by J. T. Patten
Before Nour could react, the agent jerked Fadi’s arm, lifted a weapon and fired twice. Wetness sprayed on Nour’s face with the sound of the pops. Nour heard a clicking sound and then saw another flash.
* * * *
Drake Woolf fired two shots point-blank into the embassy man’s head, jerked the arm again and put two more into the passenger’s brain.
“What the fuck!” Halliday yelled.
As she stood, hands on her head, Drake opened the driver’s door, searching the man top to bottom. Woolf pocketed the weapon and spare magazine, left the passport, and retrieved the man’s phone. He paused and pulled the weapon back out. “This is the same Russian-made handgun the Iranians had up on Devon.”
While Halliday tried to frame his comment, Drake was around the car and doing the same with the passenger.
“You said you were going to ask them questions.”
“I said I needed answers.” Drake raised the other man’s weapon. “Same. Russian. Russia sells them to Iran, Iran sells them to Venezuela or gives them to Hezbollah.”
“You’re not getting answers from them now.”
Drake held up the mobile device. “I trust phones over people. Technology doesn’t lie. The guns gave me answers, too.”
“You killed diplomats.”
“They killed my driver.”
“You used a federal agent’s weapon.”
“Drug whore’s gun.” Drake passed Halliday and headed to their own vehicle, patting her on the shoulder. He pulled the weapon from his back waistband and threw it high onto the freight containers. “It was a freebie. Get in.”
“Your fingerprints.”
Drake cocked his head.
“Right. No fingerprints on record for you.”
Chapter 81
Adrenaline coursed through Halliday’s veins. It wasn’t as much that she was bothered by the killing of two Hezbollah-affiliated drug traffickers sheep-dipped in Venezuelan diplomacy, nor did she have a dopamine rush from fight or flight instincts kicking in. No, it was the fact that she watched Drake Woolf carry on an innocuous conversation, even to the point of being glib with the two men, then in an instant killing them both like they were flies on a window. That. That is what she found to be most bothersome. Now in the vehicle, it was like the event was as routine as a morning conference call.
Havens had seen the whole thing. Instead of saying anything, he reached his arm back in a fist, which Drake bumped in silence.
“Don’t either of you have anything to say about what just happened?” she asked.
“No,” Drake responded. “But my phone and portable chargers are about dead. I also need to close my eyes.”
“And you.” She reached and swatted Havens in the arm. “You knew what was going to happen the whole time?”
Havens kept his eyes on the deserted Chicago streets. “I had a pretty good feeling he wasn’t going to interview them. But so did you.”
Tresa flopped back against her seat. “You’re murderers.”
“No, Special Agent Halliday,” Havens responded, his volume rising. “We’re the tip of the spear. You’re FBI. You build a case, if you can, and put people in federal prisons. We are sent into the world’s shitholes for years on end trying to make sure no one crosses the water to fuck with our country. Turns out, we’ve got an infestation of people on US soil who are looking to exploit our good nature or who are waiting to take their shots at us. If you have any perverse notion in your head that those two guys would ever get arrested here or anything besides a light PNG status and a first-class plane ticket home, you’re as dumb as anyone else who isn’t in the game. Get it in your head. That’s just how it is.”
“That’s true,” replied Drake.
Tresa looked over at Drake’s hands, which were manipulating both devices with his own mobile phone on his lap. She saw the device displays both illuminate, asking for a new password reset. He typed the letters T-A-N-G-O on each one, then opened the settings, where he enabled Do Not Disturb and disabled all location settings.
He looked over at Halliday, noticing her watching his activity. “They should have been more careful. They got sloppy.” Drake enabled Touch ID with his passcode. He then worked his own phone again, periodically checking the diplomat’s phones. The words “Backing up to cloud” appeared on each of the men’s devices.
“Where are you dumping their phone information?” she asked, now much more subdued.
“To our analyst. He’ll be able to sort it better than I can now. Once he feeds it into the system, it should also correlate other metadata.”
“You don’t want to see if they may have communications about the bomb threat?”
“They won’t.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“I know the layers of the organization. Everyone plays a role but sticks to their part. These guys will be replaced in two days. They’re commodities. Expendable commodities.”
“So why even kill them?”
“You ever get stung by a bee?”
“Sure.”
“It dies once it stings you. But we humans still want to punish the little shit and smack it or stomp it when its abdomen is already ruptured.” Drake leaned back into the corner and closed his eyes. “It’s just payback. One hundred percent personal.”
Chapter 82
Thanks to Tresa’s Government Purchase Card, or PCard, the crew of herself, Havens, and Woolf secured adjoining suites at the city’s Hotel Essex, which overlooked the park area of the parade.
Drake dumped his pockets’ contents on a small end table. Weapons, magazines, cash, mobile devices, chargers, cables, his Molar Mic, and more formed a pile as if just a kid emptying a junk drawer. He plugged in devices to devices and chargers to chargers and power sources. “I’m setting an alarm for two hours unless you have a case of Rip Its,” he said to Sean as Tresa opened the adjoining door then walked away to use a bathroom. “Meds are fine, but I have no idea what I may say or do at night. Sebastian woke me last. That was a couple days ago now. I didn’t sleep the night that Mena stayed at the head shed.”
“Go lay down. I’ll shut the door and go into her room.”
Drake nodded and flopped down on the bed face first.
“She’s not stupid, Drake. And regardless of anything between you and her, after this op, we’re slowing you down to zero until we all get right.”
Woolf didn’t respond, so Havens just closed the door and let the man sleep.
When Halliday came out of the washroom, she was surprised to find Havens just looking out the window. He turned to her. “It’s hard to believe that something really bad could happen to innocent people tomorrow and there isn’t a damned thing we can do about it besides wait.”
“You’re just crying because there’s no one left for you both to kill tonight.” Halliday took a pass on the view and inspected the coffee pot and Folgers packets. “It’s not like you guys have to save the world. If something’s happening, it isn’t like the rest of law enforcement, Homeland, the Bureau, and the IC have just stopped working. I’ve gotta think there’s a good reason why we haven’t had terror attacks since 9/11 until the past month. Other people are on it, too.”
“I know,” Sean conceded.
“But does he know that?” She tilted her head to the other room.
“He’s always been put out to be the lead dog. I should’ve put a stop to it, but truth is, we need a guy like that. He just goes until he drops.”
“He’s not well.”
“Trust me. I know.”
“Do you know he deeded his house to me and gave me a check for over one hundred thousand dollars? All after I had a cup of coffee with him on his porch then hunted him down?”
Sean smiled. “He’ll never hold it against anyone for coming after him. He sees it as their duty. Like a warrior code. That’s why he
was more fazed by the loss of Mena than the fact that she tried to kill him. Truth is, you’re probably the first person he’s had around him who did something normal.”
“But to just throw away so much money and a house? That’s not thinking straight.”
Havens moved away from the window and drew closer to Halliday. He lowered his voice. “I drugged him, dragged him back to his living hell, and he also was going to give me the bulk of his assets. Do you really know why?”
She shrugged. “Because he’s whacked.”
“Yes, but also because he was going to kill himself that night.”
“He told you that?”
“Yeah. When he came to my door asking for my daughter’s full name and address. He needed it for legal reasons. He’s never met her but was giving her his money, too. And Lars. The only thing stopping him was he didn’t have that info. Once he got it, he literally turned around, apologized for bothering me and was going to go off and die.”
“You stopped him?”
“No. I’ve been there myself. I grabbed him and I hugged him. I let him cry. I let him know that he had been failed but that we wouldn’t fail together, because we were going to keep trying together. He doesn’t really want to be dead, he just wants to stop the way he’s feeling and what he’s doing but doesn’t know how to because nothing ever changes.”
Halliday’s eyes welled. She turned again to the wall of the adjoining room.
“Hey, we’re all having a harder time dealing with all this than what shows on the outside. He’s not alone. You’re not alone. I know you’re trying to do your job, Agent Halliday. But like you and like me, we need to find something to believe in.”
“What does he believe in? I haven’t seen it.”
“Right now, he believes in me. I think he believes in you. That’s enough to get us all through tomorrow and hopefully help some good innocent people along the way.”
“Curse of the sheepdog, huh?”
Sean paused at the remark, his face resisting the term. “In case you haven’t noticed, Special Agent Halliday, we’re wolves.”
Havens pulled out his device and thumbed his screen to his message app, where he texted his only daughter. “Love you, Mags. Thinking of you.”
“Woolf?”
“No. My kid. Because as much as I may get caught up in the job, I have to remember my priorities. It’s cost me everything.” He put the phone away like nothing had happened. “Coffee?”
Chapter 83
Drake awoke in the darkness of the room and fumbled toward the bathroom with only small cracks of light coming from the window curtains to guide his way. He shut the door, found the switch, and after a moment of squinting, he stared at himself in the mirror. The sleep had been without episode. He felt empty but refreshed. He carried a perpetual fatigue, so anything north of that was a plus. His face was pocked with blood. His hands stained again. Yesterday had been hell; today, likely the same.
Drake couldn’t shake the thought of Mena. She had a warrior’s heart that she hid. He would hold her memory in honor and would do everything he could to make sure that she wasn’t exploited in a coverup. Even if it meant exposing himself.
At that moment, Drake identified that lost feeling of his, which was honor. Though his life had been hell and his skills forged by the blood of others, he was what he was. If he went away, someone would just take his place. On the battlefield, he initially worked for his teammates. As they fell away, he fought for pure survival. When he cared no more for his own life, he was only living by instinct, reflexes, and habit.
“Hey, are you taking a shit in there?” Havens asked, jolting Drake from his thoughts. “Halliday and I have some thoughts on how we can still try to pitch in.”
Drake heard the sounds but shifted his thoughts to his brother, Dexter.
Chapter 84
For a neighborhood that had been marginalized with the stigma of people not wanting to work, perception was not reality. Oz’s Lawndale candy children had arrived bright and early. They were given paintbrushes, paint, and their St. Patrick’s Day parade costumes.
“You look funny in your orange beard,” said a young girl named Tamiki.
“You look funny in your orange beard. And your hat,” replied Zarielle.
“Zari, where’s Mr. Oz?”
“He dead. He got thrown out the window by the po-lice.” Zari lifted her sleeve to rub the rope burn. “He all dead.”
“We still going to the parade?”
“Yeah, we going to the parade.”
Dexter Woolf longed to see his own children. They were in a better place now, so he let the past leave his mind. The present was going to set the course for a new future, and of that he was certain. “More shamrocks, kids.” He smiled. “And rainbows.”
“With a pot of gold.”
“That’s right. Lots of gold. And you all get to throw golden powder in the sky.” Dexter, the Modarris, pulled from his pants pocket stacks of one-hundred-dollar bills. “If you do a good job, I’ll give you each two hundred dollars.”
The expressions on their orange-bearded faces were priceless.
“More rainbows. Who can give me more rainbows?” he called out as he strolled to a crew of four new middle-aged men standing by the toughs. “Gentlemen. Are you my drivers?”
As if he was asking for their qualifications, each man took a small step forward.
“I drive for our church.”
The next informed Dexter that he also drove a church bus and a school bus.
“I drove CTA for twenty years,” said the tallest of the men.
“I ran the Chicago Public Schools bus service. Ten years.”
“Two-bags clearly found me the best of the best.” Dexter was indeed shocked that Two-bags provided actual bus drivers. The gang leader came through.
“Men, I’m going to clean up a bit, and we’ll get rolling out.”
The men nodded to Dexter. He walked behind one of the junked cars and changed out of his traditional clothes. Dex sported olive cargo pants and tactical boots. On his lap he held a folded navy-blue slicker coat that very much resembled an FBI raid jacket. Especially from a distance with its yellow iron-on FBI lettering.
From a small toiletry bag, he selected a pair of silver scissors and started in on his hair and beard. With a pile of snipped whiskers on the ground, he started lathering his face for a waterless shave. In minutes, he looked like most any other first responder. Most bystanders, however, wouldn’t realize just how much he had a striking resemblance to his younger brother, Drake.
Chapter 85
Tresa met Jay just outside the hotel. The first item of business, she handed him a plastic laundry bag from the hotel closet. It was heavy and bulging. Sean Havens limped up to her side as Jay inspected the bag’s contents.
The Chicago special agent rocked the bag to check out the contents without reaching in. “I see the guns, I see the IDs. That’s a good start. Where are the clothes, and do you have a count on the ammo?”
“No,” Halliday answered. Nor had she provided exactly all the guns nor extra magazines that Drake concealed. Her demeanor was convincing, however, and most importantly, Jay never had an exact inventory count.
“I don’t know that we’ve formally met.” Sean extended his good hand. “I’m one of those Mr. White guys.”
Jay fake-laughed. “I should have known. Spooks.”
“I’m afraid so. My colleague was getting frozen from Langley on his pursuit. He’s been undercover for over a month in the city. Hunting men he hunted across the Middle East. Bad dudes. He took it upon himself to liberate the weapons and gear. I hold ultimate responsibility.”
“But if I call anyone and say a Mr. White from the CIA authorized it, it goes nowhere. Even if you can’t operate in the US, we clearly have no say. Chicago field office just needs to suck it up, right?”
“I can send you a coffee mug with a logo.” Sean shrugged.
Jay waved it off, pissed.
“Cufflinks?”
Jay’s cold glare showed Havens what he wanted to see. The man was in a stalemate.
“Jay, I can say this: we’re here to help, or we’re here to stay out of the way. I’ll go ahead and send cufflinks and the mug.”
Jay rubbed his face. “No weapons.”
“Special Agent Halliday has her issued weapons. I have none. I’m just an advisor.”
“And your boy? Where’s he?”
“Among the crowd.”
“You’re telling me you’re worried about a WMD and you have a guy in the middle of it?”
“He is the one person in this country who absolutely needs to be in the middle of things.”
“Okay.” Jay extended a hand. “Thanks for bringing these back. But I want everything before you leave. Even if it’s shell casings and my SWAT guys’ underwear.”
“You got it.”
“Anything you need from me?” Jay asked with full collaborative sincerity.
“Three pairs of your best binoculars and access to your snipers.”
Jay gave Halliday a sideways glance.
“Give it to him,” Halliday said to Sean.
Havens pulled out a thousand dollars cash and handed it to Jay. “You take your wife out as an apology, along with the two SWAT guys and their significant others, to a night at Gibson’s on behalf of the Agency.”
Jay smirked. “I got a law degree. Been with the Bureau almost twenty years. I ain’t takin’ your money. I’ll let you take us all out for steaks. What happens to the bill is none of my business as long as it isn’t taxpayer funds.”
“I assure you, Havens is good for it,” Tresa added.
Jay’s head jerked to Sean. “You said Havens?” He gave Sean a hard look. “You used to live here?”