An Act of Treason

by Jack Coughlin

  Their car climbed the hill once again, then nosed around a right-hand turn, and LeGarret pulled to the curb and shut off the lights. “Damn, there’s the mutha, right there! He just got home.”

  Parma leaned forward between the guys in the front seat to get a better view. In the dim light from the porch and the light that popped on from inside the target’s car, they made out the figure of a skinny man in the white uniform of a naval officer. “Got to be him. He’s alone, too. No lights in the house, so the family ain’t home.”

  “Damn,” said Shields. “I wanted a piece of his wife.”

  The target unlocked his front door and went inside, and immediately a series of lights bloomed throughout the house. Living room, kitchen, bedroom, bath.

  “Now?” asked LeGarret Shields, his tongue licking his dry lips.

  “Not quite. Let him get settled for a minute. Probably taking a leak, then he’ll make some food and turn on the TV. Get comfortable.”

  The figure came unexpectedly into view again, walking down the driveway, pulling a green plastic trash cart out for curbside pickup. He had a blue plastic carton of recycled cans under one arm, propped on his hip but resting on a little towel to protect his white uniform.

  “Fuck waiting,” hissed Parma. “This is the chance. If he’s taking out the garbage, he’s already off guard and getting comfortable. Soon as he goes back inside, we do it.”

  “Unh-hunh. You right. Get ready.” Achmed Fox pulled his pistol free and rested it on his leg. “Go on up there now, LeGarret, soon as he’s back inside.” Fox felt the car drop into gear and slowly creep forward, sticking to the curb.

  “Let’s go on and do it,” said Fox, his voice now tense, ready. He threw open the door of the car and climbed out, waiting only a moment for the others to form up beside him; then all three advanced rapidly up the walk and onto the porch. Parma reached up with his pistol and smashed the front porch light as Fox opened the screen door and kicked hard with his steel-toed boot at the lock on the wooden door.

  It crashed open, and the three of them dashed inside, looking at the startled man across the room. Little dude in a white uniform. Calm. Fox had expected to see fear. He shouted, “Get your ass on the floor, muthafucka! Get down or I’ll cap you where you stand.”

  LeGarret Shields closed the door and turned to look at their prisoner. “What you grinnin’ at, muthafucka?” he yelled at the sailor, who was kneeling, hands locked behind his head.

  Then all of the lights went out.

  There was a muffled crummpp sound, and Vincent Parma screamed as a high-velocity bullet took out his right knee. He dropped to the wooden floor, and a second rip of bullets shredded the middle of his chest. Another cough from a different direction, and the back of LeGarret’s head exploded.

  Before Samuel Achmed Fox could react, an incredibly strong hand reached out in the blackness, closed around his pistol, and snatched it away at the same time a muscular arm wrapped in a tight V around his neck and tightened in a choke hold. The oxygen was cut off, and Fox tried to pry off the arm, but it was as if it were made of steel and concrete. His resistance faded; he could not breathe. The lights came back on, and as his sight faded, he saw four men in full battle gear watching him.

  The little sailor spoke. “We’ve been expecting you,” Freedman said. “Let’s have a talk.”

  Then the arm turned Fox loose and he toppled over, gasping for breath as his lungs burned in pain. His neck felt broken.

  44

  LANGLEY, VIRGINIA

  “T HE MONEY KEEPS ROLLING in, doesn’t it, gentlemen?” Bartlett Geneen, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, spread his hands over two neatly stacked piles of papers on his desk.

  Jack Pathurst from the Office of Security kept a confident look on his face and remained calm. “I am apparently on my way to becoming as rich as the CEO of some state-owned utility company. What’s my latest total, Mia?”

  Mia Kim from the Financial Department said, “Two new deposits were wired in just before midnight. One from the Canary Islands, the second from Buenos Aires. You are each up to about forty million.”

  “You have it all tagged to be scraped up later?”

  “Yes,” Kim said.

  “Good.”

  Stephen Swinton sighed loudly and looked at his folded hands, which were shaking. His face was ashen. “My wife has left me,” he announced softly. “Glenda cashed out those first deposits in her account and departed, leaving a short note beneath a magnet on the refrigerator. She has gone to Reno to file for divorce.”

  Pathurst gave the lawyer a smirk. “Glenda is a smart girl. You owe the government some big bucks.”

  Bart Geneen stood up and stretched. “One of the neatest frames I have seen in a long time,” he said. “Homeland Security is interested in both of you, which poses new problems. Bobby Richardson over at the White House is trying to distance himself from this entire episode. He has become a political liability for the president and will soon be dismissed as chief of staff, even if the media does not get a hint of this, as I fully expect them to do.”

  Pathurst held up his right palm and moved it slowly left to right. “ ‘CIA Officials Caught Taking Bribes.’ That catchy headline will be crawling across the bottom of TV screens for weeks. Smart.”

  Geneen moved to the tall American flag on a stand in one corner of his office, picked at the gold fringe, and rubbed the silk of a red stripe between his fingers. “That’s not even half of it. Not even the worst. You two will be painted by the press as working with America’s enemies, the Taliban. You are getting rich on bribes from a rogue agent, Jim Hall. According to the testimony of the soldiers who escaped, they watched Hall actually protecting the Taliban’s people when Kyle Swanson pulled his gun on them. So, Hall equals Taliban equals the overthrow of the Pakistani government equals nuclear weapons in the hands of terrorists who hate America.” He turned to face Pathurst and Swinton. “Is that about right?”

  Pathurst said, “I wasn’t involved in that.”

  “Neither was I,” protested Swinton, looking up. His eyeglasses were dirty.

  “Does not matter,” responded the director. “We don’t want to have to defend ourselves in public. Therefore, I am pulling the plug on the investigation of Agent Lauren Carson and restoring her to active status. It’s pretty obvious to me that Jim Hall set her up. Similarly, I have already spoken with the FBI, Homeland Security, and General Middleton over at Task Force Trident. Gunnery Sergeant Swanson is off the hook for any and all charges. Again, it looks like that was Hall’s doing.”

  Pathurst shifted in his chair. “Okay-but I think you may be moving too fast, Mr. Director. We still cannot get involved because we have to protect our deal not to chase Jim Hall. Son of a bitch will roll up more of our networks if he thinks that we are chasing him. Nothing to stop him from doing so in the future.”

  “I know, Jack. But for right now, it won’t be us. Swanson and Carson are the leads, both now working through Task Force Trident. If they need some of our help, they will let us know through the Trident loop. Let them finish him off. We stay out of it. Hall probably has laid a trap or two that would alert him if we get involved. So we don’t. No memos, no phone calls, no e-mails, no nothing.”

  Swinton blinked and caught his breath. “Trident? It’s them! That Major Sybelle Summers threatened me, and this is their work. We can charge them all now-”

  “Shut up, Swinton.” Bartlett Geneen was growing red in the face and was tired of dealing with the whining lawyer. “Earlier tonight, a three-man hit squad hired by Jim Hall tried to kill a naval officer who is part of Trident. They failed. Trident is in the clear, do you understand me? That case is over.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “As of right now, I have to suspend you both from duty until further notice. And, Jack, because you are the watchdog around here, I cannot allow the Security Office to conduct the investigation. It cannot even be anyone within the Agency, so I will arrange for a sympathetic indep
endent counsel to cover all of our asses.”

  Pathurst remained calm. “Understood.” In a smooth move, he placed his CIA credentials on the director’s desk. “I’ll be home doing chores until this gets cleared up.”

  “Swinton?” The director’s voice was harsh. “Go find your wife and get that money back. Contact Mia Kim every day, and don’t consider trying to run away. You are not cut out for that sort of thing. This meeting is over. Everybody out.”

  The office emptied, and the director went to a cabinet and poured a stiff shot of icy vodka he kept in a small refrigerator. There were some sliced lemons in a little plastic bag, and he dropped one into the drink and took a long swallow. What a mess this is, he thought. The agreement with Hall was a deal with the devil, but time has a way of changing things.

  The good part was that the Trident people had already flipped the hired thug into becoming an asset and forced him to send an e-mail of confirmation to the man in Turkey who had hired them. Geneen did not want to spend much time thinking about how they got that information so quickly, but the e-mail was being traced to an exact location.

  INCIRLIK

  TURKEY

  F OR N ICKY SHAW, THE e-mail message spelled the end of days, and he trembled slightly as he read it. Sam Fox and Nicky went back a long time in the gangster life that thrived in Washington, D.C., even in the great shadow of the Supreme Court. As fast kids, they snatched handbags from tourists and headed back to the projects on the run. In their teens, they turned to mugging tourists, picking their victims in the crowds around Union Station. Armed robbery came next during the years they should have spent in high school; then Sam got snapped up by the cops when he and another brother tried to hold up a Vietnamese liquor store one night. The other kid was new to the game and had crossed in front of Sam’s pistol, giving the owner just enough time to snatch a big Remington pump shotgun from beneath the counter and blow a hole in the robber’s stomach, hurling the instantly dead body into Sam, knocking him down. When Fox had looked up again, he was staring up the big smoking barrel of the Remington. When Nicky heard about the botched robbery, he decided that it was time for him to join the U.S. Army and be all that he could be, far away from the gangs.

  Sam should not have freelanced like that. He should have waited until Nicky could have done the job with him. They were a fearsome pair, because Nicky had brought brains to the party. He even devised a set of code words, like a quarterback in a huddle, meaningless to anyone but him and Sam. “Green Cat” meant everything was fine. “Grand Canyon” meant to proceed with caution. “Lowrider” meant to stop immediately and withdraw, while “Buffy” was their code word that the shit had hit the fan and to run like hell.

  After assigning the hit, Nicky had been expecting a smooth “Green Cat” message of confirmation. Instead he got “Buffy,” repeated three times in capital letters. He had no idea what had gone wrong, but Sam had managed to send the ultimate warning. The law was coming, and it was time to go. He did.

  * * *

  “A LL GOOD THINGS MUST come to an end,” he said.

  “Cut the bullshit philosophy. What the hell happened?” Jim Hall was in the passenger seat of Shaw’s Land Rover, parked in an isolated little industrial park near the base. It was packed with layers of boxes and suitcases. Extra storage was in a container secured to the top of the rugged vehicle.

  “Beats me. All I know is that my man sent me the code to get the hell out of Dodge. Been knowing him for thirty years and he’s never crossed me. Not a dude to panic easily, either.”

  Jim Hall’s mind was spinning with possibilities. Some shithead gangbangers failed to take down the Task Force Trident communications guy? The guy was a nerd, not a field operator. Hall felt a tingle along his spine. Trident had expected something to happen and had pulled an ambush. Swanson. Thinking like me. “I hope you don’t think I’m paying the rest of the fee,” he said.

  “Nope. Just wanted to meet and give you a heads-up. We known each other a long time.” Shaw slid his right hand up inside his jacket and grasped the stock of a pistol. “By the way, don’t even think of trying anything, old man. You ain’t no match for me. Gimme the gun in your belt, fingertips. Flip it into the back.”

  Hall lifted the Glock from the nylon holster and tossed it over the seat. He put his palms on the dashboard without being asked. “Okay. I’m just thinking. So, the job failed and you’re on your way out. Tough luck all around. But I still have work to do. Did you bring the sniper rifle?”

  “Yep. You still owe me for that stuff. See that key on the floor mat between your feet? It opens up that storage shed over there, 18-A printed on it. Your stuff is in there. Plenty of other toys, too. Help yourself. Ten thousand for my going-out-of-business sale.”

  “Let me reach for my wallet?”

  “Careful, Jim Hall. Just give me the money and go on about your business. We both walk away. Never see each other again.”

  Hall slowly removed a long, flat wallet of brown leather from his inside jacket pocket, and handed it over, using his left. “Here, just take it all. Eleven thousand, close enough.”

  “You a good man, Jim.” Nicky Shaw flashed his Grade A smile and reached for the soft leather wallet with his right hand, having to briefly remove his fingers from the shoulder gun.

  Jim Hall had known all along that he would have to be quick, because Nicky was a big guy, a warrior. There would be no second chance, and he could not win in a brawl. The narrow knife with the four-inch blade fell into his palm from the rear, hidden side of the wallet, unseen in the dim light. When Shaw reached for the money, Hall grabbed his right wrist to hold it still, counted on the steering wheel to delay the left coming over, and plunged the knife upward into Nicky’s throat.

  Hall threw himself atop the bigger man, the weight of his whole body pinning the muscle-pumped right arm and shoving Nicky tight into the driver’s seat. Nicky cursed in surprise, and his left arm broke free and a big fist thundered down on Hall’s right shoulder. Hall took the pain and dug into the throat again and again, ripping and tearing at the larynx and arteries. Jets of crimson blood flooded from the thrashing man’s throat. Nicky Shaw was extraordinarily strong, and Hall panted with exertion to keep him from breaking free. Thank God the man was wearing a seat belt that helped hold him in place. The legs were useless, trapped in the space beneath the dashboard.

  The fist lost some of its power, and the right arm softened. Hall pulled away just enough to remove the knife from the neck and go to work on the stomach, slicing more veins and wrecking internal organs. Nicky’s cursing turned to grunts of pain, and finally to sighs of surrender and a gurgle of life puffing from him.

  Jim Hall did not stop cutting until he was sure the huge mercenary, once a friend, was nothing more than a piece of dead meat.

  45

  BERN

  SWITZERLAND

  T HE NOON SUNLIGHT REFLECTED mirror-bright off the snow-covered sharp peaks of the Bernese Alps that marched off into the distance outside the city. It was crisp but not too cold, and Kyle wore a lightweight bomber jacket, while Lauren was in a belted tan trench coat, with apples and carrots in her deep pockets and the collar turned up. She held his arm as they strolled beside the River Aare; gentle swells pushed the dark, swift-flowing waters to within inches of the wide walkway.

  “I can’t believe that we are somewhere that you have never been before.” Lauren playfully pushed against him.

  “The Swiss have been neutral for seven hundred years.” He pushed her back. “Not much call for my specialized services. Anyway, they have some pretty tough guys in their armed services to meet their needs. Do a lot more than guard the pope.”

  Near the Nydegg Bridge, Kyle saw the spire of the cathedral, and they slowly climbed a long set of sharply angling stone steps that took them upward toward the center of the ancient city. At the top, he checked his tourist map, orienting himself, then they moved on.

  The attractive couple seemed to be something they were not. Instea
d of being a pair of love-struck tourists, Kyle and Lauren were making an in-depth reconnaissance of Bern, readying for the time, coming soon, when Jim Hall would have to break cover.

  It was a meandering stroll, and Kyle constantly was on the lookout for places in which death might hide, might even be hiding at the moment. He would not discount the possibility that Hall had hired a countersurveillance team of his own. Moves and countermoves, the eternal survival game of life and death. Where are you, Jim? What are you thinking?

  “It looks like a fairy tale,” Lauren said as they moved through the winding streets, with brightly colored statues on every corner. A small crowd had gathered before the fifteenth-century clock tower, and exactly at one o’clock a parade of carved animals, jesters, knights, and bears made their noisy journey about the clock face. She watched the clock. Swanson watched the crowd. Tourists of every shape and size, many with phone cameras and video recorders, making pictures of this Aesop’s Fables wonderland to show their friends. That worried him, but nothing could be done.

  In a few minutes more, they were waiting at the Bear Pit. Lauren started tossing carrots to the three large and shaggy beasts, who ignored her treats. Two were sound asleep, and the third just sat there, digesting. The pit was littered with the uneaten food from earlier tourists.

  A small, compact man in a gray business suit leaned his arms on the railing beside Kyle. His longish hair was swept back, and he had eyes like steel marbles. “They are treated like animal royalty. It is a long and boring story. My name is Commander Stefan Glamer, and today, I represent the Federal Criminal Police.” He let them glimpse the badge on his belt, then extended his hand, and both Lauren and Kyle shook it. It was a strong, firm grip. “The cantonment police asked for our help in this matter that you have brought to their attention. Fortunately, our base is at Worblaufen, which is not far from here.”