Black Ops Bundle: Volume One

by Allan Leverone

  She walked into the bathroom and pulled the roll of toilet paper out of its ceramic holder. She removed the roll and took the metal cylinder out of the bathroom. She stood directly in front of her captive, moving close, invading his personal space. She held the cylinder out in front of him. “Last chance. You’re going to talk to me either way. The only question is how much pain you’re going to endure before you do.”

  The man hesitated. “I…” Then he closed his mouth again.

  Tracie shrugged. “All the same to me,” she said conversationally. “To be perfectly honest, after what you two did to the cop and the accident investigators up there in Bangor, I kind of prefer it this way.”

  She leaned toward the lookout. “Open up.” The conversational tone had disappeared, replaced with an ice-cold, deadly menace.

  He closed his eyes and shook his head almost imperceptibly. Tracie slammed the butt of her gun against the side of his head. He grunted in pain, stunned, and his jaw flopped open. She shoved the cylinder into place between his upper and lower teeth, then quickly slapped the base of the iron against the right side of his face, holding it there for one beat, then two, then three. It sizzled and the smell of burning flesh filled the room.

  The man bit down hard on the toilet paper holder, convulsing against his duct-tape bindings like an electric current was pulsing through his body. He tried to lean away from the burning pain but she kept the iron pressed tightly to his head. An agonized sound, something between a groan and a wordless scream, issued from deep in the man’s chest, and when Tracie removed the iron, an angry red mark had been seared into his cheek, its curved triangular outline clearly visible.

  He panted and moaned and shook his head. Tracie was unmoved. “Ready to talk?” she asked.

  The man refused to respond and she lifted the iron to slap it back into place. He moaned in panic and began nodding enthusiastically. She removed the toilet paper holder from between his jaws and said, “I know about the plot to assassinate President Reagan. I know when the shooting will occur and that it will happen in D.C. What I don’t know is which rooftop your operative will shoot from. You’re going to tell me.”

  The lookout raised his head, resignation in his eyes, and said, “Nyet…I cannot…” and Tracie cursed. “We don’t have time for this,” she spat, and forced the toilet paper holder back into the man’s mouth, and he mewled like an injured kitten. She slapped the iron against the left side of his face, but this time left it in place for twice as long.

  When she finally removed it, the man sat in a puddle of his own urine, his bladder having released while he struggled. Tracie slapped the side of his face and the man opened his mouth to scream and she neatly plucked the holder out of his mouth once more. “One more time. Which rooftop?”

  “The Minuteman Mutual Insurance Company building,” the man mumbled, his Russian accent magnified by the pain. Tears rolled down his crimson cheeks. A thin line of drool ran from the corner of his mouth. The smell of burning flesh filled the room and Tracie tried not to gag.

  “Are you telling me the truth? Because if I find out you’re lying to me, I’ll burn your skin right down to the jaw bone. Do you understand me?”

  The man was panting and shaking. Sweat poured down his face. “I understand,” he said weakly.

  Tracie thought about Winston Andrews and about his betrayal of her, and another question occurred to her, one that didn’t bear any direct relation to the KGB assassination plot but one she could not help asking. “Was killing us part of the assignment?”

  The man hesitated, but only momentarily. Tracie passed the iron in front of his right cheek and the man spoke quickly. “Yes…I mean, no…I mean it did not matter. Once it was learned you were still alive, the mission was to retrieve the letter at all costs.”

  “And once you gained possession of the letter, what were you to do?”

  “Take it to someone.”

  “Take it to who?” She prodded him again.

  “Mister Andrews,” he said.

  She paused, thinking. “How many of your other operatives will visit this motel tonight?”

  “None,” the man said, shaking his head in resignation. “There is a two-man team driving north from Atlanta, but they will not arrive in the area until tomorrow. They are meant only to provide backup.”

  “Okay,” she said. “One last thing and then I’ll leave you alone. What’s the procedure for reporting in after you secure the letter?”

  “After we retrieve the letter we are to phone our contact.”

  “Comrade Andrews.”

  “Da. We are to advise him of mission status and then begin driving back to Washington to deliver the letter to him in person.”

  Tracie reached for the telephone on the writing desk. It was an ancient black rotary model, attached to the wall with a long cord so guests could use it without getting out of bed. “You’re going to make that call right now,” she said, holding the phone in front of him.

  He recited the number and she dialed. It was different from the one she used to call Andrews, which made sense, she thought. The traitor down in D.C. would need to know which side of the fence he was talking to before he picked up any ringing telephone. Before she spun the plastic rotary dial on the final digit, she leaned down and got in the Russian’s face, moving closer and closer until she could smell his sour sweat and his rancid breath.

  “One warning,” she said, her voice soft and deadly. “If I so much as suspect you are trying to pass a message to Winston Andrews—and I’ll know, I’ve worked with Andrews a hell of a lot longer than you have—getting burned by an iron will be the least of your problems. I’ll shoot you in the face and then dump your worthless corpse in the Atlantic Ocean. Do you understand me?”

  The Russian paled and nodded. “I understand,” he said in his heavily accented English.

  Tracie dialed the last digit and held the handset between her own head and the Russian’s, angled so he could speak into it but so she could still hear everything that was being said.

  The call was answered on the first ring, as if Andrews had been sitting right next to the telephone. Undoubtedly he had. “Go,” he said without preamble.

  “We have retrieved the letter.”

  “Very good. Casualties?”

  “Your CIA asset and the young man are both dead.”

  There was a short silence and then Andrews said. “Dispose of the bodies and then get back here with the letter. Do not let it out of your sight.”

  “We will be there as soon as possible.”

  The line went dead and Tracie replaced the telephone on the bedside table. A numb sense of shock filled her body. Her handler, a man she had worked with for years, had just spoken of her murder with no more emotion than if he were discussing a change in the weather.

  She turned back to the Russian. “I’m going to go and ask your comrade the same questions I just asked you. Do you understand what will happen to you if I find out you’ve been lying to me about any of this?” Tracie said.

  “I understand,” he said, defeated.

  “Is there any part of your story you would like to change? If so, now’s the time.”

  He shook his head. She nodded once and then walked out the door.

  ***

  Tracie was gone longer than Shane had expected her to be, and when she returned, her face was pale and drawn. She stepped through the door and he asked, “Are you all right?”

  She ignored the question. “Did this one give you any trouble?” she asked.

  “No, he never said a word. We just sat here.”

  “Good,” she said, and her face softened just a bit. “Nice job. Do me a favor now, and go keep an eye on the lookout. Our talk was very fruitful. It required a little persuasion to convince him to open up, but eventually we reached an understanding.”

  Shane stared at Tracie. Her voice was hard and cold and bore little resemblance to the one he had heard moaning and gasping in pleasure just a couple of hours before
. “Okay,” he said. “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to make sure the first guy told me the truth.”

  34

  June 1, 1987

  4:50 a.m.

  New Haven, Connecticut

  They moved quickly, Tracie directing the action. She had returned fifteen minutes after leaving Shane with the lookout, her face grim but satisfied. “I got what we need,” she said, “and now we have to move. Help me get this guy to the other room.”

  After Shane had secured the man in the dummy motel room, she instructed him to wipe down all of the surfaces they may have touched. “I’m going to call the spooks on these two once I’m sure about who we can trust at CIA,” she said, “so fingerprints won’t be an issue. But just in case someone finds them before I do that, I want to make sure you’re protected. My prints are untraceable, but I doubt you would be so lucky.”

  While Shane toured the room with a worn bath towel, scrubbing every surface he could, Tracie double-checked Shane’s bindings to satisfy herself they would hold. Then she applied a double layer of tape over each man’s mouth, winding it tightly around their heads and patting it in place. Despite the fact the two men had been there to kill them, Shane almost felt sorry for them. They looked like twins, their cheeks flaming crimson, shiny and burning, and the tape’s sticky adhesive must have felt like an additional torture session.

  Tracie didn’t seem to notice.

  Once she seemed satisfied both men would stay immobilized, she gathered up the weapons and picked up a DO NOT DISTURB placard off the inside doorknob and told Shane, “Let’s go.” She said nothing to the Russians, neither of whom had spoken since the end of the interrogation, and both men stared straight ahead, ignoring Tracie and Shane and, it seemed, each other.

  They paused at the door, Tracie doing one last quick check of the room, Shane pondering how quickly his life had turned upside-down. After a few seconds, she hung the DO NOT DISTURB sign on the doorknob, then eased the door shut and locked it from the outside.

  They hurried across the rapidly lightening parking lot to the second motel room and threw their gear together quickly. Shane repeated his print-scrubbing exercise with the bath towel while Tracie packed their few meager supplies in the Granada. Tracie hung another DO NOT DISTURB sign on that door, then they slid into the car and drove to the motel office.

  After paying for a second day’s rental of both rooms, they hurried back to the car and drove out of the New Haven Arms lot, Tracie at the wheel. They turned toward New Haven proper in search of an all-night restaurant. It was 5:05 a.m.

  ***

  They found one almost immediately, tucked away under an I-95 overpass. The Original Greasy Spoon seemed to embrace the 1950s with an enthusiasm bordering on obsession. Shane knew Tracie was almost out of money and he thought he might have just enough cash left for two cups of coffee and a couple of blueberry muffins. He was right, and they walked out of the diner and back into the 1980s with their food and coffee less than three minutes later.

  Tracie asked Shane if he wanted to drive. He hadn’t bothered to offer because even with all the traveling they had done yesterday she had not so much as considered giving up the wheel. “Sure,” he answered, surprised and pleased although he was not entirely sure why. It was as if he had passed some kind of test back at the tumbledown New Haven Arms in the surreal few hours they had spent there.

  She climbed into the passenger seat and sat demurely, smiling at him while he dropped into the driver’s seat. “What?” he asked. “What’s so funny?”

  Then he went to start the car and realized. There was no key. “Okay, you win. Would you mind starting this piece of junk for me?”

  “No problem,” she answered, pleased. “We’ll make a proper criminal out of you yet.” She leaned over his lap to hot-wire the ignition and he flashed back to their time together in bed at the motel before the Russians had arrived. Her silky skin, her luscious lips, the curve of her naked hip under his hand, the way her breathing quickened as he had stroked her inner thigh, the sweet sound she made when—

  He realized she had spoken to him and he cleared his throat. “Uh, sorry, I missed that,” he said, embarrassed.

  “I asked if you were going start driving or whether you planned to sit there the rest of the day replaying your mental movie of us together in the sack.”

  “I wasn’t…”

  “Don’t even try to deny it. I’m a trained interrogator, remember?”

  He could hear the smile in her voice. “Okay, okay, I admit it. Just don’t come at me with an iron.”

  She laughed, the sound light and girlish, light-years removed from the ice-pick chill she had displayed when dealing with the Russians. Shane shook his head and dropped the car into gear, turning left, right and then left again, climbing the ramp onto I-95 south, thoroughly confused by this young woman sitting to his right.

  Thoroughly enchanted by her as well, although he knew he could not afford to be.

  She ate delicately as Shane drove, picking tiny pieces off the muffin with her fingers and placing them on her tongue before chewing soundlessly and swallowing, brow furrowed in concentration. Shane had to be careful not to get so caught up watching Tracie out of the corner of his eye that he drove off the highway and into the guardrail.

  He let her think for a while and when it became clear she had no intention of starting a conversation, said, “So what did those guys tell you back there?”

  “I know where the assassin is going to be stationed.”

  “How can you be sure they told you the truth?”

  “They both gave the same location. There’s no way they would have done that if one of them had been lying.”

  “Unless they agreed on a story beforehand, in case they were caught.”

  Tracie shrugged, conceding the point. “True enough,” she said, “but I don’t think so. Those guys were one hundred percent certain they were going to walk in on us in our sleep, put a bullet in each of our heads, and walk away with the letter. That’s why they were so sloppy. They had no reason to suspect we were on to them, and thus no reason to make up a story. Plus, they wouldn’t have expected us to know about the assassination.” She paused. “I’m confident I got the truth out of them.”

  “Okay,” Shane said. “So what’s the plan from here?”

  “The plan? I wish I knew.” She sighed heavily. “First stop is New York. We’ll pick up my supplies, then head straight to D.C. I’ll find a safe place to stash you, and then I’ll have to pay a visit to my traitorous boss, Winston Andrews. From there, I stop an assassination. I’m not exactly sure how yet.”

  “Stash me? I don’t think so. You said yourself I’m neck deep in…whatever is going on, and I’ve nearly been killed twice now in less than twenty-four hours. I have a stake in this thing, too, Tracie, in case you’ve forgotten. Plus, you can’t do everything yourself. You need help, and I’m going to help you. Period. End of story.”

  35

  June 1, 1987

  5:45 a.m.

  Interstate 95, just outside Newark, NJ

  “I don’t understand,” Shane said. They had pulled off the highway at a random exit, bought fresh coffee, and then hit the road again. Steam curled out of the plastic lids, dissipating in the air. “It doesn’t make sense. What possible advantage could there be for the KGB to launch World War Three?”

  “It does make sense,” Tracie said. “It actually makes perfect sense if you consider it in context. Think about it. Exercising tyranny is dependent upon maintaining control, but the world is opening up. Citizens who have been under the thumb of the communists for decades are beginning to get a glimpse of the freedoms they have long been denied, and they’re starting to realize those freedoms are within reach. They want them.

  “The Soviet Union is crumbling, Shane. I know because I’ve seen the evidence firsthand. They have arguably the finest, most modern military in the world, next to ours, and yet the rest of the Soviet infrastructure is in a
shambles, as is their economy. It’s getting harder and harder for the Soviets to keep their satellite countries in line, and more and more expensive to do so at a time when resources are shrinking.

  “This makes perfect sense,” she concluded, a reluctant sense of wonder in her voice.

  Shane shrugged, frustrated. “I still don’t get it. Okay, Czechoslovakia wants to break away from the Russians. So what? How does that tie in with the KGB assassinating the president of the United States?”

  Tracie sat for a moment, thinking. Shane could see her working through it. “Okay,” she said at last. “It’s obvious from this letter,” she tapped the grimy envelope, “that Gorbachev can see the changes coming, and that he knows he is helpless to stop them. He admits that much. Whatever the future holds for the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, in ten years’ time it is going to look very different than it does right now.”

  “So?” Shane said. “Things change all the time. I still don’t understand why they have to kill Reagan.”

  “Because,” Tracie said, rubbing her eyes. She suddenly looked very tired. “The Soviet Union is no different than any other government, at least as far as the inner workings are concerned. Politicians disagree philosophically, squabble, grab power, consolidate that power, whatever. Obviously there’s a faction—in this case, a group of high-ranking KGB officials—who will stop at nothing to prevent the destruction of their power base and their personal empires. This faction wants to start a war, and the bigger, the better. You think Czechoslovakia is still going to want to step out from under their protector’s umbrella once the world’s two great superpowers start lobbing nuclear warheads at each other?”

  “But all wars end eventually. What happens then?”