High Treason

by John Gilstrap

  “If I thought he’d turned to the other side? You betchum, Red Rider. Without flinching.”

  Jonathan let it go, but it sounded like more talk than truth. Soldiers and cops and firefighters developed a brotherhood of shared fear and sacrifice that made them a family. Fratricide would be no easier among them than it would be among brothers born of the same mother.

  Still, some crimes were so egregious that all the old rules needed to be disposed of. Could this be one of those?

  “Sometimes, I really hate my job,” he said.

  “I’ve got a question for you,” Boxers said. “If FLOTUS is planning the destruction of mankind as we know it, where does that put POTUS? More to the point, if we’ve really stumbled upon the truth here, where does that put us? We know a bunch of shit that they’re not going to want us to know.”

  “We’ve made a living knowing shit that Uncle didn’t want us to know,” Jonathan said.

  “Not at this level,” Boxers said. “A president willing to kill his own wife is a guy prone to scorching the earth.”

  “You’re assuming he’s an accomplice,” Venice said. “That might not be the case.”

  “I’m assuming nothing of the kind,” Jonathan said. “Stipulating that all of this impossible shit is true in the first place, I think that we could call President Darmond an ally. We all want to stop her.”

  “It’s a little different, Dig,” Boxers said with an eye roll. “He killed innocents at the Wild Times. We’re not talking about a stable man.”

  “We’re talking about a panicking man,” Venice said. “There’s a difference between killing in a panic and being a murderer.”

  Jonathan smiled. “Tell that to the mourning families,” he said. Venice had campaigned damned hard to get Darmond elected. She would be the last constituent to abandon him.

  After a brief silence, Boxers said, “Holy shit, Boss. What have we gotten into?”

  Jonathan shook his head. “Scary, huh? Even scarier when you think that Mr. Chief of Staff Winters invited us to the party. I’ve got lots of alarm bells sounding right now. Think of the damage we’ve done to this administration,” Jonathan said. “We kicked his SecDef in the balls and we stirred the Agency pretty good.”

  Venice’s jaw dropped. “You don’t think they know about Trevor Munro, do you?”

  Jonathan wished he’d never told her about the way he’d settled that score. “The absence of handcuffs would say no,” he said.

  “Maybe that’s because you saved Darmond’s sorry-ass life,” Boxers said.

  “He shouldn’t know about that, either,” Jonathan said. “But facts are facts. From this point on, we double down on OpSec. We need to assume that we’re under siege.”

  Boxers cocked his head. “Don’t we still have a PC to find?”

  Jonathan shrugged. “I’m beginning to look at that cargo as less and less precious.”

  “But we made a deal, Dig. The official version is that FLOTUS is in danger, and we have to snatch her away from it. If I were you, I wouldn’t want to have to call the White House and tell them that you’re walking away.”

  Another bell rang in Jonathan’s head. It was a church bell, actually. A gong. “Back up,” he said. “Why did they bring us in?”

  The question stopped conversation. Drew stares from both of them.

  “Don’t look at me that way. Think about the order of events. There’s a shoot-out at the Wild Times bar and a bunch of people are killed, mostly Secret Service. We hear rumors of a cleanup operation, where a homeless guy only one guy saw is carted off. No official record of that. There’s a lot right there to make me uncomfortable. Can we agree on that?”

  “I don’t remember the last time I was comfortable,” Venice said.

  Boxers made an undefinable noise that Jonathan interpreted as agreement.

  “If this was a hit on the First Lady to shut down her terror operations, why would Douglas Winters contact Irene Rivers to have us brought into the case? Why wouldn’t they just let it run its course?”

  As soon as the question had left his lips, he saw the answer. “Oh my God,” he said. “We’re pawns. We’re being used. They don’t want us to find her and bring her back. They want us to find her so they can finish the job of killing her.”

  Boxers saw it too. “They turned to us because legitimate law enforcement would leave a paper trail,” Boxers said.

  “And what happens when we do find her?” Venice asked.

  Jonathan let the question hang in the air. He hoped that the answer was obvious.

  “They’re going to kill her?” Venice gasped. Realization hit her hard.

  “I don’t know,” Jonathan said. “Hell, we don’t know anything. We’re just trying to feel our way through this mess. But a commitment to kill is a commitment to kill, isn’t it?”

  “Sweet system,” Boxers said. “We hand over the victim and then we all get popped. I seriously cannot wait until I see Doug Winters again. I’ll pull his brain through his nose.”

  “We’re missing something,” Jonathan said. “The stuff that makes sense only makes sense till it doesn’t. That always means we’re missing something.”

  “But the basics are solid,” Boxers said. “Can we agree that FLOTUS was up to no good?”

  Jonathan’s cell phone rang, displaying the name J. Edgar, his little joke to himself. It was Irene Rivers’s phone number. He pressed the connect button. “This is Scorpion.”

  He was startled to hear a male voice say, “Arc Flash is ready.”

  Jonathan recognized the voice as that of Paul Boersky, Irene’s longtime confidant and body man. Her Clyde Tolson, but without the sexual overtones.

  “Good to know,” Jonathan said. “Why are you telling me this?”

  “Because we thought you’d want to ask some questions.”

  “You mean because you don’t want to be the one asking them,” Jonathan corrected, but the line went dead.

  He looked to Boxers. “We’ve got to go.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  It had been a long time since Griffin Horne had been enough of an insider to warrant a code name, but as soon as Jonathan heard the phrase “Arc Flash,” he knew exactly who it referred to. He also knew the origin of the name, and took no pleasure from the memories. Horne’s corner of the covert world involved the extraction of information from people who were intent on remaining silent. All too often, his tactics involved the application of electricity to the most sensitive parts of his subjects’ bodies.

  Jonathan abhorred torture. On the occasions when he’d employed it, he’d had great success inflicting pain just once or twice at the beginning of the session, and then developing the source through the mere threat of additional unpleasantness. Hurting people was never a legitimate goal for a professional, but he’d known far too many operators and spooks who found genuine pleasure in hurting people.

  Griffin Horne was one such man, and Jonathan always felt as if he needed a shower after being in a room with the man. That said, there was no denying that Horne’s methods were effective. Jonathan knew of at least two post-9/11 terrorist plots that died in their planning stages thanks to information that was extracted by Arc Flash.

  The drive to Horne’s farm took about forty minutes. “I hate this son of a bitch,” Boxers said as they closed in on the place. “Every time I see him, I want to pop his head like a zit.”

  Jonathan agreed. “Thing that scares me is, I imagine he has equipment at his fingertips that could do exactly that.”

  The call from Paul Boersky—not Irene, yet from Irene’s number—told Jonathan that the Secret Service agents from Becky’s apartment—or whoever they were who pretended to be Secret Service agents—had been prepped for questioning. He didn’t know what that meant, exactly, but he was confident that the next hour or two were going to be unpleasant for everyone.

  “Pull to the side,” Jonathan said when they were still half a mile from the farm.

  Boxers followed instructions and wait
ed till they were stopped before he asked why.

  Jonathan pointed to the barely recognizable silhouette of a dilapidated old house that looked like it hadn’t seen an occupant in decades. “Pull up behind there,” he said. “We’ll walk into Horne’s place.”

  As Boxers piloted the Batmobile up the remains of the rutted driveway, Jonathan explained. “What I said back in the Cave about increased security. Given what we know about Horne and his less-than-stable loyalties, I don’t want to provide more of a target that we have to. I want to make a tactical approach.”

  Jonathan more sensed than saw the surprised glance from Big Guy. “You’re really spooked by this shit, aren’t you?”

  “Damn skippy I’m spooked. The president has a lot of toys at his disposal. We’re good, but our abilities have limits.”

  Boxers stared for a long time. After a few seconds of silence, Big Guy smiled and said, “Pussy.” Then he opened his door.

  It took them all of five minutes to kit up. When they were done, they each wore a sidearm, a rifle, and a personal defense weapon, plus a ballistic vest whose pockets were stuffed with ten thirty-round magazines—5.56 millimeter for Jonathan’s M27 and 7.62 millimeter for Boxers’ HK417—plus one flashbang grenade and three frags each. Jonathan shifted his Colt to a thigh rig on his right side, and balanced it on the left with a folded MP7 in a holster on his thigh. Other pouches in his vest carried five spare mags for the .45 and three spares for the MP7. All told, including the existing loads in their weapons, each of them carried over four hundred rounds of ammunition. With decent marksmanship—both of them were far better than decent—it was enough armament to sack a well-fortified castle.

  “Lids or no lids?” Boxers asked. It was his way of asking if they would be wearing Kevlar helmets.

  “Sure,” Jonathan said. “In for a dime, right?”

  When they were done, they looked like they were ready for battle. In fact, they were ready for battle.

  Jonathan rocked his NVGs—night vision goggles—into place and instantly, the night became day, only tinted green. A glance to his left showed him that Boxers had already put his on. They’d only recently upgraded their night vision to a four-tube array, transforming their view from tunnel vision with the old two-tube models to nearly panoramic.

  “Okay,” Jonathan said. “Let’s do this.”

  Boxers rumbled out a laugh. “We’re going to scare the shit out of Horne.”

  As they approached the farmhouse from the left side—the green side, as Jonathan thought of it—they moved as stealthily as they could. With winter in full swing, the forest floor was covered with dry, noisy leaves. They placed their feet carefully, but noisy was noisy.

  “Good lord,” Boxers whispered. “I feel like we might as well be blasting music.”

  “We’re still half a click away,” Jonathan said. “They won’t hear a thing.” He tried to sound assuring, but he didn’t think he pulled it off.

  Sometimes, this business was easier when you knew for a fact that the guys on the other end of the mission were trying to kill you. In those cases, anybody you saw was a target, and the disposition options were obvious. Here, everything was a variable.

  If he saw someone, was he friend or foe? If the person had a weapon, was the weapon for personal protection or for killing approaching good guys?

  The only absolute was when the guy with the gun pointed said gun at Jonathan or Boxers. That was a capital offense, and the penalty was bestowed immediately.

  That was a lot of thinking to do when the bad guy’s bullet could come at you at two thousand feet per second.

  The route to the big barn took them over two fences, one built of stone, thanks, no doubt, to the labor of slaves two hundred years ago, and the other made of chain link and barbed wire. Boxers took out the wire with a pair of cutters.

  The approach to the barn on Horne’s property took all of thirty minutes. Jonathan found the absence of threats to be unnerving. He wanted to see sentries and snipers. The fact that he didn’t see them merely made him wonder where the shooters were hiding.

  Finally, they arrived at the green side of the barn itself. Solidly constructed of heavy timbers, almost no light escaped the structure.

  They approached shoulder to shoulder, each of them cheating out ninety degrees to keep watch for threats that may materialize from any compass point. When they reached the near wall, they both spun to press their backs against the heavy timber.

  With their backs against the wall, they sidestepped toward the corner where the green side met the white side, the front. With his M27 pressed to his shoulder, Jonathan led with the muzzle as he peered down the front wall. The image flared as his goggles amplified the light that spilled from under the enormous front doors.

  He looked away from the flash of light, and scanned the night beyond the barn and to his left. “I don’t see any threats,” he said.

  “I’m clear,” Big Guy agreed.

  Still using the wall as cover, they glided through the night to a spot on the near side of the door.

  “How do you want to handle it?” Boxers asked.

  Jonathan lifted his NVGs out of the way. “Diplomatically,” he whispered. Then he bellowed, “Arc Flash! This is Scorpion. If you are inside the barn, speak up loudly and speak up now!”

  “Diplomatic and subtle,” Boxers observed.

  Jonathan heard movement beyond the walls, but nothing that he could make out as voices.

  “Arc Flash! You do not want to cross me. I have Big Guy with me, and we are both heavily armed, and we are coming in. If you have a weapon, put it down, or I will shoot you when I see you! Acknowledge, please!”

  He heard more movement from inside. Nothing sounded panicked, and he didn’t hear any of the characteristic sounds of rifle bolts being cycled. If anything, the noises from inside sounded routine, though even Jonathan couldn’t quite put his finger on what that meant. Sometimes you get a bad feeling about an entry, and sometimes you get a good feeling. This one fell in the middle.

  Jonathan checked the latch on the big double doors. The thumb lever moved, and when he pulled the wooden panel, it swung open. He looked to Boxers. “You go high-right.”

  “Rog.”

  This was the moment that Jonathan simultaneously hated and loved, these few seconds before throwing open a door to the unknown, with heart, mind, and soul fully committed to dealing with whatever lay beyond.

  He pulled open the left-hand door panel, weapon at the ready, and used his left heel to push it out of the way. Without a word between them, Jonathan and Boxers squirted inside. The room hadn’t changed much in the eighteen hours since they’d last been here, except there were no people.

  Boxers said, “Who was making the noise?”

  As if on cue, Jonathan heard it again. Closer this time, it sounded like furniture being moved. “Where is that coming from?” he wondered aloud.

  They moved together, deeper into the vastness of the barn. They kept their rifles at their shoulders, scanning the shadows for threats. They scanned left-right, up-down, over and over again, fingers poised just outside their trigger guards.

  When they’d made it to the halfway point—about to the spot where they had met with Irene and the White House people—Jonathan dared to let his weapon fall against its sling. He kept his gloved hand on the grip, just in case.

  The noise happened again. Definitely the sound of something being dragged across wood.

  What the hell?

  Then Jonathan noticed something. “Hey, Big Guy. Does this room seem smaller on the inside than it does when you look at it from the outside?

  Boxers took a few seconds to look around. “Come to think of it, yes.”

  More dragging.

  “It’s coming from behind there.” Jonathan pointed to the array of farm implements that hung from mounting brackets on the wall.

  “How do you suppose you get in? I didn’t see any doors—”

  A workbench moved just five feet to Boxers
’ right, causing them both to snatch their rifles back to their shoulders, poised to shoot.

  The movement stuttered, and then started again. Only it was more than just the bench. It was the entire section of wall that contained the bench. It was a door, and because it was opening toward them, they wouldn’t be able to see who was behind it until he’d stepped into the clear.

  Jonathan tugged on Boxers’ sleeve, then mimed with a patting motion in the air for them drop down to one knee.

  The door opened all the way.

  And the silhouette of a man emerged into the expanding wedge of light on the floor. The silhouette held a pistol in its hand.

  “Is somebody out here?” the shadow called. “Show yourself or get shot.” It was Horne.

  Boxers gave Jonathan a curious look. What do you want to do?

  “It’s Scorpion,” Jonathan said in a conversational tone. He didn’t want to sound overly threatening.

  The silhouette jumped and raised its weapon.

  “Arc Flash, if I eyeball you and you still have that pistol in your hand, I’ll kill you.”

  “Unless I do it first,” Boxers added.

  As often happened, the deep rumble of that second voice sealed the deal. “I’m putting it on the ground,” Horne said. And the shadow did exactly that.

  “Is that the only weapon?” Jonathan asked.

  “The only one on me,” Horne answered. His voice had always had a tinny, boyish quality to it, but the quaver in it tonight made it sound particularly young.

  “Is there anyone else back there with you?”

  “Only the ones that were sent to me. For crying out loud, Scorpion, why are we—”

  “Because I don’t trust anyone tonight,” Jonathan said. “After what’s been going on, everyone is a threat until they’ve earned otherwise.”

  “Even after all these years? I’m hurt.” The silhouette stretched its arms out to the sides and splayed its fingers. “What’s next?”