by David Hosp
Cianna leaned forward, trying to see the man’s face through his upraised arms. ‘Charlie?’ she said tentatively.
‘Christ, Cianna,’ the man said, lowering his arms just enough to look back at her, though still keeping them high enough to provide some protection. ‘What kind of a welcome is that for your little brother?’
CHAPTER FOUR
Jack Saunders was sitting at the head of a large semicircular table on the sixth floor of CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. An array of television screens paneled the wall in front of him. The room was dimly lit and hushed except for the periodic rasping of closed-circuit radio communications in the background.
Four others sat at the table with him. Lawrence Ainsworth, the Assistant Director of the CIA in charge of operations – Saunders’s friend and boss – sat directly to Saunders’s right. Colonel Bill Toney, the Director of the NSA, sat next to Ainsworth, his expression telegraphing his disgust. Saunders thought Toney was a first-class asshole, and figured Ainsworth had strategically separated Toney and him to prevent trouble. To Saunders’s left was Gerald Hoag, the Assistant Director for counterterrorism at the CIA, and Sonny Kopecki, a close advisor to the newly elected President. Hoag was ineffectual but harmless – a master paper-shuffler who’d advanced by keeping a low profile on the bureaucratic escalator. Saunders didn’t know anything about Kopecki other than what he’d read in the papers. The reports didn’t bode well.
Saunders could feel the stares from the other men around the table. He’d never been a clean fit with the management crowd in the intelligence community; they were all spawn of old-line families with powerful connections and political ambitions. Saunders was a mutt. If it hadn’t been for Ainsworth’s support, he would have been banished from the Agency years ago. And now his ass was really on the line.
It didn’t bother him. He figured that’s what asses were for. He’d made his reputation across enemy lines, running more successful missions than anyone could remember. At thirty-nine, he had more practical experience than all of the others around the table put together. That was the only reason the rest of them allowed him to be there, choking down stale, re-circulated air. Because, whether they liked it or not, Saunders knew what he was doing, and people who could claim that truthfully were in short supply.
‘My men are in place,’ Toney said. His men. What a prick, Saunders thought. The men were actually with the FBI – the CIA had no technical jurisdiction to operate within the boundaries of the United States – and were on loan to a joint operation over which Toney had little operational oversight. Legalities, titles and official chain of command aside, it was an Agency op through and through.
Ainsworth took a deep breath. ‘Okay, Jack,’ he said. ‘You’re calling the shots.’
Saunders picked up the headset sitting on the table in front of him, looked at the twelve monitors on the wall. Each showed a slightly different view of a small house in Alexandria, Virginia. Ten of them were beamed from the helmet-cams worn by the operatives in the field. One was an overhead satellite shot. One was from a stationary camera that had been mounted on a nearby telephone pole. ‘Team Leader, this is Base,’ he said. ‘Status?’
One of the radio reports crackled loudly. ‘Base, Team Leader. No movement. We have five inside. Two male. Two female. One child.’
‘Weapons?’ Saunders asked.
‘Unknown.’
The man on the other end of the line was Nick Johnson. Good man. Twenty-nine years old. Former marine, now with the feds. Well-trained and battle-hardened. Married, two daughters, the oldest in third grade. Saunders knew the names of all ten of the people on the ground. He was pretty sure Toney couldn’t say that about any of ‘his’ men.
Saunders took a beat before giving the order. ‘Team Leader, proceed.’
‘Roger that,’ Johnson said. ‘Team One, Team Two, move in.’
Ten of the images on the monitors shifted, jostling loosely, scanning as the house grew larger on the screens. The overhead satellite image focused in more closely. The image from the static camera on the telephone pole a hundred yards from the front door remained unchanged. Saunders’s attention was on the images on the wall, following each of them, searching for the danger. It was out there, he knew.
The house was the residence of Tariq Kaleada, a doctor prominent in the Muslim community. According to Saunders’s intelligence, he was the primary communications conduit delivering messages for the radical Islamists in the area, including two fledgling Al Qaeda cells and some of their allies. It was likely that any messages delivered to those on whom Mustafa was spying came through Dr Kaleada, and he might still have the evidence. Might meant there was around a 25 per cent chance. Twenty-five per cent in Saunders’s profession was considered a slam dunk. Any way you looked at it, it was the best chance they had to find out why Mustafa had been killed.
‘You gonna announce, Saunders?’ Hoag asked. He was making irrelevant notes on a pad bearing the Agency’s logo.
Saunders shook his head. ‘Team Leader, you’ve got the ram,’ he said into the radio. ‘Five up front, five in the rear. Take it quick.’
‘Roger that.’
Bill Toney rocked back and forth in his seat. ‘Jesus fucking Christ,’ he muttered. ‘What if your intel is wrong, Saunders? What if your informant had shit?’
‘If he had shit, why was he killed?’
‘Who knows?’ Toney said, his voice getting louder. ‘Maybe he was just an asshole. Look who he hung out with, after all.’ Saunders shot Toney a vicious look. ‘Do you know what the Arab Anti-Defamation League is gonna do with this if you’re wrong?’ Toney continued. ‘I’m not even sure this is legal.’
Saunders clicked off the microphone on his headset. ‘Go to law school,’ he said. ‘Let us know if it’s legal when you graduate. Until then, shut the fuck up.’
‘I went to law school, asshole,’ Toney shot back. ‘I went to Harvard! Where did you go to school?’
‘Mogadishu, prick,’ Saunders muttered.
‘Please, gentlemen,’ Ainsworth soothed. ‘You two can compare genitalia when this is over.’
The images on the screens showed that Team One had reached the front door, and Team Two was rounding the corner in sight of the back door. Saunders clicked his mike back on.
‘Both teams in place,’ Saunders said. ‘Team Leader, you have a go. Break it down.’
The radio crackled. ‘Team One, Team Two, this is Team Leader. We have a go. On my mark: three, two, one . . .’
Members of both teams swung heavy metal battering rams into the doors, just below the door handles. Front and back doors exploded simultaneously, the wood from the frames splintering inward. For a moment the noise was disorienting, as ten agents, heavily armed and clad in dark riot gear, moved into the house, yelling, ‘Federal Agents! Nobody move! Hands where we can see them!’
The television screens on the wall took on the quality of a kaleidoscopic lens as each member of the team broke off into narrow halls. Two Middle Eastern-looking men were sitting at a table in the kitchen, frozen, their hands half-raised, their eyes wide. They were in their late-thirties or early-forties, and they had long beards. ‘What is the meaning of this?’ one of them demanded. ‘We are American citizens! You have no right!’
‘Don’t move!’ was the response from one of the agents. ‘Heads down on the table!’
‘This is not right!’ one of the men yelled back. His hand slipped below the table, and the agent moved without hesitation, swinging the butt of his assault rifle into the man’s forehead. The man was knocked from his chair, and slid across the linoleum floor. A phone skittered to a corner, dropped from the man’s hand as he grasped his forehead, which was already bleeding profusely. ‘No!’ he cried. ‘I was calling my lawyer!’
Just then, two young women were ushered downstairs. One of them was carrying a baby wrapped in a blanket. She screamed when she saw the man bleeding on the floor. ‘What have you done to my husband?’ She handed the baby to the other
woman and ran to the man. She reached up to the sink and grabbed a dishtowel to wrap around his head. ‘What have you done?’
‘Ma’am, keep away, please!’ the agent yelled at her. He put a foot in between husband and wife and physically separated them.
‘Why, why, why?’ the woman was screaming through sobs, reaching out to her husband.
‘Please, ma’am,’ the agent repeated. ‘No contact.’
‘This is illegal!’ shouted the man remaining at the table. He stood. ‘By what right do you do this?’
One of the other team members pushed the barrel of his assault weapon into the man’s chest. ‘Please, sir!’ he barked. ‘Sit back down!’
Saunders watched Johnson’s camera angle as he stepped forward. ‘Sir, please remain still. We are executing a lawful search.’ His voice was calm but firm, almost robotic. He knew that the entire operation was being recorded. Saunders silently thanked God that none of the ops he’d run when he was younger had ever been recorded. Saunders was nowhere near as diplomatic.
‘Where is your warrant?’
‘It will be provided to you in due course,’ Johnson said.
‘That is illegal!’
‘No, it’s not. Once the search has been completed, you can contact a lawyer to confirm that. Until we are done, you need to stay here. If you don’t, I will place you under arrest. Is that understood?’ He looked down at the bloodied man on the floor, turned to one of the other agents. ‘Agent Salvino, provide that man with first aid.’
Salvino put his assault rifle down and knelt by the injured man.
‘Get away!’ the man’s wife screamed. ‘Get away, I tell you!’
Salvino looked up at Johnson, and the team leader just shrugged.
The search took forty-five minutes. Two team members remained with the residents the entire time, watching over them. The others went through the house with microscopic precision. Through drawers, through cabinets, under beds and in mattresses. They even pried up floor boards where a seam looked askew. The search turned up nothing.
Back at Langley, the four other men around the table stared at Saunders. ‘Goddammit,’ Toney muttered. ‘I told you. I fuckin’ told you, but you wouldn’t listen, would you?’
Saunders said nothing in response. There was no point. He had no cover, and everyone knew it.
‘You can’t treat this Agency as your own personal commando unit, you asshole!’
‘That’s enough, Bill!’ Ainsworth shouted.
Johnson’s radio microphone crackled. ‘Base, this is Team Leader. We’ve got nothing here.’ There was frustration in his voice. He looked around, and on the television screen hooked to his camera Saunders surveyed the mess in the house.
‘Search them,’ he said.
‘Roger.’ Johnson turned to the two men. ‘Sirs, please stand against the wall, feet shoulder-width apart.’
‘I will not,’ one of the men responded.
‘Yes, sir, you will,’ Johnson responded. He nodded to Salvino, who reached down and lifted the man off his chair. Two of the other team members conducted the search, probing far more aggressively than the frisk most people are used to at the airport.
The women were next. Johnson summoned Beverley Samuels, one of the team members, to conduct that search, and ordered his men to turn their heads during the process. ‘Nothing,’ Johnson said into his microphone when it was over. ‘We’ve got nothing.’
‘Congratulations, Saunders,’ Toney said. ‘You’ve got yourself an official shitshow. The suspension that’s been coming your way for years looks like it has finally arrived, asshole.’
Saunders just sat there, his mind working furiously.
Toney continued, ‘Don’t think I’m gonna take one inch of this fall for you. Don’t you have anything to say for yourself?’
Saunders clicked back on the microphone on his headset. ‘Search the baby,’ he said.
‘Say again, Base?’ Johnson’s voice was unsure.
‘Search the baby,’ Saunders repeated.
‘Mother-fucking-Christ-on-a-popsicle stick!’ Toney shouted. He turned to Ainsworth. ‘Lawrence, you need to take control and shut this cocksucker down. Do it now! Otherwise, I’ll file a report that will shake the whole Agency to the core. I swear to God, I will. You and I have been friends for a long time, but I don’t care.’
Ainsworth looked at him. ‘We’ve never been friends, Bill.’ He looked at Saunders and shrugged. ‘Your operation, your call.’
‘Team Leader, do you copy?’ Saunders said into his microphone.
‘Roger that.’ Johnson walked over to the woman holding the infant wrapped in a blue blanket.
‘No!’ she screamed. ‘You leave my baby! Animals! Leave him!’
‘Ma’am, hand me the baby,’ Johnson said.
‘No!’ she screamed again.
Johnson motioned to one of the other agents, who stepped forward and held the woman by the arm. She continued to scream. Johnson pulled the child away from his mother and the baby began to cry in long, loud shrieks of fear. Back at the bunker, Saunders could hear several different people yelling, but the baby’s wails cut straight through to his eardrum.
Johnson laid the baby down on the kitchen table and unwrapped the blanket. On the screen, Saunders watched as the baby, no longer safe in his warm cocoon, shivered and sputtered. Johnson ran a gloved hand down around the baby’s back. Nothing. He reached in and flipped his hand through the folds of the blanket. After a moment, his hand stopped. The screen was still. Slowly, his hand pulled back from the blanket, and grasped in his fingers was a 12-megabyte memory stick. He held it up to his face, giving those back at the bunker a clear look.
‘Bingo,’ he said quietly.
‘Bingo,’ Saunders repeated.
Suddenly there was a shriek followed by several rounds of gunfire. In the confined space of the kitchen it sounded like the world was exploding. Everyone was shouting, and the cameras jostled, spinning around in a panic, seeking out the source of the gunshots. Johnson’s camera spun from the baby and the lens came to rest on one of the two men who had been sitting at the kitchen table. He was standing now, and he had a black Glock in his hand, pointing it just below the camera. On the screen, they could see two bright flashes from the muzzle, then the camera spun and flipped, and came to rest staring at the ceiling. More shouting followed, and then several bursts of automatic rifle fire. After a moment, all that was left was the sobbing coming from one of the women.
‘What the fuck happened?’ Saunders shouted into the microphone.
A voice came back. ‘He got Sal’s gun! Special Agent Johnson’s been hit!’
Saunders surveyed the television screens, trying to piece the scene together. One showed one of the women, bent over the body of her husband, blood pooling under his body. She was rocking back and forth, wailing. Another showed Nick Johnson’s face. He was lying on the ground, ashen, gasping for breath. ‘I’m okay,’ he said over and over. ‘I’m okay, I can hack it.’
‘We got you, boss,’ the man kneeling over him said. Then he turned and looked back toward the hallway. ‘Get a goddamned ambulance here!’ he screamed. ‘Somebody get a fuckin’ medic!’
He turned back to the wounded man, and the screen showed Nick Johnson’s face again. It had grown paler. A thin river of blood leaked from the corner of his mouth. ‘We got it,’ he choked out, raising a clenched fist. The man leaning over him held out his hand, and the memory stick slipped out of Johnson’s hand. ‘We got it,’ he said again. His eyes rolled up into his head.
One by one, the other men in the sixth-floor bunker walked out, none of them saying a word. Saunders stayed there, though. He sat alone for several hours, watching as the ambulance arrived, and Nick Johnson’s body was loaded into the same vehicle as that of the man who had killed him. He watched as the other members of the operational team passed each other, the faces on the screens tight with pain and anger. He sat until the last of the cameras had been shut down, and the screens went bla
nk, and he was sitting in complete darkness in the command center, wondering whether any of it had been worth it. Wondering whether Nick Johnson’s third-grade daughter would care, even if it was.
CHAPTER FIVE
Cianna held a towel to her brother’s forehead as he sat on the sofa. Her assault on him had opened a cut just above his right eyebrow. The bleeding had stopped, and the cut was small, but she still felt guilty. ‘I think maybe you need stitches,’ she said.
‘You kidding?’ Charlie said with a wry smile. ‘I get worse cuts shaving.’
‘You’re shaving now?’ He laughed at that, but she could hear the pain it masked. He’d always been short and slight and acutely sensitive to intimations about his masculinity. ‘When did you get out?’ she asked, changing the subject.
‘Two weeks ago,’ he said. ‘My discharge came through last month.’
‘Why didn’t you let me know? I would’ve put on the dog. How often does my baby brother come home from war?’
‘I was a supply sergeant,’ he said with a touch of embarrassment.
‘In Afghanistan,’ she pointed out. ‘I don’t give a crap what anyone does; if you’re doing it in a combat theater, you’re a combat soldier, as far as I’m concerned.’
‘Not in the same way you were,’ he said quietly.
She took the towel away from his head and stood up, not knowing what to say. ‘Yeah, well,’ she stammered. ‘I’m guessing most people would choose your military record over mine.’
He looked down, avoiding her eyes. ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to bring it up.’
‘No problem,’ she said emotionlessly. ‘I haven’t had a chance to talk to you since it all happened.’
‘You want to talk about it now?’ he asked.