Sam couldn’t see Hayward’s computer monitor, but she knew the page had loaded. His body tensed and his face lost its color. His eyes glistened. His jaw clenched and one hand closed into a white-knuckled fist.
Sam returned to Hayward’s side. She had to stifle a gasp. A video loop was playing. Two torture victims, one male and the other female. Their bodies were in terrible shape. The girl had been violated. Sam could see in the victims’ eyes that the spark of life had been beaten out of them. They were as close to dead as anyone she’d ever seen. They had given up hope, and the end was just around the corner. Say what you wanted about the spiritual side of things, but when a person lost interest in living, they didn’t tend to hang around much longer.
She put her hand on Hayward’s back. She wanted to say something comforting, but nothing came to mind that didn’t feel trite or hackneyed. She settled for silence.
He wiped tears from his eyes and got to work. Sam would have employed Dan for what came next, but she couldn’t risk involving him. Calling via burner from halfway around the globe was one thing, but calling from within the city would have been madness. She was also afraid of getting Dan collared for aiding and abetting.
Hayward pecked away, sparing occasional furtive glances in the direction of the clerk, hoping no one would notice the green font against a black background that indicated Hayward was somewhere deep in cyberspace.
He accessed a decryption program available on the Dark Web. It was probably invented by someone in the US government but subsequently stolen and disseminated, for a tidy profit of course, by a Russian hacker. The program exploited a trapdoor in every digital photography and video device. The trapdoor was mandated by the federal government. There was a war on terror going on, etcetera, and you couldn’t be too careful. Liberty was nice, but security was necessary, so security won every time.
The trapdoor did the following: it ensured that regardless of the device’s settings, any digital video or photograph taken by any device sold in the United States contained the precise location where the video or photo was shot. The latitude and longitude were encoded and the data was embedded inside the digital pixels.
The feds knew how to decode the location data. Consequently, so did the Russian hackers, and so did anyone who happened to purchase a copy of the decryption program on the Dark Web.
A few keystrokes later, the coordinates appeared in a little pop-up window. Sam wrote them down on the palm of her hand with a ballpoint pen. Whoever posted the videos had also typed an address into an encrypted message sent to Hayward’s account along with the video link. A quick Google search verified the two sets of coordinates—the address in the email message and the location data encrypted in the video of Katrin and Joao—matched to within a dozen meters. Sam felt confident they had found Katrin and Joao.
Hayward pointed at the email message. It said, “9 p.m.”
Hayward closed the windows and erased the computer’s cache to cover his tracks. Sam tucked her arm in his, and they walked out of the store with far more nonchalance than they felt.
As they crossed the parking lot, Sam nudged closer to Hayward. It was the closest she’d come to wanting to hug him genuinely, not for show. Those images of Katrin and her father were too awful for anyone’s eyes.
They returned to the relative safety of the stolen car. Sam thought of the Cagliari safe house, and Hayward’s description of Maria Ferdinand-Xavier’s murder, and of the location they’d just discovered. She didn’t have a good feeling. “You know this is a trap,” she said.
Hayward nodded. “Of course it is.”
“You don’t seriously plan to give yourself over to Grange, do you?”
“Not in a million lifetimes,” Hayward said.
Sam smiled. She had wondered whether his promise to Grange was a bluff. But will it make any difference in the end? Grange still held all the cards, and Sam was having trouble envisioning a happy ending. Even if they somehow managed to free Katrin and Joao from the Agency muscle, then what? Spend the rest of their lives looking over their shoulders, waiting for Grange’s men to come knocking?
The Agency was somehow involved with a criminal organization, and she and Hayward knew about it. The risk to the CIA was enormous—what would stop Sam and Hayward from testifying before Congress or talking to the FBI about the Agency’s criminal affiliations? Only one thing would guarantee there would be no blowback. Grange would want the slate wiped completely clean. He would want everybody dead.
Her thoughts turned to Brock. He’d certainly be out of jail by now, released on his own recognizance at best, or on house arrest at worst. Knowing he was so close, so available, was excruciating.
Soon enough, she told herself.
But she had a tough time believing it.
52
Grange expected them to arrive at the safe house at nine p.m., but they had no intention of complying with Grange’s wishes. It was half past four in the afternoon and they drove straight to the destination, not waiting for the appointed hour, stopping only briefly at a sporting goods store for more provisions. Hayward paid cash for a pair of large hunting knives, two pairs of cargo pants, two binoculars, and a pair of low-light scopes.
They bought extra hollow-point ammunition. It was the safest round in a hostage situation, they both agreed. On contact with the target—the flesh and sinew of a living, breathing person—the slug flattened itself, creating maximum drag, reducing the likelihood that a round entering a bad guy would exit his body and strike a hostage on the other side. That was the thinking anyway. But in real life, all bets were off.
After their brief provisioning stop, Sam delegated driving duties to Hayward. He guided their stolen sedan southbound on Highway One. Sometimes, in a fit of street sign bombast, the road was called the Jefferson Davis Highway. Just frequently enough to cause confusion, it seemed.
Darkness had fallen and rain threatened. The air grew thick and humid, as if the atmosphere itself were perspiring. Hunger gnawed at Sam’s stomach, but the mild nausea overruled her appetite. Too much adrenaline, too much stress, too little sleep, and too little nourishment all ganged up on her.
She wondered, not for the first time, at the wisdom of a direct approach against the Agency team. Hayward had filled her in on Artemis Grange and his entourage, and nothing in Hayward’s description made her believe Grange was a man to be trifled with. And in her current state, she wasn’t likely to be at her best. Hayward appeared to be in roughly the same shape.
Plus, Hayward was an unknown quantity in a tactical situation. She’d never seen how he handled himself when it mattered most. She’d never even seen him fire a weapon. Sure, he’d bested a single Agency knuckle-dragger in the Cagliari safe house. Perhaps that spoke enough about his operational abilities, or perhaps it meant nothing. Perhaps he had just gotten lucky.
City gave way to forest. Eight lanes dropped to six, and finally to two. Pavement gave way to dirt.
They were getting close. Sam’s heart rate grew faster and she got that feeling in the pit of her stomach. She fought to remain alert and focused on the world around her, taking care to observe the details. It was all too easy to become lost in your own fears and insecurities in moments like this. Getting wrapped up inside your own head was a great way to make critical errors. In these situations, you could literally think yourself to death.
“Park here,” Sam said.
“We’re still a mile away,” Hayward protested.
“You should never be in a rush to get to your own death.”
“Deep.”
“A SEAL friend once told me that,” Sam said.
“I’ll write it in my notebook.”
“Just park the car.”
Hayward complied. He found a modicum of concealment behind a dense section of undergrowth. It wouldn’t slow down a concerted search, but you’d have to be looking closely to see the car.
They set off on foot through the forest. Sam wasn’t a tracker and had spent no appreciable tim
e in the woods. She knew that before Hayward had stumbled into clandestine life he had been an egghead economist. But both of them were reasonably athletic, and they moved with about the right combination of speed and stealth.
Sam recalled another of her SEAL friend’s sayings: “Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast.” They spread out, reducing the chances that one person would spot them both.
For all of that, Sam felt horribly exposed. Depending on the Agency’s level of concern about Joao and Katrin Ferdinand-Xavier, she and Hayward could be attempting to penetrate a deep, layered defense. Motion detectors, guards posted in hunting stands, electrified fences, and deep, wide irrigation trenches—undoubtedly filled with murky Potomac water—were all possibilities.
They encountered none of those things. They reduced their pace as they neared the clearing. The lack of overt defense didn’t mean much, but it was disconcerting. It felt as if they were walking into a trap, so they added another measure of caution as they approached.
They reached the clearing and split up. Sam waited for Hayward to reach his position. Across the clearing, she saw his face search for hers. She took a deep breath and gave the signal. He gave her a thumbs-up and set off toward the side of the house, moving just inside the cover of the forest, crouched low and moving quietly.
She stood up out of her crouch, pistol in her hand, hammer cocked, thumb on the safety, mentally rehearsing the motions she would need if she ran into resistance: level the sights, disengage the safety, and loose a two-round burst aimed at the center of mass in a single smooth, practiced motion.
Breathe. Full lungs. Exhale. Eyes aware. She approached the front door but veered right to a large picture window. She crouched below it, wrapped her jacket around her elbow, and waited.
Hayward had further to go. She couldn’t see him, which meant that he would announce his readiness by simply beginning the assault. It didn’t take long. She heard the crash of breaking glass from the other side of the house.
She rose, cocked her elbow, and swung her protected arm into the picture window. The noise was jarring. Jagged shards fell like icicles and Sam ducked out of the way. She crouched beneath the opening and listened.
An undisciplined team would come running. A disciplined team would already be in defensive positions. There would be no reason for them to move.
Sam heard no movement.
She turned and raised her head just enough to peek an eye over the sill. There was no light within. She crouched again, retrieved the low-light scope from the cargo pocket on her right leg, and moved to the other side of the window. Best not to appear in the same place twice.
She placed the scope to her eye and scanned carefully. The scope rendered the room in eerie shades of green. She saw a shabby sofa against the back wall. There was an ancient television, the kind with a picture tube. Pictures hung on the wall.
But there were no signs of humans.
Just then, a shadow moved across the doorway. She followed it with the scope. The figure looked at her and flashed a thumbs-up. Hayward had breached the window on the other side of the house and met no resistance on his way to Sam’s position.
Sam had the urge to get Hayward to unlock the front door, but it would have been a mistake. They’d have both been in the same place at the same time, vulnerable to the same threat. And what if the door was rigged? Not long ago, a fugitive had sliced a federal agent in half with a tripwire-activated shotgun. The lesson had stuck with her, so she climbed through the broken picture window and took position flanking Hayward as he moved through the house.
They cleared the kitchen. No sign of inhabitants. Same with the bedrooms and bathrooms. Moving slowly and quietly, they entered the basement. It was unfinished. The concrete walls perspired. The floor was smooth and slick. The space smelled of rotting wood and dead rodents, and bare bulbs hung suspended from the framing, their strings reaching toward the floor. There were no openings in the walls. There were no trapdoors in the floor.
There was nothing at all.
An ear-splitting howl assaulted Sam’s ears. It was agony and anger and despair, all distilled to a kind of anguish Sam hadn’t heard in a long time. Her head snapped to its source. Hayward yelled again, even louder this time, a single word over and over, moving further toward insanity with each repetition: “Grange!”
Sam put her hand on his cheek, pulled his head to her shoulder, and felt moistness on her face as his cheek brushed hers.
There was nothing left to do but regroup. They’d been manipulated again. They were dealing with professionals, people with the resources to anticipate any cleverness that Sam and Hayward might dream up, people who could embed false geo-coordinates into digital imagery, encrypted just the right way to give the appearance of authenticity. Defeated, they left the house and walked toward the car.
Why the hell didn’t Grange seem to be interested in closing the deal? Was he just wary of subterfuge, trying to better control the variables? It didn’t make sense. He had all the firepower he could want or need, and he had the hostages. There was nobody Sam and Hayward could ask for help. It seemed Grange held every advantage.
It also seemed Grange was none too eager to get his hands on the ChemEspaña data. If that were true and Grange was indifferent to whether and how he obtained the data, he could afford to be crafty and patient. Because the hostages were in such terrible shape, Hayward and Sam had to seize whatever Grange threw their way, no matter how manipulative it might end up being. It was another advantage Grange held, and it was a big one. They were destined to fail, Sam thought.
But all was not lost. There was still William Nichols. They were still on schedule. Sure, they had hoped to have the hostages brought to safety before Nichols’s story hit the news loop. It would have been so much cleaner. The uproar over the Agency’s illegal activity on US soil was to have changed the climate, to suddenly cast Sam’s actions in a much different light, to have given her the advantage she needed to get the indictment dropped. It was to be her ticket out.
It would be much more complicated now. It was impossible to predict how the story might impact the hostages. Would Grange and his men lose the will and political backing to sanction hostage-taking? Or would the news that Sarah Beth McCulley’s death had come at the hands of a CIA asset, operating outside the law and with unknown motives, have the opposite effect? Would Grange ensure plausible deniability by leaving no one alive to tell the story?
Probably the second thing, Sam reasoned. Grange was extremely calculating. Sentiment, morality, humanity—those didn’t seem to be qualities Grange possessed.
She considered calling William Nichols to halt the story, but a phone call wouldn’t have done any good. It was already nearly midnight. The presses would already be rolling. Half of the daily quota would already have been printed, Sam guessed. The thing was as good as done.
They drove deeper onto the peninsula and parked the car. They were too exhausted to drive any further.
53
Dawn broke. A ray of sunlight struck Sam’s closed eyelids and she awoke. Her neck hurt. She was ravenous and surprisingly thirsty. She had to pee.
She left the car, did her business, and returned to find Hayward relieving himself against a tree.
They said nothing. There was nothing to say. Hayward started the car, pulled out of the concealing underbrush and onto the dirt road, and guided them back to civilization.
They stopped at the first gas station. Hayward filled up the car while Sam bought basic provisions—coffee and manufactured sugar-bomb pastries. As she waited in line to pay, she saw the stack of newspapers for sale at the checkout counter. She read the headlines and her mouth went dry.
Quickly, she grabbed three papers, slapped a ten-dollar-bill on the counter, and rushed outside, fighting the urge to vomit. She moved like an automaton. Her legs felt like wooden pegs and the pavement seemed a long way beneath her. A pit opened in her stomach. Her mind churned, still straining to grasp reality and its implications, frantic
to find a sliver of hope, struggling to account for how things could have possibly gotten so sideways, so fucked up.
She opened the car door and sat heavily in the passenger seat. She didn’t trust herself to speak, so she just handed the newspapers to Hayward. He looked at all of them, the color draining from his face until he looked vampire-white.
“Award-Winning Journalist Found Dead,” said one headline. “Addiction Kills Pulitzer Winner,” declared another. “Journalist-Hero Dead before His Time,” said the third.
“They got to Nichols,” Hayward said needlessly.
Sam stared straight ahead, defeat settling over her.
“We have nothing,” Hayward said. “No leverage. No options.”
Sam said nothing.
“We’re completely fucked,” Hayward said.
Sam didn’t argue.
54
They were worthy adversaries, Grange thought. It wasn’t an admission, and it wasn’t admiration. Just an observation, one that affirmed his strategy. He didn’t begrudge them their successes. He had just anticipated them and negated them in advance. An old principle, really, known best to fishermen and subsistence hunters. Some quarry was too crafty to blunder into anything. Some quarry had to be worn down before you could administer the coup de grace.
Which is coming, Grange thought. It wouldn’t be long now. Taking care of Nichols wasn’t difficult. What worried Grange was who else might have seen the story Nichols was working on. Not that Grange was naïve enough to believe it wouldn’t get out eventually. Juicy truths always escaped their bureaucratic burials. It was just a matter of time. Time was the ultimate commodity, especially once you wandered off the reservation, as the administrative types liked to phrase it.
He had known the day would come, of course. He had prepared for it with the same kind of dispassionate, methodical approach that had kept him alive over the years, perpetually perched as he was on the tightrope.
The Blowback Protocol: A Sam Jameson Thriller Page 25