“Shit,” Rule said.
“I don’t know why the Soviet guy raised his weapon, but Sam lost his composure at hearing that and pulled out his 9mm and shot the leader of the Soviet group.”
“And that’s what started the shooting outside?” I asked.
Uncle Happy nodded. “We all started shooting. We ran for cover outside, not knowing that school was starting that day. The Soviets came after us. They had guys outside and so did we. It was an all-out gun battle. Unfortunately, the kids and women across the street got caught in the middle.”
Uncle Happy paused almost as if he were reflecting on that day. I wasn’t sure how to feel. Our undercover agents were there for the betterment of our country, but in the end countless innocent lives were lost for no apparent reason.
“How did you know there was a tape?” Rule asked.
“I saw the guy shooting it. And after that, it wasn’t hard to learn who he was.”
“Why did one of your guys tell you that a plane was shot down right in the middle of negotiations?”
“The mission was led by Congressman Turner. He was ex-CIA. When confirmation came that the Soviets shot down the plane, he was worried that our identities would be compromised. So he relayed to our guys what had happened and told them to warn us.”
“Did my father blame Congressman Turner for what happened?”
“He did. He was furious. We all were. That’s not something you do when you know your team is in a heated negotiation with the enemy. It hurt us all for a long time that those people were killed.”
“So I did see what I saw,” Rule said, not really directing his statement to anyone. “My father did kill Congressman Turner.”
Uncle Happy’s eyes lit up, “What are you talking about, Rule? What did you see?”
“I saw my father kill Congressman Turner in the woods near our house.”
Uncle Happy leaned forward, “Are you sure?”
Rule nodded.
“Your father never saw you?”
“No.”
Uncle Happy rubbed his beard and nodded, “There’s a lot more to this, unfortunately.”
“Like what?” I asked.
“Like a few years before his death, we found out that Sam became a traitor.”
“You’re kidding,” Rule said.
“Wish I were. And it all started with his wife.”
If my mouth had been detached from my face, I would have had to pick it up off the floor.
Sixty-six
“At first it was about money,” Uncle Happy said. “Then it became about power.”
“What happened?” I asked.
“Let me first start by saying that when you’re in the spy business, if your sense of self becomes clouded by who you’re pretending to be, then it’s easy for the person you used to be to become the person you pretend to be.”
“So, Sam Cardinal let himself become his alter ego?”
Uncle Happy formed a gun with his hand again and pointed in my direction, “Bingo.”
“How’d you find out?” Rule asked.
“I didn’t, but your father did.”
Rule was sitting up in his seat, but when Uncle Happy said that Mr. Rule was the one who found out about Sam Cardinal, Rule leaned back as if he were expecting some heavy news to come his way.
“Turns out that Margaret had gotten them in some heavy financial trouble,” Uncle Happy said.
“What kind of financial trouble?” I asked.
Uncle Happy stared into my eyes and didn’t blink when he spoke again, “The kind that gets you killed, son.”
“I don’t understand,” Rule said. “The firm is doing well. My father has lots of money. How could she have gotten them into financial trouble?”
Uncle Happy sipped on his coffee again. By now mine had gotten a little cold, so I just set it on the coffee table.
“Contrary to what you may have known, Margaret Cardinal thrived off the fast life. And Sam appeased to her every desire. But for Margaret, Sam wasn’t enough. In the mid-nineties shortly after the First Gulf War, Sam was on a mission in Morocco, and Margaret was with him. Spouses normally don’t get involved in our business, but there are rare—and I mean extremely rare—conditions when they do.
We were trying to find the location of an arms dealer who we believed was building WMDs. Sam and Margaret were introduced to a wealthy and influential couple who were linked to another couple who we believed knew where the WMDs were being made. They created a friendship with this couple that lasted over a year. After a year or so went by, Sam convinced us that the couple was a dead lead. We had nearly twenty-four-hour surveillance on the couple, and they were as clean as they come. So we backed off them and focused on the other couple.
Fast forward five years, and Dennis finds out that Sam had secretly created another business account and had been moving money from one account to the next over a six-month period.”
“How’d he hide it from my dad for so long?”
“He was able to replace the money shortly after he moved it. But one time he didn’t replace it fast enough, and your father caught wind of the missing money. He approached Sam about it, and that’s when Sam told him what was happening.”
Uncle Happy cleared his throat.
“Turns out, the wealthy couple that we were following did indeed have ties to arms dealers and they brought Margaret and Sam in. Sam and Margaret were moving hundreds of thousands of dollars of inventory right under the CIA’s nose. Sam told your dad that the deals were getting too big, and it was getting harder for them to keep their secret a secret. He told your dad that they had paid off other agents who were helping them, but that the other agents were starting to get greedy and wanted more money.”
“What did my dad do?”
“What could he do? Sam was one of his best friends, but he also had an allegiance to the United States government. If he told on Sam, he’d be sending his best friend to jail for treason. If he didn’t then he’d be going against the oath that he swore to uphold.”
“You said that Margaret got them into financial trouble,” I said. “How much?”
“Over two million dollars.”
I shook my head.
“Two months later, Sam dies of a massive heart attack.”
“What happened to the debt?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t spoken to Margaret since Sam’s death.”
Rule stood up and paced across the room. His face was stern, and he was looking toward the ground as if he were reading words off the floor. After walking back and forth three times, he stopped and faced us.
“I remember a week or so after Mr. Cardinal’s heart attack, Mrs. Cardinal was over at my parents’ house. I had just pulled up in the driveway as my father was walking her to her car. They didn’t look happy, but I just assumed so because of the circumstance. When I went inside, my mom was sitting at the kitchen table kind of frowning. I asked her if everything was okay, and she said not really but that my dad would do what he always did and take care of the situation. Again, I thought she was just referencing the fact that Mr. Cardinal had suddenly died.”
“Do you think it was something else?” I said.
He rubbed his chin, “I don’t know. But for a few weeks, my father wasn’t acting right.”
“I would never have gotten that impression of her after today,” I said.
Uncle Happy’s eyes widened a little, “You saw Margaret today?”
I nodded, “We went by there.”
Uncle Happy sat up in his seat, “Why?”
“We wanted to see if any of our theories actually held water.”
“What did she say?”
“She was acting kind of strange. Like she couldn’t really talk. So I gave her a note to meet us in the city, but instead of her coming, two CIA agents came.”
Uncle Happy stood up, “Which two agents?”
“Small and Foxwood,” I said.
“Shit.” He looked toward the far window facing
the backyard. “You were followed.”
I looked at Rule with furrowed brows and then looked back to Uncle Happy. “I didn’t see anyone following us.”
He formed a gun with his fingers and pointed at me, “Exactly.”
Sixty-seven
“What do they want?” Rule asked.
Uncle Happy led us downstairs to the house’s unfinished basement. He moved with urgency once he touched upon the basement’s concrete floor.
“You know what they want.”
“The videotape,” I said.
Uncle Happy stopped at his workbench and opened a metal toolbox that was sitting in the center of the workbench. He shuffled through the toolbox until he found what he was looking for. I was expecting him to pull out a screwdriver or a wrench, but it looked like he pushed down on something, and then a second later I heard a click. I turned around, and a five-foot-high door opened in the cinder block wall. I don’t know if I would have noticed it there had I really been looking.
Uncle Happy motioned for us to follow his lead. He ducked past the door and disappeared into a dark room. I looked at Rule, and he shrugged his shoulders and then followed Uncle Happy.
“What kind of mess have I gotten myself into?” I said to myself.
I saw Rule disappear into the dark room, and then I followed shortly thereafter. I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised by the door in the wall. Uncle Happy was a CIA agent for over thirty years. If anyone knew how to get in and out of a room quickly it’d be him.
I ducked my head and walked into darkness. Ahead of me, Rule called back for me to stay low. I raised my hands over my head and quickly learned why. The ceiling to whatever I was in wasn’t much higher than the door. I walked about ten feet until I heard Uncle Happy and Rule talking in hushed tones. Suddenly the room became larger, and I was able to stand to full height.
“What is this?” I asked.
“Surveillance,” Uncle Happy said.
The room wasn’t much bigger than a large walk-in closet. Two flat screen monitors were set up on a brown desk. The walls seemed to be emitting a yellow glow of light that was just bright enough for us to see each other.
Uncle Happy sat in a chair and unfolded a keyboard in front of the two monitors. A few keystrokes on the keyboard, and the monitors came to life. One showed an aerial view of the property, and the other showed the same view but in red, blue, and orange thermal colors.
“Why did you build this?” I asked.
“What good spy doesn’t have a secret lair?” he said, smiling.
The images on the left monitor zoomed out to see a wider range of the woods, but unfortunately the only thing we could see were the tops of trees. Uncle Happy moved the cursor around until he saw the front house where Rule and I parked.
“They wouldn’t be stupid enough to come the way you guys came,” Uncle Happy said.
He typed a few more keystrokes on the keyboard, and then the right monitor changed to the same view as the left monitor.
“This satellite records in twenty-four hour increments. Let’s backtrack a little and see what we can see.”
A timer on the right monitor started moving in reverse until it reached the point that my car was driving along the main road, but driving backward. Uncle Happy clicked the mouse, and the monitor started going at a normal speed again. We saw my car turn into the driveway and then saw Rule and me get out. Seconds later, Rule and I entered the woods and the satellite feed lost us among the trees.
Uncle Happy kept the feed going. Ten seconds went by, and then a white Chevrolet Tahoe drove along the same road and slowed as it neared the driveway but then kept going.
“That’s them,” Uncle Happy said.
He caused the feed to go in reverse again, and the Tahoe started driving backward. The feed stopped, and then the Tahoe started driving forward. At a certain point, Uncle Happy paused the feed and then changed the viewing angle and zoomed in until the Tahoe was close enough that we could see the license plate. Uncle Happy took down the numbers, and then on the left monitor brought up a secure DMV page. He punched in the license plate numbers, and seconds later the registered owner of the Tahoe came up.
“Definitely them,” he said.
“How do you know?” Rule said. “The car is registered to a Roger Thomas.”
“It’s an inside joke some of us had at the agency. Work-related vehicles—we often registered them in the names of sitcom characters. Roger Thomas is the name of the guy from the show What’s Happening.
I shook my head. Guess the others guy’s car would be registered under the name Rerun.
“Let’s see where they went,” Uncle Happy said.
We followed the car as it drove for about another two miles and then turned onto a side road that led to an abandoned house. Small and Foxwood got out of the cars and then reached back in and pulled out rifles with scopes attached.
“Jesus,” I said.
“Yeah,” Uncle Happy replied.
“How long ago was this?” I asked.
“Thirty-four minutes.”
“How good are they with those rifles?”
Uncle Happy just looked at me with a raised right eyebrow.
“That good, huh?” I said.
“Yeah, that good. But we have the upper hand. We know they’re here.”
“But they could be anywhere near here by now. How are we going to find them?”
“We have time. The average walking speed for men of their size would be around four miles per hour. If they were walking on a flat road, they could do two miles in about thirty minutes. However, given that they’re walking in the woods with obstacles like tree branches and such to walk over, that would slow their speed to about two miles an hour. I’d say we have at least twenty minutes before they get here.”
“That gives us plenty of time to make it out,” I said.
“You could run, Jacob, but they’ll keep coming until they have what they want.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that Dennis meant the world to me. I know what they’re looking for and I know why. The problem is that no one knows where Dennis put the videotape. For all we know he could have destroyed it like he said he did.”
“They told us he didn’t,” I said.
“They were looking for Rule’s reaction. They’re CIA. They lie every day. They don’t know if the tape exists either, but whoever is paying them off believes that it does.”
“Do you know who’s paying them off?”
“I have a suspicion.”
I looked over at Rule and waited for his reaction. I knew what Uncle Happy was asking of us, but as much as I despised these guys for being traitors, the cop in me was fighting the notion of killing them in cold blood.
“Rule, I’ve always had your back,” I said. “What do you want to do?”
Uncle Happy changed the right monitor’s view to real time. He scanned the area where he thought that Small and Foxwood would be, but they were camouflaged by the trees.
“Let’s go after them,” Rule said. “Because Uncle Happy’s right. They won’t stop until they get what they want.”
I looked at both Rule and Uncle Happy. They stared back at me as if they were waiting for the green light. I felt like I was standing at a crossroad where both ways led to disaster. If I convinced Rule to leave, we’d have two CIA agents after us as well as the Russian Mafia. If I stayed, then I’d be going against everything that I was sworn to uphold as a cop.
“Who else is on the videotape?” I said.
Uncle Happy hesitated before standing up. He understood what I was asking. Rule’s family wasn’t killed because Rule’s father was one of the men caught on video. Rule’s family was killed because someone else was on the video.
“Jacob,” Uncle Happy said in a calm and pleasant voice, “I say this with all sincerity. If I tell you, I’ll have to kill you.”
Uncle Happy didn’t smile after he said the words, like most people do when they joke a
round with that phrase. I knew that he was serious. And if he couldn’t tell us who else was on the videotape, then there was no way I could let Small and Foxwood ever get their hands on it.
“We’ll need guns,” I said.
Uncle Happy smiled, “Now that’s the easy part.”
Sixty-eight
Small and Foxwood were smart, but Uncle Happy knew the layout of the woods better than anyone. His secret lair, as he called it, was equipped with more than what the eye could see. The back wall opposite of the computers opened to a display of rifles and handguns. He handed Rule and me both a Barett M107 sniper rifle with a scope attached.
“Don’t worry,” he said, “these are untraceable.”
“How did I know you were going to say that?” I said.
Uncle Happy smiled.
He opened another closet in the wall and pulled out camouflage, long sleeve shirts and Kevlar vests. Before going upstairs, Uncle Happy went back to the computers and brought up various images of the woods.
“I have cameras scattered around,” he said.
He clicked a few keystrokes on the keyboard, and the left monitor’s image turned into eight smaller boxes of various angles in the woods.
He pointed to two boxes, “These are a thousand yards out in their direction.” He looked at his watch and then back toward the monitors. “We’ve got about nine minutes before they cross here. Our best shots are going to come from here.” He pointed to two other boxes on the screen. “Rule, do you recognize where these spots are?”
Rule leaned in and looked at the images. “Think so. That’s where Dad took down that deer couple years back.”
“Good memory. That’s where you’re going to be. Take Jacob to this spot,” he pointed to another box on the screen, “and then you’ll be in good position to take them down.”
“Where are you going to be?” I asked.
“Here. I can see them coming and let you know when to take the shot.”
The Game of Life or Death: A Detective Series of Crime and Suspense Thrillers (The Jacob Hayden Series Book 3) Page 16