The Blowback Protocol

by Lars Emmerich

  “Another great question,” Sam said. “One I would love to ask my dear friend Artemis Grange.”

  Archer’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t even think about going after him,” he said.

  Sam shook her head and rubbed her eyes. “That will be hard to do from a jail cell.”

  Dan and Archer exchanged a look.

  “What?”

  Dan broke into a smile. “It’s not the top news story, but at least it made the hourly rotation,” he said.

  “What are you talking about?”

  Dan pointed at the TV screen. Sam read the ribbon of text scrolling across the bottom: “McCulley girl killed by rogue CIA asset, according to government sources.”

  Sam smiled. “I had almost forgotten. I’m so glad they ran the story. Thank you, Dan.”

  “No problem,” Dan said. “The newspapers are all going to run the story too, but it probably won’t be on the front page now that there’s been a ‘terrorist attack’ in DC.”

  “Right,” Sam said. “I’ll take what I can get.” She looked at Archer. “So they’re going to drop the charges against me?”

  Archer shook his head. “The attorney general is re-evaluating his position in light of the new facts.”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  Archer smiled. “It means I was never here, and you should be careful about where you show your face for the next few days.”

  Sam shook her head. “Goddamn politicians.”

  Archer gave her another hug. “I have to hit the road,” he said. “Rumor has it there’s an international fugitive on the loose in our fair city.”

  Sam smiled. “We’re all counting on you.”

  “Hang tough, Sam,” Archer said on his way out. “I have a feeling this is going to work out just fine.”

  69

  Hayward stood watch over Katrin’s hospital bed. She was still under sedation. Her cheeks had hollowed out during her ordeal. Her body had wounds that would heal into scars but Hayward wondered if her heart and soul would ever fully mend.

  The weight of responsibility never left Hayward. He had repeatedly offered his life in exchange for hers, but his willingness to sacrifice himself was no exoneration. Guilt and remorse pressed against his chest.

  Joao had not survived the explosion. There was even speculation that he had died of his injuries before the bombing occurred. Maria had bled to death while Hayward waited, just meters away. Katrin had been savagely beaten and raped. None of it would have happened if Hayward hadn’t come into their lives. He tried to tell himself that if he hadn’t been the CIA’s access agent, then someone else would have been, and the outcome might have been even worse. But this offered little consolation. Hayward couldn’t escape the truth that he had brought this unspeakable evil into their lives.

  Katrin slept and he watched her, recalling the music of her laughter and the warmth of her smile and the magic of her embrace. His heart stirred for her. Her face had a radiant, ethereal quality despite her injuries.

  But it disappeared when she awoke. Her eyes found him, and her reaction to his presence told him more than any words might. A darkness descended, her jaw set, and her eyes became hard and wary. If he had held out any hope for the two of them, it died with one look in Katrin’s eyes. His heart broke.

  And it broke again when she asked about her mother and father. He answered through his own tears, and he knew that her wail of despair and loss would haunt him to his grave.

  70

  The doorbell rang and Sam slowly made her way over to answer. It had been two weeks since the explosion. The shrapnel wounds from the blast were well on their way to healing, but Sam was still struggling under the weight of it all.

  And her heart hurt. She’d called Brock a dozen times and sent at least that many notes, but he never answered. She’d lost weight and there were dark circles under her eyes.

  “Jesus, Sam, you look rough,” Dan said.

  She smiled weakly. “You really know how to flatter a girl.” She wrapped her arms around him and felt the warmth of his embrace. It felt a little like water in a desert.

  “Are you sure this is what you want to do?” Dan asked, pointing to the “For Sale” sign in the front yard.

  Sam shook her head. “I have no idea what I want to do.”

  She motioned him inside. They stepped past cardboard boxes, suitcases, furniture wrapped in plastic, mementos standing in formation like soldiers awaiting their fate. She stopped at the refrigerator for a soda and handed Dan a beer, then led him to the patio. They sat side by side on the flagstone steps.

  “Where will you go?” Dan wanted to know.

  She shook her head. “Away.”

  Dan said nothing.

  “Trouble is,” she said, “wherever I go, I always seem to run into myself.”

  He chuckled. Sam took a sip of her drink and tried to rub away the tired burn in her eyes. Everyone had romantic visions of a new life on a faraway beach somewhere, full of nothing but infinite potential and pure possibility, but it never seemed to work that way. You either brought your own trouble or conjured it out of nowhere.

  “Maybe a Tibetan monastery,” Dan said. “I think ‘losing yourself’ is even in the brochure.”

  Sam smiled, but she didn’t invest much in it. It didn’t reach all the way to her eyes and it didn’t last very long.

  “I’m so sorry, Sam,” he said.

  She nodded and swallowed the lump in her throat. “Me, too.”

  “Did you hear from . . .” Dan trailed off.

  “Not a word,” she said. “He’s back over in the desert already, according to his boss. His version of ‘away,’ I guess.”

  Dan shook his head. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Me, too,” Sam said again. “That bastard. Maybe he knows I would murder him if he showed up around here.”

  Dan laughed. Sam did too, but it felt weak and a little futile.

  She cried then, as quietly as she could manage, but there were moments when the grief was too much and she couldn’t help the way her shoulders shuddered and her diaphragm fluttered and everything seemed to be pressing down on her with wicked, angry, jagged edges. Somehow having Dan around made the breakup seem more real. More official, maybe.

  Dan kept silent watch by her side.

  “He was the one,” Sam said after a long time.

  Dan just nodded.

  More time passed, but no words passed between them until Dan said, “They cleaned out your office.”

  Another sad smile. “One of the perks of my position,” she said. “When they toss you out on your ear, they take the time to throw all your stuff out after you.”

  Dan chuckled. “That’s not what I heard. I heard there was a gushing apology from the director and a fat raise and a fancier job title on offer.”

  Sam swirled her soda. “I suppose the truth is always in the middle somewhere,” she said. “Yes, they ate a little crow and made a token offer, but they were pretty mealy-mouthed about it. Defending the department’s interests, looking after public safety, the usual crap.”

  Dan shook his head. “Sounds like they really weren’t that sorry.”

  “Of course they weren’t,” Sam said. “I think they knew.”

  “Knew what? That you already had one foot out the door?”

  She nodded. “Something like that.”

  Another long moment passed in silence. Then Sam asked, “What happened with Grange?”

  “Gone,” Dan said. “There was one subway camera hit right after the blast, then nothing. No hints, no clues.”

  Sam nodded. She didn’t expect he would ever be found. “And the ChemEspaña files?”

  Dan shrugged. “I sat on them. I wanted to see how things played out with you. I thought maybe they could be leverage, if we needed it.”

  “What are you going to do with them?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t have them. I checked on them one day last week and they were gone.”

  “Gone?”
/>
  “Poof.”

  It wasn’t a good development. The files were dangerous. Nuclear proliferation. She supposed she should care more than she did, but it was no longer any of her concern. It was officially someone else’s problem.

  “I wish I had a clue why Grange wanted me back on the Doberman case.”

  “Strange you should mention it,” Dan said. “I actually found an answer. Well, Archer did. Wells’s phone had spyware on it, and when the Bureau combed through his stuff they found months of recorded conversations.”

  “Months?”

  Dan nodded. “Just about every conversation Wells had for the last three months of his life.”

  “Scary,” Sam said.

  “Right. Makes you want to throw your phone in the lake, doesn’t it? Anyway, they found a few conversations between Grange and Wells.”

  “And?”

  Dan looked at her. “Sam, what I’m about to tell you is extremely sensitive. Please don’t breathe a word to anyone.”

  “Scout’s honor.”

  “Sarah Beth McCulley was murdered.”

  Sam’s jaw dropped. “Murdered?”

  “Assassinated.”

  “Ezzat was an assassin?”

  Dan shook his head. “Ezzat was an asshole jihadi with a big family in Damascus and a loyalty problem. He sold out to the CIA a couple of years ago. Oren Stanley and Alexander Wells threatened to make his treason public unless he killed the girl.”

  She shook her head. “They had to know we would kill him. Why the hell would they send him on a suicide mission to kill a five-year-old girl?”

  “This is also very sensitive,” Dan said. “Stanley and Wells were on the Doberman payroll.”

  “Jesus,” Sam said. “They killed Sarah Beth to kill our investigation?”

  “Exactly,” Dan said. “They knew they were on borrowed time.”

  She sat in stunned silence. “Why would Ezzat agree to something like that?”

  “He was smart enough to realize he was a dead man no matter what course he chose. He figured at least this way, none of his family back home would suffer. The fundamentalists are bat shit crazy over there.”

  Sam shook her head. “Do the McCulleys know about this?”

  “No. The suits are sitting on it. They’re afraid of the negative press.”

  Sam clenched her teeth. “I would love to burn every one of those sons of bitches.”

  “Me too,” Dan said.

  “I wish Wells and Stanley were still alive. I would love to kill them slowly.”

  Dan smiled. “Me too,” he said again.

  Sam frowned. “Wait a minute. This doesn’t make any sense. After Sarah Beth, the CIA worked their asses off to get me back on the case. Why would they do that if Wells was involved?”

  “Wells told Grange that Oren Stanley ordered the murder. Grange wanted to go after Stanley, but it would have been too obvious. So he and Wells shoved you back in play.”

  “He didn’t know Wells was dirty?”

  “Not at first.”

  Sam shook her head. “Still doesn’t make any sense,” she said. “Wells was complicit in the Doberman thing. We would have figured it out eventually and Wells would have been just as screwed as Stanley. Why would he push Grange to get us going again?”

  Dan smiled. “Great question. I bet you already know the answer.”

  Sam thought a moment. She tried to imagine the most cynical play, and it came to her: “Wells and Stanley were going to hang it all around Grange’s neck.”

  “Nice work,” Dan said with a smile. “Maybe you shouldn’t quit your job as an investigator.”

  “But Grange figured it out.”

  “Right.”

  Sam shook her head. “Still doesn’t work,” she said. “How the hell would they know when to set Grange up? They needed him to keep me on task, but how would they know if the investigation led me to them before they could burn Grange?”

  Dan looked at her. “They dedicated a lot of resources to following you around.”

  “Are you serious?”

  Dan nodded. “They were on you like flies on stink. More than a dozen operatives.”

  Sam shuddered. “Jesus. I didn’t have a clue. The last tail I spotted was in Izmir.”

  Dan nodded, not wanting to say the obvious.

  “Guess I wasn’t on my game,” Sam said.

  “I don’t know who would have been,” Dan said.

  Sam shook her head. “What about that phone conversation I taped in Izmir? The one with Jim Price? He said, ‘Stop her.’”

  “You only heard the last two words of the sentence. Wells actually told Price to not let anything stop her.”

  Sam shook her head and chuckled. “Holy hell,” she said. “What a mind screw.”

  Then she frowned. “Something’s still confusing me. Why would Grange agree to get me back on the case? Wasn’t he involved in the Doberman thing, too?”

  Dan shook his head. “Doesn’t look like it. He took over Hayward’s op for the ChemEspaña data, but he wasn’t involved in the Doberman crimes.”

  Sam chuckled. “What a goddamned yarn ball.”

  “Aren’t they all? But somehow Grange figured it out. While you and Hayward were storming the empty safe house, old Grange was busy taking a razor blade to the good senator’s neck.”

  Sam shook her head. “What an ugly business. Why the hell did I stay in it for all those years?”

  Dan shrugged and toyed with his beer bottle. The silence stretched. “Looking back, it doesn’t really seem worth it, does it?” he finally said.

  She shook her head, thinking of what she’d accomplished over the years, of what she and Dan had done together, of all the bastards they’d put out of business or put out of commission, but thinking mostly about what it had cost her.

  They grew quiet. Dan studied his beer bottle and Sam stared off into the distance.

  “What are you going to do?” Dan asked.

  She shook her head and shrugged.

  Dan put his arm around her shoulders and pulled her to him. “Whatever it is,” he said, “I’d never bet against you. Not in a million years.”

  Sam smiled. This time it reached all the way to her eyes.

  A note from the author

  Hello, and thank you for reading! Books are dirt cheap these days, but reading a novel is still a huge investment of our most precious asset: our time. I appreciate your time, and I hope you enjoyed this installment in the Sam Jameson series.

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  The events in the Blowback Protocol took a lot out of our heroine, and Sam is definitely on her heels and reeling from all the punches she endured. But rest assured that she still has all of the fight and fury that has made her a fan favorite over the years. In fact, she’s back in a new novel called BURN, which is ready for you RIGHT NOW!

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  I hope you enjoy Sam’s next adventure!

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  Until next time,

  Lars

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  Books by Amazon #1 Bestselling Author Lars Emmerich

  The Incident: Inferno Rising

  The Incident: Reckoning

  Fallout

  Descent

  Devolution

  Meltdown

  Mindscrew

  The Blowback Protocol

  Burn