by Marc Cameron
He looked for earpieces, any kind of weapon—besides the broom. Nothing. The guy kept walking without looking back. Maybe he was just a shy janitor.
Chavez took the Moleskine notebook from his pocket and began to make a couple of notes. He enjoyed these quiet times, when he could think, but he preferred the action with the rest of the guys.
Few outside the inner circle knew The Campus existed. It wasn’t something you applied to. You had to be asked, handpicked, so it was easier to get the crème de la crème of intelligence officers and operators. Chavez was a plank-holder, one of the first on board at inception, along with Clark and Dom Caruso, who’d been chosen by President Ryan and Gerry Hendley. There had been others: Brian—Dom’s brother—and Sam. Both had been killed on the job. Chavez had lost countless friends, in Colombia, on Rainbow, and with the Agency—in hellholes all around the globe. Finding a place to get killed was never a problem.
Work in that environment made for a close-knit team, closer than family. The Campus was small. It had to be, but like any family, there were periodic squabbles and disagreements. Switching partners now and then helped to keep everyone on their toes. Beyond that, from a personal standpoint, Chavez genuinely liked these people. It was a good thing, too, because all told, he’d probably spent more time with members of one team or another than with his own family. Patsy had grown up that way with John Clark as her father, and now JP was going through the same thing. At a reunion the year before, Ding’s cousin had called him an asshat for spending so much time away from home, berating him for abandoning his family and leaving all the work on the home front to his wife. Patsy about ripped the woman’s head off defending him. But she’d been quiet on the drive back to the hotel, and admitted she wouldn’t mind seeing more of him. That next morning, though, she’d apologized for laying on the guilt trip, and left him a handwritten note. He’d even shown it to John and was pretty sure there had been a tear or two welling up in the old man’s eyes.
Never thought I’d meet another man like my dad. But I’m sure glad I did. Please don’t get discouraged because of us. JP and I know you’re not Superman—you’re so much better. Superman doesn’t have to be brave; he’s invincible. You’re a mere mortal, and yet you march into danger anyway, every day. That’s brave. Someday, JP will find out what you and Daddy do, and when he does, he’ll be so proud of you, just like I am.
Love you,
—Pats
Funny thing was, his wife’s note telling him to get out there and do his job only made him want to spend more time with her. Maybe she was just extra-wily that way. Accustomed to compartmentalizing home and work into different parts of his brain, he pushed the thoughts away and focused on the mission, rejuvenated for the moment.
A steady stream of customers, mostly young Indonesian hipster types, came and went from the business. Suparman’s was crammed in the middle of a strip mall that was three stories tall. Like the larger mall to the south, it had the slouchy look of something old that had been refurbished and repainted many times over. Flanked by a hair salon, a pet store, and a scooter dealership, among other things, Suparman’s took up the bottom two floors in the center of the mall. The upper floors of most of the businesses appeared to be apartments. That would make things interesting if they ended up having to break in here.
There’d been no heavies, no dark limousines pulling up front, nothing to lead Chavez to believe there was anything remarkable going on inside the store. Of course, that didn’t mean the Calliope tech wasn’t there. Chavez was more interested in learning if the security guards went home after the store closed, in the event they came up empty-handed at the main office and had to come back here later.
Adara showed up less than half an hour after she left, black hair still damp under a stylish red ball cap. She’d changed into khaki slacks and a sky-blue polo shirt. Chavez had a cup of tea waiting for her.
“Your hair looks good,” he said. “I’ll bet Dom likes it.”
“He’d better,” Adara said. “Because I’m not sure this stuff is going to come out anytime soon. It smells like they used some kind of tar or something in the dye. I’ve showered in a lot of bathrooms in my travels . . . Did you know they have a hose connected to the toilets that you can use instead of toilet paper?” Adara had a knack for language and culture. Out of all the people on the team, she was the most likely to study up on the eccentricities of the places they visited—and then do her best to embrace them. She was also possessed of a keen sense of smell, and suggested even when she was transportation coordinator that the guys shower with local soaps on arrival at any new destination so as not to stand out from the crowd. “I looked it up,” she said. “It’s called a . . .” She looked at her hand, where she’d written down the word. “Semprotan cebok, or something like that. Basically means the spray hose for your butt.”
“Yeah, it’s going to take some time to convert me on that one,” Chavez said. “Not big on the air-drying thing . . .” He nodded at her hand. “You may want to rethink having something about butts and hoses written on your palm.”
“That’s why you make the big money.” Adara chuckled. She scooted her chair closer, forearms on the table so she could arch her back. Long flights, even on an aircraft as plush as the Gulfstream, had a way of putting kinks in a person’s spine that took days to shake out.
“Anything?” she asked, shooting a sideways glance through the window across the street.
Ding shook his head. “Nothing but customers. Our guys are set up outside the eye doc’s office. Should be making entry as soon as it closes.”
Adara raised her cardboard teacup. “Here’s to sitting on our spray-hosed butts while they do the fun stuff. When you were a kid, did you ever think you’d be in Southeast Asia drinking tea and trying to steal some millionaire’s computer software?”
Chavez knew the question was rhetorical but answered it anyway. “As I remember, my only goal when I was a kid was not dying in a gang fight.”
“Brutal,” Adara said, grimacing like she meant it. “Hey, you’re not really mad about the scenario in New York, are you?”
“Hell, no,” Chavez said. “I want training to be as close to the real thing as possible without spilling too much blood. We’re playing a zero-failure game. The only way to win is to cheat like hell . . . and then lie our asses off if we get caught. I was pissed at myself because I didn’t figure out what you were up to.”
“That means a lot.” She toyed with her cup, spinning it slowly on the table. “You’re a good boss.”
Chavez shrugged off the comment. “I’m just one of the guys.”
“No,” Adara said. “You’re not. You might look at yourself like one of us, but the rest of us view you in the league with John—”
Ding almost spewed his sip of coffee. “Well,” he scoffed. “I’d say the rest of you need to check your windage and elevation, because I have a long way to go before I am anything like John Clark.”
She drank her tea and looked at him for a time, and then said, “Whatever you say. I’m just telling you how we see it. You and John talk about us. Who do you think we talk about? You and John. It’s only natural. Not that this is a democracy or anything, I’m just saying that all of us see you taking more and more responsibility—”
“John’s not going anywhere.”
Adara gave an adamant shake of her head. “I’m not saying that. I just mean you’re a good boss, even if you do make me dye my hair so I look goth.”
He chuckled and pushed away from the table, chair chattering on the tile. “You got this for a few minutes? I’m gonna take a stroll.”
“I’ll be here,” she said, toasting with the teacup again.
Chavez had never been comfortable with compliments, so this was as good a time as any to conduct a little area familiarization. Whenever possible, he liked to walk the streets and alleys around any surveillance site, getting a lay of
the land, egress routes, possible overlap with other ops. A gangbanger a block away might not have anything to do with your target, but that didn’t make him any less of a threat if he saw you hanging around his neighborhood. Smart spies used their surroundings like prey animals used chattering squirrels as an early-warning system for approaching danger. It was good to know where the squirrels were. More than once he’d watched some cartel kingpin’s lookouts—called halcones in Spanish—run to alert their bosses of rival cartels or federales. You could never have too much intel, and the best of it often came from the bad guys.
The ocean was just two blocks away, but none of the breeze made it past the buildings, leaving the area behind the hotel devoid of wind. Late-afternoon sun beat down on the rusty tin roofs, causing them to tick and pop under the heat.
Chavez had planned to make a four-block loop, two blocks to the north and two blocks to the south. He knew there was a river to the north that bisected the neighborhood, but a large greenbelt of thick foliage ran alongside the boulevard north of the hotel. Two Indonesian men sat on a sidewalk bench smoking and chatting idly with each other. Neither paid any attention to Chavez when he turned right down the cracked street and began to wind his way south, exploring the twisted alleys and tree-choked lots between houses.
Colorful roosters—Indonesian jungle fowl, according to Adara’s research on the plane—scratched beneath shrubs and scabby grass along wrought-iron fences. The wiry little birds often found their way into local cooking pots, and they eyed Ding carefully as he walked the concrete streets.
The low houses could have been in any country in Asia. Even the nicer, “middle-class” homes were much smaller than those found in North America. Most of them could have fit into Chavez’s living room. Of course, Hendley Associates paid better, and Patsy was a surgeon, so they could afford a little more house than a run-of-the-mill GS-14 like he’d been with CIA. Some had tile roofs and blossoming fruit trees, but most were patched with rusty corrugated tin and weathered plywood.
It was late afternoon, and sticky hot.
Out of habit, he glanced hard to his right, exaggerating his movements just enough to get a look behind him with his peripheral vision. The two guys who’d been smoking on the park bench were up now. Not weird in and of itself, but they bore watching. Chavez thought about calling Adara but decided he was just being paranoid.
He continued south, cutting behind a car dealership that blocked off not only the air but the traffic noise from the boulevard.
The guys would be hitting the optometrist any minute, and then they could get this show on the road. He turned right at the corner at the end of the dealership, swinging wide out of habit—but not quite wide enough. Two more Indonesian men met him head-on. Both were half a head shorter than him, thicker around the middle, with big arms. Construction workers? Both picked up their pace, coming straight at Chavez. As he suspected, he heard the patter of sneakers on the concrete behind him.
He cut left, intent on jagging around the oncoming men and making a sprint for the boulevard. They were thuggish, the kind of dudes it was easier to outrun than fight, especially when there were four of them. He heard a loud pop followed quickly by a hollow thunk he recognized as a 40-millimeter grenade launcher. He braced himself for an explosion, as something hit him hard between the shoulder blades, shoving him forward. He stutter-stepped, skipping to keep from going down, tangled in his own feet. He recognized a second pop-thunk, then another stinging smack, this one on the back of his thigh, striking the peroneal nerve and giving him instant dead leg. He listed sideways, drawing in his arm to keep from breaking his wrist as he fell. He caught the flash of a large black projectile rolling away on the street. These bastards were shooting him with plastic bullets. Big-ass plastic bullets, dense and hard like missiles made out of a bowling ball. He’d used them before. Fired from the same M203 grenade launcher he’d used in the military, these “less lethal” rounds were used when you didn’t want to fill your target with lead but didn’t care if you bruised the hell out of them—and maybe even broke a few ribs.
Chavez used the momentum of his fall to roll, coming up in a kneeling position with his back to the dealership. He could hold his own in a fight, but four against one sent him reaching for the Smith & Wesson over his right kidney. There was another pop, this one not nearly as loud as the 40-millimeter, followed by the sickening crackle of a Taser.
Chavez was too hyped to feel the barbed steel darts that struck him in the upper arm and right thigh. Fifty thousand volts coursed between the darts, convulsing his muscles. Jaw clenched, his hands useless claws, he toppled sideways to the pavement. He’d been tased before and struggled to sweep the gossamer wires as soon as the five-second shock was past, but the weapon crackled again, sending him immediately into another full-body cramp. By the time it was over, his hands and ankles were zipped in flex-cuffs. Tires screeched to a stop, a van door slid open, and rough hands threw him inside. One of the men slipped a black hood over his head. He closed his eyes, his mind racing to make a plan, any kind of plan. He’d stop fighting back now and listen, take note of the sounds he heard inside the—
A sudden blow connected with the side of his head, which, pressed against the floor of the van, had nowhere to go. Chavez groaned, bracing himself for another blow that didn’t come. His ears rang. His stomach roiled. The blindfold made it difficult to draw a breath. The heavy blow hadn’t knocked him out, but he was not quite conscious of his surroundings.
He was vaguely aware of rough hands turning him from side to side as they rifled through his clothing, yanking the pistol from his belt—holster and all—and then his knife and wallet. He heard gasps when they found the radio, and the wire neck-loop microphone. The earpiece was inside the hood, and one of them knew enough about communications gear to hike up the cloth far enough to pinch the tiny monofilament hair and pull out the pea-size piece of plastic. They found it all—except the flat battery pack inside the lining of Chavez’s belt—which also contained the tracker he and Clark used to identify every team member’s position for the common operating picture.
Adara would realize he was missing soon, and when she let Clark know, he’d bring the cavalry. Chavez smiled reflexively, despite the searing pain in his head. It would be epic. He just hoped he was still alive to see it.
34
Michelle Chadwick found an open parking spot along 15th Street, across from Washington-Liberty High School—a lucky break for this time of morning, when joggers and cyclists flocked to the Custis Trail before they went to work. The school wasn’t far from her condo. She swam at the aquatics center there three days a week to burn off the stress of her job, not to mention the butter-pecan ice cream she scarfed down at least five nights a week. She skipped the pool this morning, in favor of a run. It was as good a place as any for a private conversation with that bastard David Huang.
The meeting was set for six a.m. Unable to find anything close to sleep, she’d arrived at five-thirty. His Range Rover was already there, three cars back from her. That made sense. He’d want to get there early, check out the location for surveillance and whatnot. He, or more likely someone who worked with him, was probably watching her now. Chadwick was not a spy, but she was sneaky, and that was the same thing, wasn’t it?
She sat for several minutes after she parked, finally banging on the steering wheel with both hands in an effort to settle herself before she opened the door. She and Huang had run together before, on this same trail. He’d complimented her tights then, saying he liked how they showed off her legs. She’d worn them again today, hoping they might throw him off balance. She felt exposed and stupid for it now.
The sun wasn’t quite up yet, but it promised to bring its sticky heat in just a few more hours. Having grown up in the deserts of Arizona, she found it impossible to understand how D.C. could be so muggy and chilly at the same time. She debated throwing on a light jacket from her trunk, but decided she’
d let her hatred of Huang warm her until the run heated her up.
The Custis Trail generally followed Interstate 66 east and west. Chadwick dispensed with her usual stretching and headed east, toward the Potomac and Downtown Washington, D.C. Much of the trail ran between the highway and residential areas, but the half-mile or so that lay ahead of her cut through a semi-secluded greenbelt. They’d share the trail with other runners and cyclists, but, for the most part, she and Huang would be able to speak freely.
Chadwick hated running for the first couple of minutes of every workout. It took a while for her joints to warm up. Slowly, with each gliding step, her lungs and legs began to call an uneasy truce and started working together. After that she fell into an enjoyable pace. Still twilight, the trail through the greenbelt was shadowed and foreboding, made even more so because of this shitstorm she’d brought down on herself. She padded along glumly, dreading the thought of seeing David Huang’s face. Even the earthy root-beer smell of sassafras that grew alongside the trail failed to cheer her up.
He was bent over, tying his shoe, when she saw him, wearing unremarkable gray sweats, nothing like the running shorts he’d worn when he was trying to impress her. He wore a fanny pack, too, like a retired tourist or federal agent might wear. He’d never worn one before, probably started so he could carry a gun. Smart, because since that day at the restaurant, she’d felt herself constantly overwhelmed with the desire to claw his eyes out every time she had to look at his face. He glanced up when he heard her shoes on the pavement, his brow knit into a stern line—like a father waiting up for a daughter who had come home from a date smelling like rum and Coke.
She kept running and he fell in beside her.
“You would be advised,” he said, “to let me know more quickly when you come into possession of this type of information in the future.”