by Marc Cameron
Nelson let fly a flurry of curses. “That’s exactly what they’re doing... .” He craned his neck out the bunker window.
It wasn’t uncommon for insurgents to use kids to play on the sentiments of American soldiers who were far from family and younger siblings—lull them into a false sense of security. Surely these men knew that.
“Foster!” Nelson barked across the radio. “Get that gate down on the double.”
“It’s okay, LT,” Specialist Foster’s voice came back in a wash of static. “You’re not gonna believe it, but this kid speaks English. Says his name’s Kenny—”
“Impossible!” Hunt snatched up a pair of binoculars from the map table. The boy loitered at the gate, preventing the soldiers from closing it without bringing the heavy steel beams down on top of his head. He wore faded blue jeans and some kind of ball cap with a logo on it she couldn’t read. A red, white, and blue Pepsi T-shirt was just visible under a black fleece jacket. Streaked blond hair caught the heavy rays of afternoon sun over the sawtooth western slopes of the Hindu Kush. The boy certainly had American features, but Hunt knew such a thing was impossible. Even without the binoculars, she could make out the look of detachment on the kid’s face—almost, but not quite, a smile—as if he’d just won a game but didn’t want to let on.
Lieutenant Nelson found a fresh string of curses as he swept his M4 off a rack near the door. He headed toward the gate at a trot.
Hunt fell in beside him, wishing she had a rifle instead of her puny nine-millimeter handgun.
“Shut the damned gate!” Nelson screamed into the radio as he moved.
“Seriously, Lieutenant,” Foster came back again, almost giggling. “This kid speaks English better than Nguyen. Can you believe this shit? He says he’s from—”
They’d made it to within twenty meters of the gate when Foster suddenly pitched forward, his head exploding like a blossoming red flower. Chunks of him flew into his partner and the boy. The crack of sustained rifle fire followed an instant later, drawn flat on the thin mountain air.
Specialist Kevin Nguyen, the second gate guard, had just handed the kid a chocolate bar when the shooting started. He scooped the boy up in both arms and ran for cover behind the gate bunker as withering incoming fire began to pour from the mountains. On the American side, fifty-caliber Brownings opened up with a reassuring clatter from each of the three raised sentry posts, sending a fusillade of lead and glowing tracer rounds back toward the surrounding mountains.
Gray puffs of dust kicked up as bullets struck the ground around Hunt’s feet. She crouched, doubling her speed to sprint for the relative safety of the concrete guardhouse. Nelson moved backwards, methodically picking off attackers with his M4 as they swarmed the half open gate.
Hunt made it to the guard shack and slid behind a concrete Jersey barrier, pistol clutched in her hand. She landed beside Specialist Nguyen, who now lay on his side, firing his rifle with one hand while he shielded the little boy who called himself Kenny. Hunt rolled up on her shoulder to watch in horror as a stream of insurgents in black turbans materialized from every mountain shadow. Pouring through the gate, the screaming Afghans engaged surprised pockets of soldiers, caught flat-footed in the attack.
Less than thirty feet away, an HiG fighter so young he was yet unable to grow more than a few sparse whiskers on his pointed chin, stood in the full open and pressed an RPG to his shoulder, aiming for the guardhouse. The look of jubilance on his face was unmistakable as he chanted the hollow, breathy “Allahu Akbar!” of a holy warrior.
Hunt shot him twice in the chest with her pistol as he pulled the trigger. He slumped and the RPG hissed past, missing the intended target but skittering along the rocks to blow the tires off a Humvee behind them.
Still firing, Lt. Nelson dove behind the concrete barrier to land beside Hunt with a heavy grunt.
“Anybody hit?” he said, his eyes still referencing the EoTech holographic sight of his M4.
“We’re doin’ just fine, LT,” Nguyen snapped back, between well-placed shots from his rifle. An enemy fighter fell almost every time he fired.
Hunt rolled half on her side in the dirt so she could look Nelson in the face. “I’m sure you guys got a Predator up somewhere around here. What do you say we call and see if we can borrow it?”
The LT grunted in agreement, handing his M4 to Hunt.
“You give us cover while I make the call... .” Radio communication with higher command from the narrow Afghan valleys was impossible and Nelson never went anywhere without a satellite telephone on his belt. It took agonizing seconds for the link. When command finally picked up, the urgency in Nelson’s normally collected voice was obvious.
“We’re getting our asses handed to us!” he screamed above the din of gunfire. “We need air support ASAP!”
Another voice, shrill and broken, came across the radio Nelson had set on the ground. “AAF coming through the fence by the Afghan Army latrines!” It was Sergeant McCrary, two years younger than Nelson. AAF was Anti-Afghan Forces. “What’s your location LT?”
Nelson snatched up the radio. “Stand by.” He turned back to the sat phone. “Get us support as soon as you can,” he said, a pained look on his beaten face. “Bring them in—hello ... ?”
He dropped the phone. “Dammit. Lost the signal.” He took up the radio again.
Hunt shot two more insurgents while she listened to Nelson give orders that chilled her to the core.
“Fall back, fall back,” the lieutenant shouted into the radio while he surveyed their situation as best he could with a wall of bullets flying overhead. “All able, form a new perimeter around the command bunker. Watch your dispersement. We’re gonna have to hold these guys off for a while... . Fixed wings are twenty minutes out, Apaches are forty.”
Nelson had just ordered all his men to abandon his own position at the front gate. They were now nearly a hundred yards outside the new perimeter.
“Sit tight, LT,” McCrary’s voice crackled over the radio, nearly drowned out by gunfire and yelling. “I’ll get a squad together and we’ll come bring you in.”
“Request denied,” Nelson barked. “We’ll hold them off from our position. You see to your defenses... . That’s an order.”
Insurgent shooting lulled for a moment as the fifty-cals opened up to drive them back from the gate. Three black turbans popped up from the river bank fifty yards west of the bridge. Hunt and Nguyen shot got two of them before the third ducked out of sight.
“How many do you think?” Hunt said, more to herself than anyone else.
“Three hundred ...” It was Kenny, peering from under the shelter of Specialist Nguyen’s body. The look in his dull gray eyes reminded Hunt of a child that got his kicks from torturing animals.
The boy smiled as if he knew a deadly secret, raising his dirty brow slightly. “They’ve been watching everything you guys have been doing for two weeks, figuring out how to take the camp.” He grinned up at Nguyen, who looked back in slack-jawed amazement.
“Thanks for the chocolate bar,” the kid said. He gave a bored sigh, oblivious to the bullets zinging overhead. “Too bad they’re going to cut your filthy head off.”
With that, Kenny opened his fleece jacket. A black cylinder about the size of a can of deodorant rolled into the dirt toward Hunt. The boy’s hands shot to his ears. He ducked his head against Specialist Nguyen.
“Grenade!” Hunt screamed, a half second before the blast slammed into her chest.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
7th Fighter Squadron
Langley Air Force Base
Virginia
A curt airman wearing green digital camo BDUs and a pencil-thin mustache had disappeared with Ronnie Garcia’s ID what seemed like hours before. Now she stood outside the reinforced steel door, rocking back and forth from one foot to the other. Evidently, there was some concern about her level of need to be within spitting distance of a hangar full of F-22 Raptors.
Palmer had seen to it she
was credentialed as a full counterintel agent for the CIA—but even in the shadow of the Agency’s headquarters, so few people ever actually saw CIA identification that she was met with a tilted head and arched brow—the universal expression for “... Sure you are... .”
Garcia had stopped for a Diet Dr. Pepper on the drive in and was now sure some unseen Air Force security officer was having a dandy old time watching her do the potty dance outside the bunkered door. From the number of cameras and sophisticated satellite antenna arrays that bristled on the concrete block hangar, her misery was likely being beamed directly to the Pentagon.
The door gave a sudden electronic buzz and a metallic click. In a near state of panic, Garcia reached for the handle, but it was pushed open by a slender brunette in a green Nomex flight suit. The leather name tag above her right breast pocket identified her as Major T. Doyle.
The major winked a startling blue eye—a woman-to-woman wink.
“You know, they make us gals wear diapers when we fly,” she said in a comfortable Texas drawl. “Haven’t come up with a way to connect our lack of exterior plumbing to the relief tube ... though they’ve tried some pretty uncomfortable dumbass ideas, let me tell you. Come on. The head is right down the hall here.”
“Thanks,” Garcia sighed, waving to the camera above the door. At least someone had been paying attention to her dance.
Her business taken care of quickly, Garcia met Tara Doyle outside the ladies’ room door. She was immediately struck by the major’s uncommon beauty. Thick hair, so black it shone blue in the stark light of the cavernous aircraft hangar, was pulled back in a loose ponytail. Glacier-blue eyes locked on Garcia and drew her down the side hall to a cramped office Doyle shared with another pilot.
Doyle dipped her head toward the vacant desk. “Speedo won’t be back for a couple of hours. You can grab his chair if you want.
Garcia rolled the padded chair around beside Doyle’s cheap wood veneer, DOD-issue desk.
The major kicked her desert-tan boots up on a stack of folders and leaned back with her hands behind her head. She was slightly built, a head shorter than Ronnie. Had it not been for the grace and maturity in the way she carried herself, the baggy fight suit would have made her look like a child in pajamas.
“All righty then,” Doyle said, with the swagger of someone accustomed to commanding a hundred-and-fifty-million-dollar aircraft. “What does the CIA want with a little ol’ jet jockey like me?”
“Just a few questions.” Garcia leaned forward in her chair, resting her elbows on her knees. She hoped it made her look more earnest. “Have you ever met a woman named Nadia Arbakova?”
“Sure. My baby brother’s lady friend. They both work for the Secret Service. I don’t think much of her, to tell you the God’s honest truth—she’s a little too much of a shrinking violet for my blood. Awfully damned needy ...” Doyle lowered her eyes. “But I’m guessing you already knew that. Does this have anything to do with that congressman’s list of infidels?”
Garcia bit her lip. “There’s really no delicate way to put this—”
“Well, hell, don’t then,” Doyle said. She let her boots slide to the floor. “I’m a female pilot in a sky raining testosterone. Folks don’t sugarcoat stuff around here.”
“Arbakova is dead,” Garcia said. “Murdered.”
Doyle folded her hands in her lap. “Does Jimmy know?”
“Not yet. I’m on my way to see him after this. I understand he and Nadia have a relationship.”
“Had.” Doyle shrugged. “Jimmy broke it off a couple of weeks ago. He said she was starting to see the boogey man... . Guess she had a right to.”
“Did she ever talk to you about that?”
Doyle shook her head, staring off into space. “The three of us went to dinner maybe three or four times. She was always the quiet one. Jimmy and I did most of the talking.”
Garcia glanced down at her notes. “Jimmy is Native American?”
“Northern Cheyenne,” Doyle said. “My parents adopted him when he was eleven. I was nearly seventeen. Mother and Daddy died in a car wreck about six months later.”
“Tragic.” Garcia gasped.
“You’re tellin’ me,” Doyle said. “The poor kid comes to us as an orphan, then we both end up parentless. I took care of him as best I could. I made sure he got through junior high and high school while I went to college on an ROTC scholarship.”
“Did you ever meet any of his Native relatives? Cousins, aunts, uncles?”
“Yeah,” Doyle said, tapping a pencil on the desk. “He had an aunt and uncle on the res in Montana. Anyhow, they couldn’t take care of him.”
“Can you give me their names?”
“I don’t remember, but I can find out. I don’t know if they’re even still alive.”
The major suddenly leaned across her desk, cobalt eyes focusing sharply on Garcia. “And that all leads me back to my original question. I’m smart enough to know the CIA doesn’t investigate the murder of a Secret Service agent. Is my baby brother mixed up in something he shouldn’t be?”
“I don’t know yet,” Garcia answered honestly. “Does the name Tom Haddad mean anything to you?”
“Nope,” Doyle said, leaning back again, arms on the rests of her chair like a queen on a throne. “Sounds Arab.”
“He used to be the CIA station chief in Cairo.” She watched Doyle’s eyes for any sign of a reaction. “His body was found with Ms. Arbakova.”
“Listen, Ms. Garcia... .” Doyle released a long sigh. “I fly fighter jets for a living so I’ll leave the spy-hunting shit to you. But no matter what he tells you, this is gonna be awful hard on Jimmy. He’s always been a little on the sullen side. All he ever wanted to do was guard the president of the United States. Used to talk about it nonstop when he was a kid. To tell you the truth, I’m surprised the Secret Service even lets him near the veep. He can be kind of a downer to be around. Not a big one to demonstrate emotion. Neither was Nadia for that matter. Guess that’s a side effect from being orphaned young.”
“Wait a minute.” Garcia sat up straight. “Arbakova was an orphan too?”
“Raised by a couple of older sisters.” Tara Doyle gave a quiet little chuckle. “I guess Jimmy has an excuse to be sullen though. He gets himself orphaned twice—and then he has to be raised by the queen of West Texas bitches. Speaking of that, I have to get my bird ready for a flight. Are we done?”
Ronnie shut her notebook. “For now.”
Tara Doyle shut the door behind the nosy CIA agent and took a cell phone from the pocket of her flight suit. She pressed the second number on her speed dial list.
“Jimmy?”
“Hey, sis. What’s up?”
“Listen to me,” Tara said. “I don’t know what the hell you’re mixed up in, but a lady CIA agent just came by to see me.”
There was a long silence on the line. “And?”
“Nadia’s dead.”
“That’s not funny.” Jimmy’s voice turned ice cold.
“I’m not screwin’ with you. This woman is asking a lot of questions. You sure there’s not something you want to tell me?”
“Are you serious? Nadia’s dead? How?”
“She didn’t say,” Tara sighed. “Listen, Jimmy. I told her I’d met your aunt and uncle from the reservation in Montana.”
“Okay.”
“You understand what I mean?” Tara said. “When they come to talk to you, you just say you don’t remember any family but you’ve heard me talk about them. I’m afraid this could screw up your career if you’re not careful.”
“Understood,” Jimmy said. “Thanks for lookin’ out for me.”
“Listen,” Tara said. “I gotta go. I’m sorry about Nadia.”
“Me too,” Jimmy said. It was difficult for her to read his voice. “Me too.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
U.S. Naval Observatory
Washington
Quinn sat on the vice president’s porch and waited q
uietly. Where others might feel the overwhelming need to ask questions during an interview, he let silence do much of his work for him. Garcia was in the chair next to him, leaning forward, but following his lead. Thibodaux stood back, listening but giving the group some space.
James “Jimmy” Doyle stared out over the rolling green lawn as if in a trance. He wasn’t a tall man, but what there was of him was built like a tree trunk. He had the slightly narrow eyes and Asiatic look of a Native American.
“You’ll find out soon enough... .” Broad shoulders rose and fell with calculated breaths. “But she was starting to get really paranoid. I told her she was going to get fired... . I guess it got her killed.”
Doyle had hung his jacket over the back of the white wicker chair exposing his sidearm, expandable baton, handcuffs, and radio. His shirttail had come untucked and his dark tie hung loose and cocked to one side, like a silk noose around his muscular neck.
Palmer had called ahead to Sonny Vindetti, the special agent in charge of the VP’s protection detail, to let him know one of his agents was about to get what might turn out to be devastating news. Nancy Hughes, the vice president’s wife, had been delivering a tray of cookies to the small cottage below the residence that acted as the Secret Service security office. She’d seen the look on Vindetti’s face when the call came in and demanded to know what was going on. It was a standing opinion with most detail agents that snowy-haired Mrs. Hughes was the best suited of anyone in the United States to run the country if anything ever happened to the president. She had the brains, the fortitude, and, coming from the old money of a father in the West Texas oil business, the family name to make her political royalty.
As Robert Hughes was happy to point out in the self-deprecating way that had served him so well, he was “no rocket surgeon, but he was, at least, smart enough to marry the right gal.” Nancy could be as unforgiving as a concrete wall if she felt she was being wronged, but she cared about her agents as if they were her own children. The VP’s code name was Pilot. Hers was Peregrine, but the Secret Service satellite detail that saw to her security referred to her as Mother Hen.