“Orizaga has gotten careless in recent months. As for Mr. Garcia, his ex-government hacker is using what we call the Shadow-Net. It evolved from the TOR Project, which itself was an offshoot of a classified US Navy program that provided Internet research free from surveillance and tracking. The Shadow-Net is extremely difficult to penetrate, however, the NSA facility in Colorado does much more than monitor cell phones. We’ve traced Garcia’s computer network, but if he relocates or reconfigures his system, we’ll lose him and have to start over. That’s another reason I think we should move on him ASAP.”
“I find it increasingly disturbing that Carl Johnson can be more efficient than the TER. I don’t want to underestimate him the way McGrath and his people did.”
Rainman fell silent, so Spoke said, “Moving the kind of money Garcia has moved and procuring the kind of material he has procured is no easy task, sir. I doubt he could accomplish that alone.”
“Precisely. Have Mr. Orizaga engage his associates in the Triad to investigate a possible connection in their own neighborhood. Maybe they already know about their local competition. It occurs to me that Garcia would also need specialized black-market acquisition talent to provide the kinds of logistics and mercenary support he has.”
“And regarding a preemptive strike on Garcia?”
Rainman paused. “Deploy Drake’s team and keep the building under surveillance, but I want to wait until we identify Garcia’s infrastructure, just in case he or Johnson elude us. Then make a soft entry. See if the Unit can take him alive. If he’s running Johnson’s financial transactions from that computer, then he must have the account numbers and access codes, either in his head or on the computer. They’re holding half a billion dollars of the Triad’s money. Grabbing that will cripple his operation and might give us some leverage in our future negotiations with them. Confiscate his hardware.”
“And if he resists or creates a scenario where the Unit might be compromised?”
“No police can be involved at this point,” Rainman said. “Taking him alive is preferable to dead, but dead is also acceptable.”
“Understood.”
Rainman added, “Keep the current timetable to hit the others after midnight. We need that angle to serve as a distraction because we’re still vulnerable for seventy-two more hours. After that, it won’t matter what the world believes.”
Spoke nodded to the empty room. “Maybe Johnson is infected. He was with the girl when she went active.”
“That was more than twenty-eight hours ago. Obviously, he’s not infected or he’d be dead or in a coma by now, same as the president and Aaron McGrath.”
Spoke nodded again, mentally kicking himself for such a simple oversight. “I’ll get you your seventy-two hours.”
“See that you do.”
Chapter 29
1722 hours MST Friday
Northern Mexico
The room had darkened considerably as the sun set behind the huge estate. Neither Carl nor Palmer had turned on a light in the office. The progress indicator for the file transfer had just registered one hundred percent when Carl heard the yell through the office patio door he’d opened exactly for that purpose.
“Incoming!”
He and Palmer both looked out the center of the window wall in front of them. They both saw a flash of fire and a smoke trail heading toward the house.
Heading straight for them—right at the office where they stood.
Palmer snatched the thumb drive out of the computer, yelling “Go!”
Carl raced through the open office door and was all the way down the hall at the back of the house with Palmer right on his heels when the rocket hit. There was a loud clap of sound and a concussive blast of air that blew out windows throughout the huge house. As far as Carl could tell, most of the blast damage was localized to the front wing of the house. There was no fireball, but that entire section of the house collapsed instantly.
Before they landed, they’d all agreed that since they had no heavy weaponry beyond a couple of shoulder-held RPGs on the helicopter, their only reasonable course of action was a full retreat if the house was assaulted by any sizable force. When Carl and Palmer tore out through the back door, the other three mercs were already in a full-on sprint toward the luxury chopper two hundred feet away.
The pilot had kept the engine idling. As Carl closed the distance, the rotors began slicing through the air rapidly with a swishing sound, reaching take-off speed in seconds. The merc who had been left behind for security had prepped the two RPGs and was scanning the sky all around through binoculars. As everyone converged on the chopper, the merc who had been on lookout duty on the roof shouted.
“I saw two troop trucks and a handful of Jeeps, one with a roof-mounted fifty-cal.”
They all piled into the chopper and the security merc said, “No air assault, Boss. We got lucky this time!” He started prepping his RPGs for storage, but Carl grabbed him and pulled him aboard.
“Leave that stuff!” To the pilot, he said, “Get us out of here and hug the ground.”
As soon as the rear door closed, the pilot lifted off and raced the chopper just a few feet above the ground with the nose tilted down for max speed. Carl couldn’t see the arriving force beyond the house, which meant they couldn’t see Carl’s chopper.
Carl watched the ground race by not even ten feet below. Right when it looked like the pilot was going to plow into the near hillside, the helicopter rapidly gained altitude, crested the hill, and dropped back down on the other side. Carl breathed a sigh of relief.
He mentally tuned into the quiet hum of the engine as the helicopter lifted higher into the sky some distance away from the Orizaga estate. He looked into the darkness outside the portside window and could feel the gazes of each of his team members on him. All of the mercs had seen him kill the old woman, or heard about it immediately afterward. Still facing the window, looking at the bright lights of the receding city of Hermosillo, he spoke to all of them.
“The president and her daughter are in the hospital dying, and I’ll do whatever it takes to save them. If I have to kill a hundred people or a thousand, I’ll do it.”
He said the words, but he didn’t feel the truth of his own conviction. Palmer seemed to sense his struggle. She touched his shoulder and whispered to him.
“Compartmentalize.”
He turned to face her. “I crossed the line, Nancy.”
She shook her head. “You did what needed to be done. If you hadn’t we would not have the intel we came here for.” She patted a Velcro pocket on her combat vest where the thumb drive rested.
“I murdered an old woman for a bunch of files.” The question he was trying to delay answering was how many lives were the president and her daughter worth?
“Hey, Boss,” Merc Three said from the co-pilot’s seat. Carl turned his gaze on the man. “I don’t think I could have done what you did, but I know you had to pick someone.”
Palmer said, “It was a mission-critical decision. She was the oldest and she was already on life support.” Palmer paused. “She was the right choice. She was the only choice.”
Carl heard a near silent “Hoo-wah” from behind him and figured it was an ex-military macho man’s way of giving support. He glanced around the cabin and nodded. Then he turned back to the growing darkness outside. After a few moments he turned and looked at Palmer for a long time. Her assessment was clinical and heartless, but he knew she was right.
“What have I become?” he said. Agent Palmer said nothing so he continued. “It was easier this time.” She nodded. “It was too easy. If Mrs. Orizaga hadn’t given up the password…” He pondered whether to say it out loud or not. “I already had my next two targets picked.” His gaze became distant. “I would have killed them all, Nancy. The kids too. To save the president, I would have done it.”
Carl gripped the armrests of his seat so tightly his arms trembled. Agent Palmer reached over and laid her palm on his forearm. This time, th
ere was no comfort in her touch. It didn’t steady him. She only reminded him of how ill prepared he was for this kind of life.
He was being swept along by events, and those events were changing him, reshaping him. His monster was taking over, driving him insane, and guiding him into the deepest, blackest part of the abyss. How much killing was too much? He thought about Aaron McGrath for a moment and wondered how long that man would fight the battle. He realized McGrath would fight until the end. It was at that moment Carl realized he had to be clinical like Palmer and McGrath. He had to pack his feelings away and accomplish the mission. His gaze grew hard.
Merc Three said, “You gonna be okay, Boss?”
“No,” he said. “That old woman looked me right in the eye before I pulled the trigger. I’m going to see her face in my mind for the rest of my life.”
Right next to my son’s face. And Lenore Cummings. And her daughter, Lisette. And Anita Chapman. All of them forever reminding me how badly I fucked things up.
He looked back at Palmer. “How can someone compartmentalize that?”
She said nothing.
He pulled out his cell phone and stared at it for a moment. Then he looked at Palmer.
She said, “By your own rules, you can only use that cell once. Is whoever you’re going to call that emergency?”
“McGrath needs to know his family is on a kill list.”
Agent Palmer raised her eyebrow at his statement, and he knew what she was thinking. Director McGrath and he had declared war on each other last week. They’d hurt each other in the worst possible way, and now Carl was reaching out to save McGrath’s family. He dialed the number Palmer gave him and a coarse voice immediately answered.
“Go for McGrath.”
“You don’t sound too good.”
“Johnson.” McGrath hacked for a long while, then said, “What’s your situation?”
“We’ve been butt-fucked by an unknown adversary high up in the government. He or she is well positioned, protected, and has extensive resources.”
“Agreed.”
“There’s no easy way to say this, but Nancy found a kill list with your daughter and her family on it. Can you get a team to her?”
McGrath hacked again. “Negative. I’m out of the game. Don’t know how long I’ve been asleep. I remember someone trying to wake me, but…”
Carl had put the cell phone on speaker and he and Palmer listened to the man cough until he was breathless.
“Something has changed, Johnson. I think someone’s here—”
McGrath’s voice was replaced by a rapid beeping tone. The call terminated. Carl looked at Palmer, then removed the battery from the cell.
Merc Three said, “What do you want to do, Boss?”
“The only thing we can do.” He glanced around the cabin. “We fight until we can’t. Our adversary has a team somewhere. He or she has staff members, assistants, and suppliers. These people have families too. Everybody does. We’ll find them and use them.”
Palmer narrowed her eyes. “Are you sure you want to go down that path, Carl?”
Carl grunted and looked forward. “I’m already going down that path. Have been for three weeks. I knew when I stepped into the abyss there was no turning back. I never truly understood what that meant until today.”
Until I killed that old woman.
He looked at Merc Three and at each of his mercs behind him. He knew they were seeing his doubt, but he also wanted them to see his resolve. Finally, he rested his gaze on the agent sitting next to him.
“Our adversary has already established the rules of engagement by using a sixteen-year-old girl to try to kill the president. The kid gloves are off. Nothing and nobody is off-limits.”
Carl sucked in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Me and these guys,” he waggled a finger around the cabin. “We’re terrorists, Nancy. The question is, can you go down this path with us?”
Palmer shrugged and said, “It’s a good bet that I’ve already been classified as a traitor and a terrorist right along with you.”
Carl nodded. “Then let’s escalate. Let’s give ‘em something new to think about.”
Chapter 30
1930 hours EST Friday
Undisclosed TER Op Station, Virginia
“Rainman, this is Spoke.”
“Go ahead.”
“We have identified Mr. Garcia. His true name is Daniel Ortega. He’s a naturalized US citizen originally from Mexico City. He’s related to the well-known Ortega family, with extensive connections to black-market weapons and mercenaries, as well as off-shore financing institutions and forgery operations. He has a wife and a newborn child in Albuquerque.”
“Instruct the Unit to take him at his office at once. The intel on his computers will likely prove valuable. See if he’ll voluntarily give up his account codes. If so, terminate him. If not, deliver him to the TER interrogation facility in Virginia.”
“Very well. And what of the operations underway in Mexico, sir?”
“Reyes’s beachfront house was completely destroyed, though Johnson’s team still needs to be dealt with. They left Orizaga’s home right before the army contingent arrived.” Rainman’s voiced paused for a one-count. “In a helicopter.”
Spoke expected that rebuke. “There was no record that Alfonso Reyes kept a helicopter at the house, or that he even owned one,” he lied. The record had been on the audio recording of Johnson’s conversation while Agent Peoples was talking to the vice president, but Spoke hadn’t reviewed that recording until after his previous report where he recommended using local military personnel rather than the fast-response Unit team from the airport. At that point, it was too late to do anything about the plan.
Rainman said, “Neither errors nor excuses will be tolerated.”
Spoke paused. “Understood.”
“Carl Johnson and what remains of his team are running out of options and assets in-country. They’ll try to make contact with Garcia or possibly with the Ortega family for assistance. Have Orizaga move his local army assets against the Ortega family wherever they may be. I want them eliminated. All of them. If we can’t find Johnson’s team, then I want to leave them nowhere to turn for help.”
Chapter 31
1800 hours MST Friday
The Reyes Estate, Northern Mexico
The landscape passing beneath the helicopter was almost pitch black, except for the occasional lit homestead. Carl had asked the pilot to drop down below radar level and fly without running lights. The luxury helicopter skimmed low over the ground at full speed. They had no warning of the disaster until they were almost right over the site of the mansion. In his mind, Carl had been expecting to see the mansion destroyed and burning. As the helicopter flashed over the site, he realized there was no structure left to burn. All he saw in the near darkness was a huge dark pit. The building, its landscape, the security fence, the parked cars, and the APC had all been scraped from the earth. All that remained was a crater.
His heart leaped into his throat and all he could think about was Julia Reyes. He gasped at the thought of losing her and absently reached out for Palmer’s hand. He needed her stabilization more than anything at that particular moment.
“They got out,” Palmer whispered. “We had an evac plan.”
“No.” Carl shook his head and looked out the window. “We didn’t have a plan for that.”
He let go of her hand, then leaned back in his seat and shifted his gaze to the horizon. A long line of blue and red strobe lights of emergency vehicles approached from several miles inland.
They had discussed the possibility of encountering a rogue army unit under the control of another high-ranking officer who might have replaced El Patron. They had defensive weapons to handle a low-level conflict like that, even if it involved a helicopter air assault or air force jets. But no one in their group—neither Carl nor his mercs nor his TER tactical support office—had anticipated this level of engagement. He drew valuable conclus
ions from what he saw.
The destruction below wasn’t the result of a missile barrage from a helicopter gunship. Though Carl was a rookie in the business of war, he could easily tell the crater he now gazed into was the result of a single strike.
“Nancy,” he said. “What kind of weapon is powerful enough to completely obliterate an eight-thousand-square-foot building, leaving no trace of the structure, and leave a crater that big?” He already thought he knew the answer.
Merc Three answered instead. “A fucking cruise missile would do that.”
Palmer added, “With a high-explosive warhead. They’d want complete destruction, so they wouldn’t use a drone-mounted smart bomb. That wouldn’t have enough yield.”
Carl nodded and glanced at the agent beside him. “I’m guessing Mexico doesn’t possess cruise missiles.”
In the dim light of the cabin, he saw Palmer shake her head. “None that I’m aware of.”
“So our adversary can order a US navy vessel somewhere to launch a cruise missile to destroy private property in a friendly nation.” Carl shivered as he considered the power wielded by the adversary, then told the pilot, “Maintain radio silence, fly low, and continue back to the airport. That’s our rally point. If there were survivors down there, that’s where they’ll go.”
The Reyes ladies and the mercs probably never even knew what hit them. That’s the way the US military operated.
Shock and awe.
All their adversary had to do was convince senior government officials that a credible terrorist threat existed at the location of the mansion.
We’ve located Carl Johnson, the American Terrorist who kidnapped the First Daughter. He has a sizable mercenary force and we have actionable intel indicating he is preparing for another strike on US soil. There are zero friendlies at the location.
Palmer added, “And our adversary can order the execution of civilian women and children within our own borders.”
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