That wasn’t great. But even worse was the fact that with Monroe compromised, Blackstone was aware, at least to some extent, that he too was exposed. If he knew that Echelon had his files, he was entirely capable, in Jed’s opinion, of seceding from the union. If he wasn’t aware of what they had on him, he might try to cover it up by simply disposing of the woman and turning her presence in Texas back on Seattle. This was what a guy like Wales Larrison called ‘blowback’. The deputy director sounded calm, even sanguine, on the line from Vancouver. Jed supposed he was used to these things blowing up in his face. After all, he’d seen most of his network in France rolled up back in ‘03. Caitlin Monroe was the sole survivor of that betrayal.
Although the best outcome to the immediate crisis would be for Monroe to disappear, while leaving Jed with enough documentation of Blackstone’s villainy to destroy him at his leisure, the White House Chief of Staff knew he had to act quickly to maintain some semblance of control.
‘The Federal Center down in Temple,’ he said. ‘Talk me through what kind of assets we have down there, Mr Director.’
*
‘Really. This is fascinating, and not at all creepy,’ Caitlin continued. ‘But really off topic. You asked what I hoped to achieve? I want to know what the fuck went wrong in New York.’
Blackstone shifted uncomfortably in his chair and shot a glance over at McCutcheon, before trying to cover up his loss of self-control with bombast.
‘What happened in New York, young lady,’ he said in a lecturing tone, ‘is that President Kipper learned a harsh lesson in the realities of life. He had been running down the defences of this country, selling off some of our finest assets in the worst sort of dime-store auctions, and in New York the chickens came home to roost.’
Caitlin stared at him for two seconds. Long enough for him to squirm.
‘Sweet suffering disco Jesus,’ she said. ‘Could you be any more patronising or clichéd?’
Blackstone bristled but had no chance to reply before she spoke again.
‘Your administration signed a salvage contract with a Turkish shipping company controlled by a man called Ahmet Ozal. Save the bluster. If I didn’t already know that, we wouldn’t be here. The contract wasn’t notarised in America. But I did obtain a copy in Europe. Ozal provided ships to transport jihadi fighters across the Atlantic and into New York. He was also responsible for springing Bilal Baumer from a French prison cell in Guadeloupe, where he’d been rotting away quite nicely, thank you very much.’
‘Stuff and nonsense,’ protested Blackstone.
‘No, it’s history, Jack,’ she said. ‘And so are you, unless there’s a good reason you took it upon yourself to commit treason.’
She was ready for him this time when he exploded.
‘IT WAS NOT TREASON!’
‘Governor . . .’ McCutcheon warned.
‘The hell with her,’ snapped Blackstone, his cheeks turning bright red. ‘I will not be traduced in my own house. I will not have my patriotism questioned by the likes of this mercenary whore.’
‘Good for you, big guy,’ she said. ‘So, the jihadi nutjobs you paid twenty-five million dollars to invade America and kill a couple of thousand of your fellow citizens while, incidentally, making one hell of a mess of midtown Manhattan – what was up with that again?’
‘I am sure the Governor will tell you it was all a horrible mistake. It wasn’t meant to turn out that way. And he would be right in that . . .’
Caitlin’s face distorted into a rictus of animalistic rage as she spun around to confront a new presence in the room.
He stood, dressed casually in jeans and a pink polo top. His accent was German, but he had worked on it assiduously and could have passed for a New Jersey native. His Ottoman heritage betrayed him only in so far as his olive skin stood out in a roomful of Anglo-Saxons who had endured a long winter.
Bilal Baumer positively beamed at her.
‘Caitlin,’ he said. ‘It’s been too long.’
53
SEATTLE, WASHINGTON
‘Tusk Musso has a bunch of special ops-capable Rangers down there,’ said Wales Larrison. ‘Most of them with experience in village fighting in the Middle East and a tour of Manhattan.’
‘That sounds excellent,’ said Jed. ‘Wake Tusk up and tell him we have an agent needing extraction. Hostile extraction.’
Larrison hesitated long enough for Jed to know there was a ‘but’ coming.
‘The reason most of them are down in Temple, Mr Culver, is to recover from Manhattan. I know most of the civilians down there consider it a hardship posting because of the relationship with Fort Hood, but for those troopers, thirteen months of escorting survey teams around the countryside is akin to a vacation.’
‘Vacation’s over, Mr Director,’ Jed snapped. ‘Get Musso out of bed, and get their asses on the road. Now!’
‘With all due respect, sir, we don’t even know if Agent Monroe is under duress.’
‘When people say “With all due respect”, Mr Larrison, in my experience they mean anything but. So I’m not going to bother. You tell me she went in, under cover. She cracked their system, uploaded the data, and now she’s gone offline, but you can track her, or at least her handset, to Blackstone’s residence. I know you intelligence types hate to make assumptions, but I think we can safely jump to the conclusion that the brown stuff has well and truly hit the fan and we have a limited amount of time to clean this shit up before we’re all covered in it.’
To Larrison’s credit, he didn’t back down. ‘If that is so, Mr Culver, sending a stick of Rangers in to kick down the Governor’s door isn’t going to help. But it will surely escalate the problem. I would suggest that if we must intervene, we maintain the minimum possible profile. Sergeant Milosz is awaiting a signal to extract Monroe. We do not have a secure channel to him, but we can still contact him. By telling him to find a safe channel and briefing him in. It will take time we may not have, but I guarantee it’s a better idea than starting a civil war.’
A worsening headache added to Jed’s misery. A steady, growing pain that felt like somebody boring a knuckle into his temple. His hands shook and six slices of four-cheese pizza sat heavy in his gut, leaving him feeling clammy and nauseous.
‘Right,’ he said, exhaling sharply. ‘I’m not going to tell you how to do that. Just get it done. And you’re right, of course. I’m sorry. Kicking in the fucking door and killing every motherfucker inside probably isn’t going to help. No matter how satisfying it might be to contemplate. My apologies, Larrison. I just . . .’ he fought back the urge to vomit and a painful surge of indigestion, ‘it’s just that we’re so close to nailing this I don’t want it to fall apart at the last moment. So let’s get on it.’
Culver hung up the phone without saying goodbye. Dizziness almost knocked him back to the mattress when he tried to stand, forcing him to lean against the wall and suck in a couple of long draughts of air. When the dark blurs at the edge of his vision receded, he pushed himself off into the small en-suite bathroom and ran a hot shower. He needed to clear his head and think. And maybe throw up properly.
Fucking pizza, he thought. I’ve got fucking food poisoning from that four cheese son of a bitch. He leaned against the sink and struggled to draw in a lungful of air. His reflection in the mirror looked wretched. He was positively green, and dark black pouches stood out under his eyes. He shook off his own problems, however. He had more important things to deal with.
Incomplete information. That was the problem.
Monroe had done her job. She had punched through Blackstone’s defences, and although Jed had not seen the data, Larrison assured him it was enough to bring down the Governor for good. So there was that. It wouldn’t be a matter of just dropping the file on his desk and telling Mad Jack that he was going down. It would have to be handled with some finesse. It might even mean giving the bastard a way to escape honourably. As much as Jed seethed with a hunger to revenge himself on this cocksucker for
all of the trouble he caused, he also recognised there were larger questions in play. There was no point taking Blackstone down if he pulled down the temple around him.
And there was still Monroe to consider. They had no idea why Monroe, or at least the locator chip tracking her handset, had suddenly crossed Fort Hood and come to rest in Blackstone’s residence.
A terrible thought occurred to Jed. Terrible, and yet heavy with possibility. It brought his acid reflux surging up painfully, all but unbearably.
If Monroe had proven to herself that Blackstone’s link to Baumer was not just incidental, might she have decided to settle any perceived personal debt with Mad Jack, in spite of his own direct order to the contrary?
He actually laughed at that as he stepped into the shower and let the hot water play over his head; an unkind, braying bark that did as little to improve his mood as the shower did to make him feel any better physically. He was really suffering. It was starting to worry him. But not as much as Agent Monroe.
Had she done to him what he’d done to Kip? Namely, acting with a semblance of obedience for the sole purpose of arranging events to suit herself.
He scrubbed at his scalp as the stinging hot water battered away at the edges of his hangover and his illness. He was having trouble swallowing, and wondered whether he might be coming down with the flu. There was a monster flu bug getting around Seattle right now, like something out of Stephen King. Be just his fucking luck to get it when he could least afford to. He leaned both hands against the wall and let the hot water massage the back of his neck. His belly hung huge and low over his thighs.
He was going to have to get back into shape when this was done. Been promising Marilyn for months that he would do something about his weight and his fitness, but there was always some reason, some excellent excuse for not taking that first step. Another meeting, another crisis, another fire to put out. How the hell was he supposed to look after himself when he spent every waking hour, and then some, looking after the country. And if a guy couldn’t reward himself at the end of the day with a decent drink and a lousy fucking pizza . . . well, fuck. What was the point?
His stomach rolled over again. He gritted his teeth and promised himself he would do something as soon as he could. Marilyn was right. He’d really let himself go.
First, however, first he had to finish Blackstone, and deal with whatever Monroe had set in train down there. Maybe Kipper had been right about her. Maybe she was the wrong tool. A tactical nuke, when a stiletto was more appropriate.
She’d done something similar in the Federation, he recalled, after breaking Lupérico out of that detention centre. Caitlin Monroe had taken what she needed for her mission, in that instance, and then taken a man’s life of her own accord.
How would she play this one? he wondered.
54
FORT HOOD, KILLEEN, TEXAS ADMINISTRATIVE DIVISION
She launched herself at him.
Even with her hands cuffed behind her, Caitlin flew at Baumer in a blur, as straight and swift as an arrow. An armchair stood in the way, a deep, club chair, clad in dark brown leather and studded with burnished brass stud buttons. She mounted it as though running up a set of steps, kicking off as she pivoted on one foot and lashed out with the other, aiming a flying side kick at his throat. She meant to crush his larynx with the blade of her foot.
Baumer was ready for her, and had begun to dodge the impact even as she mounted the chair. He slipped sideways, executing a creditable sidestep that she noted as having all the hallmarks of some karate training. Caitlin turned the pile-driver of her flying yoko geri into a vicious roundhouse snap aimed at his head. Baumer, already raising his hands to deflect the attack, switched to a stopping block but didn’t focus the technique in time. Caitlin’s mawashi geri crashed through his defence. He cried out in pain as she shattered his forearm, snapping the ulna like a dry twig.
Even so, the broken bone absorbed enough of the blow to ward off the worst of the impact on his skull. She felt a glancing, dissatisfying impression of her steel-capped boot cracking his cheekbone, but before the energy could transfer itself into his brainpan, he had spun to the floor. Baumer, she knew, had some hand-to-hand skills – basic attack and defence methodology stolen, ironically enough, from the Israeli-developed krav maga combat system, and polished to a pretty high sheen. But his training was straightforward and practical. Good enough for somewhere like New York. Hers had been obsessive and refined. And all but pointless in the circumstances she now found herself in.
Pain, a bright white neutron star of pain, exploded in her chest, as McCutcheon kicked her away from the man she intended to kill. He appeared within her peripheral vision just as she thudded down on a thick Persian rug, after executing the attempted kick to Baumer’s skull. Caitlin landed on her side, exhaling, dropping as much hip and shoulder as she could into the fall; but she remained at a disadvantage to a man on his feet, with the length of a whole room to line up his attack. McCutcheon drove a snap kick into her centre body mass and she flew into the bookshelf, grunting as it forced the last of the air from her lungs.
‘Enough!’ he barked, quickly backing away, holding a gun on her.
‘I probably wouldn’t have done that in your position, Miss Monroe,’ said Blackstone. ‘After all, you’ll be leaving with young Billy Bob in a few minutes. And now you’ve simply exacerbated the bad blood between you.’
‘What the fuck . . .’ said Caitlin.
Blackstone shook his head. ‘Please, harsh language isn’t necessary. Ty, could you attend to Mr Baumer? I suspect he’s going to need a medic. If you pass me your gun, I’m sure I can persuade Miss Monroe to behave herself.’
The appearance of six TDF troopers at the French doors drew Caitlin’s attention away from her long-time nemesis.
The men looked anxious, uncertain as to whether to come barging in or to wait outside when they saw Blackstone holding the pistol and obviously still in control.
‘Might be an idea if we had the fellows wait in here for a few minutes,’ said the Governor. ‘Miss Monroe has a reputation as a difficult woman. I can see it’s well deserved.’
His aide nodded before limping over to the doors to let them in. He’d hurt himself kicking her. But he’d hurt Caitlin even worse. She could feel a couple of cracked ribs grinding against each other as she found her feet.
Baumer looked ashen, his previous confidence entirely gone. He fixed her with a glare, suffused with murderous intent.
‘Gonna pay for that, whore.’
‘Now then, where were we?’ said Blackstone. ‘Oh yes, you were traducing my honour, my patriotism and my judgment.’
He shot her in the leg.
She registered the roar of the handgun before the shock of the bullet tearing into her thigh. Caitlin screamed an obscenity as she went down, the leg snatched away from beneath her as if by a giant hook. She had been shot before, but it never got any easier. The pain and trauma and sense of violation were new, every time. Still, her training ran deep, and she controlled her collapse towards the floor, screaming to empty the air from her lungs, again, and tucking both arms around her wounded ribs and her chin into her chest to save herself a concussion should her head hit the floor. The impact wasn’t so bad. The bullet had stunned her nervous system and she was still numb. It would be a few seconds before she felt the real pain.
Echelon’s senior field operative found herself down at the same level as Baumer, who was still struggling to recover from the kick to his face. His arms seemed weak and rubbery as Ty McCutcheon, having returned from opening the doors, bent down to support him, and haul him back to his feet. If Caitlin could have dragged herself over to put out his eyes and choke the life from his body, she would have. But she knew that Mad Jack would put a bullet in her head before she got close. The debilitating rage of being so close to the man who had sent killers after her husband and child, of being within killing distance herself, but being unable to act, was nearly as crippling as her wound.
<
br /> Then the shock of the bullet gave way to floods of pain coursing through her body. She sucked in a mouthful of air, tasting blood and bile as she propped herself up against a dark leather couch, the companion piece to the single-seater she’d used as a platform to fly at Baumer just now. The lounge was covered in lush, ornate splatters of her blood. Shining in the light of a low-hanging chandelier, smelling of earth and copper and corruption.
She was the only thing moving in the room. The TDF squad had entered and now stood gawping at the scene. Baumer leaned against the bookshelf, waves of loathing coming off him like heat. Blackstone sat like a fat, aged monarch in his dressing gown, holding McCutcheon’s pistol on her. Nine men watched the sole woman in the room without comment as, grinding her teeth against the agony, she contorted her lower body to slip her good leg, then her injured limb, through the handcuffs. Her head swam and dark red spots filled her vision as she did so. She moved slowly, and nobody tried to stop her. A childhood memory arose, of a small dog, its back legs and half its spine crushed by a car on the road in front her house on another military base. Edwards AFB, where her father was stationed when she was six. The neighbourhood kids all stood there silently, watching the dog as it struggled to drag itself off the tarmac, unable, in the end, to escape the anchor of its crushed innards holding it in place. Surrounded by armed and hostile men, she felt like that poor animal.
Twenty-five years ago, Caitlin Monroe had walked through the ranks of mute, staring children and crushed the head of that little dog with one, fierce stomp. She was crying as she did so, distraught that such a hard mercy should fall to her when larger, older children stood by, doing nothing.
Angels of Vengeance: The Disappearance Novel 3 Page 54