Winterlong

by Mason Cross

  By the evening, we had both begun to succumb to cabin fever. I read the books I had bought and thought a little bit more about what we would do when we reached Chicago. Bryant had napped frequently and, just as frequently, complained about the confinement. I had given in around five o’clock and let him walk the length of the train and back. Twelve cars plus two locomotives at either end. It had killed half an hour.

  Neither of us had talked much about the reality of our situation. It was as though we were in a temporary bubble of relative security, and neither of us wanted to burst it. As the clock ticked on and the miles slipped away, I began to feel like we were getting closer to safety. I reminded myself that there was a long way to go yet.

  I left the roomette a little after nine p.m. to buy us dinner: our fifth prepacked sandwich feast of the journey. I bought another book and a deck of cards, deciding it would be something to break the monotony. As I was paying, I felt the train begin to slow on the approach to the next station. I took the sandwiches and moved across to the windows at the platform side of the lounge car. The snow was no longer falling, but it looked pretty inhospitable out there. The station signs told me we were in Minot, North Dakota. I watched the platform as it rolled by at a gradually declining speed. I saw a handful of passengers waiting patiently: a young back-packing couple, a group of older people, a family with a little girl clutching her mother’s hand, and a baby strapped to the father’s chest in a BabyBjorn. Everybody in warm clothes, packed for a trip. Nothing out of the ordinary, once again.

  When I got back to the roomette, Bryant took me up on the suggestion of a couple of hands of poker. We didn’t have any chips, of course, or indeed much in the way of cash, so we played using a pile of individual sugar portions I’d liberated from the lounge car. It didn’t take long for me to be glad we weren’t playing for real money, as the pile of individually wrapped sugar on Bryant’s side of the table began to grow.

  “I’m breaking one of my rules, here,” I said.

  “What’s that?” Bryant asked, looking puzzled.

  “Never take on an expert in his field.”

  Bryant looked like he wanted to laugh out loud for a second, but then he composed his features and shook his head. “Not quite an expert. In fact, that’s the reason I’m here.”

  I didn’t say anything to that as I swept the cards up from the table and tapped them into shape. I remembered speaking to Bryant’s wife back in California. You never really know anyone. I decided not to press him on it.

  Bryant stood up to stretch his legs. He put a hand on the edge of the top bunk and ducked his head to look through the window. There was nothing to see but darkness and snow. The last stop, the one after Minot, had been Rugby. In another few hours and another few stops, we would cross into Minnesota. Bryant grew tired of watching the darkness go by and turned back.

  “I’m going for a walk,” he said.

  I shook my head. “You already had a walk. I told you, we stay put unless absolutely necessary.”

  “I thought you said the police didn’t release our names or our pictures yet. Who’s going to recognize us?”

  “I told you, the police don’t have anything to do with it,” I corrected. “The people who want me have suppressed our names and pictures. That’s only because they don’t want to involve anyone else unless they absolutely have to. If they get desperate, they might just decide to release them, and all bets are off.”

  Bryant sat down on one of the seats. Then he changed his mind and got up. He looked like he wanted to pace. The problem was, the spatial dimensions of the room restricted him to about one and a half paces, max.

  “You know what, Blake?”

  I squared the cards and slid them back into the pack. Then I looked up at him. “What?”

  “This is fucking bullshit!” He slammed a fist off the door for emphasis.

  “Calm down.”

  “I will not calm down. All I wanted was a new start. Okay, I stole something that didn’t belong to me. Sue me. Put me in fucking jail, okay? I didn’t sign up for this. I don’t deserve to be shot at and dragged halfway across the goddamn country before probably having to sleep with one eye open the rest of my life because the guy they sent to get me is public enemy number one, okay?”

  I looked up at him, keeping my expression impassive. This had been building since the day before, ever since the immediate adrenaline rush of the chase had begun to subside. I knew he needed to get it out of his system.

  “What do you want from me?” I said after a moment. “An apology?”

  “Yes! Yes, I want an apology. This is your fault, Blake, all of it.”

  I opened my hands and shrugged. “All right. I’m sorry.”

  “That’s it?”

  “What more do you want? I’m sorry you’re involved in this, and I’m doing my best to get you uninvolved. Believe me, I didn’t choose this situation either.”

  “What more do I want? How about telling me exactly who’s after us?”

  “It’s better—”

  “‘Better you don’t know.’ Save it. I want to know who’s going to kill me. I have a right to know.”

  It was my turn to look out of the window at the darkness. All being well, we had another eight hundred miles and seventeen hours together in this tiny cell. I knew I didn’t want to endure another seventeen hours with Bryant in this kind of mood, so I supposed a little candor was worth the price. I hadn’t given him any of the details partly out of a lifelong habit of never giving anybody any more than the minimum necessary information and partly because it wouldn’t do him any good. It might make him even more afraid. But now I was reconsidering. For one thing, he was right; he did deserve an explanation for why his life was suddenly in danger. For another, perhaps a little scare was good. If he was more scared, he’d be more careful.

  “All right,” I said at last. “I guess we have some time to kill.”

  33

  SEATTLE

  “Got him!”

  The jubilation in Travers’s voice was palpable. Stark remained cautious.

  It had been a long day, piggybacking on the police and FBI investigations, relying on the key information they had withheld to ensure those other agencies couldn’t make a breakthrough before them.

  Others had come to the same conclusion as Stark following the discovery of the taxicab at the business park. The whole area had been locked down and searched carefully, but too much time had elapsed for anyone to hold out much hope of finding the airport fugitives in the immediate area. They looked at the proximity to the light-rail and the absence of any other nearby travel options or reports of carjackings, and investigated the possibility that one or both of the suspects might have taken that option to head back into the city.

  Travers had beaten the FBI to the punch in calling Sound Transit, the light-rail operator. Yes, they did operate CCTV on their services for passenger and driver security, and yes, they were only too happy to help the authorities with their investigation into the shooting at the airport. Was it some sort of terrorist thing? Travers gave the standard noncommittal responses and barely had to pretend to be from a government department for the guy to enthusiastically agree to send all video files from all of their services between twelve noon and two.

  Twenty minutes later, their contacts said the feds had made the same request, except that they asked for all footage from the entire day. Typical FBI—thorough to the point of procrastination.

  The compressed video was sent within a half hour. Stark instructed Travers to begin by focusing on city-bound services between twelve thirty and two. There was a service every ten minutes during the day, which gave them nine videos to look at. It didn’t take long for them to find Blake and Bryant, getting on the train at 13:08. They both kept their faces down, but they were easy to spot, given the fact there were hardly any other passengers. The pair separated and took different seats during the journey, before alighting at University Street.

  It would be almost two
hours before the FBI video analysts matched up the two men on the 13:08 footage with the suspects from the airport.

  From there, it had been tougher. It was difficult to move through a major city without leaving a trace on camera, but finding their two targets would take coordination and manpower that they didn’t have. It would take the FBI time to do the donkey work, to access all of the street cameras and store security cams and anything else they could find. As Stark saw it, there were two options: Wait for the feds to piece together Blake’s next movements, or try to hurry things along. He had contacted Faraday, asked for the latter. He wanted to release Blake’s name and picture and give their worker bees something more to go on. Although Stark didn’t say it out loud, he questioned why this had not been done already. The answer had come back after a short interval, and it was in the negative. There was too much of a risk that Blake would be arrested before they got a clear shot at him.

  Reluctantly, Stark backed off. It was a fine balance. They needed to help the FBI just enough but make sure they didn’t get too close to finding Blake by themselves.

  So they tried to work a step or two ahead. The feds were just following the trail of two unknown suspects. They lacked the crucial insight into who Blake was, where he might go. There were three major transport hubs within easy walking distance of the stop at University Street. Security footage from there might let them cut to the chase.

  But now, after hours of mind-numbing tedium, it sounded like Travers had made a breakthrough. When Stark saw the close-up of Scott Bryant’s face, he knew that the excitement in Travers’s voice had been earned.

  “This is King Street?” he asked. You couldn’t see much in the background, but they had spent so many hours looking at footage that they had become experts in identifying locations in downtown Seattle.

  “King Street,” Travers confirmed. He had been working through the multitude of video feeds from King Street Station for the past couple of hours. It was laborious work because there were so many: platform facing, waiting areas, ticket desks. One of the cams had a shelf that jutted frustratingly into the frame, meaning that if a customer stood a little way back from the desk, his face was obscured. When they had noticed that, they’d groaned. If Blake had picked this departure point, he would likely have used that one. But it looked as though his traveling partner hadn’t been so careful.

  Finally, they had nailed down Blake and Bryant’s exit route from Seattle: aboard a train out of King Street. But going where?

  “Good job,” Stark said, his eyes moving to the time stamp in the corner of the screen. “Now let’s find out which train they took.”

  FIVE YEARS AGO

  KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN

  I looked up as Collins said my name.

  “You didn’t give up comic books when you hit puberty?”

  I looked back down at the Batman trade paperback in my hands. I liked to read in my downtime, and comic books are one of the English-language imports you can still usually get in most places around the world. I was reasonably sure Collins had never read a book of any kind.

  I glanced at Dixon, who was sitting across the main room of the safe house, sharpening one of his knives. The end of his tongue was jutting out from between his teeth in concentration.

  “What can I say? The high culture in this place intimidates me.”

  Collins followed my glance and shrugged, conceding the point. “Come on over. Martinez has an update.”

  I tossed the Batman book aside and got to my feet.

  The safe house was two rooms on the second floor of a derelict building in the district of the city called Zoar Shar. It was Spartan accommodation—gray walls, concrete floors, rusty bars on the glassless windows. An interpreter had found six thin mattresses and some multicolored blankets, which helped in the freezing nights. The sleeping area was the smaller of the two rooms, and we kept our equipment and computers in the other. We hung blankets across the windows by day, but spears of sunlight made their way in through the gaps, making the dust motes shine in the air. The walls were covered with old graffiti in black spray paint, all in Arabic. One of the walls functioned as a bulletin board, where we had pinned maps and visuals relating to the mission. There was a new picture in the dead center: a smiling headshot of our target, Ajmal al Wazir, scion of Kandahar’s first political family. The fortunate son.

  Martinez had his tech nest set up in the corner of the second room. Over the three days since we had identified the Wolf, I had occasionally attempted conversation with him as he led the work on developing that intelligence. I had concluded that he liked to keep himself to himself. That was fine by me, and in fact it would have been nice if a couple of the others had followed his example.

  Martinez was examining satellite images of an urban location that I assumed was somewhere in Kandahar on one of his two screens. Murphy, Collins, Ortega, and I were arranged around him as he translated the bird’s-eye view into identifiable locations.

  The only one who showed no interest whatsoever was Dixon. He remained on the other end of the room with his back to the wall, still sharpening the hunting knife. Everybody had something, I reflected: I read comic books, Collins and Murphy played cards, and Dixon sharpened his knife collection. In our line of work you need a certain appreciation for the tools of the trade, but in my book, an out-and-out fetish for blades is never a promising character trait. As the rest of us watched Martinez’s screen, the metal on metal would issue a distracting sssshhhhhnnn noise every few seconds. You could just about block it out, after a while.

  “How sure are you about this intel?” Martinez asked, turning to direct the question at me.

  “When are we ever sure?” I said. “But I think so, yeah.”

  His response was a frown. “I was afraid of that. If he’s here, then we’re in trouble. It’s a fucking fortress. Twelve-foot-high walls, barbed wire, guards around the clock. Cops seem to be on the payroll, too—there’s a drive-by once an hour.”

  I had expected as much. As soon as I had discovered the Wolf was a member of one of Afghanistan’s richest families, I had known we were up against difficult odds. It was like discovering you needed to make a citizen’s arrest on Tom Cruise, against the wishes of the police.

  “We’d need a battalion to attack this place,” Martinez confirmed. “That’s the bad news.”

  It was a rhetorical suggestion. Politically, there was no way that was going to happen. We would have to find some way to get to the Wolf quietly.

  “So there’s good news?” I asked.

  “If you’re right about this, I think he’s working off-site.”

  “What do you mean working?” Collins asked.

  Martinez indicated the screen. “Every morning, two cars leave the south gate of the compound ...” He brought up a closer image with a time stamp of yesterday at eight o’clock local time. It showed two Jeeps passing through the gate. He zoomed out of the first screen and traced a line across the city with his finger before zooming back in. “They drive two miles southwest to this neighborhood.” The close-up showed the Kotali Murcha area.

  I nodded. It was a journey of riches to rags—Kandahar’s most exclusive neighborhood, Shahri Naw or “New City,” to a virtual slum built along the trail leading out of Kandahar City proper to the upper Arghandab valley. Martinez found the right spot on his zoom and framed it so we could see a row of black squares in among what looked like a residential street.

  “What are those?” I asked, and then it came to me before Martinez could answer. “Garages?”

  “Yes. The two Jeeps park around the back, and he goes in. He spends hours a day there. They post a guard out front, one at the back, probably more in the Jeeps.”

  “Heat sig?” Murphy asked.

  “Thermal imaging shows some major heat in whichever garage he’s working. I think he’s putting together a goddamn fleet.”

  I counted the row of garages. “So if he has a vehicle in every one ... six car bombs?”

  �
�If this is the only location, six minimum. Looks like he’s planning another coordinated attack.”

  If we were right, this would be the biggest attack yet.

  “How long until he’s ready?”

  “Could be a week, could be tomorrow. We’ve only had eyes on him since you got the tipoff.”

  “So we have to move on this,” I said, turning to Collins.

  He watched the screen for another couple of seconds and nodded. “We do. Okay, let’s hear some pitches.”

  “First off,” Murphy said. “We have to take him at the garages. Not even up for debate. The house is too secure. Plus we have to deal with the car bombs.”

  Collins turned to direct his voice at Dixon, irritated. “Dixon, get off your ass and get over here.”

  Dixon didn’t move, but put his knife back in its sheath and looked up at Collins as a partial concession to his notional position of authority.

  “Tell me how long you need to put six VBIEDs out of commission.”

  Dixon rolled his eyes at the clumsy acronym and for the very first time, I empathized with him. Vehicle-Borne Improvised Explosive Device—why use two words where five will do? He thought about it for a moment.

  “Easiest way is don’t. Just set them to blow. No more car bomb.”

  “No more neighborhood,” Martinez cut in. “This spot’s right in the middle of the civilian population. Fucker knows what he’s doing.”

  Dixon shrugged almost imperceptibly, kept looking at Collins.

  “Man has a point,” Ortega said. I wasn’t sure if he was talking about Dixon or Martinez.

  There was a tense silence. Martinez was looking at Dixon in disbelief. Collins had a neutral expression, as though he was giving the pitch due consideration. Murphy was hanging back for once, watching the others to see where we would fall on Dixon’s suggestion. It was simple—it had that much going for it. Looked at objectively, it was the plan that stood the greatest chance of success.

  It was also a suggestion that could only be cooked up and executed by a full-fledged psychopath.