“I was supposed to be at the president’s speech, but instead I spent most of the evening hugging the toilet bowl. I must have picked up a bug out there in New Mexico. My doctor gave me some homeopathic remedies, though.” He held up his small carry-on.
McGrath noticed Peoples and frowned. “I thought Tim Fredericks had the duty tonight.”
Agent Stephen Peoples nodded and said, “Agent Fredericks was in an accident on the way in. He’s in the emergency room. I got called to fill in about two hours ago.”
McGrath seemed to have trouble concentrating, but he still picked up on the doubt that was clear in Peoples’s voice.
“Explain.”
Peoples hesitated. “I just don’t believe in coincidences.”
He gave no further details, so Palmer said, “Tell him what you told me.”
The man shook his head. “I got a call last night from an associate I haven’t seen in five months and he was scared out of his mind. Claimed he knew who leaked info to the First Daughter’s kidnappers.”
Palmer narrowed her eyes and looked at McGrath, but he seemed not to be able to focus on the obvious conclusions he himself had suggested on his flight across country on Air Force One.
“Go on,” she said to Peoples.
“I told him to get in a cab and meet me at my apartment, but he never showed. He was an intern for Martine Scallow, but now that man is also unaccounted for.”
McGrath said, “The president’s chief of staff is missing?”
Agent Peoples nodded. “All of the rest of his staffers are where they should be, or at least, they were as of twenty-three hundred hours last night.”
McGrath was slow in responding, so Palmer said, “Keep working on that angle. See if those two show up somewhere. First thing in the morning, run a location check on all key government personnel.” She glanced at McGrath. “Copy me on any other missing persons or any other anomalies.”
She turned to McGrath who said, “What’s your status, Nancy?”
“My plane departs in two hours and I’ll be in Albuquerque a little over three hours later. If Johnson keeps his word, I’ll depart for Mexico City with him aboard at oh-nine-hundred and touch down three hours after that.”
McGrath nodded. “You don’t expect him to show tomorrow, do you?”
“I’m concerned about his rage.”
“We need intel, Nancy. We can’t allow Johnson to interfere with our mission objectives or go off the reservation on this op. There’s too much at stake.”
“I agree his unpredictability has been a pain in the ass when he’s been the target of our ops, but he’s also been a game changer for us when he’s on our side.” She fell silent for a moment, then shrugged. “I’ll just have to make sure he stays on our side.”
“You like him, don’t you?” McGrath said.
“I understand him. And, I think he can help us beyond his role as a look-alike for the drug lord.”
McGrath nodded. “Still, he’s a loose cannon. If he goes rogue, you’ll have to eliminate him. Will you be okay with that?”
“No, I won’t. But if it needs to be done, I will do it.”
Monroe arrived with a steaming cup of instant coffee. McGrath reached for it, but his hand was shaking so badly he almost couldn’t grab it. His jerky motions splashed nearly a third of the liquid onto the floor before he finally got control. He took a sip and noticed Palmer watching him.
“Nerves,” he said. “That medicine must have me wired.”
“Maybe you should rest. Agent Peoples can take up the slack while I’m gone.”
McGrath smiled. “I’ll be okay once I get a little of this gourmet coffee in me.”
Palmer chuckled. “Sip it sparingly. That stuff’s government-issue, two dollars a pound gourmet blend. Comes in a cheap-ass five-gallon corrugated can with a black-and-white label pasted on it to camouflage its true value.”
They both shared a quiet laugh and McGrath’s eyes adopted a distant gaze. She could tell he was thinking about Johnson.
“You like him too, don’t you?” she said.
“I know what he’s going through.”
“We killed his kid, Aaron. He didn’t kill yours, even when he could have. Hell, if he was half the terrorist we thought he was, he would have killed her.”
“I know, Nancy. I don’t want to have to kill him, but if he doesn’t play by the rules he will become expendable.”
Chapter 9
0115 hours MST Friday
Albuquerque, NM
Carl sat on the edge of the bed as Rainey slept on his side, next to him. Soon the fatigue of the previous day’s events caught up with him, and he felt his head nodding into sleep. He curled up on the bed behind Rainey and held him. Several times Rainey jerked in his sleep like he was having nightmares, and a couple of times he made a keening sound like he was trying to scream in his dreams. Each time, Carl woke up and held him tight and talked to him gently until he quieted down.
Just before sunrise, they prepared to leave the motel. Carl wrapped Rainey in the blanket and dropped him at the house of one of his friends. He had wanted Carl to take him home so he could introduce him to his folks, but Carl declined. He said only that he didn’t want to encounter the police and didn’t explain further.
In truth, he didn’t want to have to explain to Rainey’s people that their boy had been with a terrorist all night. While Carl was no longer labeled as such, he knew he was, in fact, still that guy. You didn’t become a bad person, then suddenly turn good again just for one good deed or just because the president declared you untouchable.
Carl got out of the SUV and walked around to open the passenger door just like he would for a woman. After climbing out with the blanket tied around his waist, long legs peeking from the dragging folds of cloth, Rainey wrapped his arms around Carl’s neck. He leaned into Carl just like a girl would and hugged him for a long time. He gave Carl a shy kiss on the cheek. Carl watched the boy-girl sashay up the short concrete walkway toward the front door, trailing much of the blanket.
Carl then headed immediately toward the airport, but not without a detour to his storage shed to pick up a duffel bag containing a terrorist’s most powerful weapon—cash. After a quick breakfast, Carl drove around to the west side of Albuquerque International Sunport, to the cargo gate, arriving just shy of nine o’clock. He always found it curious why the Sunport was classified as an international airport when he’d heard it had no direct international connections. He’d heard all international connections were made through other, larger airports in cities like Denver, Houston, Phoenix, and Dallas.
Carl found it ironic that he pulled in at the very same gate where his mercenaries had ambushed Special Agent Cummings and her elite TER commandos three days ago. He showed his driver’s license to the civilian gate guard who was clearly expecting him, thanks to advance notice from McGrath’s TER team, and he was directed to a parking area near the cargo hangar. Moments later, he was boarding Palmer’s Gulfstream, likely the same jet that had delivered the elite kill squad his mercs had terminated.
Agent Nancy Palmer met him at the top of the stairs. He’d only met her once, during his aborted attempt to find and kill Director McGrath in Virginia two days ago. She’d been decked out head to toe in black tactical gear and had intercepted him. Now, she was dressed in civilian clothes, and he did that man-thing—his gaze drifted down along the curves of her slender physique and back up again—as he climbed the steps to enter the plane.
She wore faded, tight denim pants and the first button of her light blue, button-down shirt was open, which Carl found enticing even though she wasn’t very ample in the chest and wasn’t showing any cleavage. Over the shirt, she wore a dark blue, pin-stripe blazer. All in all, she looked like a business executive on vacation who didn’t know how to dress for a vacation.
She wasn’t what he would describe as beautiful, but she was definitely attractive. She carried herself like a professional athlete. She looked strong and her body
seemed well toned. He found himself feeling a bizarre and embarrassing attraction to this woman, who undoubtedly had a major role in the decisions leading to his son’s death.
“And do you approve?” she said. Her voice grated with a sound that was more like a dangerous whisper than a spoken word.
At the top of the steps, Carl leaned sideways and looked behind her, then glanced behind himself as if looking for someone.
He said, “Pardon me for staring, but I was expecting a kick-ass government commando all dressed up in tactical gear. Where is Agent Palmer, anyway?”
She gave him a sarcastic look. “Very funny.”
Carl smiled and reached out his hand, which she shook. Her grip was firm, her skin warm. He fought his programmed greeting of “It’s nice to see you again,” because it was not. Looking into her eyes, he could see all the people involved in the killing of his son, Mark. She must have sensed his thoughts because her demeanor changed instantly as the smile faded from his face. He quickly released her hand.
She said, “I’ll give you the nickel tour before we depart.”
Without waiting for his acknowledgment, Palmer walked past the passenger area to the modified closets in the rear half of the plane. Carl followed, dumping his duffel bag on a seat. When he caught up with Palmer, she explained the various storage compartments and narrow closets, all of which were hardened steel appliances that opened with a ten-digit code. She had him commit the code to memory.
On the left wall immediately behind the passenger seats was the restroom. Beyond that was a full-length closet that held a single wicked-looking sniper rifle with a folded bipod assembly under the barrel and an oversized scope. Palmer called the weapon a Barrett M107, a fifty-cal shooter that pretty much destroyed anything it was fired at.
“Any halfway decent sniper could hit a target up to a thousand yards with that weapon,” she said. A true professional could “reach out and touch someone” a mile away.
“You mean, reach out and kill someone,” Carl said.
“Same difference.”
“I assume you are such a professional?”
“I am.”
She was looking at him, and he found her gaze too intense to match. He tried to appear as though he felt calm and appraised the Barrett again. “That looks like the same sniper rifle Merc Four used yesterday to save my ass.”
Palmer nodded. “Same model. I like to dress mine up a little nicer, though.” She pointed at the bulbous laser optics on the top rail. “You know, ‘cause I’m a girl and all.”
Carl looked at the assassin again. “You enjoy all this gun shit, don’t you?”
“I was a Navy SEAL.” She shrugged. “Of course, I like guns.” Then she gave him a girlie smile and her nose crinkled up a bit. “I like knives, too.”
Beyond the sniper closet was another storage unit that held a variety of automatic weapons, including Uzis, micro-Uzis, P90s, and the folding-stock PDW—the computer-designed Personal Defense Weapon that fired six-millimeter armor-piercing rounds. She said it was her favorite for urban warfare when she needed instant stopping power in crowded spaces. She said it was like the P90 urban street fighter, but lighter in weight and quieter, with less recoil. “All in all, it is a better killer,” she said, “and you don’t have to mess around with a top-mounted magazine.”
“Sista needs to get a life,” Carl said.
On the opposite side of the aisle, Palmer showed Carl the closets that held ammunition, first-aid kits, MRE rations, a variety of black handguns and suppressors, infrared and night vision headsets, black metal handcuffs and white plastic zip-cuffs, telescopic carbon composite police batons and pepper spray, and an assortment of grenades—frag, explosive, and flash-bang. In the bottom drawer were six high-performance combat parachutes.
She ended the tour with a quip about how easy the parachutes were to use. “Just strap it on and jump out of the plane. When you pull the cord, they practically fly themselves. Well, until you hit the ground.”
Carl didn’t laugh.
Palmer nodded toward the cockpit. “Let me introduce you to Air Force Colonel Vesario Reichert. He’s the Air Force pilot that retired El Patron yesterday. Only the best of the best qualify to fly CAP for the president. With our help, the administration spun the incident as a training accident, but the colonel would have had to face disciplinary action, even after a long and decorated career. He’s now temporarily assigned to the TER.”
CAP, Carl recalled, was the acronym for Combat Air Patrol. They were the special detachment that flew cover for Air Force One whenever the president was in the air.
Carl followed Palmer forward. As he entered the cockpit, both pilots turned toward him. Colonel Reichert was a slender man, maybe five-eleven or six feet tall, and was a few shades darker than Carl. He had intense green eyes that had likely stolen the hearts of many women in his younger days. The colonel gave Carl a brief head nod when they made eye contact.
“Nice bit of work yesterday, Colonel,” Carl said. “I can’t begin to describe how much that general deserved to have a missile smoked up his ass.”
“I’ve been briefed on your exploits also,” he said half talking over his shoulder and half attending to his flight preparations. “Killing those cartel druggies and bringing the First Daughter back was no easy task, I’m sure. Pretty impressive for a civvy.”
The co-pilot, whom Palmer introduced as David Blick, eyed Carl like he was an enemy he was being forced by circumstances to work with.
Which pretty much summed up their current situation.
Carl took a guess at the man’s hostility. “Second trip to Albuquerque this week?”
He figured the guy was comrades-in-arms with the elite commandos Carl’s mercs had dispatched three days ago. He’d no doubt also heard how Carl had kept the commando leader alive and hacked his head off while the man was still conscious, partly for revenge and partly to unnerve the man’s boss, Aaron McGrath. Not as obvious to anyone but Carl, it was partly to prove to himself and the US government agents that he could be as ruthless as they were. It was part of his transition from normal civilian to most-wanted terrorist.
“Those were damn good men,” the co-pilot said.
“I’m sure they were, but they were over-confident and cocky. They thought I was going to lie down and die because they’d been doing this longer than I or because they’re guns were bigger. But killing is a nasty business, Mr. Blick, and I’ve come to learn that we don’t retire from the business of killing. We keep killing until we get killed, period.” He looked at the deck carpet for a long moment. “But it’s a chosen career field. It’s not like those guys didn’t have a choice whether or not to kill my son and come hunting me.”
Carl turned away from the man. He’d been seduced by all the government ops mumbo-jumbo and the tech toys and weapons. He’d almost forgotten why he was in this mess. With his recollection clear again, he recalled that these people were not his friends. At best, he was going into this mission soon to be surrounded by enemies of varying degrees of definition. Any of them could turn on him in a heartbeat if it fit the government’s objectives. Some of his enemies, like Palmer and her crew, he had to work with to accomplish his personal mission. Others, like the entity called the Triad that controlled El Patron, were to be dispatched with extreme prejudice.
His enemies were directly responsible for Mark’s death. His task wouldn’t be complete until he avenged his son. And Melissa Mallory. He saw Agent Palmer studying him, but he walked past without acknowledging her and took a seat in the cabin after stuffing his duffel beneath his seat. He reminded himself that Nancy Palmer was not his friend. She was a government agent, and he had no doubt whatsoever that she would kill him if it fit the government’s agenda.
He began to formulate his own contingency to eliminate her if the necessity arose. He’d have to do it without weapons and without any kind of hand-to-hand combat.
How do you kill a badass navy SEAL?
Chapter 10
0900 hours MST Friday
Albuquerque, NM
Nancy Palmer watched Johnson move silently by her, a storm of dark emotions trailing in his wake like a tangible cloud. The man wasn’t just angry. His emotions went a lot deeper. One moment he seemed fine, until the co-pilot’s words triggered Johnson’s sudden emotional change. As he passed, she could feel his anger and his hatred radiating like heat from a lava flow.
He seemed like two separate and distinct men contained within the same shroud of skin. One was polite and caring, a charming gentleman she’d caught checking her out and flirting with her. He seemed kindhearted and carefree about things, and she wondered if she’d glimpsed the remnants of his personality from before. The other Carl Johnson was a raging man, full of raw pain. She could see by his quick change of persona that he was barely keeping his rage under control.
She could relate to his rage. It was a monster, but it was also a powerful motivator. It was, in fact, her reason for joining the military and becoming an elite covert operator in the war on terror. Learning her twin sister was killed five thousand miles away by a terrorist bomb would pale, she knew, to Carl’s pain of watching his adult child being murdered right in front of him. She could only wonder how Johnson kept hold of his sanity, though she figured an argument could be made that he hadn’t.
Rage could be an efficient tool if used properly. It had served her extremely well for the last few years and it had enabled Johnson, an untrained amateur, to accomplish deeds over the last thirty days that fully trained operators might not have been able to handle. So far Johnson was able to keep his monster on a tight leash, using gut instinct instead of training to control the rage. He seemed to be able to analyze a scenario and plan out a tactical response before letting his monster roam free. He’d been tested under fire and performed well.
If he were ever prosecuted for his actions, that very ability to analyze and plan would mean the difference between a plea of insanity and full-intent murder. There was no doubt in Palmer’s mind which side of the line Johnson would fall. To make matters worse, Johnson seemed to be fully aware of what he was doing and what his punishment would be if he were caught.
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