by David Perry
Peter winked at the old man. “I owe you one, Ducky, and so does my brother. I need to call someone in Washington. Is that okay?”
“Ding dong, you’re gone,” Ducky smiled, nodding toward the phone. “Sounds serious.”
“It is,” Peter responded. He pushed out another breath. “It is.”
Chapter 47
“Where are you taking me?” Al-Faisal demanded three hours later. In a wheelchair being escorted to the hospital exit by John, a CIA agent and Simoon mole in the Company, Cyclops had a pounding headache. Awake but groggy, the cool clean West Virginia air energized him as they waited by the curb.
“To a safe house in Manassas. You’ll wait there until we receive instructions from your mother on how to repatriate you.”
John pushed al-Faisal through the open sliding-glass-door exit. A black panel truck idled at the curb. The driver and a man riding shotgun exited the vehicle and assisted John in lifting the chair into the back. Al-Faisal sat in the second, bench-like passenger seat.
“Tell your mother I said hello.” John slammed the door shut and tapped it twice. The van moved off.
The man in the woods a hundred yards from the safe house in Beckley, West Virginia, lowered the field glasses and removed the headphones from his ears. He turned off the two-foot-long ultra-sensitive K300 microphone and lifted the satellite phone to his ear.
“They just took him out of the safe house,” the CIA agent said into the device. “They’re headed west on Route 19.”
“Roger that,” came the reply. “Keep your eyes on the safe house. We’re sending a team to get them. We have eyes on Cyclops from above.”
The agent looked into the sky and saw the drone circling overhead, soundless and no more than a speck.
Thirty minutes later, just inside the Virginia–West Virginia line, al-Faisal asked, “How much longer?”
The driver shouted over his shoulder. “We’re on Route 55. It’s another thirty more miles. Probably an hour on these back roads.”
The van sped past a small clearing. A low-slung farm building with several vehicles parked on the grass appeared through the window and just as quickly disappeared from sight.
“Can you hurry it up?”
“Sit back and shut up! We’ll get there when we get there.”
Al-Faisal muttered. Damn Americans. Never in a hurry!
The terrorist stretched his arms and twisted his torso. The effects of the drug that had stopped his heart lingered. His muscles felt like heavy, wet concrete. As he turned, through the rear window of the van, Al-Faisal saw three sedans approaching at high speed two hundred meters back.
“We’ve got company,” he shouted.
The driver glanced in the mirror and saw the caravan. “We’ll let them pass,” he replied. He turned his eyes back to the roadway and slammed on the brakes.
“What the … ?”
The tires screeched along the asphalt as the van fishtailed to the left. Blue smoke erupted from the wheel wells. Three more sedans ahead of them had appeared from driveways hidden in the trees, blocking the way. The rear echelon of SUVs did the same.
Before another word was uttered, fifteen uniformed agents appeared surrounding the van, wearing black tactical gear with FBI emblazoned on their bullet-resistant vests. Automatic weapons and handguns were trained on the driver and passengers.
“Hands on the dashboard! Now!”
The two men complied.
“Move and you die, here and now!”
The driver and passenger-side doors were flung open, along with the rear panel. The two men and al-Faisal were led to separate vehicles. The van was commandeered by two agents. In less than three minutes, the van and six sedans formed a single line of vehicles heading east along Route 55 toward Manassas.
In one of the sedans, al-Faisal sat flanked by two heavily armed, helmeted agents. His hands and legs were now chained and shackled. He looked at one of his captors just as a hood was placed over his head.
“Where are we going?”
“You are now a guest of the United States government. We’ll be in Washington in ninety minutes. Enjoy the ride.”
Hours later, another caravan, this time a three-vehicle motorcade, zipped through the darkened city streets of the nation’s capital. Jason sat beside the director in the backseat of the first car.
“What’s going on?” Jason demanded. “How can I can help you?”
The director of the FBI, George McNamara, formed a tight-lipped frown. He was about to speak when his cell phone rang. Jason listened as the man said a few words, then spent the next thirty seconds listening.
“Excellent,” he said to the caller. “That’s at least a start. Thanks, Special Agent.”
“Well?” Jason persisted. “I deserve some answers.”
McNamara was undeterred. “That was Clay Broadhurst. He’s dying by the way. The bullet he took in that stairwell in the condo towers really screwed him up. He’s developed lung cancer. He doesn’t have much time left. He’s technically been on medical leave ever since the assassination attempts two years ago. But we can’t keep him away from the office. He’s been over seeing this operation and studied what happened at the shipyard in Newport News, and why.”
“Admirable. I have a great deal of respect for Agent Broadhurst. But, what does it have to do with me?”
“We have a general idea where Delilah Hussein is. We have been trying to track her down for the last two weeks.”
“So you guys never really believed she was killed in the explosion on the yacht?”
“No, we believed she was dead. We only found out she was alive in the last two weeks. Our analysts reopened the case and found that the bodies of the man and woman on the exploded yacht in the James Rivers were not those of Hussein and her manservant Oliver. They did not have the tattoos. We have been trying to track her whereabouts ever since. These things take time.”
The caravan turned right onto Eighth Street.
“So what’s your plan, and how does it involve me?”
“You want your son and woman back. She wants her son back. We’re going to arrange a trade. And you are going to lead us straight to her.”
“A trade?”
Jason exited the black SUV still surrounded by FBI agents, but this time not as a fugitive. Jason, the director of the Secret Service, and ten agents stood aside as a large square truck approached.
They were in an underground parking garage deep beneath Washington.
The square rig looked like an armored car, except it was painted black with FBI in four-foot white letters on the rear. A pair of guards exited the cab. They moved to the rear door and opened it. Another phalanx of guards wearing riot gear and helmets, and sporting automatic rifles, spilled out.
Seconds later, a man in an orange jump suit was escorted from the truck by another pair of guards and two more plainclothes men wearing jeans and short haircuts. The prisoner shuffled down from the truck, chains clanking. A thick strand circled his waist. His handcuffed wrists were secured to these irons. Another set of links draped from the waist to a pair of leg irons restraining his ankles. A black hood covered the man’s head.
The detainee was smaller than Jason.
Jason’s confusion multiplied when one of the plainclothes agents spoke to the director.
“We don’t think this is a very good idea. This guy is dangerous.”
The director smiled politely. He spoke with an even tempo dripping with patience. “Tough shit. The decision has been made and it was made at the highest pay grade. It’s out of my hands now.” The director turned to his men. “Bring him here.”
The prisoner was led to the director and Jason. The man stood a few feet away. He was surrounded by guards, their rifles and batons poised.
“Take it off.”
A guard grabbed a fistful of cloth and ripped the hood from the man’s head.
With his mental and physical state frayed, Jason’s ability to control his impulses had eroded. The consta
nt worry about Michael and Chrissie had been gnawing it him.
He needed to find them and be with them. It was the only thing that mattered. Their lives—and his—depended on nothing else.
Yet, the path to finding them had twisted and turned in unexpected directions. No matter how close he was, the distance between him and his loved ones seemed to increase with each passing hour. Frustrated and fragile, he didn’t think his body could react to anything else placed in his path. That is, until the hood was ripped from the prisoner’s head.
The dark skin. The eye patch. Jason starred into the soulless face. The pharmacist would not remember the next few moments.
His arm shot out, slamming into al-Faisal’s head. Jason leapt on him pummeling him with blows about the head. He landed two perfect punches, the sharp cracks cutting through the underground garage. Three FBI agents wrapped Jason up and tore him away.
The director strode over to Jason, who lay on the pavement, looking up at the senior law enforcement official.
“Did you get that out of your system?”
Jason cleared his throat and pushed himself erect.
“Well?” the director persisted.
“Yeah, I guess so,” Jason replied.
“Okay, then. Let’s get your family back.”
THE END
Enjoy this excerpt from the third installment of the Cyclops Series:
The Cyclops Reprisal
Part One
Chapter 1
Monday, April 13
They exited the elevator into a stark-white sterile corridor. The hallway ended at a large white metal door. The FBI director opened it, walked in, and held it open for Jason.
The pharmacist stepped in and looked down upon a semicircular indoor amphitheater. At the lowest level, ten large screens, six feet high and ten feet wide, were mounted on the wall. Four screens showed satellite images of various locations around the world. The remaining six displayed data scrolling over a black background.
Its multi levels were occupied by the stepped stages of the theater crammed with computer stations, terminals, and secure phones. Fifteen men and women were seated at these stations and other locations. Certain smaller computer screens were synced displaying the computer’s information on the larger screens.
“Welcome to the SIOC,” McNamara declared.
On the highest level of the center, a large conference room overlooked the massive technological display below. The common walls were floor-to-glass, allowing for a panoramic view. From this vantage point, agents in the enclosure could observe the goings-on in the command post.
“Jason,” FBI Director George McNamara began, “has agreed to help us. I want everyone to brief him on Operation Dust Storm.”
The faces around the table shot the director shocked glances.
“Sir, he’s not cleared,” one woman objected.
“I just gave him clearance!”
No one made a movement to comply.
“I mean it,” he persisted. “Just give him facts. And do not mention what security agencies or databases were accessed. Give him the important details.”
Throats were cleared and papers shuffled.
“Tom, you start.”
The wheelchair bound Tom Johnson opened a thick file and spoke in a slow, methodical manner, reciting facts.
“Two weeks ago, we learned that the explosion on the yacht after the assassination attempts was staged.”
“How did you come to know this?” Jason asked.
“We intercepted a communication between someone in Newport News called The Watcher and an unknown subject that caused us to question the conclusion that Hussein was dead. A special team was dispatched to look into the explosion. It was determined that the bodies on the yacht were not those of Hussein and her associate. That information was not shared with the local police … or anyone else for that matter. We knew that Lily Zanns, aka Delilah Hussein, was alive. We brought in the FAA and began to look at all flights, commercial and private, originating from the area in and around Newport News.
“The tail letters on Hussein’s plane and its transponder signal were cross-referenced with electronic flight records from the FAA’s mainframe. All flights are tracked and saved at their headquarters here in DC. Hussein and her associate flew to a few miles of the coast of North Carolina. The plane’s track terminated over the water. At first, we thought they may have crashed into the sea.
“We checked with the Coast Guard and the Navy, looking for a record of a crash and/or recovery operation. There was nothing. But we did find a report of an abandoned aircraft, a float plane, matching the tail numbers of her aircraft.”
“Hussein,” Jason began, “was off the grid. I understand she had no papers, no social security number. How did she manage to buy a plane?”
“She had no paper trail as Lily Zanns. But she did have one as Delilah Hussein. The plane was owned by an organization based in Syria with ties to The Simoon.”
Johnson continued his explanation. “The plane was found empty, floating on the ocean waves. There was no sign of foul play. We assumed that they rendezvoused with others.”
At that point another gentleman unknown to Jason took over.
“Back checking, we cross-referenced the shipping lanes and routes for the day after the assassination attempt and were able to determine that two ships were in the area at the time the plane’s flight terminated. Both ships’ crews were interviewed. It was learned that two people, a dark-skinned man and a woman, were rescued from the sea in a rubber raft in the early morning by a Liberian tanker headed to Cuba.
“Based on the interviews, we determined that the man and woman debarked in Cuba and disappeared.”
A third man picked up the story.
“Let me stop you right there,” Jason interrupted. “Where is Agent Broadhurst?”
McNamara tapped the table. “Clay is ill. He is resting right now. Continue.”
“Since that day two weeks ago, we have continuously monitored all communications looking for any key words associated with Delilah Hussein and her organization, The Simoon, from anywhere in the world. The single communication we intercepted two weeks ago led to this area of the world.”
The man picked up a remote and pointed it at a blank monitor on the wall of the conference room. The screen came to life showing a world map. Slowly the image zoomed in on an area highlighted by a sizable rectangle.
The western wall of the box stretched from below Panama on the Pacific side north to the Gulf of Mexico. The top border ran west to east between Cuba and the southern tip of the Florida peninsula. The top right corner of the box floated over the middle of the North Atlantic. The eastern line dropped south to a point east of French Guiana. The southern side of the immense quadrilateral stretched east to west through the northern countries of South America: French Guiana, Suriname, Guyana, Venezuela, and Colombia.
“That’s a sizeable area,” Jason commented.
“More than 3.2 million square miles,” the man replied.
“I thought the government had all these resources at its disposal to monitor and locate the bad guys. Why can’t you pin her location down?”
“Given enough time we will find her. The problem is time,” McNamara explained. “An operation is underway. We need to find her. She’s using some kind of sophisticated cloaking mechanism to hide the source of her electronic and voice transmissions. Normally calls are routed through satellites and cell towers which makes tracking them relatively easy. Hussein’s communications, when they occur, are sending hundreds of signals out in a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree pattern.”
“So trace the signals back to where they all converge …”
“We’ve thought of that, young man. The origination point of the calls changes every time a call is made or a secure text is sent. It can vary anywhere inside this rectangle you see on the map.”
“How do even know this is Hussein?” Jason demanded.
McNamara smiled as if explaining
a simple concept to a child. “We have other assets around the world that have confirmed communications are coming from this area. We have teams analyzing large amounts of electronic data. And that’s all I will say about that. Again, continue.”
The agent with the remote continued. “We’ve cross-referenced each communication with known cell towers and transmission points. None of the calls can be traced to a specific cell tower. It’s a complicated algorithm which we can solve. We will need time. Time we don’t have.”
“So she’s somewhere in the Caribbean but you don’t know where.”
“Exactly,” said the director.
“How do you expect to contact her if you don’t know where she is?”
The director stood up. “Thank you, gentlemen.” He turned to Jason. “Follow me.”
Chapter 2
“Agent Broadhurst?” the special agent said into his phone.
“Who is this?”
“Peter Rodgers. Jason’s brother.”
Broadhurst shot up from his recumbent position. He regretted the sudden movement. His head swam. Dizziness washed over him. A tide of nausea swelled. The dying agent sucked in several rapid breaths, expelling them quickly. He pushed back the urge to vomit.
“Are you there?” Peter Rodgers demanded.
“Yeah … yeah, I’m here.”
“You don’t sound too good.”
Hoping to catch a few moments of much-needed rest, he had found an empty office inside the SIOC complex, hung his suit coat and tie on a chair, and lain down. He checked his Bulova. It was twenty minutes after midnight. Sunday had turned into Monday. And he’d only managed thirty minutes of shuteye-in the last twenty four hours.
“Where the hell are you?”
Broadhurst swung his legs off the small cot in an empty office of the SIOC hallway.
“I’ve been trying to call you for the last four hours. I’ve left you three messages. Where the hell have you been?” Rodgers shot back.