Dead Man Switch

by Matthew Quirk

  He saw the two agents on the CCTV and pulled his pistol, a Russian-made Strizh 9-millimeter with no serial number. They pounded on the door, and as Drake gave a closer look to his security monitor, the killing instincts relaxed, replaced with disappointment and anger. He put down the gun.

  “We’re with the embassy,” one said into the camera. “We need to talk.”

  He’d been here for two years with no contact and no support from the CIA station in Algiers. Those were the cocktail-party folks, using official covers as embassy staff, safe behind blast barriers on a hill by the presidential palace.

  He looked at them in the camera. Boxy black suits. Tight-tapered haircuts. Military bearing. They were so obviously American they might as well have been wearing Iowa State sweatshirts and drinking Slurpees.

  He thought of bringing them in and killing them. It would make him feel better, but the damage was already done.

  This was El Harrach, a militant stronghold. Everyone was family. Everyone talked. Two American agents had walked up to his business, and in that instant the cover he had built for two years was blown, the target painted on his back.

  Two years of missed birthdays, two years of sordid small crimes to stop the big ones, and now he had just lost his chance to decapitate the most dangerous trafficking outfit on the Mediterranean.

  Somewhere, a ship carrying a group of twelve radicals sailed. He would never know where it landed.

  Windows rose three stories over this narrow street. And there were eyes behind every one of them. The news would pass quickly from the watchers in the buildings to the powers in the back offices. He was done.

  He buzzed them in.

  “Drake?”

  His name sounded so strange out loud after all this time. “We need to bring you back home.”

  He looked at them, then at the gun, but he picked up a bottle of acetone instead and splashed it over his desk, his files, the trash. Any sensitive information was kept in his head, not on paper, but he wasn’t taking any chances, leaving any trace.

  “You idiots. AQIM will be here in twenty minutes.” Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, the reigning militants here in the north of Africa, rich with ransoms they had wrung out from aid groups and Western governments.

  He took a book of paper matches from the windowsill, lit one, then tucked it in under the cover so the flame would burn toward the other matchheads. He placed it on the desk, above the expanding puddle of acetone, then started fast toward the door.

  “Let’s go.”

  On it went, in Caracas, Bamako, Molenbeek, Frankfurt, Beirut, and all the other cities where Cold Harvest members were deployed. Their bank accounts were frozen. They were left without access to arms or papers. One operative at a time, Morgan and Tucker dismantled the program, the most potent weapon the U.S. had against threats that drones and the military couldn’t reach, and began gathering them all in one place.

  Chapter 44

  HAYES CROSSED THE gravel toward the barracks. The door opened, and his wife stepped out. Hayes wrapped his arms around her as his daughter walked onto the stoop.

  In the distance, a helicopter flared for a landing and disappeared behind a stand of white pines.

  “How are you doing?” he asked Lauren.

  “I’m fine. Maggie’s a little overwhelmed, but she’s being good.”

  “The routine?”

  “Every step.”

  Lauren Hayes and the security team at the house had driven a surveillance-detection routine, a planned set of evasions and reversals designed to draw out any tails. They made their way to a small base set in the most remote forests of Camp Peary, the CIA’s classified training facility along the York River near Williamsburg, Virginia.

  This part of the facility was used by the Special Activities Division, and most of the CIA clandestine-service trainees who came through Peary could only guess at what went on behind its high fences.

  “They said they didn’t pick up anyone behind us.”

  “Good,” Hayes said.

  A detonation shook the earth, and Maggie flinched back. The clouds to the south flashed red.

  “What is this place?”

  “A training base. We would practice here to get ready for operations.”

  He could hear, in the distance, the rush of helicopter blades and the soft pops of gunshots in controlled bursts.

  A few soldiers, standing respectfully in the distance, kept watch.

  Down the hill behind her, there was a Pashtun village with mud walls and a two-story minaret. Beyond that was a bunker complex modeled on North Korean facilities, and then ten acres of sandy, leech-infested marsh that could stand in for Indonesian jungles.

  Drew used to call it Shithole Disney World, all the worst places on earth in one spot.

  They would build a perfect model of the target for a given operation and raid it, time after time, until they knew those walls as well as they knew their own homes, until they could perform the mission without thinking, could succeed with half the team killed or injured. It was known as a rock drill.

  It was strange to see Lauren and Maggie here, in this mock-up war zone, with the blasts shaking his wife’s words and the smoke rising behind them.

  They had the two of them staying in the dormitory-style housing behind the obstacle courses and parade grounds.

  “I’m sorry about this, Lauren. It won’t be for long,” Hayes said. He was going straight at the men behind this to force it to a conclusion.

  “You work with these people?”

  “I used to.”

  “Friends?”

  “Closer than that.”

  They were special operations and CIA paramilitary officers, a small fraternity who knew Hayes’s true role. Hayes had helped them refine their methods for classified direct-action missions. After his years in exile among the enemy, he had brought back lessons learned. He changed everything about how they infiltrated and took down threats.

  “You’re safe here,” he said.

  “What’s happening?”

  “I thought that the people I’m after might come for me, for the house. It was a precaution.”

  “The people who are killing your teammates? They know where we live?”

  “I didn’t want to take that chance.”

  “You’re going after them?”

  “Yes.”

  He knew their pattern now. Morgan was giving them what they most wanted, which was to gather everyone in one spot, where they could be killed in one blow.

  That was good. Hayes could exploit that. He was finally a step ahead. He could use their plans against them.

  A blast shook the trees in the distance. Maggie hugged her mother’s leg. Her eyes narrowed, almost closed, and she began to cry.

  Hayes kissed her on her forehead and she stopped crying and sniffled, though her mouth remained in a grimace.

  “You’re leaving again,” Lauren said.

  He had to. He was going to New York. The killers were raising the stakes, moving into open violence. They had taken innocents before. How many would they take to get all of Cold Harvest?

  “Yes. But I always come back.”

  Hayes looked in his wife’s eyes. Claire had been right. Hayes had to choose between his home and the fight. He couldn’t have both.

  He was comfortable around death, had lived beside it and tasted it. He respected it but didn’t fear it. It was just another factor. The worst thing for him would be to stay here safe knowing he’d let others fall. It would be worse than dying, a kind of damnation.

  Maggie started to whimper again. He’d thought he would come home, and all would be fine. He could go fight his wars and then lie down in his bed and rest easy. He was wrong. He had spent too long out there among the threats. They had come for him, come back with him. He remembered the distorted voice of the enemy on the phone. Part of what he’d said was true: he was the violence.

  Lauren lifted Maggie up and soothed her, rubbing her hand over her back. A man in can
vas work pants and a flannel shirt walked toward them and then stopped. He was clearly waiting for Hayes.

  “You better get going,” Lauren said. She’d sent him off on missions dozens of times, but something about this was different. It felt final, like a valediction. They both seemed to understand without a word.

  He put his arms around her, then kissed her. A last squeeze of the hand, and then she stepped away toward the bunkhouse, leaving him there alone.

  He walked to the gate, then turned and saw his wife at the edge of the gravel, their child on her hip, soldiers on both sides with M4 carbines on slings. This was no place for a family. It was too much to ask of anyone. He was losing her.

  As soon as he was in the parking lot, he started calling the men he trusted, the men who still trusted him. He was going to New York. There was one way to stop this. He had to put himself between the killers and their target.

  Chapter 45

  HYND RAN HIS hand over the grimy steel of the tractor-trailer’s underbody and felt the new welds. The shocks had also been reinforced to hide the bulk of the load. The bed was lined with marble slab to direct the blast up and out, more kills and less crater. Over that lay two dozen barrels of ammonium nitrate and nitromethane slurry, an explosive equivalent in power to TNT but far easier to procure. They were using Tovex as the primer.

  The explosives alone would take out dozens of buildings, but they had followed the design of the bomb that had destroyed the Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983, the single deadliest day for the U.S. military since World War II.

  Above those drums were thirty tanks of butane. To make something burn, you need fuel and air. Most explosives contain both, a fuel and an oxidizer. But the most powerful ones, known as thermobaric or fuel-air explosives, carry their entire load as fuel and mix it with the surrounding air to explode. That was how a single thermobaric hand grenade could topple a house.

  This truck would turn the streets around it, the atmosphere, the bodies and breath of the bystanders themselves into a bomb.

  The truck that killed the Marines in Beirut had driven through concertina wire to get close to the target. It had lifted the barracks fifteen feet in the air, shearing fifteen-foot foundations reinforced with steel rebar. The whole thing collapsed as it fell.

  Americans had started putting up barriers around all their sites, but it was a classic bureaucratic response, the operating principle of all that had been done in the name of homeland security: react and overreact to the last attack. It’s most important to be seen doing something; it doesn’t matter if it’s effective. The barracks would have fallen even if the truck had been stopped at the outer perimeter.

  So the U.S. and its allies had built their Potemkin defenses and continued to die at the hands of this simple inevitable weapon, the truck bomb. Khobar Towers; the assassination of Rafik Hariri, the prime minister of Lebanon; the first World Trade Center attack; Oklahoma City.

  Thirty thousand pounds of TNT: that was the explosive power of this vehicle. Six times the size of the Oklahoma City bomb. It would destroy an area of five city blocks.

  He moved across the concrete floor and picked up a switch from the workbench. It was made from two pieces of milled aluminum, hinged at one end like a bike brake and designed to fit in the hand. Its technical name was a pressure-release detonator, more commonly known as a dead man switch.

  Near the hinge it had a safety—a pin with a ring hanging from it, similar to those on hand grenades.

  Hynd weighed it in his hand; barely fourteen ounces. Such devices were normally used as backups for suicide terrorists. In case they were killed before they had a chance to trigger their charges, that switch guaranteed a detonation.

  But this was a special use. Hynd had studied the American fighters carefully. Even if the truck wasn’t able to reach its target, the plan would work. Timur just had to get within blast distance of bystanders and force a standoff. He knew the American soldiers’ psychology. If they were in the vicinity, they would run to the threat, even if it meant dying, and all Timur would have to do was let go or let them take him out with a final shot. They couldn’t help but play hero. They would kill themselves.

  Vera approached him, carrying one of the encrypted phones. One of Hynd’s intelligence contacts in Algeria had called in the tail number of a private jet that was owned by a CIA front company. It had just taken off, and the source suspected it had a Cold Harvest operative on board. There were similar reports from agents in other countries.

  Cold Harvest had spent years practicing nearly perfect security, but now they were crashing the exfiltrations of their agents, bringing them home, blowing their covers. Its leaders were panicking, tipping their hands.

  Based on the flights and sightings, he believed they were gathering somewhere near New York. They were being herded together, as he’d predicted. But where exactly? He had lost too many of his men to nail it down. Once the Cold Harvest members landed in the United States, he wouldn’t have the resources to track them.

  But he didn’t need to. He had Claire.

  “It’s time to talk to Claire Rhodes,” he said.

  “Don’t do it,” Vera replied. She was afraid, and rightly so. Rhodes was a killer on fire with anger and revenge.

  But that was all to the good. Hynd knew her better than she knew herself. He could control her. He had so far.

  “Is this about killing them? Or controlling her?” Vera asked.

  “It’s the same thing,” Hynd said.

  “How do you know she’ll lead you to them? She might just run, disappear.”

  “No,” he said. She had tried to quit before and had failed. Even after her teammates rejected her, she wanted to protect them. That desire was strong, at the core of her broken nature. But in trying to shield them, she was leading him to them and helping him kill them one by one. “I can send her straight at them. She’ll show us where they are.”

  “You’re going to end up dead.”

  “I might,” he said. He ordered Timur to ready the truck. They would station it within striking distance of New York City, and when Hynd found out the location of the gathering, they would take them all out.

  Bombs and guns and hired hitmen. There had been so much killing at a distance. But this would be his hardest task: empty-handed and face to face with that lethal woman. It was what he lived for. He would make her his weapon.

  “Let’s go.”

  Chapter 46

  THE THORNS TORE at the canvas of Claire’s work pants and carved welts across her arm. She paid no mind, counting steps as she moved among the trees. She fixed her position in the woods based on landmarks—the red light of the water tower and the church steeple in town. Memories can be deceptive. She knew that as well as anyone.

  She needed the exact location to find the cache she had left up here, among the trees above her house. She needed money and a better weapon. She had left this cache when she fled. There were too many people watching her home after she’d killed the man who was posing as a U.S. Marshal.

  She didn’t keep the tools of her trade at home. She stored some and buried others as backup, hidden away nearby. Never let your two lives touch. It was the first thing you learned.

  She ignored the gravestones, a churchyard of a church long since gone. The weeds swallowed them up, and the acid rain left only the faintest impressions of the inscriptions. This one had died in the Civil War. The Battle of Port Republic.

  Old cemeteries were the perfect spot for these hides. Out of the way, avoided by most, never redeveloped.

  She had the jack handle from the second car she had stolen, a Dodge pickup. It was the only thing handy to dig with. She stooped among the fallen stones and drove the metal into the ground.

  Claire felt the doubts inch in as she dug. She’d thought it was here, but she felt nothing. Things shift under your feet. Roots grow, water runs, the earth wears down. These Appalachian peaks were once as high as the Sierras.

  She lifted the tool and drove it back i
n. The jack handle scraped against metal, a hollow thunk below the dirt.

  Twenty minutes later, she pried out the metal box, a watertight medical chest, and opened it up. Among the gear inside, there was a Glock pistol and a broken-down sniper rifle in a nylon roll. She’d spent countless hours training on precision rifles, and while she was with Cold Harvest she had done extensive preparations, going over the details of taking out targets with long-range shots in American and European cities. The box smelled like a grave, but the gunmetal gleamed with oil. They should be fine.

  A smaller case beside the guns held a flip phone with half a dozen prepaid SIM cards, a GPS unit, a high-powered flashlight, and nine thousand dollars in used twenties.

  Would she run? It was the only move that made sense. But she had run before. She hadn’t gotten away last time, because she was the problem. How could she protect the men and women she had worked with in Cold Harvest? It was strange. Normally Cold Harvest information never showed up on the intranets she could still access, but she had picked up some travel notices that used the old coded names for the program. They were getting careless. The flights and logistics suggested they were gathering somewhere near New York, although she couldn’t be sure exactly where. But how could she warn them? She’d tried to warn Hayes, and he’d played sympathetic, drew her into a trap, and attempted to kill her.

  Hayes, that asshole. He couldn’t be the prime mover behind this, though. He was a soldier. Morgan and Tucker were the chiefs. Claire could try to cut it off at the top, to go after them. But there were too many questions. Why did they call off the investigation? Did they kill her husband? Kill the other members of the program? Was Hayes working for them? Why?

  No. She couldn’t put more bodies down until she was sure. She couldn’t let the anger drive her, couldn’t let the killing seduce her.