stuff from the Senate Intel Committee. We’re talking jail time. Sedition. Treason. Big stuff.”
“I buy that. Anon seems pretty accurate,” Harwood said, eyeing Bronson. Remembering the Marine logo on the side of the server rack, he added. “Semper Fi and all.”
Bronson smiled.
“We’ve been trying to find that person, just so you know. For the record, Maximus hasn’t been wrong, yet.”
Harwood listened. There wasn’t a denial in his statement. Was Bronson Maximus Anon?
“How did Sammie get in the middle of this? He was off the grid,” Harwood said.
“Partially off the grid. He was seeing Carly Masters, who had a soft spot for Army Rangers. They met during his rehab in Walter Reed. Her brother had been wounded in Syria and was one bunk over. Their relationship grew to the point that Samuelson got as close to D.C. as he could stomach.”
“He wasn’t a city boy,” Harwood said.
“That’s right,” Bronson continued. “Valerie told me. They had lost touch. She said she saw him in the hospital after we got him back from the Chechen thing, but he was too proud. Didn’t want anyone’s help. Couldn’t understand why he was having PTSD or memory issues. He was really struggling. She tried to intervene, but duty called for her, too.”
“I’m still noncommittal on her,” Harwood said.
“About what? Whether she’s with us or them?”
“Yeah, something like that.”
“She’s with us. We … had a thing,” Bronson said.
“Please, that’s half the women in the D.C. metro area,” Harwood said.
Bronson smiled. “Maybe not half.”
“Still, you get my point. Doesn’t mean anything.”
“Well, I’ve never seen proof that she’s Samuelson’s sister, but that doesn’t mean she’s working for the other side.”
“Then why the charade? Why put herself on the Team Valid kill list?”
“Maybe something to do with Carly Masters? They were friends,” Bronson said.
“Lots of maybes. Ever going to get to telling me why she isn’t here?”
“Yeah, some asshole hacked our secure communications system and gave my Black Hawk a signal to waive off. The helicopter that picked you up was off the radar.”
“So I’m fortunate an MS-13 gangbanger jumped on me like a freaking zombie. Otherwise I might be wherever Hinojosa is?”
“Maybe.”
“My money says either way, good guy or bad guy, she’s with Brookes in that compound.”
“Maybe.”
“Okay, so fill in the blanks for me,” Harwood said.
“Sammie still had his security clearance and he’d just started a job with a defense contracting company. Masters caught Khoury, the senate IT guy, one night downloading top-secret information. She didn’t confront him. She just remotely monitored his activity. She gave Sammie the names of the
people who were involved. Evidently, there were some people skimming off the financial transactions of the Iran deal and selling information, as I said. When that got canceled, two things happened.”
“They got exposed and they quit receiving their stipends,” Harwood said.
“Again. We’re done here,” Bronson said. “But seriously, Carly Masters telling Samuelson was technically not a smart thing to do for two reasons. First, it is considered leaking, particularly in today’s environment. And second, it obviously got her killed.”
“These same people I’m guessing killed Khoury the IT guy that Masters found?” Harwood asked, recalling his brief conversation with Monisha.
“Yes. Khoury, who mysteriously committed suicide with a bullet to the forehead, was the broker of this information. Corent did the forensics and Khoury’s head was moving when he was shot. Not conclusive, but still suspicious. He was the cutout who was gathering the technical details of our nuclear capabilities and enabling the financial transactions to take place. It is a complicated network of banks that are violating U.S. law to continue the flow of money to Iran that the previous administration promised and agreed upon. Smart undid that and shut down the flow. As you said, once the deal was off it trapped some people that were skimming from the billions. One of those people appears to be Senator Sloane Brookes.”
“You’re saying Maximus Anon is right then. Brookes had Stone and Weathers ambush the families at Camp David to kill Carly Masters and establish the need for Team Valid? Then they planted the names of Sultan and Perza so Team Valid would kill them? Perza and Sultan weren’t anywhere near Camp David.”
Bronson pointed at him. “That’s what it looks like.”
Harwood whistled a low, soft tune. “I’ve been thinking it, but it’s hard to believe. And they’re trying to make Sammie for the Camp David ambush?”
Bronson held up his phone, punched an icon on the screen, and a news video began to play. It highlighted that another terrorist had been identified along with Samuelson. Vick Harwood, the Reaper.
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