The Operative

by Andrew Britton

  “What?”

  “Do it!”

  He obliged.

  “Tell me everything, now,” she ordered.

  “What the hell’s going on?”

  “Just goddamn answer me!” she snapped. “Your little girl was killed yesterday! What are you doing here, Reed?”

  Bishop regarded her sadly. “Jessica, how did Veil get away?”

  “You tell me!” she shot back.

  “I have no idea, and for the record, I’m not here alone.”

  “I know.”

  It was then that Bishop realized how careful Muloni had been. She had situated them so that his left side was facing the bridge. He was looking uselessly out in the direction of the South Street Seaport. She, on the other hand, could see the surging crowds. She was also a step and a half away from him. Basic FBI training included disarming a gunman with a grab and twist of the hand while turning and stepping aside; he would need two steps to execute the maneuver, time enough for her to draw and fire.

  “Where is she, Reed? Bishop was silent. It was obvious that Muloni had been following him. It took only a moment for him to consider the ways she could have known he was here. He wished he had asked Kealey who else knew the president requested him to go to New York. Was it possible that someone at a cabinet level, at a director’s level, was involved in this? Were there secretaries taking notes, or was it all being digitally recorded, as all official meetings in the Oval Office were? That wasn’t just for reference. It was for blackmail of chatty, duplicitous, or even drunk world leaders. It wasn’t that Bishop refused to believe there was duplicity at that level; he had seen all kinds of corruption and perversion of purpose in his years with IA. Considering all options came with the job. He simply didn’t want to believe it.

  More likely, Muloni was the problem. Had she been at One West, working with Hunt? Was she the AD’s backup? Had she spotted them at Penn Station?

  But this was a secret mission. How did she find out? he thought.

  What did he miss? Where did he slip up? What would he have done had he not been here?

  Funeral arrangements.

  The Bureau would have created a death notice, which was standard for family members. That would have been circulated internally at the Bureau. But there would have been no funeral home attached.

  That, plus Veil had escaped. Maybe someone put the two together, reasoned he had agreed to be involved with the trackdown, watched him, saw him get onto the train... .

  “I asked you a question,” Muloni said thickly.

  “You’re way off base, Jessica,” Bishop replied.

  “You’re here with a former Company man, a lone wolf. Way outside the Bureau comfort zone.”

  “Cluzot had to—”

  “Enough! Everyone around you was gunned down at the station this morning. Left, right, behind, in front. But not you.”

  “I don’t know why that happened, either—”

  “Bullshit! I will put a bullet in your leg and step on it when you’re down,” she said. “You will tell me what you know.”

  “While your crony Alexander Hunt keeps the cops away,” Bishop said. “He’s the bad egg, Jessica—”

  “Really?” She looked past him. “You can tell him that to his face. He’s on the way over now.”

  “Don’t trust him, Jessica. There’s something wrong with his operation—”

  The young woman brought the firearm around, held it in both hands, pointing down in front of her. “Last chance.”

  If Hunt were coming, Bishop was certain that Kealey would be right behind him. He needed to stall.

  “If you let me get my cell, I’ll show you what I know about Veil,” he said.

  “Left hand,” she said.

  “I know the drill.”

  Bishop slipped his left hand from his pocket. He used his thumb and index finger to reach across his waist slowly and remove the cell phone from his belt. He held his left arm in front of him, removed his right hand from his pocket, raised it palm up, then brought his index finger over and accessed his e-mails. He scrolled slowly to the one he had received on the train that morning. He turned the phone toward her.

  “Read it,” she said.

  As he expected, Muloni didn’t want to come forward or take her eyes from him until Hunt arrived.

  Bishop turned the phone toward him and read: “Cargo from Quebec hijacked. Believed to be in NYC.”

  Her lips drew back in a tense, straight line. She cocked the hammer of her .38. “I got that, too. I’m going to count to three. One ... two ...”

  “She’s working for the Bureau,” Bishop lied.

  Muloni regarded him suspiciously. “Killing civilians?”

  “No,” he said, his mind racing to think of an answer she would buy. “Hunting the sniper who is doing that.”

  Muloni didn’t release the hammer. “Who is this other sniper?”

  Christ, she seemed sincere, Bishop thought. Was it possible she really didn’t know anything?

  Bishop was about to give her a story about a Hezbollah sharpshooter attacking Jewish centers of activity when Muloni’s eyes suddenly went very wide. Her back arched, thrusting her chest forward, and her chest spewed blood and organs in a column. Some of it struck Bishop in the chin and throat.

  An instant later he heard the delayed crack of a single gunshot. It rolled over him, echoing down the narrow street. As the woman fell to the pavement, Bishop could see what her body had been blocking. He saw the people freeze and look ahead, to the west. At the head of the mob was Assistant Director Hunt.

  The prick, Bishop thought. He didn’t come the way Muloni had been expecting. He had come up behind her. Bad luck on her part—or because I would have been in the way? he wondered.

  As Hunt jogged forward, Kealey emerged from the mob right behind him. He charged forward, shoulders hunched, obviously not certain whether the AD was finished shooting. Bishop believed he was. Hunt was holding his weapon pointed down in his right hand while he drew his credentials with his left.

  “Are you all right?” Hunt yelled ahead. “I saw her draw a weapon.”

  Bishop didn’t answer. He heard footsteps behind him, raised his hands to show he wasn’t holding a weapon, turned as a quartet of NYPD officers converged on the spot.

  “FBI business!” Hunt shouted, keeping the gun down but raising his ID. “She was in league with the sniper!”

  Hunt was a bad apple, all right. Shouting that second part broke every rule there was. The identity of any suspect was need to know. Either he was trying to get the police to stand down ASAP or he was trying to put that information out there.

  Why, you bastard?”

  Just as important, what was Muloni doing here? Even if the Bureau put two agents on Veil without letting the other know—because of the leak—how did she get here when the notice went out only hours before?

  Hunt arrived, breathing heavily. His eyes were on Muloni. He nudged her weapon aside with his foot, checked her pulse.

  “She isn’t getting up,” Bishop said.

  “No,” Hunt agreed. He picked up the gun with a handkerchief, put it in the inside pocket of his blazer. The cops arrived at the same time as Kealey. The AD showed his badge around without looking up. He put it away, patted the body down.

  One of the officers called in the shooting. He described it as “an FBI action against an armed terror suspect.”

  “You okay?” Kealey asked, circling around Hunt and Muloni.

  “Yeah.” There was disgust in Bishop’s voice and in Kealey’s expression.

  “Who are you two?” one of the cops asked.

  Bishop held up his hand to show he was going to reach for something. He drew out his own ID. Kealey did the same.

  “This card is expired, sir,” one of the cops said to Kealey.

  “Call President Brenneman,” he said. “He’ll vouch for me.”

  Kealey was looking at Hunt when he said that. The AD’s eyes rolled up. He knew the name had been dropped
for his benefit. Hunt rose. Bishop had watched as he’d confiscated Muloni’s phone. He’d palmed it carefully, but not carefully enough. Bishop knew what it was. Bishop removed his jacket, knelt, and laid it on top of Muloni.

  “These men are fine,” Hunt said.

  The policemen exchanged looks. Kealey’s ID was returned. The cop who had spoken to Kealey, Officer Ratner, still seemed unconvinced.

  Hunt faced him impatiently. “Don’t you have traffic to clear so we can get a meat wagon to pick up this individual?”

  “Don’t get belligerent, sir,” the young officer replied.

  “Christ Jesus, we’ve got a sniper running around with accomplices, and you don’t think I should be yelling at you?”

  “What I think,” the cop said stubbornly, “is that you just shot a woman in the back, and I’m supposed to take your word about who, what, and why.”

  “Did you see the gun?”

  The cop didn’t answer.

  “Was it pointed at this individual?”

  Officer Ratner remained silent.

  “Let’s go,” one of the other officers said. “We’ll check in with the FBI field office, see if he’s kosher.”

  “Tell them it’s Assistant Director Hunt you’re asking about,” he snapped. “Do you need me to spell any of that for you?”

  “No, we’ve got it,” the other officer replied.

  The others started to go. Ratner remained where he was; one of the others reached back and drew him away by the arm.

  The scene was incongruous to Bishop. Two men alpha dogging over a dead woman and a growing puddle of blood. He glanced at Kealey, who handed him a handkerchief, indicated the blood on his chin. Bishop wiped it away.

  Hunt calmed slowly. He was perspiring, possibly from having run over in the heat, possibly from something else.

  Kealey was watching the AD carefully. “How about putting the gun away?”

  The remark drew a sharp reaction from Hunt. “Are you challenging me, too?”

  “Not at all. I’m trying to get you back to center,” Kealey replied. “You just killed someone.”

  “In the execution of my duties—”

  “Yes, and now the shooting is over—”

  “I saved your partner!”

  “Thank you,” Bishop said evenly, hoping he didn’t sound overly solicitous. He was with Kealey on this: he didn’t like the way Hunt was looking at them. “Mr. Hunt, you know as well as I do, the rule book says if you discharge your weapon, you have to surrender it. We’re not going there. All Mr. Kealey asked is that you holster the firearm. Otherwise, I do have the authority to confiscate it.”

  Hunt considered this, then shoved the weapon in its holster. He looked at the IA officer. “Sorry, but you walked into a situation that has been ongoing.”

  “What do you mean?” Bishop asked.

  “We’ve been watching this agent for several months. We believe she is—was—a sympathizer with radical Muslim causes.”

  “Was she?” Bishop asked, staring at him. “I watched her rough up a Muslim assassin in Quebec. She didn’t seem very sympathetic.”

  “Veil was bait,” Hunt said. “We believe Muloni engineered Veil’s escape.”

  “Speaking of Veil,” Kealey said, “do you mind if we forgo the trip to the lab right now? Maybe nose around and see what we can find out?”

  Hunt relaxed noticeably. “Not at all. In fact, I’d appreciate the assist.”

  “Great. Tell us what to do,” Kealey said.

  “They’ve found the body of a UPS driver about a half mile up South Street,” he said. “Why don’t you head over there, see if you can figure out where she went or what surveillance cameras might have seen her?”

  “Sure thing,” Kealey said.

  Leaving the corpse behind—she would have to wait her turn to be picked up—the men separated, Hunt going east while Kealey and Bishop headed north. The two men made their way up Centre Street, past the bridge, then cut over to the east.

  “There’s a guy on the edge,” Kealey said.

  “He’s also full of it,” Bishop said when they set out.

  “Which part?” Kealey asked.

  “About Muloni being a sympathizer.”

  “Was she going to shoot you? She looked like it from where I was standing.”

  “Very possibly,” Bishop said. “That’s the thing. She was tailing us. She was convinced that we’re in league with Veil. And I don’t think she was kidding.”

  “Well, that’s a dead end now. The bigger problem is I don’t think Veil is done. These feel like sideshows.”

  “Killing dozens of people, shutting down a major city—that’s a sideshow?”

  “It’s a short-term hit,” Kealey said. “People will be back in a few days. A couple of businesses will decentralize, like they did after September eleven. That doesn’t generate fundamental change. It isn’t reason enough for someone to have gone through the trouble of springing this particular assassin.”

  “Why not? She’s evading capture while—”

  Even as he was saying it, Bishop realized that Kealey was right.

  “While she’s dragging the NYPD and the FBI all across Manhattan,” Kealey said, finishing the thought for him. “Midtown west, now Lower Manhattan.”

  “Right,” Bishop said. “A distraction. But why don’t you think she’s finished?”

  “There’s one more meaty target,” Kealey said. “People are evacuating fast, en masse, so she’ll probably hit Grand Central Terminal or the Port Authority Bus Terminal before she or her sponsors move on to the next step.”

  “Yeah, the more I think about this, the more I don’t think she’s acting solo,” Bishop said. “I was there when Muloni mentioned her daughter. That registered big-time. If Veil engineered an escape, she would have gone to Pakistan to get her into hiding. It is more likely someone wanted her here. Maybe someone else who had access to the kid.”

  “There’s something else,” Kealey said. “Did you happen to see the phone Hunt took from Muloni?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s a Minotaur,” Kealey said. “The latest high-security uplink. Someone at her pay grade wouldn’t need one.”

  “She was sent here,” Bishop said. “And not to watch for Veil. Jesus, Ryan. Who the hell is setting us up?”

  “I don’t know,” Kealey admitted. “The Minotaur is not standard issue to anyone in government service. It costs about a half million per unit. The CIA wouldn’t be giving one out to an undercover agent. It’s conceivable, though, that the manufacturer would.”

  “Who’s that?”

  Kealey answered, “Trask Industries.”

  Bishop considered this. “We need a double-dog op.”

  “Hunt?”

  “Got no one else,” Bishop said. “He took the phone. He’s the closest to ‘suspicious’ we’ve got.”

  “All right,” Kealey said. “I’ll take point on this. You stay with him. I’ll go to Grand Central. After that, I’ll hit One West.”

  “Gotcha,” Bishop said.

  “Get something to eat, too,” Kealey told him. “Fast. These vendors look like they’re selling out down here.”

  Bishop offered a halfhearted grin. “Capitalism. Gotta love it.”

  CHAPTER 25

  NEW BOSTON, TEXAS

  John Scroggins was dozing in his seat after his dawn-to-ten shift at the wheel. Absalom Bell had made the White Sands run before, but Scroggins was primarily a Florida-to-Maine man for Trask Industries. The flatness of the land, the will-sapping heat just outside the door, the whitewash bluntness of the sun—none of these were for him.

  “You might as well be driving through hell,” he had told Bell when he turned over the wheel a few minutes before.

  The sameness of the world around him included the sounds—the whoosh of air moving past at 80 mph, the tuning-fork sound of the hybrid engine, the hollow whisper of the tires on the road. Save for a vintage hot rod that passed them, there was nothing new.

>   Until there wasn’t.

  Scroggins felt the dull drumming before he heard it.

  “Is the engine okay?” he asked without opening his eyes.

  “That ain’t us,” Bell said. “It’s them.”

  “Eh?” Scroggins cracked an eye. It took a moment before he could see through the white glare of the windshield. The pale blue of the sky formed beyond it, and in that sky he saw three silver-white bugs. They were low on the horizon, just above the dashboard, and getting larger—and finally louder—by the moment. He felt as if he were sitting in a vibrating chair in a furniture showroom.

  “Definitely not a traffic copter eye in the sky,” Bell said, sipping coffee.

  “Must be some kind of maneuvers,” Scroggins said.

  “How-to-fly-in-a-triangle training,” Bell joked and chuckled.

  The Bell-Boeing V-22 Ospreys continued in a straight, sinister line along the interstate. They grew larger as they approached, their tilt-rotor pylons rippling like snakes in the heat rising from the asphalt.

  Scroggins shifted uneasily, glanced in the side-view mirror, sat up, drummed anxiously on his knees. “Maybe you ought to pull over,” he suggested.

  “What for? They ain’t the damn highway patrol.”

  “No, but they are,” Scroggins said.

  Bell looked in his mirror. Just coming over the horizon was a line of Ford Police Interceptors, their dark chassis blending with the asphalt in a way that made their white tops and red and blue lights seem to float forward.

  “You running guns?” Scroggins asked.

  “No. Heroin,” Bell replied.

  “Don’t joke,” Scroggins said. “They may have some kind of listening shit.”

  “Well, what kinda dumb question is that?”

  “The kind that makes me wonder why we’ve got the law and the air force converging on our asses.”

  “Maybe they’re after each other,” Bell said. “Some kinda drill. And they’re navy, not air force.”

  “Excuse me all to hell,” Scroggins said.

  The driver slowed and pulled off the road. The men watched as the THP vehicles neared—there were four of them—and the choppers formed a line in front of them, straddling the interstate. Their six main rotors were literally shaking their insides from waist to throat now, the propellers churning dirt from the plains below them. The brush struck Scroggins as ancient peoples waving and swaying before their gods. He wished he felt more like a god and less like a cactus.