An Act of Treason

by Jack Coughlin

  He was jogging now, making progress, sweeping his eyes over the terrain to look for threats and opportunities. He never saw the arm that tripped him and sent him sprawling on the ground. Swanson yanked his AK-47 semiautomatic rifle into position, rolled over, and pointed it. About three feet from the end of the barrel sat a child, a little girl no more than six years old, with a bloody cut above her ear, a filthy and torn black dress and ripped leggings, and tears of mud cutting through the grime on her cheeks. Her eyes were huge, but she was not staring at him. Her full attention was on a woman who lay facedown beside her, unconscious and partially covered by a pile of loose rubble. The child was crying and pulling on the arm of her mother.

  Kyle registered the thought No threat and scrambled to his feet. This was not his problem. He was a trained killer, not a humanitarian aid worker. He had to leave. Now.

  The woman coughed, and a small cloud of dust rose from her mouth. The little girl quit pulling the arm and jumped to the woman, brushing some hair away from the face and crying out a name. Not my problem, dammit! He hesitated, then turned his back on them and started to jog away again.

  He stopped and looked back. The little girl finally gave him a heartbroken glance. Swanson stopped, turned, and walked back. Okay. Just a minute to get this sorted out. Just do this one thing, quick, then I’m outta here.

  Swanson knelt beside her. She was in shock. He opened the nylon bag to get at the equipment, doused a large gauze pad with water, and gave her face a quick and gentle wipedown. She hardly knew he was there and continued pawing at her mother. Kyle began to whisper comforting sounds as he used another pad to clean away the blood above her ear. The ear bleeds a lot when it is cut, and that was the problem here. No scalp wound, just smeared blood. “Move over a little bit, honey. I’m here to help you. Let me look at Mommy,” he said softly, nudging in close but not forcing the child to release her grip. She gave way. He handed her the rest of the bottle of water, and she made a choice, reached for it, and drank it all. “Good girl,” he said.

  The woman’s dark eyes were open, fluttering, and she gasped for breath. Kyle checked her for major wounds, found none, and opened her mouth to clear the airway. She was coughing up phlegm and dirt, which meant that she was able to breathe, but she was totally disoriented. He felt safe speaking English because the hood of the mask muffled the sounds. Just soothing tones. “I got you now. You’re going to be okay. Just relax. Your daughter is fine, too.”

  Standing up again, he began clearing away the spill of rubble that entrapped her. “Hold on, lady. I’ve got to move this stuff.” Rocks and sticks and small chunks of concrete and dirt had been swept into a pile over her. She lay only a few steps from the front wall of an apartment house, which was heavily damaged, as if chewed by some monster. Still, it was a distance away from the explosion, and the main force of the blast had missed them as it was channeled elsewhere. The woman stirred, and when he cleared her legs, he saw a broken bone protruding through the flesh. “Damn,” he said. He pulled the emergency kit over and dug out a small web belt with a buckle that quickly became a tourniquet around her thigh to stop the bleeding. She began to groan as consciousness returned, and Kyle used a couple of small sticks in the debris to fashion a crude splint.

  He found another bottle of water and splashed her face, wiping away the grime with broad strokes. “There. That should hold you until help arrives.” She blinked at the touch of cool water, and her daughter launched from beside Kyle and grabbed her mother in a tight hug. They smothered each other with love, but the woman suddenly tried to sit up and looked around wildly. She stared at the collapsed doorway that she apparently had just stepped from at the time of the explosion and screamed a name Kyle could not understand and began pointing, continuing to scream.

  Somebody else! There’s another kid there! Swanson dove away from the woman and frantically began to throw away debris that led back into the building’s entry corridor. Suddenly, someone else, a young policeman, appeared at his side, also digging away at the obstacle. Behind them, Kyle heard someone talking to the woman, and several more uniformed men gathered and joined the search. Pull away now! Let them do it! He was about to release and go when his hand brushed flesh and he saw the hand of another child. He let out a shout, and the other men gathered to dig.

  They had him free within thirty seconds, a boy who seemed about ten years old. The child was hauled out and laid beside the mother. Kyle stepped back, but the other men seemed frozen by the sight of the body. Do CPR! Somebody get down there! No one moved. Swanson went to his knees and pulled off his dirty gloves to clear the kid’s airways, levering out some wads of dirt. He felt a faint pulse. When he looked up, the others were only watching. He nodded to them to take over. One soldier lit a cigarette. The mother screamed. The daughter cried.

  If I do this, I will have to remove the hood and expose myself. Right now, none of them realize that I’m an American. Why doesn’t someone get on this kid? It’s not that hard. He made his decision, stood up, and slowly began to retreat. The rest of them began to drift away. The boy was dead, and there were other people needing help. Live people.

  A hand grabbed his, and he looked down. The woman had her daughter wrapped in an arm and was clinging to Kyle with all the strength she could muster. She called loudly to him, “Please! Please help my son!”

  At the sound of the English language, the other men stopped in their tracks and looked back at the mother, the little girl, the unconscious boy, and the man in the gas mask. Swanson knew it was over. The disguise was ruined. Fight or flight, now… or stay and help.

  “Okay,” he said, dropping his helmet, peeling back the hood and goggles, and throwing them away. “I’ll do what I can.” The men were moving closer, forming a circle. “Tell them to stand back while I help the boy,” he told the woman, and she barked at the others. Kyle rummaged around in the nylon kit again, grabbed the CPR kit, and tore it open to reach the little plastic dome and tube. He positioned the mask over the boy’s face, tightened the elastic strap for a snug fit, and began the process of resuscitation, alternating blowing into the tube and massaging the chest with powerful pressure from his crossed hands.

  Time became irrelevant as he repeated the process, time and again, pausing only to feel the pulse. Something was blocking the passage. He pulled off the mask and rolled the boy over, hauling the child against his own chest and wrapping his arms around him. Once, twice, he pulled in suddenly and hard in the Heimlich maneuver, then a third time, and the boy gagged with a deathly sour groan and vomited a stream of mucus and dirt and a couple of small stones.

  Swanson laid him down again and resumed the CPR, and within a minute the kid’s eyes clicked open, dark and surprised, and he started hauling in air to fill his lungs. The woman screamed in wonderment and grabbed the boy in a tight hug, calling to Kyle, “Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!” Swanson sat back on his heels, exhausted. Several of the men clapped their hands and patted him on the back.

  Kyle slowly raised his hands and placed the palms on his head. It was a new game now, back to being a Marine. Take a deep breath, stare directly ahead without expression, make no sound, and act totally unafraid. They were going to do whatever they were going to do, and if he had to die in this place, so be it. They would never see him scared.

  It took only a moment before someone knocked him on the head with a rifle butt and he toppled over, seeing flashes of colors in the pain. They would be brave now and close in as a pack to have their fun, so cover up. He brought his ankles and knees together hard, ducked his head into his arms, and rolled into a tight ball as the first kicks slammed into his kidneys and back, then more rifle strikes pounded his arms and legs and head, and cuts opened and blood flew out and there was a lot of unintelligible noise and the woman screamed some more, her pleas keening over the curses of the men who were blaming him for everything that had happened on that awful day, and Swanson could do nothing but take the beating and let it all flow over him. He kept hoping
for the black sea of unconsciousness but could not find it.

  26

  LANGLEY, VIRGINIA

  J ANETTA J ONES ADJUSTED THE red-rimmed glasses that perched near the tip of her nose. A thin African American woman with twenty years in the CIA administrative branch, she was a pleasant co-worker but slow to warm up to others. Everybody in the building was that way, so it had come as a surprise to her when she became friends with Lauren Carson. She wanted to buy Lauren a drink and have some girl talk. She was surprised when she found Lauren sitting at her desk with her head in her hands, looking lost.

  Jones went into the office, closing the door behind her. “Are you okay, Lauren? You should be celebrating, girlfriend. Letter of commendation going in your file for bringing those prisoners back is a big deal. I’m buying you a drink tonight.”

  Carson pushed herself up straight, opened a desk drawer, and pulled out a small mirror. “I look like crap,” she said. The eyes were serious.

  “Right,” Janetta said. “Most normal women would sell their favorite shoes to look as good as you do on your worst day. What’s going on?”

  Lauren dropped the mirror back and closed the drawer. Time for some major cosmetics. “I’ve just been summoned for an emergency internal review. Since I’ve already been debriefed about the prisoners, I guess it has to be about those explosions in Pakistan. No word from the team that went in yet. I don’t know anything about what happened over there.”

  Janetta Jones had been around the Agency too long to try to dig for details. Jim Hall was probably involved in it somehow. Man about to retire goes off on a secret mission and gets himself involved in a crisis. Lauren, being his deputy, could catch some fallout. Then there was the emotional component. Lauren cared about Jim, and their affair had been no secret. It was impossible to keep that kind of secret within the walls of the CIA. “We’re in a risky business,” she observed.

  Lauren was happy that Janetta had come in. The woman was almost an oracle, a walking encyclopedia of internal CIA mechanics.

  “Just routine, so don’t worry about it. I’ve seen it many a time before. Many a time,” Jones said in a slow, soft voice. “I’m sure that it is just a SODD investigation. When something bad happens almost anywhere in the world, the CIA is usually held responsible until we can prove Some Other Dudes Did It. Getting blamed for everything is as much a part of this building as the elevators and the stones. Just who we are. What time is your interview?”

  “Tomorrow morning. Meanwhile, I was told to make sure that the door to Jim’s office is locked and that a special team will be sent along to secure and seal it until we hear from him. Nobody goes inside.”

  Janetta smiled. “So let’s go do that. I’ll witness for you. Then you go fix your face and we’ll get out of here and go chase men.”

  Lauren stepped from behind her desk, picked up her purse, and glanced sideways at the glass window to check her reflection. “I’m a mess.”

  Janetta Jones rolled her eyes and turned away. “Yeah. Hideous. I’ll make you an appointment with one of the company’s plastic surgeons.”

  ISLAMABAD

  G ENERAL N AWAZ Z AMAN OF the Pakistani intelligence service said, “We have captured an American assassin and killed his partner.” Then he tapped the spent embers from his cigar in an ashtray on his desk. The smoke coiled gray above it. His round face remained calm, but his eyes drilled into those of Daniel Silver, the SAC, or special agent in charge, of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation’s huge office in Islamabad.

  Silver carefully measured his response. He had been so tightly focused on the massive explosions that had rocked the city that he had heard nothing of this. “I do not understand, General.”

  “It is simple, Special Agent Silver. Your country decided to come across the Afghan border once again without authorization in pursuit of the Taliban.” He pointed out the window of his office. “Look and see what you have caused.”

  “That is an absurd accusation, sir.”

  “Perhaps, but it is also true.” The general opened a file on his desk. “The man we have captured has been identified as Kyle Swanson, apparently a United States Marine sharpshooter of some renown. The dead one has not yet been identified.” His eyes rose again to stare at Silver.

  The FBI agent felt sweat beneath his armpits. “How do you know all of this?”

  That brought a gruff laugh from Zaman. “Do you believe that you are the only investigators here? This is my country, Special Agent Silver, and we have put everything we have into finding out what happened here yesterday and what caused it. Our techniques can be quite different than your American standards, particularly in the wake of such an atrocity. We are quite comprehensive, and have numerous sources.”

  “Well, General, all I can say right now is that I am completely baffled by your statement, and completely unaware of any involvement by my country.”

  “Then let me give this file to you. From the rubble of an apartment house, we recovered two bodies with gunshot wounds to their heads. They were a pair of Taliban gunmen, according to our people. Some local police apparently heard the shots, just before the explosions, pursued this man Swanson, and eventually captured him.”

  Silver rubbed his knees, a sign of nervousness. “We want to interview him.”

  “Naturally. Have someone from your embassy contact the Foreign Office to arrange it.” The ISI official slowly pulled on the cigar.

  “No, General. I mean we need to talk to him right now, to begin our own investigation.”

  Zaman shook his head. “That is not possible.”

  “You refuse my request?”

  “Not at all. I just want you to go through proper channels, Special Agent Silver. Enough of the cowboy stuff, doing whatever you want to and whenever you want to do it in our country. The government of Pakistan will cooperate, and in the proper manner. Meanwhile, Swanson stays where he is, in our protective custody.”

  “I will protest this with the ambassador.”

  Zaman waved away the complaint. “Fine. Meanwhile, if you want to do something productive, take a look at that envelope in the file. We have been unable to identify Swanson’s accomplice. Police were closing in on him when the explosions began, and he was blown apart and buried. One of the officers managed to reach what was left of the body before fire consumed everything. He thought fast enough to use his knife and shear off a sample that should help identification through DNA and international police databases. We would appreciate the FBI putting its computers to work to help on this particular front, since we are overwhelmed at the moment.”

  Silver opened the big folder and found a smaller envelope, sealed, with something lumpy inside. He tore open the flap and removed a square, transparent ziplock bag. Inside was a human finger.

  * * *

  J IM H ALL STOOD BEFORE the huge window in the spacious living room of the Royal Ocean Suite of the Jumeirah Beach Hotel, on the coast of Dubai. Maroon curtains flanked the impressive view of the water and the white yachts, while thin, sheer curtains cut the glare. His hand hurt.

  He had flown from Islamabad International on a nonstop Emirates flight and, with his German passport, cleared customs on both ends without a problem. The customs officer in Dubai asked about the bandaged left hand and was satisfied with the explanation that much of his hand had been crushed by a falling stone in Islamabad, and then a finger had to be amputated, which was verified by a doctor’s statement. A waiting limousine delivered him to the beautiful hotel.

  Once in the huge suite, some 2,325 square feet of luxury, Hall took a shower, and paused while changing the bandage to examine the wound. The amputation had been clean, although after the finger was off, the edges of the severed digit were chopped and caked with dirt to make it look like an amateur job. With the mild sedatives, he had not felt much discomfort at the time, but as the anesthetic wore off, the pain visited. The doctor did a good job. Keep it clean and give it time to heal. He opened a bottle of pills and chewed two, washing them
down with water. Then he used the gauze and tape to bandage it up again.

  Retrieving his PDA from the pocket of the sports jacket he had worn on the trip, Hall slid into the armless gray chair before a table of shining light wood and opened the laptop computer that Lauren had left behind. The hotel offered wireless Internet connections, and in less than a minute he was logged on to his account. The bank routing numbers that he kept on the PDA were pecked carefully into the appropriate formats, using only his right hand. His days of ten-finger typing were over, he thought.

  One by one, he opened various accounts in various banks and investment houses, answered security questions, and used his right index finger like a spear to force the computer to do its job. He did not have to speak to a human during the entire process, which took less than thirty minutes. By then, he had cleared out every account he had ever established for the CIA, secret holding pens in which tens of millions of dollars had been stored to pay for covert operations over the years and never returned, although the funds technically had still been under CIA control.

  No longer. Jim Hall emptied them all that afternoon, as if shaking a giant trash can of cash, and moved the money to new accounts under new names in new places that protected the identity of their investors. After receiving confirmations and safely logging those combinations of letters and numbers back into the PDA, he scrubbed and destroyed the computer hard drive. He shut the lid, walked to the window, and looked at the pretty people on the pretty boats on the pretty water. He was now one of them. Jim Hall was rich, and he did not miss his finger at all.