End Game

by John Gilstrap

  A seam of light painted the ceiling as a vehicle nosed into a parking space next to hers out front, and an alarm bell rang in her head. She rose from the bed and drew her weapon, but did not go to the window. This was probably nothing, but if it was indeed a threat, she didn’t want to expose herself to an easy shot.

  Across the room, on the other side of the bathroom door, the shower continued to run. She checked the knob and was not at all surprised to find that he’d locked the door. That hollow-core paneled door wouldn’t stop a knife, let alone a bullet, but it was something.

  Jolaine’s concern deepened when the lights on the vehicle out front continued to shine. She could hear the engine running through the window.

  The shower stopped three seconds before someone rapped on the door.

  “Excuse me, Ms. Bernard?” a voice called from the other side of the door. The tone was all business, neither friendly nor aggressive. “This is the police. We need to talk with you.”

  Philip Baxter stood on the walkway alongside the Woodrow Wilson Bridge. He looked out over the Potomac River, Virginia on his left, Maryland on his right. The lights of Old Town Alexandria shimmered on the water. He wore his blue seersucker suit not so much to honor the formality of the moment, but rather to cover the 9 millimeter Walther P99 that he carried in a holster at the base of his spine. The amount of traffic at this hour—0130—surprised him. He expected the big trucks, but the number of passenger cars was more than he would have expected at this hour. Where did these people have to go?

  This was his meeting, so the protocol demanded that he arrive first and wait in plain sight. Like that of the man he waited for, his was a paranoid profession. To ask a man to meet alone to discuss the kind of subject that lay ahead required a generous leap of faith. This spot in the center of the massive bridge span offered full visibility and made an ambush unlikely. A drive-by was always a possibility, but the presence of so many witnesses rendered that option impractical.

  More to the point, the meeting spot was a mile away from any feasible sniper’s nest, and the darkness, combined with the complexity of the air conditions over the river, made such a shot impossible for even the most talented shooters. Throw in the fact that traffic noise made it impossible to record a conversation from a distance, and this was the perfect place for a covert meeting.

  Precisely at 01:30, his contact made himself visible at the Virginia end of the bridge. At this distance, he was only a silhouette, devoid of individual features, but there was no mistaking the awkward, limping gait that Philip knew was the result of a very close encounter with a 7.62 millimeter bullet fired a number of years ago by an American Special Forces operator. Because Philip had read the after-action report, he also knew that this man who approached had killed said operator with an amazing ninety-yard pistol shot before he slipped into unconsciousness.

  As the man approached, Philip paid attention to the details. He knew the man was right-handed, and he noted that the right hand swung a little less easily than the left. That meant two things—first, he was armed, and second, the man was half-expecting to have to draw down. That kind of awareness translated to nervousness, which put a special burden on Philip to be benign and predictable. This was the most fragile moment of any meet. Any errant look or sudden movement could ignite a gunfight that no one wanted.

  Philip continued to watch the river, his hands on the guardrail as he monitored the new man’s approach.

  Two minutes later, Anton Datsik was at Philip’s left side, and together they looked at the vista before them.

  “Good morning, Philip,” Datsik said. His voice was leaden with an Eastern European accent.

  “Hello, Anton. Thank you for agreeing to meet at such a ridiculous hour on such short notice.”

  “You’re welcome. My instincts tell me that this is not to be a pleasant conversation. Even your chosen location speaks of violence.”

  Some time ago, a team of terrorists had wreaked havoc at this spot during a frigid rush hour. The walls of the high-end Jersey barriers that separated them from the traffic still bore the scars of that shooting spree.

  “You’re overthinking,” Philip assured. “I promise that there is no symbolism or implied threat in the locale.”

  Datsik nodded, seeming to accept Philip at his word. “I shall pretend not to know why you called me here,” he said.

  Philip got right to it. “A lot of people got killed last night in Indiana. Did you have anything to do with that?”

  Anton pivoted to face Philip full-on. “We know each other long time, Philip. I don’t trust you, you don’t trust me. That is the one fact we both count on, and as a result, we form what you people like to call a bond. This is true, yes?”

  It had long been Anton’s way to thicken his accent and slow his speech when he was trying to make a controversial point. Now he sounded like Boris from the Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons. “This is true, yes,” Philip said.

  “Over years, we have many conversations. Sometimes I speak to Philip Baxter, colleague—fellow spy—sometimes I speak to Philip Baxter, enemy to my country. Which one do I speak to tonight?”

  It was a test question, of course, an invitation to lie. But even as the relations between the United States and the Russian Federation continued to deteriorate, Philip understood that the ability for people like him and Datsik to communicate honestly with each other could one day spell the difference between peace and Armageddon. He liked the guy, and he suspected that Datsik liked him back. The reality that either might one day get the order to terminate the other kept the relationship at arm’s length.

  “Today, I speak as a confused friend,” Philip said. “And in this matter, I believe that our two countries have never been closer.”

  Datsik chuckled. “Is not a high bar, is it?”

  Philip laughed with him. “No,” he said. “Not a high bar at all. Please tell me what you can about last night.”

  A pair of tractor trailers passed in tandem, causing the bridge deck to vibrate, and drowning out all sound. As the roar dopplered away, Datsik continued. “First, let me emphasize what I think you already know. You never should have played your silly game with the Chechen dogs.”

  Philip shrugged. “As you might imagine, I don’t make those decisions. But the effort was not a waste. We very nearly found out quite a lot about their terrorist networks.”

  “Very nearly worked,” Anton scoffed, “is a bureaucrat’s way of saying you failed.”

  “In large measure because your government overreacted,” Philip countered. “Must we really have this conversation now? Neither one of us is a decision maker.”

  Datsik backed off. “True enough,” he said. “As you Americans like to say, we are only pawns, yes?”

  “Sometimes I feel more like the board the pawns play on.”

  Datsik chuckled, but his eyes showed no humor. He looked out at the river, toward the lights of Old Town. “Things did not go well, as you know. We got our team in place on Morrow Road in Antwerp well in advance—”

  “Were you there?”

  Datsik paused, looked back at him. “I might have been.”

  From the tone and the sly smile, Philip took that to mean yes.

  “That Chechen pig was already there, waiting in the blue pickup truck that we had been told he would drive.”

  “For the sake of clarity,” Philip interrupted. “Which Chechen pig are we talking about? Adam Dudaev?”

  “Yes. Our team was in place at least one half hour before Dudaev arrived, and once he did arrive, he waited in place for twelve minutes, lights on, engine running, until another car arrived. This was, we assumed, the contact who would pass along the codes.”

  “And who was that?” Philip said. Of all the intel to be gathered through this abortion of an op, that was the one bit of information that the United States needed most to know.

  “I will get to that,” Datsik said. Always a natural storyteller, Datsik liked to take his time to build the tension. “We wer
e cautious,” he continued. “We didn’t want to, as you like to say, jump the gun. One day you must tell me where that expression comes from. The two vehicles faced in opposite directions, so that the drivers could speak without getting out. This posed a problem for us because we did not know what the other vehicle would look like. We thought it unlikely that this could be just a chance encounter, but given the stakes, we needed to be certain. We kept waiting for them to pass something,” Datsik went on. “If they had done that, we’d have taken them both into custody, just as you asked.”

  That was the third reminder that the assault team had been acting on a direct request from Philip’s bosses. Philip wondered if that was a hedge against some form of recording device—if, perhaps, Datsik was recording the conversation himself. “But . . . ?” Philip prompted.

  “They never had the chance. Two carloads of men with guns swooped down out of nowhere and opened fire. They were too trigger-happy, shooting too early, hitting the vehicles but not the people. Our team engaged the other shooters, and things went crazy.”

  Philip felt a tug in his gut. No one else was supposed to know what was going down. This was another security breach of epic proportions. “Other shooters?”

  “Other shooters. More Chechen pigs, we found out, after we searched their bodies.”

  “Why would they be shooting at their own? Weren’t they getting what they wanted?”

  Datsik gave a derisive chuckle. “Philip, my friend, perhaps you should spend more time trying to talk to dead men. It is an instructive exercise in frustration. In any event, those shooters lost, my shooters won. Is a good ending.”

  “But what of Dudaev and the codes?”

  A deep sigh. “Alas, in all of the confusion, he got away. Unlike his contact, who took two bullets to the head. He had no identification on him, but our people are working to identify him.”

  “My boss will want the body,” Philip said.

  “My bosses will tell your boss to kiss their asses. Your boss started this. You don’t get to write the rest of the script.”

  “This was an FBI screwup,” Philip insisted. “My team had nothing to do with it.”

  “We don’t care. One big government, one big screwup. The details don’t matter.”

  Philip opened his mouth to pursue the issue, but decided that now was not the time. “So, Dudaev. What happened to him? Did he drive away with the codes?”

  “We didn’t know at the time, but later we found out that yes, he did.”

  “Did you follow him?”

  Datsik cleared his throat. “In a manner of speaking, yes. We were not in a position to chase him—we were in positions away from our vehicles—but we knew where he would be going.”

  “To our friends the Mitchells?”

  “Your friends the Mitchells,” Datsik corrected.

  The Russian had clearly missed the irony, and Philip chose not to correct him. As far as Philip’s bosses in Langley were concerned, they could all die a fiery death.

  Datsik continued, “At this point, our team decided to eliminate all of them. We get the code, we kill people who want the code, and everything will be all right.”

  A glimmer of hope grew in Philip’s mind. “So, that’s what you did?”

  “Is what we almost did.”

  “Ah, Christ.”

  “Yes, was bad. Dudaev arrived at Mitchells’ house already wounded, I think. When we got there, he is already on floor bleeding. Maybe Mitchell shoot him, but I don’t think so. There is other shoot-out. Mitchell dies, Dudaev dies, but wife and boy get away along with their maid.” Datsik scowled and shot a look to Philip. “Why would they have maid?”

  Philip fell silent as he ran the facts through his head. This could still have a happy ending. “But the codes,” he said. “You got the codes.”

  Another sigh, this one deepest of all. “No codes,” he said. “We think maybe wife took them with her. What’s her name?”

  “Sarah.”

  “Yes, Sarah. We think she took codes with her. Sarah, maid, boy, codes, all gone. But she was shot and shot bad. Gut shot.” He pointed to a place high on his own abdomen. “Maybe not live.”

  Philip’s mind raced. That happy ending was feeling further and further away. “Wait here,” he said.

  Datsik recoiled. “Where are you going?”

  Philip cupped the back of his own head with his hand and rubbed the lump that was a souvenir from a bar fight gone bad in his twenties. “I’m not going anywhere,” he said. “I just need to think. I think better when I walk.”

  “If walking makes people smart, someone must have been sitting on his ass when they came up with this Chechen missile idea,” Datsik teased.

  Philip pretended not to hear.

  Think this through, he told himself. It can’t be as dark as it seems. There has to be a way. Because if there wasn’t another way, the world—Philip’s world in particular—was going to be in a very, very bad place.

  Philip walked slowly, unaware, really, that he was even walking. He thought through the logic. If this was an FBI operation, the logic had to be perfect, because Fibbies were that way, so buttoned-down and regulated that every one of them tied their shoes the same way.

  Sarah, maid, boy, codes, all gone.

  “Yeah, why would they have a maid?” he asked aloud, his words lost in the traffic rush. That was a significant point. Why would they even want a maid? The house they lived in wasn’t that big to begin with. It would be tight enough with the three of them living there. A fourth person would just be in the way.

  Perhaps she was just a housekeeper. You know, one who just comes in the daytime.

  No. That wasn’t it. The raid happened at night, and she was there. That meant she was live-in help, a conclusion that just circled him back around to his original question—Why was she there?

  Then he got it. At least he thought he did. He turned and walked back to Anton. “You said the Mitchells got away with a maid,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “Are you sure she was a maid?”

  “Who else would she be?” Datsik asked. “You told me that they have only one child. A boy. Our intelligence confirmed. Who else would she be?”

  Philip didn’t want to jump to his conclusion. He had a tendency to do that. Once he had an idea in his head, his brain took ownership and then nothing else would make sense to him.

  “You look like you’re having a vision,” Anton said. “You seeing God?”

  “No,” Philip said. “I think the girl you thought was a maid might be a security detail.”

  “Not much of a detail,” Datsik scoffed. “One girl.”

  Philip rubbed his head again. “When you got to the Mitchells,” he said, “what was their response?”

  “They fought back,” Anton said. “They were better fighters than the Chechens at the drop-off.”

  They were also expecting you, Philip didn’t say. “That meant that they were prepared,” he did say. “Which in turn means that they expected to have to defend themselves.”

  “That’s what happens when you betray everyone all at once,” Anton said. “Makes friends hard to find.”

  “The point,” Philip pressed, “is that if they were expecting a possible attack, then they might want to have personal security.”

  “But only one person?”

  “Probably for the boy,” Philip thought aloud. “Was she young?”

  Anton laughed. “To me, everybody is young. I guess under thirty, but not much.”

  Philip nodded. Yes, he’d seen this before. It was a trick used over in the Sandbox when defending important families. Young people are inherently resistant to personal protection, so to combat that, contractors would recruit younger operators for that purpose.

  “You’re smiling now,” Anton said. “First vision from God and now something funny. What is funny about armed security guard?”

  “It means they had a contingency plan,” Philip said. “And plans have to make sense. To make se
nse, they have to follow a straight line.”

  “Straight line to where?”

  He paused a beat. “I don’t know yet.”

  “Is lots of help. You don’t know.”

  It had been seven years since Philip was last directly involved in running field agents and field ops, so it took him a while to pull the standard protocols from memory. Of course, there was no guarantee that the Bureau would use the same protocols as the Agency, but the elements had to be pretty much the same. You had the routine components, such as never traveling predictable routes, and the tradecraft to recognize and elude tails. Then there were the elements that kicked in at the time when shots were fired—the specific actions to guard the protectees and get them out of harm’s way. Those he knew for a fact were common not just to the two agencies involved in this mess, but also to Secret Service and State. Anybody who protected anyone.

  Equally predictable, yet far more fluid, were the protocols to be followed if a protectee under assault was hit in the crossfire. Hospitals would be prequalified for their capabilities and preplanned as a function of the nature of the problem. Most any hospital could help a protectee with a gallbladder attack, but if a gunshot wound were involved, only a shock trauma center would suffice when such facilities were available. When the protectee was a senior government official, certain staffing requirements at the hospitals would need to be proved prior to the trip.

  Coming into this meeting, Philip had known that people had been shot during last night’s incident, but a check of hospital records had turned up nothing.

  “Other than the mother, Sarah, were there any surviving wounded from either assault last night?” Philip asked.

  “Yes,” Datsik said. “But they were all on our team.”

  “And where did you take them?”

  Datsik’s expression turned dark, defensive. “We took them to what your government likes to call a secret, undisclosed location,” he said. “That means none of your business.”

  Philip pointed at Datsik’s nose. “Exactly.”

  “Exactly what?”

  “Exactly the answer. When it is important to remain covert, hospitals are out of the question. At least standard hospitals are out of the question.”