Clearly, though, Morgan wasn’t very successful in his determination to stay in the middle of the pack, so as not to draw attention to himself. His natural ability during runs and other PT activity and his competitiveness were evidence of his leadership qualities. He was noticed not only by the other recruits but also by the instructors, especially Powers, who had taken a special interest in him.
Morgan enjoyed the supportive camaraderie that had developed among the men, almost all of them encouraging one another during long, brutal days of physical training—all except one: Code Name Condor. Morgan sensed he was trouble, with something negative to say about everyone, a loud, carping blowhard who never shut his mouth. So far, Morgan had avoided a confrontation.
But as the training got increasingly tough, and recruits were drummed out almost daily, tensions ran high. The more Morgan tried to stay away from him, the more Condor goaded him, and Morgan sensed the inevitable, a fight that could cause his dismissal from training.
One night during chow, Condor helped himself to Morgan’s tray. “What’s your real name, punk?” Condor jeered as Morgan glared at him.
“We’re not allowed to disclose our names. But then, you already know that,” Morgan said, as Condor put a heavy hand on his shoulder, yanking him around to face him.
Morgan pried off Condor’s hand and said, “If you ever put your hand on me again, you’ll regret it.”
“Is that right, sissy?” Condor jeered.
Morgan’s temper was almost to its boiling point. Condor got even louder, grabbing Morgan by the collar and poking him in the forehead as he spoke. Morgan had had enough. He was rising from his seat when he heard the whistle blow.
The room became dead silent. Powers was hustling toward them, and by the look on his face, he wasn’t any too happy.
“So you two ladies want to fight?” he roared, standing directly in front of Morgan and Condor, withering them with a look that, if looks could kill, would have been fatal. “You apparently haven’t had enough exercise today. Everybody up! Get outside to the pit! Now!”
The pit was a hole in the ground, located in the obstacle course, approximately twelve feet around and six feet deep. The troops had amassed in formation around it when Powers arrived with two other instructors.
Powers’s question, “Who started the argument?” was answered by silence. “All right, then!” he yelled. “This is what’s going to happen. Cobra and Condor are going to get into the pit and do a little dance. Whoever’s left standing and able to get out of the pit on his own two legs will join the rest of you ladies for a ten-mile run. The one who loses goes home. Is that clear?”
In complete unison, the recruits answered, “Yes, sir!”
“The only rule is, there are no rules,” Powers said, ordering Cobra and Condor into the pit. As Morgan jumped in, he noticed that the lace on his left boot was untied, but as he leaned over to tie it, Condor moved in and threw a kick to Morgan’s head. He rolled away and regained his footing, assuming a boxer’s position.
“I’m going to kick your ass and send you home!” the much taller and heavier Condor taunted.
“You’ve got a big mouth. Got the skills to back it up?” Morgan grinned, analyzing Condor’s movements, guessing correctly that the larger, slower man would come at him straight on, hoping to back Cobra into losing his balance. When Condor charged, at the last second Morgan moved to Condor’s left. As he swung around, Morgan hit him with a powerful uppercut, snapping Condor’s head back, followed by a right cross to the center of his forehead.
As Condor went down, Morgan landed a roundhouse kick to the side of Condor’s head, knocking him unconscious. The silence was deafening.
Concerned he had seriously injured him, Morgan started toward Condor, only to hear Powers yell, “Cobra! Out of the pit! You and the rest of the ladies owe me ten miles.”
Morgan got a sick feeling in his stomach when he was summoned to Powers’s office first thing the next morning.
“Enter,” Powers said to Morgan’s knock at the screen door. “Have a seat,” he said.
Morgan had a feeling he was in deep shit and was about to say something, to try to avoid being thrown out of training, when Powers began to speak.
“Cobra, I’ve been watching you closely ever since I misjudged you on the day you arrived here. What I have come to realize is that you have all the qualities to be a great operative. You’re confident, have great instincts, are smart and tough, both mentally and physically. You have great focus and are an exceptional marksman. You keep your cool and have the respect of all the men you work with. You may be the best I’ve ever seen, except for me,” he laughed.
Then he explained why he had summoned Morgan, “We’re partnering up the men, and I want you to have the first pick,” he said.
Morgan felt a sigh of relief within, but without showing emotion and without hesitation, he said, “Cougar. That’s who I want as my partner.”
Powers gave a half grin and asked, “Why Cougar?”
“I’ve felt a connection with him since the day we first met. He’s smart and loyal. He can fly both a helicopter and a plane, speaks several languages, knows when to keep his mouth shut, and even knows how to cook. My gut tells me I can trust him with my life.”
“Okay. It’s done. Head on back to the classroom.”
“Sir. Permission to speak freely?” Morgan asked. To Powers’s nod, Morgan asked, “Is Condor okay?”
Powers’s tone warmed as he said, “You have the qualities of a true leader, concerned about one of your fellow trainees. Even though we both know he is a complete asshole. He’s going to be fine, apart from taking a beating he’s going to remember for the rest of his life.”
CHAPTER 35
Together, Morgan and Conley made it through training at The Farm, two of the twelve recruits who did out of the ninety-nine who started in the program. The others couldn’t hold up to the mental strain and the physical punishment and washed out.
Those who remained graduated in the fall. The ceremony was understated and without fanfare, but none was necessary. Every single one of the recruits standing there together knew that they had accomplished something few others could.
“Gentlemen,” said Powers, standing at the podium in The Farm’s single lecture hall, “you have just completed the finest training this country has to offer.” He had notes on the lectern, but he spoke with the fluidity of a well-rehearsed speaker. “The skills we have taught you make you powerful, but they cannot grant you the virtues that must guide you in your service to your nation—responsibility, honor, patriotism. But above all, you will need unwavering loyalty. You, gentlemen, are special. The work you do will be crucial to maintaining America’s stature as the greatest country in the world.”
The recruits stood quietly, reverently, as Powers went on. “Tomorrow, you choose your assignments. Some of you will work in the headquarters at Langley as analysts, while others will be placed as attachés in foreign embassies and will be primarily responsible for gathering intelligence. These are both noble callings, vital to the functioning of our agency and, thus, to our country.
“But the boldest among you”—he looked intently at the graduates—“will choose to go into Black Ops. Those few will live lives that are dangerous and, odds are, short. They will do things that most are not capable of doing. But these men will have the unique opportunity to make history through their actions. I trust that when the time comes, you will choose wisely.”
“But first,” he said, breaking the solemnity of his tone, “I want you dressed in civvies and ready at 1700 hours sharp. We’ll all be going out for an informal, relaxing evening at the Snapping Gator across town. There’ll be good food, music, and I heard there might even be a woman or two.” He finished with a smile, and a round of cheers rippled through the room.
The new graduates reported back at 5:00 P.M., and they joked with one another as they jostled for seats near the front of the bus so they could be the first out. But not Morga
n, who was calm and stress-free for the first time in months. He took a seat toward the back of the bus, reclined, and sighed a contented sigh. It was over. He had done it. Even though he knew the hardest part was about to begin—actually being a spy—for the time being, he wanted to bask in the accomplishment.
He closed his eyes in the darkness of the bus, its glass windows painted black to prevent them from knowing the location of The Farm. As he felt the bus pulling away, he drifted off to sleep amid the sound of his fellow graduates roughhousing up front, until the bus brakes whined to a stop.
“Gentlemen, we’re here!” said Powers. “Everybody, out!”
“Come on, Cobra!” said Conley, moving on excitedly up ahead of him. But Morgan took his time. The bar wasn’t going anywhere, and after a year of constant strain, this time there was no pressure, no hurry.
By the time he had gotten off the bus, all the other graduates had run out ahead of him. He stepped down to the ground, and he knew something was wrong before he even heard the footsteps of a half dozen black-clad masked men, who surrounded him completely and cut him off from the bus. Behind him, one of them swung some sort of club, hitting him in the back. Another’s fist hit him in the jaw, and he staggered and fell backward onto the gravel.
They closed in. Morgan struggled, throwing kicks and punches wildly, but there were too many of them to fight off. He felt a hand close over his nose and mouth, and the pungent smell of chloroform engulfed his senses. He faded fast, struggling with the single-minded desperation of a trapped animal, until he completely lost consciousness and his body fell limp, like a rag doll.
When Morgan woke up, his head ached, his throat was dry, and his arms were heavy and numb. He couldn’t see anything, and it took him a moment to realize that this was because he had a rough canvas sack over his head. He tried to bring his hands up to remove the hood but found that they had been cuffed together behind his back to the chair he was sitting on. His next instinct was to work the sack off by moving his neck, but he found he couldn’t budge. His head was taped tightly to a pole that rose from the ground behind him.
He heard voices, but he was too disoriented to make out what was being said. As the fog cleared, he realized that the reason he couldn’t understand them was that they were not speaking English. It was a foreign language, one he recognized readily enough as Russian.
They pulled the hood off his head, and a blinding light shone into his face. There were at least two men in the room, but he couldn’t see anything except vague silhouettes. He screwed his eyes shut, but it helped only slightly. He still felt the bulb’s heat on his face like a furnace.
“Who the hell are you people?” he demanded. “What do you want from me?”
The response was a fist smashing into his face. He tasted blood.
“Shut your mouth, American,” said one of them, through a thick accent. He was tall and thick like a gorilla. “You only talk if you are answering our questions.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
The man punched him hard in the gut, smashing him against the back of the chair. Morgan’s reflex was to double over, but the harness on his head held him tightly. He retched in pain.
“Where is the secret CIA training center?”
“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. You people are luna—” A meaty fist smashed into Morgan’s right cheek, and blood oozed into his mouth.
“What are the names of those who trained with you?”
“I’m telling you, I don’t know what you’re talking about!” The Russian sank his fist again into Morgan’s gut. Use your training, thought Morgan, through the pain. Take yourself out of yourself. Go somewhere else.
The beating continued until Morgan lost track of time. For what seemed like days, he was brutally hammered, with no sleep, no food, and no water. They periodically cut his head free, covered it with a wet towel, tilted his face toward the ceiling, and poured water over his nose and mouth. It felt like drowning every time. They threatened him with electricity and held an ice pick to his face, hovering inches from his eye.
Whenever he lost consciousness, he was doused with cold water, and then the beatings would start again. He didn’t know how long this went on—how much time passed—until one day, the enormous Russian smacked him out of his delirious fog to attention when he told him, “We have got another American here with us. Another damn spy. He is not so tough as you, but we are convinced that he has told us everything he knows.”
He heard yells and detected some movement past the door to the room. “Please! Please, no!” It was a voice he didn’t recognize, but it was American, all right. “I won’t tell anyone—just don’t kill me!”
He told Morgan, “If you do not talk, he will die.”
Morgan felt a wrench in his gut worse than any of the Russian’s blows, and it twisted every time he heard the man pleading for his life in an adjacent room.
“Tell us what you know!”
Morgan gave him a look of furious resolve that said everything. The Russian said something to a man, who then left the room. The American was still screaming.
“I have a family! Please! Please, d—”
A gunshot, and then there was silence.
“Bastards!” cried Morgan. “I’ll kill you for this. I’ll kill you all!”
The Russian crouched in front of him and said, in an almost friendly voice, “No, my friend. You will not kill anybody. You can no longer save your countryman, but you can still save yourself. Just answer our questions.”
Morgan spat, the bloody saliva hitting the man in the face. The man struck back with a punch that landed squarely on Morgan’s nose with a crunch. It bled profusely. The Russian got up, wiping himself with disgust, and addressed another one of the men in the room.
“He will not talk,” he said. “It is time.”
The Russian pulled a gun from inside the waistband of his pants.
This is it, he thought. There was no more hope of rescue or escape. His only satisfaction would be to know that he had not broken. He had not betrayed his country.
He felt the cold barrel of a gun on the back of his head.
“One last chance. Where is the secret training facility?”
“Go to hell.” He waited for the gunshot. A strange thing, to wait for a gunshot he would never be aware of, that would scramble his brain before he had the chance to feel a thing. But he faced the thought of death head-on. He would die honorably rather than talk. He would not have the chance to serve his country as he had hoped, but at least he had this. This bullet would be his service, his sacrifice.
But it didn’t come. The barrel of the gun was withdrawn. Through the thick haze of hunger and dehydration, he thought he heard laughter.
The blinding light in his face was shut off for the first time since he woke up in that chair, and bright, clear lights came on overhead. Through swollen eyes, he saw two men entering the room. They cut his neck loose and then undid the cuffs. Morgan tried to swing his fist at one of them, but he was too weak, and he collapsed to the floor from the effort.
One of them put a canteen to his mouth, and he drank through ragged, bloody lips, sweet, cold water flowing into his mouth, which was so parched, it hurt. The two men helped him to his feet. His knees buckled, but the men held him up. He heard approaching footsteps and saw the vague outline of a man appear at the door. It took a minute for his mind to make sense of what he was seeing.
It was Powers.
“Traitor! Goddamn traitor!”
With the last of the strength that was left in his limbs, he tried to hit him, still yelling, “Traitor! Traitor! You’re gonna fry for this!” while the men supporting him held him back. He could barely tell that Powers was trying to talk to him, until suddenly the words got through to him.
“It’s okay, Cobra,” he was saying. “It’s okay. You just passed your final exam.”
CHAPTER 36
“I don’t know what you think you’re trying to pr
ove, Cobra. What good are those photographs to you if you’re dead?”
T pulled on the length of barbed wire. The loop tightened around Morgan’s thigh, rusty teeth digging into his skin. He held back a cry of pain, but he couldn’t help his breath coming out heavy and irregular, wheezing through the oily cloth in his mouth.
Not. A. Sound, he told himself, quieting his breath, trying to maintain a steady rhythm.
“This pain,” she said, tugging once more, a little harder, the claws pulling on his flesh, “it can stop. All you have to do, Cobra, is give up. Just swallow your pride and tell me where the memory card is.”
He heard the hum of something vibrating. Natasha looked at a small device on her waist. She grumbled something to herself in Russian, then looked at Morgan, narrowing her eyes menacingly, and ordered, “Sit tight.” She walked out of the room, taking a last look at him before closing the door behind her.
Morgan listened for her footsteps, and when she was far enough away, he raised his head, fighting the exhaustion and forcing himself into alertness. He tried to turn all of his attention to escaping, but it was hard to keep his mind straight. T had left him there in the windowless cell for what he assumed was all night, with a boom box, just out of reach of his foot, blasting some awful noise that someone, somewhere called music. It kept him from falling asleep at all—the blaring music, playing on a loop, echoing around his exhausted mind. All night, desperately holding on to his sanity, he tried to break free from his handcuffs, first looking for anything that could be used as a lock pick and then, frustrated beyond reason, he tried brute force until his hands bled and his skin was raw.
But the pain was good. The pain brought adrenaline, made his body awaken. It gave him a fighting chance.
Termination Orders Page 21