Camp Valor

by Scott McEwen

  “Have You Seen This Boy?” the headline read. “Friends and foster care officials have reported teen Eldon Waanders missing. The 14-year-old, who is 5’10” with sandy blond hair, was last seen leaving the Pound Ridge Sheriff’s Office on Thanksgiving Day. Please call the sheriff’s office with any information on his whereabouts.”

  The article had been converted from microfiche to digital and was especially grainy. The photo depicted a surly teenage boy taken from a school photo. It looked like Eldon Waanders could have been Chris Gibbs. Even the Glowworm thought it probable.

  The problem with confirming the match was that a search for Eldon Waanders produced a second article. This one from December 23, 1982. “Body of Missing Boy Found.” The article went on to give details: “As we enter the holiday season, the town of Pound Ridge is struck by tragedy. On Wednesday morning, the body of Eldon Waanders was discovered in an abandoned vehicle off Hollings Road. The teen, a habitual runaway, had been missing since Thanksgiving Day. His body was identified by Sheriff Marion Bouchard, cause of death ruled as accidental carbon monoxide poisoning. Eldon had been taking shelter in an abandoned cargo van during the blizzard last week. He appears to have used a gas camping stove for heat as temperatures reached record lows. It is believed he sealed all doors and windows to conserve heat, unaware he was endangering himself.”

  The article contained memorial service and burial details. Pablo’s team found copies of Eldon’s birth and death certificates. Eldon Waanders had been fourteen when he died—a year and a half before Chris Gibbs attended boarding school. A frustratingly close match, the evidence seemed to point to a dead end, but it occurred to Pablo that Chris Gibbs had faked his death before. If he did it once, he could do it again. The new lead was not completely dead, but stalled until they could gather more information. Breaking this news to the Glowworm, however, was a different story.

  Though the lead might still bear fruit, it was a failure, even if temporary. And as punishment for failure, the Glowworm, hacker that he was, let Raquel hack off Pablo’s left leg below the knee. She used a tourniquet and her paring knife. Hurt like hell. Looked even worse.

  And they ate his old hairy leg. Or rather, the girl ate some, and the Glowworm ingested it after it was blended into a slurry with farro and pumped into his stomach. In a show of self-serving magnanimity, the Glowworm had Pablo given antibiotics and outfitted with one of the world’s most advanced prostheses, so Pablo could get around efficiently. The leg episode, however, had served its purpose. Pablo no longer had any fear of dying. He only feared underperforming.

  * * *

  While his team scoured the digital universe for any information about Chris Gibbs, Pablo set another, more traditional strategy in motion. He went old-school, convincing the Glowworm to put some money behind the problem. Pablo put out a bounty.

  Working on the assumption that if the real Chris Gibbs might still be working for a U.S. spy agency, Pablo believed that someone out there in the criminal-spy underworld would know of him. And could be tempted into selling that information.

  Through some of his oldest and sleaziest contacts at the Russian Federal Security Service and Foreign Intelligence Service, Pablo set out the bait. Fifteen million dollars to anyone who could deliver Chris Gibbs dead. Forty million, if they could bring him in alive. With the online and offline strategies in play, Pablo believed finding information leading to Chris Gibbs would be a matter of time.

  Pursuing the program that trained Gibbs, on the other hand, was a trickier proposition. In the case of Gibbs, Pablo had evidence a person actually existed. He had attended a boarding school, had sucked up to the Glowworm and gotten invited to join the Degas family on Spring Break. Pablo had talked to him, watched him play video games, was asked to cook breakfast for him one morning. Point being, Gibbs was an entity Pablo had observed.

  The training program, on the other hand, was a theory based on observing evidence of its existence. Logically, if a boy created a fake identity to get into boarding school, used a suction-cup climbing device to scale the hull of a boat, and assassinated a foreign leader who was a skilled assassin in his own right, the boy probably had some training. And if he’d received this type of training, there must have been a program that trained him. Logically, once again, that program must be highly clandestine, it must employ a support staff, it must be funded and shielded from public scrutiny by a government—all signs pointing to the U.S. in this case. And of course, there were the rumors Pablo had heard from his old FSB and KGB pals in Russia, rumors about a secret U.S. program to train young boys and girls to be spies and assassins.

  That was the evidence he had—deduction and rumor. But had he observed the program in any shape or form? Pablo had never seen the program; everything he thought about it was speculation. He was like a hunter who had only discovered the carcass of a kill, but not the murderous animal. Pablo’s hunter’s instinct told him that it was an organization, or a pack of beasts, that had been able to take down the Colonel. Now Pablo needed to find that pack. The beasts were out in the game preserve sharpening their claws. Pablo figured he could do one of two things to find the pack: he could go poking around in the bushes, or he could do what poachers do—find the game warden and put a gun to his head.

  The gun Pablo could use most easily was information. For years, the Glowworm had been worming his way into the homes and devices owned by hundreds of millions of people across the world. Some of those homes belonged to high-ranking officials in the U.S. government. Some, if not all, of those government officials would have something on their computers that they’d strongly like to keep private. And once the Glowworm got in, he was a master at finding those things.

  So, Pablo thought. Let the blackmail begin!

  PART FOUR

  CHAPTER 21

  Late Fall 2016

  East Jerusalem, Places Unknown, and Panama

  When most people think back on their lives, especially the formative years—the time spent in elementary school, middle school, high school, college, and first jobs—and they think about who mattered to them, the tendency is to recall friends or enemies, classmates, coworkers. If the memories are good, they’re categorized by name, by face, a club, a sport, a haircut, sometimes even by smell—good or bad.

  When the operator sitting in the hotel room in Jerusalem thought back on his life and tried to recall the lives who impacted him—the faces, the haircuts, the activities—they were all versions of his own.

  Scott Watts, the high-school senior from Chicago who interned at the U.S. Embassy in South Korea and perfected his tennis and golf game with the daughter of the ambassador and the son of the president of South Korea. Tony Roy, the avid cyclist and student at the University of Tennessee, loved the sport of cycling so much that he spent a summer in Europe, participating in various races, all building up to observing the Tour de France, where he spent his time in the box next to a high-value target suspected of sharing U.S. secrets with the Belgians.

  And right out of college, there was Travis Wilburn, the seed broker, who traveled extensively across the African continent, selling organic seed stock, meeting with rebel fighters, and, occasionally, permanently removing warlords from this earth.

  The operator had, by his count, some seventy-three discrete identities in his thirty-odd years in the service of the American people. Some of those identities the operator would reuse, some had to be retired, but of all of them, the one he remembered most, the one that had the strongest impact on his life, was one of his first identities. Christopher Michael Gibbs, a boarding-school student at the Chapan School for Boys, where he was a member of the junior varsity football team, contributor to the high-school newspaper, member of the gaming club, a wrestler, and most critically, best friend to Wilberforce Degas, the son of Colonel Degas, who was, at the time, Central America’s premiere butcher.

  The reason the operator’s assignment as Chris Gibbs was so impactful had to do with a number of factors. Of course, one’s first kill i
s always memorable, especially when you’re fifteen years old and you’re unexpectedly forced to terminate a dictator. But killing Colonel Degas did not make his experience as Chris Gibbs as impactful as simply caring did. As Chris Gibbs, the operator actually cared about his rushing yards, touchdowns, and receptions on the school’s rather mediocre JV football team. He cared about what he wrote in the student newspaper and about learning chess, and he cared about Wilberforce, or Wil, as he was known back then.

  While the two made an odd pair, Chris Gibbs genuinely liked the pasty, nerdy, extremely bright Wilberforce, who was painfully eager for his attention. The friendship for the operator was genuine. The high-school experience was genuine. Everything leading up to the moment, and even, to a degree, the days following—the altercation with Colonel Degas—was genuine. Disentangling himself from that relationship was painful for the young operator (a lesson he learned and would not repeat). Far more painful, however, was the hurt that he must have caused Wil by taking his father—scumbag that he was—out of the kid’s life.

  This dichotomy of genuine emotion and caring juxtaposed with ruthless action was hard to reconcile, and so Chris Gibbs and his old friend, Wil Degas, were never far from the operator’s thoughts. Whether it was conscious or not, he had always known that somehow those two boys from Chapan would reenter his life.

  That moment came earlier that day in East Jerusalem when the operator received a tip: a fifteen-million-dollar bounty had been placed on the head of an operator, known in his early years as Christopher Gibbs. Forty million to be brought back alive. Those kinds of numbers were enough to give even the most experienced of operators pause.

  The operator had been in Jerusalem for the past month, on a relatively low-danger assignment. His cover was as a buyer of date palms for date paste, an industrial food ingredient used by cookie manufacturers in the United States. In reality, he’d been meeting with a Palestinian separatist group, trying to win their trust in order to gain information about certain high-value targets believed to be both financiers and directors of ISIS operations in Iraq and Syria. The Palestinian separatists were the kind of people whom the operator thought about as idealistic horse traders. They were born negotiators, looking for a little deal here and there. Give a little, get a little. The operator was very comfortable with them. Most of their business was conducted at cafés and bars out in the public, trusted places. In a conflict zone, sure, but nothing like a war zone. Hence, the operator had come to the Middle East practically naked, as far as weaponry went. He arrived armed with his clothes, a satellite phone, a SIG Sauer, and three decades of experience.

  The tip about the bounty came from the most trusted of sources—a former colleague in his SEAL team, a former protégé, a lifetime friend and fellow operative, a member of the Golden One Hundred. One of the few humans on this earth who knew that the operator had been Chris Gibbs. His friend, who had been operating in Syria on a DOD budget, offered to come to Jerusalem and provide protection for the exfiltration. And so the operator was not particularly worried about getting out of the country and returning to the safety of the United States.

  After receiving the tip, as he had been trained, he calmly returned to his hotel, quickly packed his personal items, light weaponry, and articles related to his cover—sample fruit, brochures, importation forms, and various business documents. Transportation would be arriving outside the hotel lobby in a matter of minutes. The operator moved into the hallway and opted for the stairs instead of the creaky elevator. Though not acutely concerned for his safety, if the rumors were true, forty million dollars was a lot of money. The kind of dollar-value reserved for the likes of a Bin Laden or a Saddam Hussein, not an operator who had lived a very careful and low-key life.

  Still, as he descended the hotel’s chipped marble staircase, in the back of his mind were the Palestinian separatists he’d been meeting with the past few weeks. The idealistic horse traders who, undoubtedly, were tied into the same networks and channels that were whispering about the bounty and the operator known as Chris Gibbs. He wondered if there was a photograph of him out there somewhere, some digital footprint, something that would make greedy minds go click.

  Looking out from the smoky lobby at the street, the operator saw a black Land Rover parked outside the hotel, his friend in the passenger seat, and he recognized a former Israeli Mossad agent at the wheel. He didn’t know the driver’s real name, but by reputation he knew him to be a skilled operator. And the operator known as Chris Gibbs could not have chosen a better driver. As an Israeli, he’d know the terrain and help get them through checkpoints in the country.

  Careful not to do anything that would draw suspicion, he calmly walked over to reception, paid his bill, turned in his clunky room key, a brass key tethered to a decorative tile that matched the tile on the lobby floor. He received his passport and a receipt. The operator slipped them into his pocket, thanked the receptionist, walked out into the hot Jerusalem afternoon, and stepped directly into the back seat of the Rover.

  The driver had Metallica’s “Unforgiven” playing on the radio, volume turned low. His friend, whose eyes never stopped scanning the street, said, “Hey, buddy,” as the operator got in behind the passenger seat. The Israeli driver didn’t wait for the door to close, but pulled out, not speeding but not wasting any time, either.

  Jerusalem is both a modern and an ancient city, with a mix of modern highways and narrow roads barely fitting a donkey cart. The drivers tended to be reckless and eternally in a rush. This included the many Orthodox Jews the operator had noticed, driving minivans full of families with their large, circular velvet hats on, at breakneck speeds through the ancient part of the city. Navigating through the warren of streets, the two Americans and the Israeli driver discussed the exfiltration plan, the consensus being that driving south to the seaside town of Eilat would draw the least amount of attention. There, the Israeli would rent a boat and scuba equipment for himself. He would then take the Americans out into the Red Sea and make contact with an American naval vessel, drop off the Americans, and head back.

  As soon as the details were decided, the operators settled in for a quiet ride, all hyper-alert as they made their way out of the city. The operator in the back seat was eager to speak to his friend in detail about what he knew about the bounty, the circumstances, the players involved, but he did not want to discuss this in front of the driver, who was not as well known to either man.

  The farther they drove outside of Jerusalem, the more the tension eased. Not far from town was a famous Elvis-themed gas station with Elvis dressed as Jesus, Elvis dressed as a Hasidic Jew. Elvis printed on T-shirts, cups, every conceivable knickknack. It was, of course, a tourist destination. They stopped for gas and water, and the driver grabbed a falafel while the operator’s friend picked up a tin of Skoal mint dip.

  Departing the gas station, they opted for a circuitous route, not following the expressway that ran the length of Israel, but instead winding through a village to the northeast. The operator’s friend joked about visiting a nearby restaurant famous for its hummus. They were in a dusty, hilly, nearly mountainous part of the country, driving down a narrow road. Ahead was an intersection where a villager pulled a reluctant donkey across the street. Attached to the donkey was a cart of what looked like farm equipment, very common in the area.

  “Pull around them,” the operator’s friend said to the driver, who eased into the oncoming lane. The road ahead was clear to pass. Something pierced the windshield, and instantly, the Israeli’s driver’s head seemed to vaporize in red mist. The operator shielded his eyes, reached around his back for his gun, and groped for the door handle in the back seat, while the farmer let go of the now rearing donkey and emptied an Uzi into the Rover’s engine block. The SUV careened off the side of the road and crashed into the rocky slope on the opposite side of the oncoming lane.

  Upon impact, the driver’s side of the vehicle exploded. The operator didn’t know if it was due to the engine or some
sort of ordnance inside the vehicle. He was thrust against the door, glass and fragments flying everywhere. Sharp bits of car swirled around him. The operator could feel the hair burn off the side of his head. He somehow managed to get the door open and stumble out into the street. His friend had already exited the vehicle and was crouched, firing up the side of the hill where gun barrels were aimed down at them. His friend was yelling something the operator couldn’t hear because his eardrums had been blown out, but without pausing, he turned in the opposite direction and opened fire, killing the villager, whose Uzi sprayed in an erratic arc as he toppled backward onto the blacktop, firing into the donkey, which went berserk, stomping and kicking the car to pieces. The operator probably shouldn’t have wasted the time or the ammunition, but out of mercy he shot the flailing donkey.

  The operator thought he heard his friend yell, “This way!”

  He glanced to his left and saw his friend sprint across the right side of the road and dive over a rickety guardrail in the direction of the steep slope down into the valley. The operator moved to follow, but something struck him from behind, something like an axe handle blow behind his ear. He fell onto the street, losing consciousness as his world turned bright white and then black.

  * * *

  Sometime later, the operator was vaguely aware he was bound, gagged, and in the back of a vehicle, speeding through what felt like winding roads. He knew since he was alive that whoever had captured him was likely beginning the process of collecting on the bounty, a process that would no doubt involve safe-houses, negotiations between untrustworthy parties, and innumerable opportunities for betrayals and human error. Chances of his survival were exceedingly low. His only hope, at this point, was that his friend had gotten out alive.

  * * *