Scott Roarke 03 - Executive Command

by Gary Grossman

  “We’ll be there in another three hours,” he told his passenger, without expectation any longer that he’d be answered. “I drop you off, and you pay the remaining amount due.” Still no comment.

  They passed a sign for an upcoming truck stop. “Sure you don’t want a cup of coffee? We’ve got another stop ahead?”

  The man looked out the window. He didn’t drink coffee or alcohol. Besides, he needed some more sleep so he would be ready for the work ahead.

  In the rearview mirror, Perez saw the man fold his jacket and put it between the door and his seat. Then he rested his head against the makeshift pillow and closed his eyes again.

  For an instant, Perez thought of pulling over, shooting the asshole, and taking his money right now. Five thousand dollars. It was right there in a briefcase. Estavan had told him, “Make sure you count it!” There would be hell to pay back home if he screwed up. Fuck it, he thought. He could suffer through another three hours of silence.

  Minneapolis, Minnesota

  “Your Honor, are you feeling okay?” the court clerk volunteered during a morning recess. The judged appeared out of sorts today.

  “I’m fine, Melissa,” Judge Beard said.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, thank you.”

  At one point during morning testimony, Beard looked like he had completely tuned out. He had to ask the witness to repeat an answer. He carefully phrased the request so the defense would not have cause to file an appeal. Still, the prosecutor noted the lapse, as did Beard’s clerk.

  “Do you want to call a recess, sir?” she leaned in to whisper.

  “No, I’ll be fine.” With that, Beard tried to put his bench face back on, but all that came to mind was the ring and the man at Starbucks who was wearing it. Without realizing it, he wrote down a word on his pad. The last letters of the name Cooper trailed off just as Judge Lawrence Beard’s hand relaxed and he slumped into his chair never to hear another word of testimony.

  Ten

  Moscow

  Arkady Gomenko left work at precisely 1830—6:30 p.m. Since he was, as he liked to say, between marriages, he had no need to go right home. He rarely did. He loved watching sports on TV, meeting friends at bars, and trying to talk his way into some middle-aged woman’s bed.

  In truth, Gomenko was more successful watching TV and talking sports. So, this was his routine, three or four nights a week. Pretty boring for a forty-four-year-old civil servant who might still have a little potential left.

  He wasn’t bad looking. The kind of person who never stood out. Though he talked about the personalities of the people at his work, he never discussed his occupation or politics. Arkady Gomenko was the typical Russian of the new regime—which was pretty much a copy of a Soviet citizen-comrade from the old regime.

  Arkady Gomenko appeared to live his life this way—from work to bars, from bars to home, from home to work. It was this way ever since wife number two ran through his savings and left with a true capitalist, an Austrian stock broker. Now, six years later, Arkady did his job efficiently, but no better. Most importantly, he never raised concern from his supervisors.

  It was noted by those who occasionally tailed him over the years that he had his familiar haunts and there was nothing dangerous or subversive in his pattern. He seemed to have fewer than a dozen bars, cafes, and restaurants on his list, and he visited them quite spontaneously, with no predictable frequency.

  To his boss, Yuri Ranchenkov, the new deputy director general of internal intelligence of the Federal’naya Sluzhba Bezopasnosti, better known in abbreviated form as the FSB, Gomenko was a reliable enough, semi-unnecessary official who would either die at his desk of old age or retire into oblivion. The perfect functionary. There was probably no need to tail him anymore. Of all people, Gomenko was harmless. Still, there were rules.

  Arkady Gomenko must have known he had been spied on by his boss. He’d processed reports on others who declared loyalty to the state but were still tailed off hours. In two cases, people disappeared. Like in the old days.

  Today, Gomenko turned right from his office at Lubyanka Square and walked down Myasnitskaya Street to a small sports bar. He spent a few hours there. No one scored that night. Not even the Russian soccer team on TV in a repeat of a World Cup match.

  At 2212, he went home alone, none richer for the experience.

  Washington, D.C.

  “Penny, it’s your long lost.”

  The army intelligence officer recognized the voice over the phone. “For never more,” she corrected him. CPT Penny Walker and Scott Roarke had had a torrid, but short-lived, affair three years ago. Somehow they managed to maintain the heat of their relationship in their conversations without giving into the sex any more. “But if you ever say so long to your sweetie, you know who to call.”

  “I thought you and Touch Parsons were an item?” Roarke asked. Parsons was the FBI’s leading IT expert, having helped Roarke twice in the past year. His real name was Duane, but the agency dubbed him “Touch” because of his special abilities with complex computer programs, particularly manipulating and interpreting facial recognition photos.

  “Well, yes, Mister Matchmaker. I had a momentary lapse. Your voice can send me to such warm places.”

  It was all quite innocent; merely the cost of engaging Walker’s expertise.

  “What can I do for you this time?”

  “I need help.” Roarke had not told her what he’d been working on recently.

  “Go ahead, baby. Fill me in.” It was an intentional double entendre.

  “I’m up to my ass in alligators and I can’t figure my way out of the swamp.”

  “What is it?”

  “I can’t say.”

  ‘But you need my help.”

  “Yes,” he replied.

  “On business you can’t tell me about.”

  “That’s about right.”

  “You are the most frustrating man I’ve ever had the pleasure to take to bed,” Walker admitted.

  “The pleasure’s all mine.”

  “That’s debatable. So what can you give me?”

  “Some army records. Nothing out of the ordinary.”

  “You’re such a liar.”

  “Really. Basic research,” Roarke said, explaining nothing.

  “Okay then. Now if you remember, honey, army records go back about two hundred fifty years. So care to narrow it down a little?”

  “I’m going to give you a bunch of names. See what you come up with. If you start connecting the dots, then you’ll make me a happy man.”

  “I doubt that,” she laughed. “No more hints?”

  “Nope. I’ll e-mail you names. You do your thing. You’re the best at it.”

  “I know,” Penny Walker said.

  Scott Roarke quickly e-mailed a Word doc. Walker would soon discover everyone on the list was dead. He hoped she’d find a lot more. He was acting on a hunch and on Katie’s insistence to get help.

  Chester Township, Ohio

  Late Afternoon

  Gloria Cooper wasn’t thinking about anything as she walked down her long driveway to bring up the weekly Chesterland News. It had been years since she’d read much of it, but her husband Bill still liked to follow local sports. It was a throwback to when their son Richard played high school football. A few cars rolled along the suburban street lined with contemporary homes, none more magnificent than the Coopers’. But that didn’t matter to her. Little did anymore.

  About twenty yards off, on the opposite side of a street, a black SUV slowed and came to a stop. Its warm exhaust hit the cold air and sent a cloud billowing upward. As she walked to the end of the driveway she casually looked at the vehicle. The woman wondered why it was there. Someone seemed to be looking at her, but she couldn’t tell who.

  Gloria bent over to pick up her paper. When she looked up, she was startled by the sound of a car horn. The SUV had pulled out into traffic and nearly sideswiped a passing car. Her first impression was t
o call out idiot! But as the SUV sped off, she held the thought: The man at the wheel!

  For a moment, a fleeting moment, the sixty-seven-year-old woman’s heart seemed to stop. He looks like…

  The driver felt a piercing stare in his peripheral vision. He floored the SUV.

  Bill Cooper wouldn’t want to hear what his wife thought; what she wanted to think. So she wouldn’t even share it. Yet, the man in the car looked so much like their son—their long dead son.

  It was a mistake. Possibly his first one in years. He wished he had never returned to Chester Township. Why? he asked himself. It was stupid and dangerous. He never intended to be seen. After all, he had died twice. Once in Iraq, years ago; and more recently in Washington. Stupid! Never again.

  Richard Cooper drove away with the image of his mother’s surprised face staring at him. As soon as he reached Interstate 71, he floored the accelerator wanting to add miles between his past and where he was going.

  Richard Cooper is dead, he affirmed. And the people responsible for killing him will all die, too.

  Years earlier, the army officer known as Cooper had been leader of a squad ordered to take a building in Baghdad and rescue a family. Cooper viewed the tip as highly suspicious. It came from an unreliable source that disappeared when army intelligence tried to question him.

  Cooper complained. “It’s a fucking setup.” His appraisal was curtly dismissed. Cooper tried again. He could clearly see the danger. Why couldn’t they? Again his request was denied. The order came back, “Take the damned objective!”

  But the building was too quiet. He was certain no one was inside. Cooper radioed command. A captain, a major, a lieutenant colonel, a colonel, then a brigadier general. He was ignored. He skipped over them and went to a two-star. The general didn’t take his call. He stopped short of going higher under threat of court martial. Against his better judgment, and those of his fellow soldiers, he obeyed the order.

  Cooper and seven other squad members went into the building. He was right. It was a trap. A bomb exploded. Four floors pancaked on top of his fellow soldiers. Everyone but Cooper was killed. Somehow a retaining wall protected him. Although dazed, he made his way through the rubble. At first, revenge was not on his mind. Surviving was.

  A family found him stumbling through an alley. Realizing that a lone American soldier would be the prime target for snipers, they took him into their home. They had their own motives. They were Shiite insurgents and they wanted information on American weaknesses and soft targets.

  The army never found Cooper’s body. They assumed it had been incinerated in the blast.

  Cooper’s captors didn’t need to torture him. He willingly cooperated, not because they turned him, but because the army ignored him.

  And if he had any doubts about his decision, they evaporated when his immediate command changed the story. They released a statement that the squad was attacked in the course of a rescue attempt. They put up a heroic defense, but died when a suicide bomber stormed into the building.

  The lies killed the man who had been Richard Cooper, not the bombs.

  The former lieutenant remained in Baghdad, helping the rebels. Weeks later his new associates introduced him to a man who could help him. His name, Ibrahim Haddad. Like Cooper, he was a man on a mission. He saw great potential in the American soldier, especially when he learned that Cooper was an extraordinary athlete and an accomplished actor in his high school.

  “You shall become an instrument of revenge, my young friend,” the Syrian explained. “Yours and mine.”

  Haddad told Cooper how important a role he would play in bringing down the Americans. The ex-soldier cared more about his personal vendetta. But soon the millions Haddad transferred to Cooper’s new Swiss accounts made him put his own cause on hold. Until now.

  Haddad had taught Cooper how to change his look, manner, and identity; how to move through crowds yet never be seen; how to become the world’s stealthiest assassin. It worked time and time again, right through his most recent passing. That’s when he faked his own death at the hands of the man who most wanted to see him dead—Secret Service agent Scott Roarke.

  Now America’s Secret Service, the FBI, and even Haddad thought Cooper was gone. The dental records of the deceased would not prove anything, for a man who survived a bomb blast at ground zero could have a whole new set of teeth.

  As he drove out of Chester Township, Ohio, he vowed never to make another mistake. He had more money than he could ever spend, the ability to travel anywhere in the world, and the knowledge of how to kill more successfully and effectively than any assassin since the Jackal.

  The image of his mother’s face was nearly gone now. He’d provided for his parents’ welfare. They had their memories. That was better than knowing who he was today and where he was going.

  Richard Cooper didn’t exist. But as any number of other people, he had more work to do and all the time in the world.

  Interstate 15

  A truckstop north of Helena, Montana

  Ricardo Perez exited the highway thinking only of getting his cursed passenger out of his life. As he angled toward the far end of the parking lot, he hit his brights twice. A signal. Two hundred feet away a car answered with three flashes. The flashing lights identified the cars to one another. Perez drove to the waiting vehicle, made a wide turn, and backed into the space next to the green Toyota Camry.

  “Stay in the car.” These were the first words from the man Perez had driven 1,138 miles.

  It was obvious his passenger was not an American.

  Another man, about the same age as his forty-something passenger, stepped onto the pavement. Perez’s “package” did the same. They hugged and kissed one another; left cheek, then right. Next they returned to the green car where they talked for ten minutes.

  Perez grew impatient. He wanted his money and he wanted to leave. The whole thing was making him nervous. Just as he was about to get out to try and hustle the men along, his passenger returned.

  He reached into the backseat and fiddled with something. Perez presumed he was getting the money ready. “Here.” He passed an attaché case forward with pretyped directions. “This is where you’ll go now. Follow the instructions on the paper. Then you will be through.”

  Perez checked the case. The money was there in hundreds. He counted it out twice, which took more time. $5,000. Then he looked at the directions. “It’s all there, but I wasn’t told about any other stop,” he complained. “This isn’t part of the deal.”

  “You are mistaken. It is right here on the paper. You have one hour.”

  “Am I picking up someone else?”

  “There will be someone there. Another driver for you to meet. Now go. Do not be late. One hour. Exactly.”

  The man left Perez’s Lincoln and rejoined the other in the Toyota. Perez watched. He was pissed off. He punched the steering wheel. “Jesus Christ! This wasn’t the fucking deal!” He needed rest more than anything else. He wanted to drive a few miles and find a safe motel. Instead, he slammed his foot on the gas pedal and tore out of the parking lot. He nearly hit a guard rail as he merged back onto Interstate 15. One hour? He figured he’d get there early. If no one was there, he’d leave. Fuck them! Fuck every one of them.

  The directions called for him to take an exit east off I-15 exactly twenty-two miles out, make a right on a two-lane road, and keep going at twenty-five miles an hour for exactly eighteen miles. Simple and stupid.

  He followed the instructions with the radio finally blaring loudly. He hated every station he found, but at least there was music. He turned off the Interstate at the precise point and drove down the county road. Eventually the pavement ended, but the road continued. Perez picked up his cell phone and thumb-dialed a number. The call went nowhere. He checked the display. No bars. Damn it! Perez speeded up. According to his odometer he was less than a mile away and a few minutes early. There was a rise ahead. Got to be just over the hill, he thought.

 
Ricardo Perez began the descent and immediately slowed. He saw smoke rising from the road ahead. “What the fuck!”

  He crept forward barely above five miles an hour. A car, or what was left of it, was smoldering. It looked as if it had stood at ground zero for a high-explosive attack.

  Perez stopped short. He checked his watch. He was a minute early. Did the person he was supposed to meet have an accident? “Shit!” He was going to be in serious trouble when he got back home.

  The young gangbanger took his gun out of the glove compartment and cautiously stepped out of his car.

  “Anyone there?” he yelled. It was a useless call into the cold air. No one could have possibly survived such an explosion and fire.

  An accident? There were no skid marks. Perez walked around to the front of the car. The driver hadn’t hit anything. The driver? Perez looked in the wreckage. The skeletal corpse of a man was burned beyond recognition. The stench made him pull away.

  It was too much for him. Perez broke into a full run back to his car. He had to get away. This was no accident. Then…

  Ricardo Perez couldn’t intellectualize the blinding flash. It was too sudden; too unexpected. It simply happened. It was followed by a blast of raw energy and skin-searing heat. Perez was at his top speed, but the force of the explosion hurtled him a dozen yards back into the lifeless dirt of the Montana high desert.

  Eleven

  Washington, D.C.

  Christine Slocum hadn’t wasted a moment to invest herself in her new job. She was an excellent writer with a full command of history and a talent for working “closely” with others. Her credentials were impeccable: a Smith College graduate with honors, work at Associated Press and MSNBC, and a short stint with Congressman Teddy Lodge. Rumor had it that she’d served Lodge in more ways than one. After meeting the young beauty, Duke Patrick hoped he’d be as fortunate. But right now, it was all about work.