Hunt the Lion

by Chad Zunker

  Instead, she heard urgent words whispered into her ear.

  “FBI. Don’t scream. Don’t move.”

  FIFTY-FOUR

  They huddled inside a first-floor motel room, a quick drive from Saint Patrick’s Catholic Church. Folders, papers, and photos were spread out across the bed, a whiteboard situated on a stand in one corner with writing all over it—as if they’d already had this place set up as their makeshift war room. The strong man who’d snatched her from behind called himself Agent Epps. Natalie had recognized the second man hiding behind him—Assistant Director in Charge Spencer Lloyd.

  Together, the three of them had remained silent and hidden in the shadows of the outer courtyard until the meeting among Senator Harris, Nathan Barnes, and the third as-yet-unidentified man had finally ended a brief ten minutes after it had started. Natalie was unable to hear most of the heated discussion, but it was clear none of the three men were happy to be standing there. After the men had left, Natalie was quickly escorted to a Buick and immediately transported to the motel room, where—based on the current expression on Lloyd’s face—she was about to be interrogated as if she was at the top of their Most Wanted list.

  Lloyd shut all the curtains, offered her a firm hand toward two wooden chairs sitting next to a lamp in the corner. “Please sit down, Ms. Foster.”

  “I’d rather stand. Thanks.”

  Lloyd glared at her. “Please.”

  She reluctantly took a seat, immediately felt the heat of the lamp on her face. Epps lingered by the door.

  Standing directly in front of her, his arms crossed, Lloyd said, “Please explain to me what you were doing inside that courtyard.”

  Natalie shrugged. “Probably the same as you, Agent Lloyd. Looking for answers.”

  “Did you follow one of the men there?”

  “Did you?”

  Lloyd exhaled in frustration. “We don’t have time for these games, Natalie. We’re racing the clock here. And you nearly blew things up for us just now.”

  “How do you even know who I am?” Natalie countered, glowering.

  She refused to be intimidated and was still a bit miffed about being grabbed in the courtyard. Afterward, neither agent had even asked for her name or identification. They just seemed to know who she was and acted as if they were not altogether surprised to find her there. Why?

  “We’ve been looking for you,” Lloyd admitted. “I spoke with Michelle Blair in the hospital yesterday morning. She told me about showing you the CIA video of your fiancé in Moscow—a video I’ve now seen—and the car wreck that followed shortly thereafter. Michelle called it an assassination attempt. She was concerned you were still in serious trouble because she’s been unable to reach you.”

  Natalie softened at the mention of her friend. “Is Michelle okay?”

  “She’s tough. She has a long road to recovery, but she’ll be fine.”

  “What about Sam?” she pleaded. “Do you know anything?”

  “Are we finally ready to start talking?” Lloyd asked her.

  She nodded and nearly held her breath while awaiting his answer. For the past thirty-six hours, she’d lived with the constant dread that at any moment, she might get devastating news about Sam. Would Lloyd be the one to deliver it?

  “Sam was involved in a covert CIA operation in Moscow two nights ago that went off the rails and left many from his team dead. But I’ve been told nothing has been confirmed about Sam just yet. The CIA is actively searching for him. That’s all I know, I’m sorry—I wish I could tell you more,” said Lloyd.

  Natalie felt some small sense of relief. “Thank you.”

  “Did you know about Sam’s involvement with the CIA?” Epps asked.

  Natalie shook her head. “Not until two nights ago, when I found out about something called Black Heron. Then I stumbled upon the warehouse where they must’ve trained for this operation. I went underground shortly thereafter.”

  “Why’d you go underground?” Lloyd asked.

  “When you find out your fiancé has been lying to you for over a month about some secret CIA mission, then a thug shows up and takes two different cracks at your life, you tend to not know who to trust anymore. Better to lay low.”

  “Believe me, I understand. I dodged bullets myself last night.”

  Her forehead wrinkled. “Who’s trying to kill you?”

  “I’m working to figure that out. Could be the same people who are behind your thug. So how about we help each other out?”

  “What do you want to know?” Natalie asked, ready to embrace whatever help she could get right now.

  “Tell me everything that happened after Michelle first showed you the video.”

  Natalie explained her path toward identifying Lenny Gregor—the tattoo on his right hand, connecting the dots through two different military sources, and how she’d finally tracked him down at the Raven last night. She then talked about his meet-up with a lawyer named Nathan Barnes, whom she followed to the meeting this morning with Senator Harris and the other man.

  “Barnes is Senator Harris’s nephew,” she clarified. “I don’t know the identity of the third man. Do you?”

  “Dan Bradley, assistant deputy director with the CIA.”

  Natalie cursed. “You serious? So you’re telling me the CIA is behind trying to take us both out?”

  “I don’t think so,” Lloyd said, shaking his head. “At least, not officially. I found out last night that Bradley has been leading a covert hunt for an intelligence mole. The same night that Black Heron went south in Russia, one of the black-ops agents on Bradley’s secret team, a man named Mike Madrone, broke into my condo and ended up putting my father in the hospital. We found the same guy ransacking your place yesterday. I also believe Madrone was the one who shot and killed my CIA contact last night while trying to execute me in the process.”

  “You think a CIA agent assassinated another CIA agent?”

  “Yes. And it’s all connected to what went down with Sam in Moscow.”

  “How so?”

  “I’ve been following your fiancé for the past month, ever since my uneasy encounter with him at Union Station, where my boss was specifically asked by the director of the CIA to let Sam walk right out of there—no questions asked. I now believe word of my off-the-books investigation into Callahan somehow made it back to the wrong person at the CIA, which put me personally at risk two nights ago.”

  “And you think that wrong person is Bradley?”

  “Yes, for many reasons. But I don’t understand the connection to Senator Harris.”

  “They were college roommates.”

  Lloyd’s eyes narrowed. “How the hell do you know that?”

  Natalie was starting to put it together in her mind. “After finding out the lawyer was Senator Harris’s nephew, I was up all night researching everything I could possibly find about Harris. I now remember reading a profile piece from a publication called Bostonia—BU’s alumni magazine—where it specifically mentioned Senator Harris and Dan Bradley, onetime college roommates who were now both working high in the government.”

  Lloyd considered that for a moment. “Okay, but that still doesn’t explain how or why Harris would be involved in Black Heron.”

  Natalie stood, paced slowly around the motel room, processing all the information flashing through her mind. Then a moment of clarity struck her, and she turned sharply back to Lloyd. “Unless Senator Harris is the mole.”

  “Harris?”

  “You said yourself that Bradley had to be working with a bigger player.”

  “I did, but . . .”

  “Think about it. We know that Harris sits on the Senate Intelligence Committee. The man has direct access to highly classified intelligence info that could be very valuable if put into the wrong hands. Harris also has motive. He’s currently in a tight battle to keep his Senate seat in next year’s election. His opponent is a rich real estate mogul who’s already poured tens of millions of dollars of his own money
into his campaign to beat the sitting senator. Harris can’t compete on his own—his net worth is under two million—unless he somehow gets resources from the outside. Harris is also in a position to help Bradley advance more quickly up the CIA ranks. Perhaps two college buddies worked up this whole scheme over a couple of beers.”

  Lloyd was processing. “Damn. So instead of hunting the mole, Bradley has actually been protecting him.”

  Natalie jumped in again. “But something happened in Moscow two nights ago that threatened to jeopardize everything. So Harris and Bradley panicked and began trying to tie off every possible loose end to prevent from being exposed.”

  Lloyd and Epps shared a wide-eyed glance. For a moment, all three of them stood there in silence, as if the heavy weight of the truth had finally rested on them.

  “What do you think?” Lloyd asked Epps.

  “I think Natalie is right, Chief,” Epps admitted. “All the threads are right there.”

  “Which means we need to move quickly. Call Krieger and have him start pulling everything he can on Senator Harris. His financials, his travel records, his phone records—all of it. Do the same with Nathan Barnes, and go get that lowlife Lenny Gregor off the streets.”

  “What about Bradley?”

  Lloyd considered it a moment. “Put a team on him, but be careful. I don’t want to spook him and send him running. We already know he’s a dangerous man. Not until we talk to Stone.”

  “I’m on it.”

  Epps marched out the motel room door, phone already to his ear.

  Lloyd turned his attention back to her. “Under the circumstances, Natalie, you’ve done some incredible investigative work.”

  “We’ll see. I hope I’m right. I just want this to be over. That’s the only chance I think I have to get Sam home—if he’s even still alive.”

  “If there’s one thing I’ve learned about Callahan, he’s a hard man to take down. I think he’ll make it home. And I’ll do everything in my power to help make that happen.”

  “Thank you. What’s next for me?”

  “You’re coming with me right now to meet with Stone.”

  Natalie nodded. The last time she’d stood face-to-face with Director Stone was when she’d just hammered out a story last fall exposing the dark conspiracy between congressional candidate Lucas McCallister and Victor Larsen, the powerful and sinister CEO of Redrock Security. Watching Lloyd pull everything from the bed and stuff it into a brown satchel, she noticed an eight-by-ten photograph fall out of a manila folder. She picked it up, examined it. It was a surveillance image of Sam standing beside a park bench next to a familiar-looking older man with a gray beard.

  “I know this man,” Natalie stated, eyes stuck on the photo.

  Lloyd looked over. “Marcus Pelini. CIA.”

  “Why do you have a picture of Sam standing with him?”

  “Pelini is the one who recruited Sam to Black Heron in the first place. He ran point on the whole operation.”

  Natalie felt shocked by this news. She immediately flashed back to sitting in a hotel suite last November with Marcus Pelini, Lisa McCallister, and Sam, where they’d finally discovered that Pelini was the manipulative man who’d played puppet master with Sam’s life and had sent him on the run from deadly assassins. Staring at the photo, she couldn’t make any sense of this new revelation. In the aftermath of Redrock, they’d both agreed they hoped never to see the gray-bearded man again.

  And yet Sam secretly had agreed to join him for Black Heron?

  “Why would he do it?” Natalie asked, almost to herself.

  “Do what?” Lloyd asked.

  “Why would Sam join Marcus Pelini?”

  Lloyd stopped what he was doing. “You really don’t know, do you?”

  “Know what?”

  “Marcus Pelini is Sam’s father.”

  FIFTY-FIVE

  Alger Gerlach exited a cab near Kensington Palace, stepped out into a gray London day with steady rain. Pulling the collar up on his jacket, he quickly paid the driver, grabbed his bag, and trotted up the front steps of the Royal Garden Hotel. Shaking off the wet, he did a swift scan of the lobby, as he usually did upon entering any place where he’d be staying the night. He felt extra cautious today. The last time he was in London, he’d been forced to execute two MI5 agents. Studying the faces around him, he found no one that gave him any reason to be overly alarmed.

  Walking up to the front check-in counter, he offered the woman behind the desk one of his many aliases. She typed into her computer, smiled.

  “Welcome to the Royal Garden, Mr. Munchin.”

  “Thank you.”

  She set a card key on the counter. “Do you need help with your bags?”

  He gave her a quick smile. “I’m fine.”

  “We have a package waiting here for you.”

  Gerlach tilted his head. He wasn’t expecting a package. That made him a bit uneasy. The clerk turned, searched a console behind her, then returned with a thin manila folder with the name Jonas Munchin written in black marker on the front.

  “Enjoy your stay with us,” the clerk said.

  Once inside his hotel room, Gerlach dropped his bag on the carpet and tore open the manila envelope. Inside, he found half a dozen surveillance photos of a gray-bearded man in a black trench coat walking out the front doors of the Milestone Hotel. Gerlach immediately recognized the man—Marcus Pelini—the reason he was in London in the first place. His client must have already done some legwork. That could make the job very easy for him today.

  Setting his bag on the bed, he quickly found the silver case with his gun inside. He pulled the gun out of the foam and screwed on the suppressor. Removing his jacket, he slid his arms into his chest holster, placed the gun in its pocket, and put the jacket back on.

  Gerlach stared at himself in the mirror over the dresser and felt a jolt of adrenaline push through him. Marcus Pelini. For as long as Gerlach could remember, Pelini had been a powerful force in their shadow world. A man who inspired fear in even the best contract operatives. Many of the top assassins on the planet had ultimately met their demise over the years at the hands of the legendary CIA agent.

  It would be a great thrill to take him out today.

  Gerlach smiled, headed for the door. There was no time to waste.

  The Gray Wolf was about to prey on the Lion.

  FIFTY-SIX

  Sam ditched the stolen Civic and huddled with Tommy at a small table near the front window of a coffeehouse a few blocks from the Milestone Hotel—the only lead they currently had on Marcus Pelini. They’d made the drive from Le Tréport to London with no hiccups—which was nice, for once. But Sam still had no idea how he was supposed to find his father. Lucinda was probably right. Pelini couldn’t be found unless he wanted to be found. Still, Tommy was doing his best to assist, including hacking a full list of people currently booked at the Milestone. Sam was skimming through every name on that long list and feeling more hopeless with each passing minute.

  “Anything?” Tommy asked him.

  “Nothing,” Sam said, staring at the laptop screen. “None of these names mean anything to me. He could be any of these people—or none of them.”

  Turning the laptop back over to Tommy, Sam stared out the window and watched the rain continue to fall over London. It had been a steady drizzle ever since they’d arrived this afternoon that soaked the sidewalks and streets, and seemed to put a cold damper on everyone who stepped into the coffeehouse with them.

  “What about the CIA boards?” Sam asked.

  Tommy shook his head. “Nothing. There’s been no chatter about him anywhere.”

  “You check Lucinda’s private account again?”

  “Yeah, dude. For the tenth time already.”

  “And you still can’t trace his only message to her back to an IP address around here somewhere, like you did with Lucinda?”

  “I tried, believe me. Nothing but dead ends.”

  Sam grunted in frustration.
“Maybe I should just go hang out in the lobby of the damn hotel. See if he happens to step out of an elevator or walk in from the outside. Because I’m never going to find him by sitting in this coffee shop all afternoon.”

  “Be patient, man.”

  “I’m out of patience, Tommy.”

  “I hear you.”

  “Even if I get lucky—which is a long shot—what would I even say to the man?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He’s never shot straight with me. It’s been nothing but smoke and mirrors with my father from the first moment we met. Why should I expect anything different?”

  “I don’t know. But you have to try. He may be your only way out.”

  Sam nodded, sighed again. Tommy was right—and that sucked. Sam again thought about the boy. Could Charlie really be his brother? If he was truly Pelini’s son, why the hell would he be living in Zolotov’s palatial residence? The boy seemed to be full-blooded Russian and quite comfortable in his bedroom there. It didn’t make sense. Sam still had so many questions for Pelini and wasn’t sure if he’d ever get the truth.

  He rubbed his face with both hands, feeling exhausted. He needed to sleep for a week. He tried not to think about what Natalie was doing right now, and what had to be an escalating amount of worry building up in her at his complete disappearance. Every few hours, he fought the temptation to ring her up on his burner phone. He longed to hear her voice. And yet he knew he couldn’t do that. He was desperate to finish this and get back to her. To beg her forgiveness and to start all over—again. But that might never happen if finding Pelini was his only chance.

  “Damn,” Tommy suddenly muttered, eyes popping wide-open while staring at his laptop.

  “What?” Sam asked.

  “It’s him.”

  “Who?”

  “Pelini. He just sent me an email clearly meant for you.”

  Tommy turned his laptop to face him. Sam leaned in for a closer look. In the center of the laptop screen was an email with a message that damn near took his breath away.