American Terrorist Trilogy

by Jeffrey Poston

  And he didn’t care.

  Regardless, he was an extremely valuable asset for the previous mission to rescue Melissa Mallory and for the current mission to prosecute her abductors. Not many operators could have pulled off an ad hoc rescue of the president’s daughter the way Johnson had, and he conducted his operations against the FBI and against the elite TER agents sent to kill him with flawless planning and execution.

  He’d found illegal funding and materiel and mercenaries to conduct his operations. For thirty days, he stayed several steps ahead of a government that had billions of dollars of intel assets with which to find him.

  The TER could never predict what he might do next because he simply acted on whatever impulse popped into his mind at any given moment. He was an amateur that didn’t operate by any predictable rules of engagement. They couldn’t profile him, so they couldn’t anticipate him.

  Any of his mercenaries could have simply completed the initial assignment, taken their money, and run, but all had remained in his service. Carl Johnson had become their leader and they were fiercely loyal.

  Carl Johnson was an engineer and a project manager in his former career. Before last month, he sold real estate. He had been a captain in the Air Force, but only as a research engineer. He had no military combat training.

  Nancy Palmer knew she helped create Johnson’s monster, and she knew he knew it. How a civilian in his circumstance could stand to look her in the eye, or work with her or McGrath on this mission, was beyond her understanding. She wondered what his motivation was.

  Why is he so intent to find and kill the men who kidnapped Melissa Mallory? Why does he even care about the president’s daughter or what larger agenda her kidnappers have?

  Palmer considered these things as she watched Johnson take a seat near the rear of the jet. He didn’t sulk about or flop himself into his seat in anger. He was calm and controlled in all his movements. He reminded her of many of her operators. Like a trained professional, he was tense and primed for instant action. His gaze darted about as he absorbed the details of everything around him.

  There was no first-class section; the entire business jet was luxurious. The front section was, however, more spaciously appointed. At the beginning of the section were four luxurious leather seats—two mounted on each side of the aircraft, one behind the other. A sturdy table could unfold from the wall in front of each seat and all four seats could swivel to enable a group conference. Next were three rows of four equally luxurious leather seats, also positioned in twos on each side of the jet. Those seats did not swivel.

  Johnson sat in the window seat of the middle row on the starboard side of the jet. He fastened his seat belt and stared out the window into the featureless desert beyond the cargo hangar. Well, it seemed featureless to Palmer. She’d been to Arizona and New Mexico a handful of times over the years, but had yet to see anything of redeeming value in the landscape.

  Behind her Reichert and Blick exchanged their preflight code talk, then the colonel did the same with the control tower.

  “We’re cleared for priority take-off when you’re ready, Agent Palmer. Direct route straight to General Roberto Fierro Villalobos International Airport in Chihuahua, Mexico.”

  “We’re ready now, so please proceed.”

  “Roger that. Distance is about four hundred fifty miles. Gate-to-gate flight time is approximately one hour twenty-two minutes with priority clearances on both ends.”

  “Very well.”

  Only the starboard door was opened, so she hit the button that engaged an electric motor somewhere in the deck below her feet. The stairs rose and folded in half, the lower half smoothly against the upper half, which then folded into the doorway of the bulkhead. It whined to a close and she slid the locking lever counterclockwise to latch the door. She took a step toward the cockpit with the intention of sitting in the crew jump seat behind the co-pilot, then reversed her course at the last moment and sat in the seat beside Johnson.

  His eyes were closed and if he knew she was there, he gave no indication. She didn’t even know whether or not he was awake until half an hour into the flight when he started muttering words she couldn’t make sense of. He clutched at the armrests on both sides of his seat and jerked his head away from the window. Eyes wide open, he stared ahead, a thousand miles in front of the cockpit window.

  She’d seen the look of shock and trauma many times in the eyes of soldiers. His was the look of a person who had seen something that a human should not see, done something a human should not do.

  Tentatively, Palmer reached out and laid her right palm on Johnson’s left forearm and was shocked at what she felt. He was in great shape for a fifty-three-year-old man. When she touched his arm, though, he was so tense his sinewy muscles felt like cords of steel. She could feel him trembling. In the blink of an eye, he moved so quickly she almost struck him in defense. His right hand shot across his body and gripped her hand and he shouted.

  “Don’t leave me! Mark, don’t go!”

  His fingers dug into her wrist like a vise grip and he slowly turned his to face her. In his eyes she saw pure, unadulterated hatred and she thought he had finally lost the battle of control. She tensed, expecting his attack.

  Carl blinked rapidly three times and the hatred was replaced by raw pain. He relaxed his grip on her wrist. She let go of his arm and started to slowly pull her hand away. He surprised her by wrapping his fingers around her palm and holding her hand in place. He relaxed in his seat and turned his face toward the window again.

  After a few minutes he said, “It’s always the same nightmare.” He seemed to have difficulty putting his thoughts into words. “I get to him before Reyes drives up, but he doesn’t know what’s coming. I try to pull him back inside the lobby, behind the metal door, but he always pulls his arm away and turns to start walking away from me. Then he dies. Every time I close my eyes. Over and over again. He just pulls away from me and dies.”

  After a while, Johnson released her hand, but she decided not to let go of his arm. She imagined she was doing some good, helping him control his monster. She remembered the calming effect of her hand on his shoulder during his meeting with President Mallory in Virginia earlier in the week, when he’d been grieving his son’s death even as he hoped for ways to kill Aaron McGrath.

  President Mallory had squashed those hopes, and now whatever closure Johnson sought was bottled up inside him. He seemed ready to explode, though he was visibly relaxing at her touch. She watched tears roll down his cheek and for a long while he seemed on the verge of sobbing.

  He said, “I always imagined I would build this portfolio of apartments and mini-storage buildings as my retirement nest egg. I already own three. I figured when I died, I’d leave millions of dollars of assets to my son, so he’d live comfortably.”

  Johnson turned toward her and wiped the tears from his eyes with his palm.

  “What’s the point of all that now?” She knew he wasn’t looking for an answer, so she gave him none. “What’s the point of living, Agent Palmer, if not for our children?”

  “Call me Nancy.”

  He turned away. “I don’t want to call you Nancy.” He said her name like it was a curse word, and his voice was as hard as steel. After a few moments, he continued with a gentler tone.

  “Do you suppose there’s anything else after this fucked-up life that we live? Some kind of afterlife where I’m going to be forgiven after all the people I’ve killed?”

  “God forgives us all.”

  “You believe in God?” Johnson almost chuckled. “You kill people for a living, Agent Palmer. How the fuck can your God forgive you for that?”

  “I kill to protect people.”

  Johnson faced the window again. “I suppose that’s the difference between you and me. I just want to kill people.”

  She tried to understand his pain, tried to empathize his loss. But she’d had a hand in creating that loss, as did Aaron McGrath and President Mallory. Sooner or
later, if Johnson lived long enough, he’d have to find some kind of closure. If he was lucky, he’d learn that killing would never alleviate his pain.

  If, as Aaron surmised, closure caused him to turn on the TER or the president, it would be Palmer’s task to put him down. She desperately hoped it wouldn’t come to that. She had a feeling deep inside that Johnson was one of the good guys.

  If he could just keep his monster under control.

  He lacked the training to compartmentalize his pain. As a result, he was a grenade and the pin was already pulled. Worse, he was in danger of crossing over to the dark side and finding solace in the mere act of killing.

  “Mr. Johnson,” she began. “Carl.” She paused, then spoke softly. “Killing without purpose makes you no better than the men you’re hunting.” Johnson started to object, but Palmer tightened her grip on his arm and raised her left hand to silence him.

  “Let me help you. I can show you how to…,” She hated sounding so clinical about the business of pain and death. “I can show you how to compartmentalize your pain to allow you a better chance to complete your mission.”

  He turned from the window and looked at her. “Okay,” he said. “And while you’re at it, you can teach me how to be a better killer. I’ve been lucky up to now, but luck won’t always be enough.”

  Palmer nodded and removed her hand from his arm. She felt a strange bond with the man. He seemed to know his emotional turmoil was a weakness and yet, he didn’t try to hide his vulnerability from her. He was letting her know he needed her. It was part of his magnetism and she figured that was part of the reason his mercenaries fought for him. She also felt drawn to him because of it.

  Men didn’t like to show or even admit having a weakness, especially not to a woman. Johnson was different, though. He seemed fully aware of his strengths and weaknesses. In many ways, he reminded her of her boss, Aaron McGrath. He wasn’t quite as old as McGrath, though both were attractive and fit and both were mentally reserved, intelligent quick thinkers, and decisive. But that’s where the comparison ended.

  Johnson possessed an additional skill set she hadn’t seen in other male leaders. She hadn’t seen it in female leaders, either, though most women in command positions knew they had to mimic the male command style or they’d never be placed by men into command positions.

  Even the current president of the United States played the man’s game exceedingly well. Once elected, a president has an administration to help run the country’s affairs, the power players of which are predominantly male. There was no room for a woman’s touch in the presidency.

  As much as Palmer admired Shirley Mallory, she knew a woman could only inject a limited amount of herself into her command style. While the president led her administration, she had to play by the rules or face losing the confidence of the men. Besides, the rest of the world was mostly run by men, so they dictated the rules of the game. Palmer wasn’t bitter about it. She simply understood the landscape on which she operated.

  Carl Johnson wasn’t following the rules of government service or covert ops. Or, perhaps he was just making up his own rules. Either way, she found his deviance appealing. Johnson was emotionally gentle and possessed a tenderness that counter-balanced his ruthlessness. He let her comfort him because he knew he needed her strength to remain strong himself. Regardless of the outcome of their current mission, Johnson would either find closure or he wouldn’t.

  Suddenly she didn’t want to kill this man.

  Chapter 11

  0930 hours MST Friday

  Carl heard only the barely audible buzz of the engines in the rear of the plane. There was no chatter of passengers and no inquiries from flight attendants. There was only peace and quiet.

  He was very conscious of the closeness of Agent Palmer. With his eyes closed, he studied her. She wore no perfume, nor did he detect any fragrance from soap or shower gel. His senses remembered a hint of mint-flavored toothpaste he had breathed in when she stood close to him earlier, explaining the various weapons in the locked cabinets. Now she wanted to teach him lessons of emotional compartmentalization.

  What the hell am I supposed to do with all that nonsense?

  With sixteen available seats on the spacious plane, not counting the cockpit jump seat he’d seen when talking to the pilots, he and Palmer continued to sit next to each other throughout the flight. It seemed almost childish that the reason neither of them moved was because the truce they had formed might then be shattered.

  His left arm and her right arm shared the center armrest, and their arms touched for the duration, sometimes sliding millimeters against each other as they breathed or as the plane rode minor air turbulence. He refused to break that contact with her. He found it impossible to hate Palmer, just as he had discovered he could not hate McGrath or the president. Instead, he revisited his bizarre attraction to the woman through their physical contact and wondered if she felt the same.

  Not likely, he thought.

  If he messed up this op or even stepped out of line, she’d cut him loose for good. That was the kind of soldier she was. Still, he allowed himself to enjoy a brief respite from what seemed like a continual six-week span of violence. He kept his breath steady, not wanting to betray his feelings and spoil the moment.

  Eventually, he opened his eyes and in his side vision saw Agent Palmer watching him. He smiled.

  “What?” she said.

  Carl turned to face her as much as his seat would allow. Her face was slender, her cheekbones prominent. Her blue eyes could look both innocent and pretty, or dangerous and deadly. She had that deadpan gaze down pat, though, and it lent an intense look to her face. Her blond hair was short and straight. It was a practical, low-maintenance hairstyle.

  She had what he referred to as young skin. Her face was smooth and unblemished with no lines or wrinkles or scars. Her nose was narrow and her lips were medium—not thin but not full. She wore no makeup or eyeliner or color or any of the things that women seemed to think was necessary to be pretty.

  Agent Palmer was a plain woman. She was attractive in a kick-your-ass kind of way, and that’s what Carl found attractive about her. That, and her extreme fitness. He remembered grabbing her arm and recalled now how strong she felt. She had not yielded. He’d always had a special attraction to physically fit women.

  “How old are you, Nancy?”

  The barest hint of softness touched the corners of her eyes when he used her first name, and he could tell she was struggling not to smile.

  “Twenty-seven.”

  Which made him almost twice her age. His smile broadened and suddenly she couldn’t hold back her smile either. She slapped his arm playfully.

  “What?”

  Carl chuckled and turned forward in his seat. He wondered if there was a girlie woman hidden deep inside her, maybe one with a sense of humor. He wondered in what kind of world a woman like Nancy Palmer and a man like himself might connect. He remembered sensing a deep vulnerability in her when they first met in Virginia, but then he shook his head.

  “Nothing. Just an old man’s fantasy.”

  Colonel Reichert came on the intercom and announced they were half an hour out from the General Robert Fierro Villalobos International Airport. Carl’s smile faded and his mind shifted gears as he looked forward to the mission ahead of them.

  Carl tried to get a sense of where they were in relation to the border of Mexico and both New Mexico and Texas, so he concentrated on the memory of an iPad map he’d seen yesterday morning during his rescue mission. New Mexico’s border with Mexico was miniscule, while the Texas border with Mexico stretched in a twelve-hundred-mile wavering line from the northwest to the southeast. He could picture the Gulfstream jet turning left and reentering US airspace in less than half an hour. That meant they were still within reach of US covert assets if their unknown adversary had them to deploy against them. If their adversary had such assets, then he or she also probably had the capability of knowing where they were and
where they were heading.

  He grunted.

  Palmer’s smile disappeared and she said, “What are you thinking?”

  Carl shifted his gaze to the right, which had him staring out the window. He felt a discomfort in his gut.

  “I feel like I’m running around a blind corner not knowing who’s around there waiting to shoot me in the head.”

  He faced Palmer again and her gaze darkened as she absorbed the implication that he didn’t trust her. He shook his head.

  “No, it’s not you. It’s not about trust.” One of the things he’d quickly learned about Agent Palmer was that the two of them seemed to be instinctively of one mind, sharing similar thoughts, though he wasn’t quite sure how he’d come to that conclusion. He just felt it.

  “But what if there’s somebody like you on the other side. We still don’t know who we’re up against. What if there’s a McGrath over there running the op? I keep thinking about Melissa’s kidnapping. I keep thinking there’s no way some drug cartel hit men could take out Melissa’s security detail without inside help. Somebody powerful or highly placed must be working against us.”

  Palmer nodded. “We’ve come to the same conclusion. There must have been an informant.”

  Carl nodded and felt a deep sense of satisfaction that he and Palmer were indeed on the same wavelength.

  She continued. “Aaron and I agree this implies someone very high in the government is involved in the kidnapping and…”

  Carl waited. He got the feeling Palmer was going to disclose some kind of secret or classified information. He didn’t push her. She had to know he and his team needed all available information to succeed in their mission.

  Finally, she said, “The president’s chief of staff, Martine Scallow, went missing right after one of his interns contacted us about information regarding someone who may be behind the information leak.”