by Stephen Frey
“So maybe I have to share some of the guilt for that, too,” Troy said, sending Bill an accusatory glare.
Bill glanced away after a few moments.
“All I’m saying,” Troy continued, “is that in a very small way, I understand where Shane’s coming from. Especially now that I know how many attacks RCS has stopped over the last decade.”
“We didn’t stop what happened today at the malls,” Bill muttered dejectedly.
“No,” Troy agreed quietly, “we didn’t.”
“And I can’t endorse Maddux’s vigilante brand of justice, either. Roger told me about that little sideshow.”
“He only took out people who deserved it,” Troy argued. “He eliminated the scum who’d worked the system and dodged prison on a technicality. Murderers, rapists, pedophiles—and only ones he was absolutely sure were guilty. I don’t have a problem with that.”
“But how do you know that’s all he did? How do you know he didn’t take out a few people who didn’t deserve it along the way? People he had a personal beef with.”
“I don’t know, Dad, and I don’t care. Look, if you were so hopped up about what Maddux was doing on the side, and Carlson had told you about it, why didn’t you stop it?”
“Who says I didn’t try?”
Troy gazed at his father, wondering—about a lot of things. “I still don’t understand why President Dorn changed his mind about Red Cell Seven. I don’t get why he wanted to destroy it a few weeks ago and now he wants to keep it. Why all of a sudden he wants to make it a cornerstone of the U.S. intelligence program.” Troy hesitated. “And I especially don’t understand the one-eighty when it was one of the senior guys inside RCS who tried to assassinate him.”
“I can think of a couple of reasons.”
“Okay. Spin that out for me.”
“Over the last few weeks, he did find out how valuable the cell has been. He read those files I gave him, and he probably had his people do some more digging.” Bill nodded toward the Oval Office. “He probably knew about at least some of those attacks we stopped before we went in there today. And maybe he figured that if a senior guy inside it is willing to assassinate him to keep it going, maybe it is that valuable.”
“Maybe,” Troy said, still unconvinced. “What else?”
“Simple. He doesn’t want to get shot again.”
“So he’s trying to convince a rogue element he’s on their side?”
“Keep your allies close…and your enemies closer.”
“Yeah, yeah, but Shane’s smart enough never to trust Dorn no matter what he said or did.”
“Maybe we should be so smart. Maybe President Dorn is being more careful about getting rid of it this time. Maybe that’s what this is really all about.”
Troy raised an eyebrow and nodded. “See, now you’re on Maddux’s side.”
“I’m on the country’s side, son. That’s all. If that means I have to deal with shades of gray, so be it.”
“Why do you think President Dorn asked you where the two originals of Executive Order One-E were?”
“He was curious.”
“Come on, Dad.”
“It’s like he said. He knows Red Cell Seven is vulnerable without the original documentation President Nixon signed.”
“Or he wants to get his hands on the documents so he can destroy them. That’s why you mentioned impeachment possibilities. You wanted to scare him.”
Bill didn’t respond.
“Do you know where the documents are, Dad?”
Bill shook his head.
“So, how many defections did you hear about?” Troy asked after a few moments. His father would never tell him where the original Orders were, even if he did know.
“How many what?”
“Do I really have to—”
“Five,” Bill cut in. “I heard five RCS agents defected with Maddux.
“There were three from the Falcons, including Ryan O’Hara,” Bill continued, “as well as two from other divisions. You?”
“I heard—” Troy interrupted himself as the news anchor began speaking quickly in an animated tone. “Look at this,” he said, gesturing at the screen on the wall. “The guys under the bridge are shooting at the chopper.”
“Here we go,” Bill mumbled grimly. “This is it. I just hope the cops on the front line are ready for anything.”
“What do you mean?”
“These people are crazy, and they’re well-equipped,” Bill answered. “They aren’t like the normal idiots who shoot up places. Most local law-enforcement units around this country are completely unprepared for this kind of capability…and commitment.”
CHAPTER 10
“ALL RIGHT, all right!” the leader shouted at the other two men, who were still shooting into the air. The helicopter was moving off quickly. The eye in the sky had gotten the message. “Hold your fire.”
“What do we do now?” one of the men yelled, panic-stricken. “We can’t stay here forever.”
“We’ll be fine.” The leader smiled confidently. He nodded over their shoulders. “You see, help is coming already.”
The two men turned in unison to look, as if their chins were connected, completely convinced of the sincerity of their leader’s gesture. However, it was nothing more than an old playground trick.
The leader shot both of them in the back of the head as soon as they glanced away. As they lay sprawled on the ground, he put an extra bullet into each man’s brain.
When he was sure they were dead, he burst from behind the wall toward a line of police cars. He knew why the authorities had waited so long. He knew what they were doing, and he was too committed to the big picture and the greater good to allow them to derail it this quickly.
He’d been tortured once before by U.S. intel, and he wanted no part of another interrogation session like that. He much preferred a quick death over what would undoubtedly take many painful days to die. Besides, what was waiting for him on the other side was much more beautiful than this world. That’s what he believed, anyway.
He dropped his weapon and threw his arms up in the air in full view of the authorities. Then he began to jog straight at the center vehicle in the line of cruisers. He could see the faces and the expressions of the policemen who were stationed behind the line of cherry tops. They were confused by his actions. Where were his compatriots? What in the hell was going on? They had no idea how to react.
They should be shooting me now, he thought as he ran. I would be shooting me. But they are not trained well, and the chain of command has failed them. Some idiot five levels above these street soldiers still hasn’t made a decision on how to deal with this emergency, probably because it was being broadcast live for the world to see and they don’t want to be perceived as vicious and insensitive. So they are paralyzed.
Their hesitation allowed him to make it all the way to the center of the line before they finally raised their weapons and ordered him to stop. By then it was too late—and he pulled the cord.
The bomb in his backpack unleashed its fury, releasing a terrible blast that took eight policemen and women with him.
AS KAASHIF watched the man jog toward the line of police cars on television, he actually felt the exhilaration his brother in arms was experiencing. It was taking the form of a great rush in his chest and a tingling sensation that extended from his heart all the way to his fingertips and toes. The man on TV was doing the right thing. He was sacrificing himself rather than take any chance of giving away something during an interrogation. Of course, the cops had no idea what they were dealing with. They would in a second.
The bomb exploded, incinerating this brother as well as several police officers.
As the sound of it faded from the TV, Kaashif allowed his face to slowly fall into his palms, and he began to sob. They’d been planning this attack
for almost three years. Now the first stage was complete, and its success had been nearly perfect. The Minneapolis squad was gone, but they hadn’t been apprehended, and every other team was back in hiding and accounted for. Seventy-three civilians were dead, and more than two hundred had been wounded. Even better, the United States population had run for cover. Reports were already coming in that with a week to go to Christmas, malls across the country were empty.
It was the greatest gift he could have received, and the tears would not stop coming. There were others in the house, and he could not have them see him like this, so he moved quickly to the bathroom and locked the door.
Then his tears flowed in earnest.
THE RUSTY hinges creaked as Major Travers pushed open the wooden door of the tiny house he’d built deep in the woods of Virginia’s Appalachian Mountains.
It wasn’t really a house. It was a shack, and not much of one at that. It didn’t have running water, electricity, or heat—not even a fireplace. The stove was nothing more than a crude burner that was fired by a natural gas cylinder, when he remembered to buy one. So he usually ate the soup cold out of cans, when he remembered to buy them. And not many of the up-and-down planks that formed the four exterior walls of the relatively square floor plan rested flush against each other, and he’d never bothered to install insulation, so the place was drafty as hell. But it served its purpose. It was remote out here in the George Washington National Forest, as remote as any place could be within a hundred miles of Washington, DC.
Most important, as far as Travers could tell, he was the only person on the planet who knew about the place. The closest farm was several miles away, at the bottom of the mountains, so it lay outside the national forest. And hunters weren’t allowed to take game within the forest’s boundaries. Which didn’t preclude poaching by the locals, of course, but he’d never had a problem with anyone using the place. He always set up a few inconspicuous indicators when he left so he could tell if it had been used or inspected when he returned. But they’d never been set off, just as he’d seen tonight when he’d gotten here. He’d checked even though he was exhausted after the steep climb through the cold, dark, wet forest.
He built the shack himself five years ago. He’d snared the lumber and other materials from a construction site down in the valley along the river. Then he’d lugged the stuff up the side of this mountain in the dark, without even a path to follow on his trips back and forth to the pickup he’d left on the logging road that night. He’d robbed the site so there wouldn’t be any record of him buying anything at a store. Even if he’d paid cash, someone might still have remembered him. He was ultimately paranoid, he knew. But that had always proven to be one of his most formidable weapons.
Roger Carlson would have built him something out here if he’d asked, Travers knew. Carlson would have done anything for him. But then at least one other person would have known about it. As sad as it was for Travers to understand and accept, he couldn’t completely trust anyone, even Carlson. And that hadn’t been the old man’s fault. Travers just had a terrible time with it. The only person who’d come close to that level of trust was Harry Boyd—now Harry was gone, too.
Travers stepped inside the shack, flipped on the tiny flashlight he’d dug out of his pocket, and played the beam around the small, mostly bare room. It was chilly in here, but it wasn’t wet. A cold, soaking rain had begun to fall on the Mid-Atlantic an hour ago, as he’d been driving around DC on I-495—and he was glad to be in a dry place after hiking up the mountain in the dark. He didn’t use this place very often, only when he desperately needed to go underground. Given what had happened three hours ago in Wilmington, this was one of those times. Shane Maddux wouldn’t be happy when he found out his two young soldiers had been killed.
Travers stripped off his boots and the drenched poncho he’d worn up the mountain, tossed everything in a corner of the shack, and grabbed a rolled-up nylon sleeping bag off the table by the burner. He untied the bag and shook it hard to get rid of any black widows or brown recluses that had decided to make it home since the last time he’d been here—which was six months ago. Then he spread the bag out on the wooden floor.
It wasn’t going to be comfortable, but then maybe he deserved some discomfort, maybe even some pain. He’d failed miserably in his job today. The United States was under attack. Hundreds of people had been killed and wounded, and the population was terrified, much more so than it had been after 9/11. People were cowering inside their homes with their doors and windows locked. Families who owned guns felt only marginally more secure than the ones who didn’t. The men who’d carried out the attacks today were maniacs, but they were good. Only one team had been stopped—and they’d committed suicide. His gut told him this was going to be a long, hard campaign that might never end unless the country took unprecedented actions. Despite the brutal and ferocious nature of the attacks, Travers still wasn’t certain the federal government would take those unprecedented steps, which would delve deeply into the personal privacies America’s population held so dear.
When he was wrapped inside the sleeping bag, Travers flicked off the flashlight. As he lay on his side and listened to the rain falling on the roof, he stared into the darkness above him. Was Kaashif involved with what had happened today? His instincts told him yes. At least that gave him a place to start. He needed to get in touch with an associate. He needed cash and a secure location. This shack had its purpose, but he couldn’t conduct operations from it. It was too far from anything to be effective.
Travers shut his eyes and forced himself not to think of all the issues facing him. There would be plenty of time to think—and act—tomorrow. But right now he desperately needed to recharge his body.
Moments later he was unconscious. It was a technique he’d learned in the foxholes of Iraq and Afghanistan from an older Marine vet. The guy had taught him to force himself to get sleep in any situation. An exhausted soldier was a poor soldier, and the trick to the technique was turning off the mind and all the bad thoughts it fired at him when there were no distractions.
But Travers never turned off his mind completely. It was always there to warn him of danger.
He bolted upright in the darkness and peered around the shack’s interior. He couldn’t see anyone, but he sensed a presence. Unfortunately, the warning had come too late.
Before he could draw his pistol, someone stepped on his wrist, immobilizing it and his ability to draw his weapon. Then a brilliant light bathed his face, and he shut his eyes tightly against the powerful rays.
“We meet again, Major Travers.”
Travers recognized the voice. “How?” It was all he could think of to ask.
“Turnabout’s fair play, don’t you think?”
“I don’t know what the hell you—”
He didn’t finish. The dart was fired from nearly point-blank range, and it dug deeply into the side of his neck. Electricity flooded through his body as he dribbled around the floor.
CHAPTER 11
“ARE THERE any RCS associates who would help Maddux even though he’s gone rogue and they know it?” As the private plane eased down into the thick cloud cover toward Westchester Airport, it shuddered slightly. Troy buckled his seat belt when the turbulence hit. “And would they do it without telling you? Maybe do it even when you specifically told them not to?”
It had happened exactly as Troy anticipated. A few minutes after the situation outside Minneapolis ended with the last terrorist igniting a suicide bomb in his backpack and taking several law-enforcement people with him, a young aide had knocked on the door and informed them that the president would not be able to meet with them again after all. The guy apologized halfheartedly and then left the situation to four Secret Service agents, who had immediately escorted Troy and Bill off White House grounds. Because of the Holiday Mall Attacks, security had been tightened another notch around the president, and all visitors
were being escorted out. Even some of the regular staff had been told to leave and not return until they were contacted.
“I hate to say it,” Bill admitted, “but all those things are possible. Maddux was smart about getting to know a few of the other associates even though Roger and I tried to block him from doing that. And I’m pretty sure he did them a few favors to entrench himself.”
“What kinds of favors?”
“One of the associates was having a problem with his daughter’s fiancé. The guy was abusive. He was beating her almost every night, and—”
“Don’t tell me,” Troy interrupted as the plane broke through the low clouds. He glanced out the window. It had been raining in Washington when they left, but it was snowing here in New York, he could see in the plane’s lights. “The guy went missing.”
“No, they found him all right. He was floating facedown in the East River. They pulled him out of the water down off Alphabet City in Lower Manhattan. It was ruled an accident, but nobody has any idea how he got in the water or what he was doing in that part of town. It’s a rough area, and he lived up in White Plains.”
“Jesus,” Troy muttered. Maddux had pushed the vigilante deal for his own purposes after all. After promising Troy he never had, the liar—if Bill was telling the truth. Mind games, Troy thought as the plane rocked again. Always the mind games in this profession.
“Another one of the associates was having a problem at one of the companies he owned. He was pretty sure the chief financial officer was defrauding him, but he couldn’t prove it.” Bill looked out at the thin layer of snow on the ground as the plane touched down. “What do you know—one day, out of the blue, the CFO walks into the associate’s office and voluntarily admits everything.” Bill glanced from the window to Troy with both eyebrows raised. “I wonder why.”
“Damn.”
“The guy’s face was badly bruised. He claimed he’d been in a car accident the day before. That’s what I was told, anyway. I was curious, so I checked. There was no record of a car accident where the guy said it happened.”