Savage Road

by Chris Hauty

  “A waste of time, dear girl. You might recall our last quiet conversation.”

  Of course she remembers. Odom will help her if she helps him. Hayley rejected out of hand his offer of a quid pro quo. Assisting the disgraced deputy director in any manner was stooping too low. That was then; this is now.

  “I do recall, sir.” She pauses, then says, “How can I be of assistance?”

  “Wonderful. Perhaps then you can check on an old family friend for me. Nice woman who runs a florist shop in the District. Little Shop of Flowers, quaintly enough, on Eighteenth Street. My friend is getting on in years. I worry about her.”

  “I’ll see what I can do, sir.”

  Hayley ends the conversation not long after Odom relays his request. She feels the weight of another yoke thrown around her neck. How many masters must she serve to accomplish the things she knows are right?

  * * *

  SITTING ASTRIDE A Honda CB1000R—a backup ride he keeps garaged at a second location rented under an assumed name—Rafi watches the FBI agents and military intelligence officers exiting his apartment building on F Street. Sweating profusely under a visored helmet, he has no reason to fear the authorities will recognize him as their person of interest. No doubt, the cops have turned his apartment upside down by now and located his Sig Sauer under the mattress. In his rush to grab his stuff and go, he had forgotten the handgun. Rafi had prepared for this day in more ways than a backup motorcycle with an untraceable plate. Adverse to the concept of prison with every molecule of his being, he readied not just a bug-out bag but also a bug-out life. Creating an alias, supported with all the necessary official documents, was a trivial matter given Rafi’s hacking skills and obsession for detail. Under that false identity, he rented an extra studio apartment and purchased an extra motorbike. Given the thoroughness of his arrangements, Rafi’s self-exfiltration was only a matter of grabbing Yazat and his computer, ditching the Ducati, and stepping into his assumed identity. Too bad about the fucking gun, though.

  Imagining the cops traipsing through his apartment, however, truly pisses him off. He had expected his role as a rogue cyber warrior to last longer and blames Hayley Chill for its premature demise. His days in the nation’s capital are numbered. Not that he minds leaving. Rafi has never been out of the country and relishes the prospect of new horizons. What was the George Carlin quote he had seen on Twitter? “Think about how stupid the average American is, and then realize half of them are stupider than that.”

  If he had real balls, he’d flip the switch on the entire country. He and his colleagues in Unit F6 had located exploits in the networks of every major utility. The backdoor exploit in the Stafford Compressor Station network was one such gem. Uploading the entire library of these vulnerabilities onto a hard drive the size and thickness of a credit card was no trouble at all. With this arsenal, Rafi could drop the United States back into the pre-Industrial Age.

  The longer he watches the cops in their stupid uniforms and their seriously stupid expressions go in and out of his building, the angrier Rafi becomes. Do they think they’ve got problems finding him right now? Watch what happens when he turns off the lights.

  * * *

  HAYLEY ENTERS THE florist shop in the Adams Morgan neighborhood a little after three p.m. The proprietor, a small, gray-haired woman of slim build and bright manner, is taking care of another customer as the White House aide comes through the door.

  The older woman says, “Be with you in just a moment, dear.”

  Hayley stands patiently to the side until the other customer departs. The elderly proprietor approaches, wearing a pinafore-style apron over an Eileen Fisher linen blouse and sensible jeans.

  “What can I do for you, dear?”

  “James Odom asked me to stop in, ma’am.”

  “You’re Hayley Chill.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Jim thinks very highly of you.”

  Hayley couldn’t care less what Odom thinks about her. “You have my instructions?” she asks.

  “Yes, of course. A few days ago, Jim’s attorney had a meeting with him at Cumberland. Word was passed along to me.”

  “Word about what, ma’am?”

  “That you would be the one who would take care of something for us.”

  Hayley realizes Odom had never doubted she would circle back to him. “Continue, please,” she says.

  “You see, I was with the agency and served with Jim Odom. You could say we came up together. A good friend of ours, another agent with whom we had undergone training at Camp Peary and joined in early operations was assigned the hazardous mission of going undercover in Cuba. Juan Martin was his name. Juan was quite successful in developing numerous assets in Havana. But, suspecting that his cover has been blown, Langley ordered him out of the country. Poor man, he had made it home safely, only to be murdered in a Miami alley the day he had stepped off a boat from Cuba.”

  “What does any of this have to do with me, ma’am?” asks Hayley.

  “Jim and several others of us, since retired from the intelligence services, never forgot what the other side did to our friend. We’ve received new information from a developing source in Moscow. The man who murdered Juan Martin is still in the US, operating under an alias, Alberto Barrios, and working as a valet in the White House residence.” The older woman pauses artfully. “You work at the White House, don’t you, dear?”

  Hayley hears these revelations without change of expression. She can deduce what Odom wants of her.

  “I understand.”

  “Of course, you do. Otherwise, Jim wouldn’t have chosen you.” The older woman’s demeanor shifts. She no longer seems like the gentle florist of Adams Morgan but a former intelligence officer for the Central Intelligence Agency, remorseless and cold-blooded. “Verify our intelligence, won’t you, Hayley? Take the appropriate action. Perhaps then Jim Odom can be of some service to you.”

  * * *

  HAYLEY EMERGES FROM the florist’s shop feeling overwhelmed, an emotion mirrored by the city’s pervading mood. With the threat of a kinetic war breaking out in Europe and the expectation of more cyberattacks, Washington seems on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Standing at the intersection of Eighteenth Street and Kalorama Road, Hayley studies the faces of passersby and sees collective anxiety on all of them. Despite these well-founded fears, however, people in the nation’s capital persist, going about their business. She draws strength in this observation. The bus driver continues to drive his bus. The lobbyists continue to lobby. Even the panhandlers do as they always do, despite a pervading sense of doom. If these ordinary people can cope with uncertainty, then she can continue to perform her duties as well.

  But Hayley must question her decision to do the bidding of the disgraced CIA deputy director with blind obedience. She knows what’s being asked of her. James Odom doesn’t only want Barrios exposed; he wants the Cuban operative dead. Hayley has killed once in her life. When a hit team was moments from assassinating Richard Monroe at Camp David, Hayley intervened, taking out the unit leader. She felt little in the immediate aftermath of the event and only later suffered moderate emotional distress over causing the man’s death. A lifelong psychological detachment, she learned not long after her recruitment, was the primary factor in Publius seeking her out. If the White House valet is a Cuban agent, then Hayley will have no problem killing Barrios. What gives Hayley pause is not the act of killing this man but rather a desire to understand James Odom’s true intention fully. That old weasel, Hayley muses, is capable of masterful deceit.

  She decides against contacting Andrew Wilde. Does Publius know about Alberto Barrios? Why wouldn’t they have trusted her with that information? Or maybe James Odom is playing her, setting Hayley up for an act of revenge on a personal enemy. She has almost no evidence on which to base an evaluation of Barrios’s guilt. But what keeps emerging from the static inside her head is the image of Rafi Zamani’s smiling face outside the Rosslyn train station. Whether he is a
rogue agent, a traitor working at the behest of Russia, or carrying out the demands of some other hostile actor, the self-professed cyber jihadist must be stopped. And, at the present moment, her instinct is that James Odom is her best ally in that operation. Handling Richard Monroe will have to take a second position in her priority list.

  That she has made the correct decision is underscored about fifteen seconds later, when Hayley sees the traffic light at Columbia Road and Eighteenth Street go dark. Perplexed, the deeper state operative looks to a Starbucks coffee shop at the same intersection and sees that the electricity is off there as well. In every direction she looks, Hayley sees darkened storefronts. She makes the likeliest deduction: Rafi Zamani, aka Cyber Jihad, has struck again.

  * * *

  FRIDAY, 4:45 P.M. “I’m beginning to develop a strong dislike for this prick,” April Wu says to Hayley as she joins her on a bench at the northern end of Meridian Hill Park. Walking to the impromptu meetup was far easier than dealing with local traffic brought to a standstill by a cyberattack on the entire Eastern Seaboard’s electrical grid and subsequent six-state blackout. This midpoint between the florist shop and April’s condo is a short, five-minute walk. There is no respite, however, from the constant blare of car horns as commuters vent their frustration with immovable traffic on every street and lane in the city.

  Hayley says, “Chances are the feelings are mutual. Zamani’s a fugitive because of you.”

  “Finally, something to feel good about.”

  “Why? What else happened?”

  “Oh, nothing, except being grilled by the director. Like he was pissed that I identified Cyber Jihad. He only wanted to debrief me enough to know to shut me down.”

  “What’re you saying?” Hayley asks.

  “I’m saying that flipping the switch on the Eastern Seaboard and laying it off on Moscow is a pretty good way to get the president to sign off on a heavy-duty cyber counterattack.”

  Hayley shakes her head, not buying it. “No matter what anyone might think about the NSA, its leadership isn’t in the habit of attacking the country they’ve sworn to protect.”

  “Apparently, the same can’t be said for Rafi Zamani, a contractor for the National Security Agency.”

  “Underscore ‘contractor,’ ” says Hayley.

  April throws up her hands, exasperated with her fellow deeper state operative. “What the fuck do I know? I just work there.”

  “I’m not saying you’re wrong, April. But some hard evidence, for instance, would be a nice thing to have.”

  The army lieutenant laughs gloomily. “Great. The country is circling the drain and you want to make this about us.”

  Hayley is stone-faced. She learned long ago the strategic value of remaining silent. People, in general, tend to talk themselves into the correct course of action. It just takes time. Hayley is rewarded once again for her disconcerting silence.

  “Fuck it. We’ll do it your way,” says April. “Your president-assassinating jailbird is going to tell us what I already know.”

  Given what Hayley must do next, she needs April for cover. On the walk over from the florist shop, she had decided to tell her fellow deeper state operative about the phone call with James Odom and subsequent visit to the florist. “James Odom was one of the architects of the CIA’s reorganization after 9/11 and the Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act. If someone inside the IC has Zamani on secret retainer, a deputy director of Intelligence Integration is the most likely person to know it.”

  “And you’re willing to put this Cuban dude in the ground? Seriously?”

  Hayley doesn’t want to freak out her friend. “Of course not. But if I can get the goods on Barrios and spoon-feed it to the FBI? That ought to be enough to gain Odom’s cooperation.”

  She would prefer this business with the Cuban to be bloodless. But there isn’t much time for formalities. If the White House valet proves to be a GRU agent, Hayley is all too willing to deliver his head on a silver platter to her “jailbird.”

  April hasn’t given up on the idea of tracking down the NSA contractor herself. “Think I’ll head back over to the Iron Pony.”

  “Zamani is too smart to go back there.”

  “I’m not expecting to find him sitting on a stool and drinking an IPA, wiseass. Just want to ask around about him. Maybe get a better sense of what kind of guy he is. His habits.”

  Hayley nods, getting to her feet. “Better hurry. I don’t imagine that place will be open very long with this power outage.” She turns and starts jogging south through the park.

  April stands erect, grumbling. This isn’t my first blackout, okay? she muses, and starts jogging south, too.

  * * *

  HER MOTHER DIED from breast cancer when April was ten. Raised by her father and four older brothers, she grew up in a home environment saturated with testosterone. Everything was a competition. Whether on the local ball field or in their modest three-bedroom Long Island rancher, where they endured a perpetual contest for the use of the only bathroom, the survival of the fittest was the Wu family’s operating principle. The five kids numbered enough to make up a team for any sandlot sport. Their fierce competitive zeal was near legendary for miles around. With their father often in the city running his import business, the Wu kids were left to fend for themselves. No one dared mess with little April; her brothers would protect her with their lives. But that didn’t mean the four boys refrained from mercilessly teasing their kid sister and pushing her to excel. If any Wu received so much as a B in school, the mockery and abuse heaped on the shameful dunce by the other siblings would ensure it wouldn’t happen again. Despite these challenges in her childhood, April wouldn’t trade it for another. Family is her bedrock.

  If any upbringing might have prepared her for the rigors of West Point, it was hers. Nominated for admission by her congressional district’s representative, April had long held the dream to follow her older brother Owen to USMA. The traditions and rigor of the institution appealed to her. Free tuition to one of the nation’s most distinguished colleges wasn’t such a bad deal, either. But from the earliest days at West Point, April understood she was in a hard place. With Owen having graduated two years before, there was no one to protect the ambitious and obsessively directed eighteen-year-old.

  After excelling at basic training the summer before her freshman year, April arrived at West Point full of her typical piss and vinegar. As was the case of her entire childhood, she was determined to keep up with the young men that comprised 80 percent of the student body. Her athleticism, competitiveness, and bravado stood out even in a hyperaggressive environment like West Point’s, drawing the attention of other athletes on campus. She became friends with members of the football team, including its captain and starting quarterback Joseph Stackhouse. Thoroughly acclimated to the West Point culture within the first few weeks of her freshman year, thriving in classes and thrilled to be learning the arcane customs of this iconic institution on the Hudson River, April Wu was a happy plebe as any.

  Everything changed one afternoon during the last week in October when April returned to her room from taking a shower. She found Stackhouse waiting for her. Wrapped only in a towel and anticipating nothing but a friendly chat, April asked the college quarterback to leave for a moment so she could get dressed. The boy made awkward jokes that suggested he was hoping for more than conversation. April disabused her male friend of that hope in clear terms but remained smiling and cheerful. Stackhouse continued with his stilted idea of flirtatious banter, moving closer to April and crowding her into the corner of the room. He wedged two fingers between the towel and her chest, trying to push the fabric down off her. No longer smiling, April demanded that he leave. But Stackhouse persisted. When April started to raise her voice, the young man leaned his 225-pound frame against hers, clamped his hand over her mouth, and shoved two of his fingers into her vagina.

  She fought him off. Within seconds of the sexual assault’s start, Stackhouse retreated out th
e dorm room door. April filed a written complaint with school authorities that night, and the school dutifully launched an inquiry. After a cursory investigation, the school determined that the sexual contact between April and Joe Stackhouse had been consensual. Both students were charged with violating Article 1 of the Cadet Disciplinary Code for improper use of government facilities. Local police accepted the college’s findings and refused April’s demand for further scrutiny. Because of the subsequent disciplinary action, Stackhouse was unable to participate in the traditional Army-Navy football game. Instead, he joined April “walking the area,” with sabers shouldered, for hours one cold December weekend in the school’s vast plaza, a traditional form of punishment at USMA.

  That same weekend, Army lost to Navy in that all-important game. Few cadets didn’t blame April for the loss. From that day forward, the entire West Point student body ostracized her. April never wavered in her dedication to the academy. She never complained about being shunned, not once. Throughout her four years, April ranked near the top of her class. Ten days before graduation, two other female cadets came forward and accused Joseph Stackhouse of sexually assaulting them, too. They had witnessed April’s fate for speaking out and chose to remain silent until just before graduation. For the courage and dignity with which she had conducted herself while a cadet, April Wu was nominated by her fellow students and awarded the Distinguished Graduate Award. Duty, Honor, Country, indeed.

  * * *

  FRIDAY, 5:11 P.M. Washington, DC, without electrical power and in the grip of an unseasonal heat wave, is deranged. As April Wu jogs south through traffic-clogged streets, she witnesses the escalating effects of a widespread blackout on an American urban center. A nine-story apartment building on Sixteenth Street is engulfed in flames, trapping tenants inside. A liquor store on Massachusetts Avenue spews looters, one of whom is shot dead by responding police. Emergency vehicles, sirens blaring, struggle to respond to calls in snarled traffic congestion. With surface streets almost impassable and trains not operating, people have no choice but to take to the sidewalks. Like turning over a rock and exposing thousands of ants that scatter in all directions, the thin veneer of civilization has been ripped away, revealing the terrified soul of its people.