The Patriot Paradox

by William Esmont

  The Patriot Paradox

  by

  William Esmont

  eBook Edition 2.0, May 2011

  Copyright © 2010 by William Esmont

  All rights reserved.

  www.williamesmont.com

  Also by William Esmont:

  Fire: Elements of the Undead - Book One

  Self Arrest

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  For Robin, who continues to support my quest to become a fulltime author. And for my parents, who taught me the value of a good story. I’d also like to give special thanks to Gretchen Cooke, Becky Smith, and Don Query for taking the time to critique this novel as it evolved. This wouldn’t be possible without your input. Finally, I’d like to thank Chris Muller, who took a mediocre cover and made it shine. Thank you!

  One

  Mike Vetter hated this kind of weather. Rain. Endless, miserable rain. Relentless torrents of misery pissed from swollen black clouds above the treetops. Aside from the occasional flash of chalky white lightning and the pathetic illumination from his headlights, he could see nothing of the road ahead.

  This is what it feels like to drown.

  He tightened his grip on the steering wheel and peered through the furious slip-slap of his wipers. He blinked and rubbed his eyes. Red lights twinkled through the shifting curtains of rain.

  “Shit!” Mike jumped on the clutch and brake simultaneously with all of his might. His Audi hydroplaned for an interminable moment, the rear end threatening to break loose, and then juddered hard as the tires bit pavement and the antilock brakes kicked in. A moment later, he jolted to a stop inches behind an old Ford Explorer.

  He tensed, bracing for impact from the rear. When it didn’t come, Mike opened his eyes in time to see a semi-trailer roar by on his left, missing his side mirror by inches. He checked his rear-view mirror and breathed a sigh of relief. It was clear.

  The traffic lurched to life again, and Mike pushed the Audi back up to speed. Through a brief gap in the rain, he saw what he had been looking for, an office park at the bottom of the next exit ramp.

  Almost missing his turn, he cut across two lanes of traffic, triggering a barrage of angry horn blasting. A minute later, he pulled to a stop a few yards short of a lone FedEx drop box and knocked his car into neutral.

  He looked around to make sure he was alone, then opened his glove box and dug out a small flash memory card. He placed it in the FedEx envelope in his lap and sealed the envelope tight, going over it twice to make sure it was secure. As an afterthought, he took his gun from the front seat and stuffed it into the glove box.

  He fished a billing label from his pocket and jotted down a long string of digits. The account number was stolen, but the seller from Craigslist had guaranteed it would be good for at least a week. That was six days more than he needed. He paused for a moment, tapping his pen against the steering wheel and chewing his lip as he considered whether he had made the right decision.

  “Screw it.” He scribbled a name and address on the label and stuffed it into the pouch on the front of the envelope. He inched the car forward until he reached the drop box.

  The rain swept in, drenching him to the skin as his window descended. He stretched out, stuffed the envelope into the drop box slot, and jabbed the window button, restoring the barrier between him and the storm.

  Mike got back onto the interstate. This is it. Technically, he had committed high treason. Was it really treason, though, if he was doing the right thing? If he was the only one willing to stop a lunatic? A wave of doubt washed over him. Maybe we were right. Maybe. He pushed the thoughts aside. It didn’t matter anymore.

  He saw a hole in the traffic and mashed down on the accelerator. He drove on autopilot for the next twenty minutes, not really paying attention to where he was going, just moving.

  The rain tapered off as he approached the Haymarket exit. His car chimed, jolting him back to the moment. “What the hell?” He checked the instrument cluster and saw that the fuel light was on. Scanning the road ahead, he saw a well-lit, but empty BP station at the bottom of the exit. He cut the wheel hard and darted down the ramp and into the station, pulling around to the pumps farthest from the highway.

  Mike killed the engine, got out of the car, and reached for the premium nozzle. On the other side of the island, a metallic-blue Cadillac sedan rolled to a stop, wet tires chirping on the dry cement pad. Startled, Mike turned at the noise. Riding low to the ground, the Caddy looked fast even standing still. On any other day, he would have been impressed. Turning back to his pump, he swiped his credit card and stabbed the nozzle into his tank. From the other car, he heard the hum of an electric window rolling down. He glanced over, curious.

  “Mike Vetter.” It was more of a statement than a question. The man who had spoken from the front passenger seat was about Mike’s age, clean-cut and nondescript with shaggy brown hair and a medium build. Agency.

  A wave of crippling nausea washed through him as he realized they had caught up with him. He was going to die right here, right now. Years of training kicked in, sending him scurrying away from the Cadillac, seeking cover behind a thick concrete pillar that stretched from the ground to the roof far above. My gun, he thought in a panic, it’s in the car!

  Peeking around the pillar, he saw the man in the Cadillac signal to his driver. Mike made a break for his Audi. With a guttural roar, the Cadillac jumped forward and cut hard to the right, blocking his exit.

  At that moment, Mike reached his door and hauled on the handle. Some sense of morbid curiosity, however, made him look up at the Cadillac. Mike recognized the look, the dead eyes, the feigned indifference at the razor-thin line between life and death. It was impossible to miss, for it was the same look he himself had cultivated a lifetime ago as a new CIA recruit at Langley.

  He froze. That was all the time the man in the Cadillac needed. As Mike stared, the man drew a compact matte-black pistol from his jacket, leveled it at Mike’s face, and pulled the trigger.

  Mike’s last thoughts, of his wife and children, flew through the back of his skull at four hundred and fifty feet per second.

  Two

  “Una más, por favor,” Kurt mumbled from the end of the bar as he raised his glass toward the pretty bartender. She nodded. No more than nineteen, her dark eyes lingered on him just a little too long, probably curious as to what he was doing in this corner of Peru.

  She topped off his glass, giving it a slight twist at the end to bust the foam, and slid it across the scarred bar to his waiting hand. “Veinte soles, señor,” she said, with a demure smile.

  He fished a tattered wad of bills from an inner pocket of his leather jacket, ruffled through them, squinting in the dingy light of the bar, and handed over a hundred Sole note. “Muchas gracias.”

  Her eyes lit up at the sight of the cash, and she straightened and threw her shoulders back, giving him a spectacular view of her cleavage. Her flirting wasn’t lost on Kurt, but instead of acknowledging it, he took his beer, turned, and ambled out the front door.

  She has potential, he noted, and she’s definitely interested.

  “Señor!” Kurt turned and found the bartender at his side, holding a crumpled fistful of bills, his change.

  He waved her off with a smile. “No. Gracias. For you. Muchas gracias.”

  He didn’t have to tell her twice. With a sly grin, the girl tucked the money into her blouse. “Gracias señor. I very much thank—” He dismissed her with a friendly wave, handed her his half-empty glass, and continued on his way.

  He was tired. Tired of the road, tired of drinking his days away alo
ne and waking up with a different woman every week. It was a fatigue he never could have anticipated, and he couldn’t figure out how to take the next step, to move beyond it. This trip was supposed to be his salvation, a chance to reconnect with the world and rediscover who he was. Instead, it had turned into a slow grind that was killing him.

  Shielding his eyes against the early afternoon sun, Kurt paused outside the door and scanned the plaza spread before him. Blue tarps dominated the vista. Stretched across makeshift stalls, they served as storefronts for the hundreds of vendors hawking their wares to the tourists who flowed through the city on the way to and from the Inca trail. The tarp closest to him chuffed as a gust of wind caught it from below, reminding him of the sound of sails snapping tight at the Chesapeake Harbour Marina.

  No. He shook his head. I’m sick of this goddamned place. He turned to the right and picked his way down the fractured sidewalk toward a side street that led to a park that didn’t allow street vendors. Kurt was relieved to discover that the park was mostly deserted. Aside from a young mother and her three children, he was alone.

  He chose a bench on the far side, more for the view of the mountains towering over the city than for its comfort, and took a seat. The three children scurried around the plaza chasing pigeons and screaming in delight every time they got close. Their mother appeared content to let her children burn off their energy, as she split her time between a magazine and watching them play.

  Despite the blazing sun high overhead, the air still held a slight chill. Kurt shrugged back into his jacket, leaving it unzipped in a fruitless attempt to achieve a comfortable temperature. As he fiddled with his zipper, his wrist bumped against the mobile phone stashed in his breast pocket. He took it out. It had been three full weeks, no, four, since he had last spoken with anyone back home.

  He flipped the phone open with his thumb and pressed the power button. It took only a moment for the phone to come to life and snatch a signal from the thin mountain air. Once it did, he saw that he had a voicemail. He accessed his voicemail and put the phone to his ear.

  There was the usual burst of machine-gun Spanish as the automated recording told him how to place a call on his home network. He already knew the routine.

  “You have two new messages; press one to listen to your new messages,” said the soothing computer voice on the other end.

  He pressed one before the voice could list the other options.

  After the date and time information, he heard, “Kurt. Hey. It’s me. Listen. I’ve got to talk to you.” There was a long silence. “It’s really important. Call me as soon as you get this.” Kurt made a mental note to call his brother as he deleted the message.

  The next was from his mother. “Kurt. There’s been an accident. Mike—he’s dead. Please, please come home.” Her voice dissolved into sobs, and a moment later, his father came on. “Kurt, it just happened. We don’t know the details yet.” His father’s voice choked up for a moment, and then continued, “Call me when you get this.”

  Kurt closed his eyes and bit back a scream. He didn’t delete this message. He closed the phone and, staring at the mountains high above without seeing them, he slumped on the bench. His stomach roiled, and he felt as if he were about to vomit. With a concentrated effort, he managed to swallow back the bile that had crept up his throat, associating the sour taste with the direction his life had taken.

  His trip was over; that much was clear. It was time to leave.

  Three

  Jack Carson hoisted himself from his chair and went to the tinted window overlooking the lush green lawns surrounding the CIA campus. A steady rain fell, but nothing like the night before. He returned to his desk, settling into the plush, black leather executive chair that was his home away from home.

  At sixty-one years old, Jack was a big fish in the small pond of the National Clandestine Service, the arm of the Central Intelligence Agency responsible for in-field intelligence gathering. The spies. He had entered the agency thirty-five years earlier, straight out of Harvard Law, after deciding a career wearing a suit for the FBI wasn’t for him. A veteran of the Cold War, he had completed tours of duty in several Eastern Bloc and Southeast Asian countries before finally succumbing to the lure of a stable desk job. Despite the comfortable life within the CIA management structure, a fire still burned deep within, an all-consuming desire to finish the war his government had all but forgotten.

  Standing a hair over six foot three, with a full head of steel-gray hair and a razor-sharp intellect, Jack cut an imposing figure within the halls of the agency. He was comfortable with his power and had no compunction about wielding his considerable influence to further his goals.

  With a deep sigh, Jack picked up his phone and punched in a four-digit number. “My office. Bring Mason.”

  A minute later, there was a knock on his door. “Come in,” he bellowed.

  The door opened without a sound, and a man and a woman entered, the woman pushing the door shut behind her. Only thirty-one-years-old, Helen Bartholomew was an accomplished field agent with extensive experience hunting terrorists in the former Russian republics. She was also a savant at intelligence synthesis, able to see through the torrent of data that inundated the agency and pick and choose the pieces she needed. That was the reason Jack had pulled her into his division in the first place. On the pretty side of beautiful, she was the quintessential spy, able to blend into almost any crowd and learn any language.

  The man beside her was another story altogether. Mason Perot was short and swarthy and always had an easy grin on his face. Ruthless, yet dependable, he had served with Helen on several missions and he knew how to make things happen.

  Since the pair had begun working for him, Jack had suspected some sort of romantic entanglement, but he had never been able to put his finger on it. Regardless, they worked well together, and that was the only thing that mattered.

  He reached under his desk and pressed a discreet button connected to a white noise generator. Although the office was soundproofed and swept for electronic listening devices daily, he felt there was no such thing as too much privacy. “Have a seat,” he said, waving at the chairs opposite his desk.

  Helen sat and crossed her legs. Mason’s girth made it a tight fit in his chair, and he grumbled as he squeezed himself in.

  “I just got off the phone with our friends,” Jack said. “Everything is in place.”

  Helen and Mason both nodded, waiting for the other shoe to drop. They knew Jack wouldn’t have called them in for a routine status update. They were right.

  Jack adjusted his tie and narrowed his eyes. “What I need to know from the two of you is why in the hell I have complete operational control on the other side of the planet, yet one of my own people can walk out of the front of this agency with our entire plan in his back pocket? What the fuck is up with that?”

  Helen and Mason shared a quick glance. Helen cleared her throat. “Jack,” she said in a deferential tone, “you know how it went down. After we took Vetter out, we had less than two minutes before the local police arrived. We searched him. He was clean.”

  “She’s right,” Mason added. He had been the one to search Mike Vetter’s body and vehicle after the shooting.

  Jack clucked his tongue in frustration. “It doesn’t make any sense. He carried classified information out of my office!”

  Helen held up one hand. “Hold on, Jack. There was something.” She fished in her pocket and pulled out a long string of white paper with a tab on one end and a hint of blue lettering along its length.

  “What’s that?” Jack asked, anger morphing into curiosity.

  “It’s a zipper from a FedEx envelope. It was on his front seat.”

  “Now we’re getting somewhere.” He let a half-smile slip onto his face. “Was there any sign of the envelope?”

  Helen shook her head. “No.” His smile vanished.

  “There are sixty-one FedEx drop off points between here and where we took him down,” Mas
on volunteered, looking up from his tablet.

  Jack leaned back in his chair, put his elbows on the armrests and steepled his fingers. “Interesting.” Jack stood and went back to the window. He stared out for a moment, considering the possibilities, then turned back. “Put a trace on his immediate family and associates. We need to know if anyone receives a package from him in the next day or two.”

  Helen smiled. “Already done. We’ve got his family as well as his civilian acquaintances covered.”

  “Can we trace the packages shipped from those locations?”

  “Not without a warrant.”

  Jack raised an eyebrow.

  “There’s no visibility until they reach the pickup center. We were too late.”

  “Okay. What about the other carriers? UPS and DHL?”

  “Covered.”

  “Good.” Jack took a seat on the edge of his desk. “Consider this your top priority,” he said, alternating his gaze between the two agents. “Until we understand where the information went, our entire plan is in jeopardy.”

  Helen asked, “Have you heard from Fish?”

  Fisher “Fish” Coldwell was the third person in Jack’s leadership triumvirate, the yin to Jack’s yang and a royal pain in Mike Vetter’s ass. Where Mike had ethics, Fish had none.

  “No,” Jack lied. “Not a word.”

  “I thought you said you just spoke with —”

  Jack cut her off. “No. That was another asset in the field. None of your concern.”

  She frowned, obviously frustrated at his answer.

  “Is that it?” Mason asked.

  “Yes. We’ll talk later.”

  Four

  Kurt pulled his jacket and helmet on, and in a well-practiced motion, slung his leg over the saddle, taking care not to catch it on the bulky silver panniers protruding from the rear of the machine. He detached the key from the lanyard around his neck, jabbed it into the ignition, and fired up the bike with his right thumb. It came to life with the same buzz and clatter he had grown to love over the past months.