by Stephen Frey
“The plane had a small problem. They’re replacing a part. It’s a long flight across the Atlantic, and they’ve got to make sure the thing’s in top condition when it takes off.”
“Damn it!”
“Relax. The jet’s at an airport outside Philadelphia. Once it’s fixed it’ll be to you in north Jersey in no time. Do you hear me? In no time.”
CHAPTER 33
“YOU CHEATED on me, you bastard ! I give you everything, I put up with all the shit that comes along with being Troy Jensen’s girlfriend, and then you fuck some Spanish whore. That’s how you thank me? That’s what I get for loving you as much as a woman can possibly love a man?”
“Jennie, I—”
“That’s what I get for seeing you a few days a month, maybe, and getting half your attention when I do see you. For never knowing where you really are or who you’re really with when you’re away because everything is this huge secret with you that I can’t know anything about because I can’t be trusted.”
“It wasn’t about trust. It was about—”
“That’s the thanks and the love I get in return for being completely dedicated and totally loyal to you? I hate you, Troy!”
“How did you know where I was?”
“I saw pictures of you fucking her in Barcelona,” Jennie sobbed, tears welling in her eyes before spilling down her cheeks in pulsing streams. “Graphic pictures, and don’t even try to deny it. I recognized you in those photos right away. How could I not? And who knows how many other women you’ve been screwing in the last nine months?”
“No, I meant how do you know I was in Spain?” Troy demanded, leaning down so he was face-to-face with her as she sat in the chair of the run-down, fifth-floor apartment. “That’s what I need to know.” The place was vacant, and the chair in the middle of the bare room was the only stick of furniture in the entire apartment. “Who told you?” he demanded. “Who’s your source? Tell me, goddamn it!”
“I’m not going to tell you anything after what you’ve—”
“You’d better, Jennie.”
“Or what?”
“Or I could let your imagination wander for a week and you still wouldn’t come up with half the things I could do to make you talk.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“Try me. I want my boy back, and I don’t care what I have to do to get him, especially to the people responsible for taking him from me.”
Troy was going at her hard, and Jack wanted to have compassion for Jennie. But he couldn’t. She’d set up Karen and Little Jack to be kidnapped. She’d admitted that terrible truth a few minutes ago, as soon as Troy had forced her into the chair. It was as if she couldn’t wait to tell him what she’d done.
They’d brought her to this run-down tenement deep in the heart of Brooklyn after grabbing her in the Manhattan parking garage. Without her knowing, Troy had programmed her cell phone at the beginning of their relationship so he could track her movements everywhere. It hadn’t taken them long to catch up with her once they were in the city.
Jack would have thought Troy was paranoid for doing that to Jennie’s phone—before tonight. Now he figured Troy was just being smart and careful—as it seemed his younger brother always was. Troy was an RC7 agent, and he was suspicious of everyone, because he had to be. It made Jack wonder about his own phone.
Red Cell Seven used this Brooklyn tenement as a location to interrogate, Jack assumed, or to hole up. Troy hadn’t said that, but it was obvious he’d been here before. More than once, Jack was guessing from the confident way his brother had driven the SUV to this place without needing GPS or a map.
“A little bird told me you were there with that bitch in Spain,” Jennie shot back in a quivering voice, rising up and taking a step toward the room’s lone door.
Jack moved in front of it so she couldn’t get out, hoping he wouldn’t have to get physical with her.
He didn’t have to worry. Troy pushed her back down into the chair before she got far.
“Don’t do that again,” Troy warned as she shook his hand violently from her arm. “You’ll be sorry if you do.”
“Sorrier than I am now?”
“Much.”
“How would that be possible?”
“Like I said, try me.”
“Easy, brother,” Jack called. He couldn’t imagine Troy using the same tactics on Jennie that he would on terrorists. But then, she’d set his one-year-old son up to be kidnapped, and emotions in this room were running hot. There would be no guarantees, he realized uncomfortably, thinking about what he’d wanted to do when Jennie had admitted to also being part of Karen’s disappearance. “Easy,” he murmured again, more to himself than Troy this time.
“No, I won’t. L.J. and Karen have been taken because of her, and we don’t have any way of—” Troy stopped short when his phone buzzed. He pulled it out of his pocket. “Jesus,” he muttered as he scanned the tiny screen.
Jack’s phone went off a moment later. “They want a hundred grand for Karen,” he said as he read the message. “Is that what you just got, a ransom demand for L.J.?”
“No,” Troy answered sharply, shoving the phone back into his pocket. “No, it wasn’t.” He turned his attention on Jennie again. “Tell me who your contact is. Tell me who has L.J. and Karen. Tell me where they are. I want names, phone numbers, and addresses right now!”
“I hate you, Troy. You cheated on me.”
“You have no—”
“And you murdered my cousin Lisa.”
Jack’s eyes raced to Jennie’s, then to Troy’s. She definitely had that one wrong. Jack was pretty sure the whole cheating thing was a sham, too, but he knew for a fact that the murder accusation was way off.
“How could you kill Lisa?” Jennie cried as she beat Troy about the arms and chest over and over with her small fists as he knelt in front of her. “He was Little Jack’s mother.”
“How could you set L.J. up to be kidnapped? He’s your family.”
“Because he’s your son, Troy. Because him being gone causes you the same pain you caused me. It tears a hole in your heart, just like the one you’ve torn in mine.” She let her face fall into her hands. “Murderer!”
“Wait a minute.” Jack hustled over to the chair. Until now, he hadn’t said a word. But he couldn’t let this go any longer. “I know for a fact Troy didn’t—”
“Stay out of this, Jack, or she’ll—”
“I’m not gonna let her say that, Troy.”
“The same people who showed me pictures of you screwing that bitch told me what really happened to Lisa.” Jennie kept going, ignoring Jack. “They told me you killed her, Troy. They showed me you cheating. Why shouldn’t I believe them? They have proof. You have lies.”
“He didn’t kill Lisa.”
“Shut up, Jack! You’re just covering for him because he’s your brother.”
“I was there, Jennie. I could have been killed, too.”
“Troy was in Alaska,” Jack continued. “I was with Lisa that day, right before she died. Troy was four thousand miles away.”
“I don’t believe you. You’re just lying to—”
“I’m not lying.”
“Then maybe you killed her.”
Jack took a step back, as if Jennie had physically hit him. He’d known her for nine months. Not that well, of course, but she’d always been nice to him, and Troy seemed to adore her. This wasn’t the woman he’d come to know since last December. It was as if he didn’t know her at all anymore. Thinking Troy had cheated on her had completely changed her.
“It’s not as if you’re a saint, either, Jennie.”
Jennie gazed up at Troy. “What?” she whispered.
“You cheated, too.” The room went tomb-still as Troy took his turn to prosecute. “I have pictures, too, of every inch of your body with some
one else.”
“You’re lying again,” Jennie snapped after a few seconds. “It’s pathetic.”
She was trying to seem defiant and unaffected, but that missile Troy launched had shocked her. It was all over her expression and inside her voice. Jack’s gaze dropped to the floor. Troy had just admitted to what she’d accused him of. He’d heard that “too.” It was hard to believe.
“You want to see for yourself?” Troy pulled his phone from his pocket again. “You want to see yourself wrapped around that guy you work with at—”
“Shut up!” she screamed. “Shut up, Troy,” she murmured a second time as gut-wrenching sobs wracked her body again. “You were gone so much. I was just . . . lonely. I . . . I . . .” Jennie leaned down and buried her face in her hands again. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
BILL AWOKE with a start. In his nightmare Rita Hayes had been making love to him passionately, until Maddux had appeared like a ghost in the bedroom he and Rita were using—which, he realized now that things were coming into focus, he’d never been in or even seen before.
In the dream Maddux had shot Rita as she lay on the bed beside Bill, and then turned the gun on him. Bill had awakened just as Maddux was squeezing the trigger.
He shook his head and glanced down at the .44 Magnum lying on the table. Though he’d fought exhaustion hard, he’d nodded off a few minutes ago here in the cabin’s main room, in the chair he’d been sitting in when Maddux had left. And now an eerie feeling was rolling through his body.
Though it wasn’t that typical post-nightmare weirdness and then relief he usually experienced, as he came to consciousness and realized he wasn’t actually going through anything terrible. It was something else he was feeling now—like he was being watched.
He stretched his aching body for a moment and then reached for the gun. He was just on edge from everything that was going on. That’s all this was.
“Stop right there,” a voice ordered from behind him. “Pick up that gun and you’re a dead man.”
“Okay,” Bill agreed, trying to calm his suddenly wildly beating heart, pulling his fingers back deliberately, and holding up his arms as cold steel pressed to the nape of his neck. “Let’s not do anything rash.”
“I never do.”
“Who am I speaking to?” Bill asked as the steel withdrew from his neck and a slender figure moved past him in the moonlight streaming through the window beside the table. He lowered his arms as the woman picked up the .44 off the table. “What’s going on?”
“I’m here on direct orders from President Dorn,” Skylar answered as she slipped the big gun into her belt at the small of her back, even as she kept her pistol trained on Bill. “The president has informed me that you’re part of a conspiracy that is trying to assassinate him. That, in fact, you’re one of the conspiracy’s leaders.” She paused. “I’m here to kill you, Mr. Jensen, before you can kill the president.”
“Commander McCoy.” Despite knowing for sure he’d surprised her all to hell by knowing her name, Bill had to give her credit. She wasn’t showing it. “It’s an honor to meet you.”
“How do you know who I am?” she asked.
It was as if he’d just ratcheted her burning distrust of him to an even higher level by knowing her name. “I’m assuming that if David Dorn explained his paranoid delusions about us trying to assassinate him, he explained who we are.”
“Red Cell Seven.”
“That’s right,” Bill confirmed, “and that’s how I know who you are.”
“What do you mean?”
“We’ve never had a woman inside RC7, not in over forty years. But we’ve been seriously considering you for a while. So I’m quite familiar with who you are. In fact, I’ve seen your photograph several times, recently, too. And let me tell you, your reputation precedes you. When you allow yourself to be preceded, that is,” Bill added with a soft chuckle. “It doesn’t surprise me that President Dorn chose you for this. You have a kind of supernatural aura about you, I’d been told. I was skeptical, of course. Not now,” he admitted, shaking his head. “How you found me here, I have no idea.”
“If you’ve been considering me for a while, why haven’t you asked me to join the cell yet?”
Bill glanced at the silencer affixed to the end of Commander McCoy’s pistol. “Because some of the men inside RC7 are afraid of that aura I mentioned. It intimidates them.”
“Is that a polite way of telling me you don’t think a woman can do what a man can?”
“No, Commander McCoy. It’s a polite way of telling you that some of my men are insecure.” It was tight-lipped, but Bill saw a look of satisfaction flash briefly across Skylar’s pretty face. “How’d you find me?”
“I killed a man named John Ward,” she answered directly.
Bill’s posture stiffened at the admission.
“Apparently,” Skylar continued, “Ward had met with you recently, and he was careless about it. There was collateral in his pocket about that meeting that led me here.”
“How did you know John Ward was with Red Cell Seven?”
“Stewart Baxter gave me a list of all the RC7 agents.”
“Has Dorn convinced you to kill all RC7 agents?” Bill asked. “Has he declared war on us?”
“He’s convinced me that every person inside this cell, including you, is a traitor.”
“President Dorn is the traitor,” Bill retorted calmly. “Make no mistake about that, Commander.”
“I don’t think so. Your son, Troy, murdered my younger sister, Bianca. President Dorn confirmed that for me. Only a traitor would do that.”
“What in God’s name are you talking about?”
“Don’t give me that. You get no government funding for Red Cell Seven.”
“That is true,” Bill agreed, “because it helps us stay hidden, which I’m sure you can appreciate. So what?”
“So you fund your unit by selling weapons to outlaw nations.”
“I’m afraid President Dorn and his chief of staff have sold you a serious pack of—”
“You arrange the sales and skim a piece of the profits to bankroll Red Cell Seven. Just like President Reagan’s crew did with Iran-Contra.”
“What does any of that crap have to do with your ridiculous claim about my son killing your younger sister?”
“My father discovered what you and Red Cell Seven were doing. That you were selling arms illegally. You had my sister killed in Alaska for revenge when you found out he’d reported you.”
“That’s absurd, Commander. It wouldn’t matter to me what your father had discovered about RC7. We’re immune from prosecution of any kind. We can do anything we want.” Technically, Bill shouldn’t have said that. But this situation called for desperate measures. “Or did President Dorn fail to mention that?”
“You’re immune from prosecution of any kind?”
“Yes.”
“That’s rich, Mr. Jensen.”
Desperate measures might also require showing her the last original Order, which was hidden back in his room. Of course, if she wasn’t convinced, and she took it with her, Red Cell Seven would be completely vulnerable to President Dorn.
“If you’ll give me a second, I can prove—”
“Sit down,” Skylar ordered loudly as Bill began to rise from the chair. “Are you denying that you’ve sold weapons to outlaw nations?”
As he eased back into the chair, Bill thought hard about his answer. The president might have given Commander McCoy irrefutable evidence of what they’d done in the early days to funnel cash into RC7’s numbered accounts. If Dorn had given her that proof, and Bill denied what she’d accused him of, he’d lose his credibility—and probably his life.
“I’m not denying it,” he said quietly. “But we stopped doing that a long time ago. Once I found well-heeled angels in the private sector,
we didn’t need to do that anymore. In fact, Ollie North got the idea from me after we’d stopped doing it. I regret it, but it got us off the ground. And I doubt President Dorn told you this, but Red Cell Seven has saved this country’s ass many times since it was founded in the early seventies.”
“You missed on 9/11. And the Holiday Mall Attacks.”
Bill’s eyes narrowed. Skylar McCoy had a compelling existential irreverence, even as she pointed that revolver at him. An irreverence that came from ultimate confidence in herself, he knew. He’d seen that same thing before in just two people—Shane Maddux and Troy Jensen.
“We did miss on 9/11,” he admitted. “Everyone did. But the Holiday Mall Attacks would have gone on for quite some time without us. We figured out who was behind them, and we stopped them immediately.
“I could take a few hours of your time to describe all the other potential attacks we’ve intercepted,” Bill continued. “But I know how valuable your time is, so I’ll give you just the highlights, instead. First, we intercepted an assault on the Nyack nuclear power plant across from New York City, and we—”
“This won’t keep me from—”
“And we uncovered a plot to set off missiles of the old Soviet Union, which could have caused world war.”
The barrel of Skylar’s gun dropped down slightly. “You know about that, too?” she murmured.
“I knew about it before anyone else on our side did.” Bill hesitated. “Except, of course, John Ward, because he was the one who uncovered what was going on and which missiles were going to be set off by the terrorists.”
He’d just scored another direct hit, Bill saw. She’d killed the man who’d stopped an almost unimaginable threat to the United States. If she was any kind of patriot, she had to feel at least some sense of guilt at this point.
“How was your father supposed to have found out about the arms sales I arranged?” Bill asked.
“He was a crab boat captain on the Bering Sea. But he worked covertly for the ONI out there, too. One night he picked up the wrong man, and the guy—”
“Wait a minute. Your father was Kevin McCoy, captain of the Alaskan Star?”