Rule of Law

by Randy Singer

  91

  Paige woke while it was still dark Saturday morning and took a few seconds to gain her equilibrium. She reached over and grabbed her phone. It was not quite six. Clients was sprawled out next to her in the bed, crowding Paige into a corner. Last evening he had lain at the front door, his head on his paws, waiting for his master. Paige had finally coaxed him back to the bedroom and then had to chase him off the bed twice. But sometime in the night, after she had fallen asleep, he had apparently snuck back up.

  “Clients, get down,” Paige said, pushing the dog.

  He ignored her and continued to sleep. She finally shook him awake, and he looked at her with sleepy eyes as if put out that she had the audacity to wake him up. She snapped her fingers on the side of the bed. “Get down,” she said, pushing the big lug.

  Clients finally sauntered off the bed and immediately started begging for breakfast. Paige fed him, fixed coffee, and began scrolling through stories on her laptop. The Supreme Court’s opinion had touched a nerve with both liberal and conservative journalists who believed that the executive branch was accumulating too much power. They were joined in their criticism of the Court by Republican politicians who were livid that the president would never have to account for the deaths of the SEALs.

  Several of the articles mentioned Paige. She had issued a brief written statement yesterday, saying that she respected the Court but was disappointed that she would never be able to expose the truth about what happened. Kristen had been less circumspect. Reporters had shown up at her house, and she’d gone on camera expressing her profound disgust at the ruling, saving her harshest criticism for Justice Sikes.

  Paige spent some time thinking about her own future. She still had to deal with the contempt citation hanging out there from Judge Solberg, and she prayed that the grand jury would not indict her for obstruction. But even if she could get past all of that, she knew her own law practice would never prosper. She wondered if her old boss at the attorney general’s office would even want her back given all the allegations floating around against her.

  She threw on her running clothes—black tights, a dry-wick shirt, and a long-sleeved cotton pullover since it had dipped into the low fifties overnight. She put on a headband and snapped on Clients’s leash. “Come on; we’re going for a run.”

  She and Clients parked at a garage near 31st Street, and she stretched under the King Neptune statue on the boardwalk. She started with a slow jog, and Clients did fine until he wanted to stop and sniff. For the next several minutes, he was the most erratic running partner Paige had ever had. He would slow down to sniff the shrubs along the boardwalk and then Paige would yank him away, causing him to jump up on her and let her know how much fun he was having. Paige shortened the leash and tried to keep him right next to her. After a while she won the battle of wills, and he settled in beside her at a somewhat-even pace, looking up occasionally for approval.

  “Good boy,” Paige would say, reaching down to rub his head.

  She picked up the pace a little, and Clients followed along, though he still tried to sniff people as they ran past.

  They ran for a few miles with the sun coming up over the ocean, and Paige felt some of the pressure dissipate. She was exhausted from all the tension that had been building up in the last few weeks, and Clients was going to make sure that she didn’t go at a record pace. But it still felt good to get out and fill her lungs with the saltwater air. There was something comforting about seeing the waves roll onto the beach a hundred yards away across a wide expanse of white sand. There were lots of people out walking and running, enjoying the morning, and it made Paige remember why she loved Virginia Beach.

  Because this was Clients’s first run, Paige had left her iTunes at home. But she was still deep in thought and didn’t hear the man coming until he was running beside her, on the other side of Clients, almost step for step.

  “What’s his name?” the man asked.

  Paige turned sideways.

  Daniel Reese?

  She was stunned, momentarily speechless, but kept running. “What are you doing out here?” she asked.

  “The Navy likes us to stay in shape.”

  A number of conflicting emotions hit Paige all at once. She thought about the obstruction charge and her unauthorized use of state secrets. “I don’t think we should be talking to each other,” Paige said.

  “If I were you, I would be thinking the same thing,” Reese responded, but he didn’t slow down or peel off.

  “I can’t talk to you, Daniel. We’re both under investigation.”

  Paige stopped abruptly and pulled a U-turn on the boardwalk, taking Clients with her and walking in the opposite direction.

  Reese turned as well.

  “I’m serious. Leave me alone.”

  She was hoping that Clients might sense her frustration and growl at Reese, but instead he just pulled on the leash so he could get closer and lick his new buddy.

  “My lawyer cut a deal with the prosecutors,” Reese said, falling into step. He looked straight ahead as they walked, his eyes hidden behind sunglasses. “I agreed to spill everything to the grand jury and plead guilty to the unauthorized disclosure of classified information. I’ll get the same sentence General Petraeus did—a hundred-thousand-dollar fine and two years’ probation. I might be dishonorably discharged.”

  They walked a few more steps and he looked sideways at Paige. “In exchange, they agreed not to seek indictments of you or Wyatt or Wellington.”

  Paige stopped in her tracks and turned toward Reese. “They what?”

  “Mitchell Taylor cut a deal when I told him how it all happened—me calling you guys out of the blue as the Patriot and everything. He never really wanted to go after you in the first place. I don’t think he believed he could get a conviction.”

  Paige was stunned by all this. It seemed too good to be true. The threat of indictment could be over—just like that?

  “Can we sit down?” she asked, nodding to a nearby bench.

  “Sure.”

  “Why did you do that?” she asked.

  “Because I wasn’t going to let you and Wyatt take the fall. Your team had already made so many sacrifices to expose the White House and CIA.” He paused, looking out over the ocean. “And because it was the right thing to do. SEALs don’t leave their teammates flailing in the wind.”

  They took a seat, and Paige took a minute to process this. She wanted to say something to Daniel about Wyatt, but she wasn’t sure that was a good idea. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” she asked.

  “Before the deal was finalized, I got a late-night visit from someone that added another layer of complexity. For reasons that will become clear a little later, I couldn’t say anything until today.”

  Paige furrowed her brow. “Do you have my computer?”

  “Yes.”

  That meant he must have been following her the morning she buried it. “Why did you take it?”

  Reese was scratching Clients’s head and the dog’s tail was wagging like crazy. “For your own protection,” he said, leaning back on the bench. “If you turned it in, they would have the evidence they needed to prosecute you. I needed to be the guy controlling the evidence so they had to deal with me if they wanted an indictment of any type.”

  “Do they have it now?”

  “No. I’ll give it back to you when all this is over.”

  Reese stood and Clients got excited, dancing around. “Is this Wyatt’s dog?” Reese asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Is he a good runner?”

  “Horrible.”

  Reese reached for the leash. “Can I have him for a minute?”

  “You can have him period,” Paige said, though she knew she didn’t mean it.

  Reese took the leash and stood in front of Clients. “Sit,” he commanded, raising his palm in the air. Clients obeyed as if he had just spent the last three years of his life in obedience school.

  Reese shoved his shades
on top of his head and bent over so he was looking the dog in the eye. “Now, we’re going to run back the way you came, and this time there will be no fooling around. You stay right at my side. Miss Paige is going to need a good running partner.”

  Reese stood straight up and winked at Paige. “Heel,” he said and he pulled Clients around to his right side. “Sit.” Clients obeyed like a champ.

  Paige stood as well, secretly hoping that Clients would give Daniel Reese a hard time.

  “You okay to run some more?” Reese asked Paige.

  “Why not?”

  Reese looked at Clients. “Let’s go!” he commanded. He started running, pulling on the leash a little as he did so. To Paige’s chagrin, Clients fell in step immediately. Paige joined them and Reese picked up the pace. Clients loped along with a fluid run that Paige didn’t know he had in him.

  “Where did you learn to train dogs?” Paige asked.

  “I didn’t,” Reese said. “But the SEALs taught me how to show tough love.”

  On the way back to 31st Street, Reese asked about Kristen and how she was doing. He told Paige that he already knew about Wyatt and that it had the full attention of the State Department and even the president. He also told Paige that she had done a masterful job at the Supreme Court. He had listened to the audio recording of the hearing online and had thought she was going to win.

  They stopped running at the small park located on the boardwalk near the statue of King Neptune, the same place where Admiral Towers had delivered a speech on Memorial Day. It was bordered by a Hilton hotel with an outdoor restaurant.

  Paige bent down, hands on her knees, trying to catch her breath. Reese petted Clients and told him what a good job he had done. He looked at Paige. “I didn’t realize you’d be bringing a dog,” he said, handing her the leash. “Can you wait here for a second? I’ll be right back.”

  “I guess so.”

  He disappeared into the side door of the Hilton, and Paige looked around to see if they had been followed. This whole thing felt so bizarre. Everything about Daniel Reese had been strange from the very beginning. She still wasn’t 100 percent sure she could trust him. Were her legal worries really over?

  In a few minutes, another man came out the same door and walked up to Paige. He was in his thirties with a military buzz cut, a tight shirt, and the ripped muscles of a SEAL. He spoke with crisp authority, as if Paige had no choice but to do what he said. “Commander Reese said I’m supposed to take care of your dog,” he said. “He asked you to meet him on the second floor, conference room D.”

  Paige handed the man the leash. She pulled a small plastic bag out of the pocket of her running tights and gave that to him as well. “You never know.”

  She found the conference room, and the two men standing guard outside nodded to her. When she walked in, Reese was sitting at the conference table in his shorts and long-sleeved running shirt. He was sweating and had a towel draped over his shoulder, a computer in front of him.

  “Have a seat,” he said, motioning toward a chair opposite him. “Sorry for all the secretive protocol, but we’ve got a secure link in this conference room, and there’s something I need to show you.”

  Paige tilted her head, the posture of a skeptic, but nevertheless sat down opposite Reese. She wiped her brow with the sleeve of her shirt and readjusted her headband.

  He slid the computer across the table. “There’s a document on here I’d like you to read.”

  “What is it?” she asked before touching the computer. She suddenly had a sense of foreboding. Reese was going to great lengths to explain something in a very controlled setting. This couldn’t be good news. Was this the way they would tell her about Wyatt?

  “It’s a lawsuit that Gazala Holloman is going to file,” Reese explained. “The whole thing can be proven without access to any state secrets.”

  Still skeptical, Paige opened the computer. “What’s the password?”

  “ThePatriot. All one word.”

  “Of course.”

  Paige typed in the password and opened the document. It was titled, Gazala Holloman, as the Executrix and Next Friend of Cameron Holloman, Deceased v. Philip Kilpatrick, Chief of Staff to the President of the United States and John Marcano, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

  “Is this real?” Paige asked.

  “Just read it.”

  With Reese watching, Paige quickly scanned the first page and scrolled through to the second and third. The complaint laid out detailed facts about what had happened not just to Cameron Holloman, but also to Patrick and the other SEALs. It was stunning in its precision and in the allegations being made against the defendants. Paige leaned in and began slowing down as she read—this was the case they had been trying to prove! And somehow Gazala Holloman and her lawyer had pieced it all together.

  There were exhibits attached via links in the text of the document. She clicked on them, reviewed them, and then returned to the text of the complaint.

  When she clicked the link for exhibit D, the computer took longer than normal to pull it up. And when the screen finally changed, she jerked back in her chair, her hand over her mouth, blinking, reeling, a cross between shock and pure, unmitigated . . .

  92

  FIVE DAYS EARLIER

  ADEN, YEMEN

  Saleet crashed through the gate of the parking garage and swerved to the right, barely missing the bumpers of the cars parked at an angle. He stopped for a moment as the call to prayer echoed in the garage, so loud Wyatt could barely think. Wyatt knew they couldn’t stay here. One drone strike would take out the entire three-story structure, and they would be buried in the rubble and ashes.

  “They’ll expect me to exit over there,” Saleet said, pointing to the other side of the garage. “But we will surprise them.”

  He hit two cars as he turned around in the cramped space.

  “You’ve been watching too many movies!” Wyatt said.

  But Saleet was staring straight ahead, his face calm, as if the call to prayer were putting him in a trance. “Allahu Akbar. I am ready to die for Allah.”

  “Not if I have any say in it,” Wyatt said. “How far are we from that mosque?”

  Saleet did not respond. His hands were frozen on the wheel, arms straight, as if steeling himself to exit the garage.

  “Let me drive,” Wyatt suggested, trying to break through to the man. “You can give directions.”

  Still the imam didn’t move.

  “Saleet, they’re going to kill us here!” Wyatt reached over and shook the imam’s shoulder.

  Saleet turned to him. “You should drive,” he said.

  Wyatt jumped out of the vehicle to change places with Saleet. But as soon as he did, Saleet reached over and pulled the passenger door closed. Too late, Wyatt realized what was happening.

  “The world will listen to you,” Saleet said through the passenger-side window that had been shot out earlier. And before Wyatt could climb back in, Saleet took off.

  “Stop!” But the imam wasn’t listening.

  He hit the gas and burst through the same entrance they had entered a minute earlier, and the world slowed down for Wyatt. As if choreographed to the final Arabic strains of the evening call to prayer, Saleet bounced across the sidewalk and turned left in front of oncoming traffic.

  “Hayya alal Falah . . . Hayya alal Falah . . .”

  Wyatt felt the heat and the ground shake at the same time that he saw the blinding blast. He ducked away, covering his eyes. Ashes and smoke filled the air.

  “Allahu Akbar . . . Allahu Akbar . . .”

  Wyatt breathed in and started coughing. On the street where Saleet’s vehicle had been was a crater and smoke and chaos. People were screaming and running and the concussion from the blast had crumbled part of the facade of the parking garage.

  “La ilaha illallah.”

  The call to prayer ended, but the air was filled with the bleating of horns and the shouts of desperate people running scared
. Wyatt’s ears were ringing, but he gathered himself and walked out the back of the garage, keeping his head down, avoiding eye contact with anyone. He had nowhere to go, but he knew the locals would be taking pictures of the devastation and the American drones would capture the scene in high definition. The farther away he could get from the devastation, the safer he would be.

  For the next two days, he lived in the shadows of Aden—hungry, tired, and thankful he was still alive. Though he was bone-weary and famished, he began to develop a sense of invincibility. For some reason, his life had been spared. He had no doubt that he would get out of Yemen alive.

  Forty-eight hours after the explosion, Wyatt took matters into his own hands. He made his way back up to the nice houses on the cliffs overlooking the city. He stayed in the shadows and watched for an entire day to better understand the rhythm of life here. He waited until the evening prayer time and then broke into two of the houses whose owners had gone to the mosque, helping himself to a meal and taking whatever money he could find. He didn’t even understand their currency, but he figured he had enough now. Before he left the second house, he also invaded the man’s closet and took a long white robe, a belt, sandals, and another red-and-white cloth to cover his head, replacing his grimy and charred head covering.

  That evening he took a chance. He tried four different stores before he found somebody who spoke English. He negotiated for a phone that could make international calls and pulled the currency from his pocket, spreading it on the counter. The man looked him over and eventually started separating the pieces that he needed to pay for the phone. To avoid doing paperwork, Wyatt bribed him and told him he could keep the rest.

  He believed that Paige’s and Wellington’s phones were tapped and so he called Gazala Holloman and swore her to secrecy. Following instructions from Wyatt, she drove to the home of Daniel Reese and told him what had happened. Within hours, Reese called Wyatt back. He said he would go to Admiral Towers, who would run it up the chain. Reese was fairly certain they could have a Special Forces extraction team in Aden within twenty-four hours.