The FBI director looked up at him, stunned. Across the conference table from him was seated Riley Weaver.
The director said, “What the hell is going on?”
Stone didn’t even look at him. His gaze went immediately to Weaver. “What did you tell her?”
“What?” snapped Weaver. “We’re in the middle of a meeting, in case you hadn’t noticed, Stone.”
Stone came around the table with such a threatening look that Weaver half rose out of his seat, his hands curled into fists, his body hunched into a defensive stance in case Stone attacked.
The director barked, “Ashburn, what is going on? Why did you let him in—”
Stone shouted, “What did you tell Friedman about me, Weaver?”
“I haven’t talked to the woman. I warned you before. If you start accusing me of crap—”
“I mean before I told you she was behind it all,” barked Stone. “You talked to her then, didn’t you?”
Weaver slowly sat back down in his chair. The FBI director stared over at him. Ashburn gazed at him from the doorway. Weaver looked at each of them before turning back to Stone.
“She was one of my field agents. I had every right to talk to her.”
“What did you tell her about me? That I figured it out? That I was the one who warned the Secret Service? That I was the reason the plan didn’t work?”
“So what if I did?” blustered Weaver. “I didn’t know she was a traitor then. And frankly, I still don’t know that she is. For all I know someone kidnapped her or even killed her.”
Chapman walked into the room. “They didn’t. And she is a traitor. She set us up. Diverted us while she had two of Stone’s friends kidnapped.”
“What!” exclaimed the FBI director and Ashburn in unison.
“How do you know that?” asked Weaver curiously. “We searched the train to Miami, she wasn’t on it. But something tells me you already knew that.” He glanced at the FBI director. “Holding out on us, Stone?”
“I’m no longer working for the government, in case you didn’t get the memo.”
“That’s bullshit.”
“What’s bullshit is you talking to Friedman and not telling any of us. In fact, I bet you kept her in the loop the whole time. I wondered how they always knew what we were going to do before we even did it. Now I know. It was you, wasn’t it?”
“I don’t owe you or anyone else an explanation for my actions.”
“I’ll tell that to my friends when I find their bodies,” snapped Stone.
Ashburn said, “Do you have any idea where she’s holding them?”
Stone calmed and finally looked away from Weaver. “No,” he lied. “I don’t.”
“So why’d you come here?” asked Weaver. “You want our help?”
“No. I just wanted to know who I had to thank for fingering me to Friedman.”
“Damn it, I didn’t do it intentionally,” roared Weaver.
But Stone had already left the room. They could hear him marching rapidly down the hall.
Ashburn looked at Chapman. “What is going on?”
“He told you. His friends have gone missing and Friedman has them.”
“You’re sure?” asked the director.
“Heard it from the horse’s mouth.”
Ashburn glanced down the hall. “What is he going to do?”
“What do you think he’s going to do?” replied Chapman.
“He can’t do this alone.”
The director added, “We have resources that he doesn’t.”
“That may be all well and good. But he’s John Carr. And quite frankly he’s got resources you lot don’t have either. And there’s no one on earth who has more motivation to get this woman than he does.”
“And you’re telling us he doesn’t know where they are being held?” asked Ashburn.
“If he does he hasn’t bothered to tell me.”
“Where did you find this information out?”
“In the South Bronx,” said Chapman.
“The South Bronx!” yelled Ashburn. “How did you get a line on the South Bronx?”
“You’ll have to ask Sherlock Holmes that question. I’m just good old Watson.”
“Agent Chapman,” began the director.
“Sir,” she said, heading him off. “If I knew something helpful I would tell you.”
“Why don’t I believe that?” He paused, studying her. “I think I can plainly see where your loyalties lie.”
“My loyalties, sir, lie about three thousand miles from here, to a dear old lady, an ambitious PM and an old man with dandruff and a brilliant mind.”
“Are you sure?” asked the director.
“I’ve always been sure of that,” replied Chapman.
She turned to leave.
“Where are you going?” demanded Weaver.
“Holmes needs his Watson.”
“Agent Chapman, this is not your fight.” said the director.
“Perhaps not. But it would be awfully bad form to stop now.”
“I can have you detained,” said the director.
“Yes, you can. But I don’t think you will.”
Chapman turned and hurried after Stone.
CHAPTER 95
“SO WHY ANNABELLE AND CALEB?” said Harry Finn as they all drove in Knox’s Range Rover west of Washington, D.C., on Route 29. The night was dark, though dawn was only a couple of hours away. The ambient light was limited and the mood in the vehicle matched the outside: black.
Stone, who was again riding shotgun, said grimly, “Because they helped me run a scam on her and I guess she didn’t like it.”
And I let her decoy me with a tactic a rookie should have seen through and I fell for it like the damn fool I am.
But there was something else nagging at Stone. Mere revenge didn’t seem enough motivation for someone as intelligent and ambitious as Marisa Friedman. There had to be something more. He just didn’t know what that was. And if he was afraid of anything, it was the unknown.
They’d quickly confirmed that both Annabelle and Caleb were missing and that no one had seen them for at least twenty-four hours. Stone had taken a few minutes to visit Alex Ford in the ICU. His condition hadn’t changed, but it hadn’t gotten worse either, which Stone took as a rare bit of good news. As he stared down at his friend lying on the hospital bed with thick bandages wound round his head, Stone had gripped his hand and squeezed it. “Alex, if you can hear me, it’s going to be okay. I promise that everything will be okay.” He paused, drawing a long breath that seemed to take forever to leave his body. “You’re a hero, Alex. The president is okay. No one was hurt. You’re a hero.” Stone looked down at his hand. He thought he had felt the other man squeeze it. But when he looked back up at the unconscious agent he knew that was just wishful thinking. Stone let go and walked to the doorway. Something made him look back. As he stared at his friend lying in the bed and fighting for his life, he felt a measure of guilt so powerful his knees started to buckle.
He’s lying there because of me. And now Caleb and Annabelle are probably dead. Again, because of me.
Stone had made one other stop, at a rare book store in Old Town Alexandria. The owner had been helped by Stone and Caleb and in return had allowed Stone to keep certain items there in a secret room underneath the old building. Those items were now in the back of the Rover.
“Murder Mountain?” said Chapman. “You mentioned it but didn’t really explain it.”
Knox answered when it didn’t appear Stone was going to. “Old CIA training facility. Shut down before my time. Hell of a place, from what I’ve heard. The way the Agency used to do things during the Cold War. I thought they’d demolished it.”
“No, they haven’t,” said Stone.
Knox eyed him curiously. “Have you been back recently?”
“Yes. Pretty recently.”
“Why?” asked Chapman.
“Business,” Stone replied tersely.
“What
’s the layout?” asked Finn, as he hunched forward in his rear seat.
In answer Stone pulled out a laminated piece of paper and handed it back to him. Finn clicked on the overhead light and he and Chapman studied it. There were annotations on the page in Stone’s handwriting.
“This place looks bloody awful,” exclaimed Chapman. “A laboratory with a torture cage? A holding tank where you square off with an opponent in the dark to see who can kill the other?”
Stone glanced back at her. “It was not for the fainthearted.” His look was searching. She quickly got it.
“I’m not fainthearted.”
“Good to know,” he replied.
She eyed the cargo hold of the Rover. “That’s a fine set of vintage equipment you’ve got back there.”
“Yes, it is.”
“How are we going to do this?” asked Knox as he turned off Route 29 and onto Highway 211. They entered the tiny town of Washington, Virginia, the seat of Rappahannock County at the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Washington, Virginia, was world famous for one reason: It was the home of the Inn at Little Washington, a prestigious restaurant that had been serving world-class cuisine for over a quarter century.
As they left the town and rose higher into the mountains, Stone broke his silence. “There are a couple of entry points. One is obvious, the other is not.”
“How well do you think she knows this place?” asked Chapman.
“Like Knox, it was before her time. She never would have trained there. But I can’t answer your question. She obviously knew of its existence. She may have explored it thoroughly. In fact, from what I know of her now, she probably has gone over every inch of it.”
“So she’ll know about the secondary entrance?” said Knox.
“We have to assume she will.”
But she won’t know about the third way in and out, because I’m the only one who does.
Stone had discovered it in his fourth month at Murder Mountain, when he just needed to get outside the place for a few moments alone. Just to catch his breath, collect his wits. Just get out of what had become a hellhole. Worse than any prison ever could have been. That was the principal reason Stone had been able to weather the max prison he and Knox had ended up in.
Because I endured something far worse. A year at Murder Mountain.
Chapman said, “What I don’t get is why she would have set up shop at this place, kidnapped Caleb and Annabelle and then basically dared you to come get her. She’ll never be able to escape now.”
Stone looked grim. “I don’t think she intends on escaping. She’s conceded that she’s going to go down for this. But she’s choosing to exit on her own terms.”
“Meaning she’s willing to die,” said Knox.
“And take us with her,” replied Stone.
“Dangerous opponent,” said Finn. “Someone who doesn’t care if she dies. Like a suicide bomber.”
“She better be thinking the same thing about me,” muttered Stone.
The other three glanced at each other but said nothing.
Chapman finally broke the silence. “So front or hidden entrance? We have to get in some way.”
“She’ll have six guys with her. All Russian, all hard as nails. They’ll kill anybody she tells them to.”
“Okay, but that doesn’t answer my question.”
“It’s a big place and they’ll have to have at least one man guarding Caleb and Annabelle. Friedman will be back in a protected space. That leaves five men for perimeter duty. They can’t deploy them all at the entrances. They have to hold at least three back for interior protection. That leaves one at each entrance. That’s thin.”
“What do you think they expect us to do?”
“Hit both entrances, and whichever team gets through, so be it. If we did that we’d split up, making it two against one. If we hit one entrance together, it’s four against one.”
“I like those odds better,” said Knox.
“So do I,” said Stone. “But we’re not going to do it that way.”
“Why?” said Chapman.
“You’ll see why.”
CHAPTER 96
STONE WAS ALONE. He slipped among bulky rocks and narrow crevices as he made his way toward the secondary entrance into Murder Mountain. As a raw recruit to the CIA’s fabled Triple Six Division, Stone had spent a full year of his life here learning new ways to hunt, new ways to kill and new ways to be something both more and less than human. He had become a magnificently skilled predator with all ordinary emotions such as compassion and empathy burned out of him. Murder Mountain had turned out the best killers ever to walk the planet. And John Carr was universally acknowledged as the best of the best.
The training became so intense that Stone and some of his fellow trainees had looked for and discovered a way out of the facility. They had done so not to run to the rural town about twenty miles distant to get drunk or bed a few farmers’ daughters, but simply to sit under the stars, look at the moon, feel the breeze, see the green of the trees, feel the earth under their feet.
Stone had just wanted assurance that there was still a world going on outside Murder Mountain. Assignment to Triple Six was technically voluntary, but in all the important ways it was not. Stone still remembered clearly the day the man from the CIA had visited him in his military barracks. Stone and his company had just returned from Vietnam. Stone had performed so heroically in one firefight that there was talk of his being awarded the Medal of Honor. But that had not happened, largely because of a jealous superior officer who fudged the paperwork. If Stone had been awarded the medal his life might have turned out differently. Medal of Honor winners were rare. The army might have sent him on a publicity tour, even though by then the war was waning nearly as fast as the country’s interest in waging it.
So the man in the suit had come. He had made a proposal. Come join another agency. Another unit dedicated to fighting your country’s enemies. That was how he had phrased it: “Your country’s enemies.” Stone had been told little else. He looked to his commander for advice, but it was clear that the decision had already been made. Stone, barely twenty years old and covered in medals and commendations for his exemplary service in Vietnam, was mustered out of the army with breathtaking speed and soon found himself here, at Murder Mountain.
The light was poor along this trail, but he had no trouble traversing it. It was all mental memory at this point. When he’d come back to this place not all that long ago, it had been the same way. He had remembered it all, as if he had never been away. As if the memory of it had been lurking in a set of brain cells, sequestered from the rest and not degraded in any way, like a cancerous tumor lying dormant until it started its fatal spread. Then nothing else was safe. Every part of him was vulnerable. That could sum up his life in Triple Six quite adequately.
He slipped the pair of old NVGs over his eyes when the light became too poor to make anything out. The crevices grew smaller. It was a good thing he had remained lean all these years or he never would have fit. Although, he recalled, big Reuben Rhodes had managed to squeeze himself through the rocks when he came here with Stone to save a man’s life. To save President Brennan’s life.
All the men in Triple Six had been lean, nothing but gristle and muscle. They could run all day, shoot all night without missing. They could change plans on the fly, ferret out targets no matter how deeply they had dug in. Stone could not deny that it had been exhilarating, challenging and even memorable.
“But I never wanted to come back here,” he said to himself.
He paused, looked ahead. The entrance he was searching for was up ahead. It was built into the back of a kitchen cabinet on a swivel pin. Stone had always assumed that another group of trainees before his time had done that. Stone and his teammates had merely discovered it one night and followed it out. They weren’t the only class of Triple Six recruits who wanted a bit of freedom, it seemed. Or maybe the people who ran Murder Mountain had done it, sensing that the
recruits needed to believe they had a bit of control over their lives, that they could take a few moments rest from a hellish experience.
Maybe they were afraid we’d all go mad and kill them.
He slipped his gun from its holster and another object from his belt. The entrance was straight ahead. He assumed Friedman had given strict orders. Do not kill, at least him. Bring him to me. Then she would kill him, probably after making him watch the deaths of Caleb and Annabelle.
He reached the outside of the entrance. Readying his gun, he held out the other object, a telescoping rod. He flipped it out to its full six-foot length. He nudged the wall in front of him that represented the back of the cabinet on the pin swivel. It had been painted to resemble black rock, but it was only wood. Rotted wood now. He pushed harder with the rod. The wood gave way, the pin swivel did its job and the wall swung inward.
Something shot out of the opening and hit the rock Stone was standing next to. This he’d expected. A dart. Paralyze, not kill. He pulled the pin on the lump of metal he’d taken from a compartment on his vest and tossed it into the opening at the same time he slid behind a large outcrop of rock.
There was a small pulse of energy followed by a dense cloud of smoke. Stone slid on his gas mask and counted. He stopped counting when he heard the man behind the wall hit the floor. He moved through the opening and looked down. The Russian was large, with a shaved head, a small goatee and a dart pistol in his hand. It was probably not in the man’s nature to seek to stun instead of kill. He’d not been very good with the dart gun. Stone used two pairs of plasticuffs to immobilize the man’s hands and feet. Clear of the gas, he removed his mask and moved forward into Murder Mountain.
At the front entrance to the facility, Finn, Chapman and Knox stood facing a metal door revealed in the rock face of the mountain where they’d pulled aside a curtain of kudzu that covered it. Stone had told them where the door was located and had given them a key that he said would open the portal. But there wasn’t even a keyhole to try the key in. He’d also told them that he was the only one who could make it through the hidden entrance, because there was no way for someone to follow him closely enough not to get lost. He told them he would rendezvous with them at the front door.
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