“What?”
“Not letting Janice think she’s the only woman who’s ever been through this.”
“Hey, Phyllis had her sister around when Joe Jr. was born, otherwise she would have been even more frazzled.”
“Well, I hope Janice can manage without you for the next couple of days.”
“Why, where is she going?”
“Not her. You, Kimosabe. You are on the next flight out to Forward Operating Base Delta Tango 1, wherever the hell that is, to personally give B&R their orders with the President’s executive decree of immunity forthe ambassador affair.”
“So they went for this whole cockamamie idea of yours?”
“Ours. This cockamamie idea of ours, Joey boy. Oh, we need a operational name?”
“How about ‘Stork?’”
The Hiccocks started their Saturday twice. They awoke at 8:30, each thinking what the other was thinking, then acting upon it, so neither left the bed. At 9:10 they both collapsed into a deep sleep until 10:20, when Janice rolled over and opened her eyes.
“Bill, it’s 10:20.”
Bill spoke into the pillow. “Errrrmp.”
She patted him on his butt until he lifted his head. “Good morning, almost afternoon.”
They showered, dressed, and went to a local diner for breakfast.
“No matter what, we are just looking,” Bill said. “We are not buying anything.”
“Exactly. We’re going to see our options then sleep on it.”
“We have lots of time. We don’t have to rush into anything.”
“Exactly.”
It was a beautiful, sun-shiny, day. They drove for 45 minutes to a store out on the highway that Cheryl’s sister had recommended.
Forty minutes later, Bill was ruing the fact that they didn’t take the old wagon. Tied to the top of the Caddy was the big box holding the crib. Jutting out from the tied-down open trunk was the stroller box and the back seat was crammed with little blankets, pillows, and stuffed animals. With over 300 I.Q. points between them, the one thing they did that was smart in ‘Babies R Us,’ was not commit to any gender specific color scheme or wallpaper.
“Didn’t we say we were just looking?” Bill said, as he drove no faster than 40 miles per hour, lest the wind shear lift the crib’s box into somebody’s front grill.
The nursery wasn’t ready yet. It wasn’t even a nursery, and it still had to be divested of the books, junk, and old exercise equipment that lived there. Bill put the crib, stroller, and other stuff in the garage. He then began tinkering with a lamp he started rewiring last winter.
“I made you a sandwich,” Janice called out from the kitchen.
“Just a minute.” Bill snaked the new cord through the body of the lamp and out the top. He left enough hanging out to be able to work with when he would wire the new socket to it, later, after lunch.
The TV was on in the kitchen and CNN was all over the ambassador story with graphics and serious music calling it “Summit with Death?” They had silhouetted the grainy image of Greeley from the terrorists tape and it now flew back over the graphics of a masked terrorist as thunderous theme music played. Being CNN, there was a panel of talking heads who didn’t beat the living shit out of the one “Intellectual” who espoused that the taking of the ambassador was “justifiable” due to America’s continuing suppression of the Arab sentiments in the world. Instead, they simply went to commercial. Bill just shook his head.
“Did you know him?” Janice asked.
“Greeley? No, never met him, although I hear he was… is, a good man.”
“The news is now saying his ambassadorial appointment was a political payoff for campaign contributions.”
“Well, ain’t that a scoop! They are only about a hundred years late on catching on to that dirty little secret.
But that’s the soft posts like Canada or Portugal, where some political appointee can’t screw it up too bad. Egypt is prime time, Class one. Those only get career Foreign Service Officers. The press is just looking for any way to slam Mitchell because he isn’t one of them.”
“Because he isn’t a newsman?”
“No, because he’s neither Fox news “Right,” or CNN “Left,” and they both hate that neutrality, like he was selling the secret formula of Coca Cola to the Russians.
“So what do you think is going to happen?” Janice asked as she poured Bill and herself more iced tea.
“Thanks. This is just a guess, but I’d say there’s a delta force or SEAL strike team warming up the coffee right about now waiting for someone to drop a dime on where the man is being held.”
“What about Egyptian sovereignty?”
“That’s covered under ‘Posse comi - fuck ‘em.’”
It took a second for Janice to realize that Bill had just bastardized ‘Posse Comitatus.’
Bill added, “If they get a 20 on this guy, our guys will go in first, snatch him back, then spin it as a joint U.S./Egyptian intelligence op or some kind of bullshit so that the Egyptians save face.”
“Okay, so now I feel better.”
I—
Bill was in the middle of going through a box of stuff in order to throw most of it out and put what was left in a smaller box from which, if he continued the process, he could whittle down the contents of the ten boxes that were taking up valuable baby space in the garage down to one. He was going through old checks and photographs when he heard a familiar voice.
“You are human! You actually do normal stuff!”
“Joey, I don’t believe it. I just found this in the box.”
Bill handed Palumbo an old photograph: a picture of the two of them and some other guys standing in front of a pipe held up by two braced two-by-fours.
“Hey, the high bar, Muzzi, Johnny P., Soccio, Mush, B.O. Look at the mop of hair on your head!”
“Look how skinny we were.” Hiccock laughed as he tossed the picture back in the keeper box. “What brings you round this way on a Saturday?”
“Something is bugging me and I thought I’d run it by you.”
“Wanna beer?”
“Nah.”
“Okay, then shoot.”
“You remember Brooke Burrell out of the New York Bureau office?”
“Sure do. She was point on the whole virus thing and the poison gas tank plot in New York. Solid agent.”
“One of the best. She and I had a talk, off the record. A lot of it was just agent-to-agent, you know? ‘How do I do this, how should I handle that?’ But she said one thing that…Have you heard the latest out of Egypt?”
“That they took Greely to set El Benham free? Yeah.”
“She had an inkling that Alzir knew he wasn’t going to be in custody long.”
“Have they ever done this before?” Bill asked as he decided to throw out a desk calendar from 1999.
“Not one for one like this, and if they have it’s usually a low-level or convenient grab. A local police chief or U.S. military captive. But it’s always reactive, almost improvised by them. This has pre-meditated all over it.”
“And you’re telling me this because?”
“Brooke had a sense about this guy knowing he was going to be sprung, and now she’s right.”
Bill looked at him in a way that said, “So?”
“This is a big play. They wouldn’t do this kinda thing if we caught Al Qaeda number 1. This Alzir guy is deeply connected to something else, something bigger.”
“Bigger than possibly killing a hundred thousand Americans? I don’t think I want to know what that could be.”
“I want you, as a deputy director of the FBI, to authorize a guy who I have been following for a while. He’s got some methods and practices that might give us an edge.”
“I am only dep director for stuff under my area.”
“This guy is under your area and, besides, the funding can’t go on any record, so I need you to bury it in your SCIAD budget.”
“Okay, now you’re scaring me. Is this
one of your wild-assed ideas?”
“Who was it who taught me to think outside the box?”
Joey positioned it perfectly to create the maelstrom in Bill’s head. It raged there for a minute then he simply said, “You really think this is going to pay off?”
“It’s got a good shot.”
Bill responded in the affirmative by giving Joey the Boulevard Blades gesture of a fist with the thumb jutting out between the index and pointer fingers. Not that they knew it, but it was an actual gesture from the ancient Neapolitan society, meaning “to protect.”
I—
At 4:00 p.m. in the Situation Room beneath the White House, President Mitchell was being pushed to make a decision between two diametrically opposed evils.
The Secretary of State was uncharacteristically lobbying hard to save the life of the man who worked for him. “Mister President, the ambassador is a prime asset of the United States. He is worth every effort to retrieve.”
“Chuck, we can’t negotiate with terrorists. You’ll be setting a precedent that will have every Americanoverseas being kidnapped round the clock,” the Chief of Staff needlessly reminded him. “The only option is military, if we get that lucky. Otherwise, the ambassador is now a combatant and prisoner of war.”
The Secretary of State turned to Mitchell. “Mr. President, how can you sacrifice his life like this?”
“Look, Charles, this ambassador makes over $200,000 dollars a year plus all expenses paid. There are dog faced G.I.s, who are just as valuable to me as he is, who die in shit-holes all over the world and their families barely live at poverty level. So they are both soldiers and, unfortunately, he is as expendable as they are. Chuck, what’s really going on with you? You know the damn policy as well as anyone, yet you continue to lobby for a trade that isn’t going to happen?” The President’s agitation was evident in the way he threw down his pencil.
“I pushed Greely into this post, sir. He wanted out and I personally strong-armed him to take another tour. He is a close personal friend of Saudi Prince Ramalli; they were roommates at Choate. I needed him in that post as part of my mid-east initiative.”
“God damn it, Charles, then get your head out of your ass. We send people to dangerous places and into jeopardy all the time. It may be a first for you, but, trust me, the bad news is you have to live with it.”
I—
At 19:00 hours, the chopper’s radio squawked. “Target Alpha located. GPS downloading. Mission is a go. Repeat. Go.”
The twenty men scrambled into the helicopters as the big hoses that kept the turbines going from the support truck on the apron were disengaged. Within 30 seconds of the alert message, Foxtrot Alpha and Foxtrot Bravo, the mission code name identifiers for the teams of MH60s and AH64-D Apache Longbows, were wheels up and out.
“Delta force en route, sir,” the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs informed the President.
“Good. May God protect them and any innocents on the ground.”
“Very charitable of you, sir.”
Mitchell watched a map in the Situation Room as a triangle blip denoted the progress of the two foxtrot copters as they invaded the sovereignty of Egypt.
“Notify the Egyptian ambassador. Tell him we are invading his airspace. Note time and date and then sequester him till this op is over.” The President repeated those words the way his National Security Advisor had suggested 10 minutes earlier after the Egyptian ambassador was seated in the Roosevelt room supposedly awaiting an audience with the President.
“Yes, sir.” Charles Pickering said, picking up his phone to carry out the President’s orders. He didn’t like it; the Egyptian ambassador was an official guest of this country. Stopping him from contacting his homeland was a grievous act of non-diplomacy. Still, for the safety and security of the mission underway, there could not be a chance of leaks on the Egyptian side. In fact, at the end of the day, however it came out, the Egyptians would be glad they were not responsible for any mission compromises. They then could register formal complaints at the U.N. and save face with the Arab street.
> >
The Devil's Quota
The devil is in the details when the one percent gets what the one percent wants… no matter what, no matter how much or how legal. NYPD Detective Mike DiMaggio is catapulted into an international conspiracy when the details of a not so routine murder investigation get his partner killed and him fired. His suspicions that Cassandra Cassidy, a sexual behavioral psychiatrist, high-profile Park Avenue doctor, and right out of the society pages, is somehow connected to this syndicate proves to be a dangerous path. A journey that soon has him pitted against the most powerful forces in this country and around the world.
Meanwhile, one victim of this international treachery, a special forces operative, Master Sergeant Eric Ronson, abandons his unit and is hellbent on protecting Setara, the Afghan girl he loves, from its evil grip. An army of one, soon his rescue mission crosses international datelines and crosses paths with Detective DiMaggio. None of this is good for the fat cat power brokers and inhuman traffickers who will soon learn the high cost of satisfying the Devil’s Quota.
DiMaggio watched as a Mercedes C 63 AMG pulled in through the automatic gate of a mini-mansion, whose Antebellum-style façade was hidden by tall pines from the windy streets of this tawny part of Westchester. He slipped between the closing gates as the coupe ascended the gently curved driveway. DiMaggio ran up the drive and positioned himself by the side patio doors. Through the glass, he could see an alarm system keypad on the wall. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a lock pick and tension bar and started working on the door. DiMaggio heard the electric garage door close. He had the lock picked but didn’t open the door, keeping his eye on the red “armed” light rear-entry door keypad. As soon as the light turned green, DiMaggio slipped inside closing the door quickly with the slightest click behind him. A split second later, the light became red again as the system was re-armed.
With little more than a sliver of moonlight to guide him, he padded carefully through the “Florida” room. He walked toward a light that had been turned on down a hallway, his feet falling softly over the parquet floors. Hearing a noise ahead, he stopped and waited a few seconds before continuing. Pausing at the doorway, he hazarded a peek around the doorjamb into the lit room.
He smirked at the image of Dr. Cassandra Cassidy, illuminated by the open refrigerator door, stuffing chocolate cake into her mouth with a vengeance. He stepped up behind her. Startled, she let out a Duncan-Hines muffled yelp as she whipped around spraying chocolate cake all over him.
“How the hell did you get in my house?”
“You don’t remember inviting me over for a little cake?” DiMaggio said as he tried to wipe off his shirt but ended up just smearing the wet chocolate cake into a larger mess.
She ran for the phone. “I am calling the police.”
DiMaggio beat her to the phone and held down the receiver. “I am out of here in one minute if you answer one question. I promise.”
She glared at him.
Then as a gesture of good faith, he released his hand on the phone. “Or then you can call.” His offer must have had the desired effect on her because she relaxed her stance.
“So what’s your question?” she said.
He held up a picture of Reade in uniform. “Is whatever you are hiding worth her life?”
“What happened?”
“She was holding some pictures of your clients for me and she was killed when someone torched her house.”
Cassidy breathed deeply and looked down and to the left. “I had nothing to do with any of that.”
He grabbed her chin and brought her eyes back to him. “What’s so damned important to cost me my job, her…”—he wagged the picture in Cassidy’s face—“her life, and lord knows what else?”
“Look, why couldn’t you leave this alone, leave me alone? It’s none of your concern.”
“This may not mean much to a phony baloney doctor
like you, Wanda,” DiMaggio said, drawing her name out sarcastically, “but I took an oath to uphold the law. And unless they changed it while I was in the crapper, MURDER is still against the law.”
Watching her carefully, DiMaggio could almost see her mind finally collapse under the weight of the mess she was involved in. When she looked up, his eyes met hers, and as much as he tried, he couldn’t look away. Even with devil’s food crumbs on her chin, she was captivating.
Suddenly her eyes flashed with anger, replacing the short-lived regret. “Why are you really here?”
“To try and nail down this case.”
“Nail the case or nail me?”
“Whoa! Look sister, don’t get all carried away with yourself here. You got nothing I want except information.”
“I know your type, the blue collar slob. You hear one Bruce Springsteen song and think any woman, with a brain and money, won’t be able to resist you.”
“You know, for a head doctor you’re out of your gourd. Everything is not always about sex!” DiMaggio looked away from her for a second, then suddenly put his arms around her and pulled her down to the floor.
“See!” She started punching at his shoulders. “Get off me you goddamn maniac.”
Bullets ripped into the space where they had just stood, puncturing the refrigerator, smashing jars on the counter and blowing the faucet off the kitchen sink. The windows in the front of the house were turned into a cascade of shattering glass. DiMaggio covered her from the debris with his body. When the shooting stopped, he pulled his gun. He placed his hand on her in a gesture for her to remain on the floor and whispered, “You okay?”
She nodded, too terrified to speak.
“Stay down. Don’t move,” he said quietly.
More bullets ripped through the room. Cassidy’s body spasmed with the sound of each loud impact.
DiMaggio waited for a break in the firing and then sprang up on one knee and fired in the direction of the incoming rounds.
From outside the shattered window, DiMaggio heard, “Oh shit!”
He ducked as one last burst sprayed the room. In the dead silence that followed, he heard footsteps running away. A door slammed as a car’s engine started, the tires peeling out as it quickly sped away. DiMaggio ran into the night, hoping for a license plate number or at the very least the make of the car.
The God Particle Page 37