The Ascendant: A Thriller

by Drew Chapman

  He smiled at her, but a deep exhaustion was running through him. He had barely said that many words—in total—to anyone in days. He let out a breath.

  “What the Chinese government wants,” Garrett said, “is for us to start a shooting war with them.”

  It took a few moments for Alexis to finish writing down what he had said. She paused briefly, scratched out a line, rewrote it, then finished writing. She picked up the legal pad, turned, and presented it to the camera behind them, as if for inspection and approval, then put it back down on the table and pushed it forward to Garrett.

  “Is this an accurate summation of your ideas?”

  Garrett scanned her notes briefly, then nodded yes. She lifted the legal pad and paused, holding it above the table. There was a small key sitting on the desk, underneath the pad, blocked from the camera’s view by Alexis’s body. Garrett saw it, surprised, and was about to tell her that she had forgotten it was there when she cut him off: “Thank you, Garrett,” she said slowly, carefully. “This has been very helpful. I think we’ll be able to help you get out of here.”

  Garrett glanced again at the key, momentarily bewildered, then he snapped his head up, smiled at Alexis, and covered the key with his cuffed hands. She slipped the legal pad back into her bag.

  “That would be great,” Garrett said, his heart suddenly pounding. “That would be awesome.”

  Alexis stood, nodded once, and left the room. Garrett put his hands, with the key clutched tightly in his right fist, into his lap, and started thinking about what he would do next.

  60

  THE PENTAGON, APRIL 16, 9:55 AM

  Jimmy Lefebvre knew something was up. Garrett had been gone for nearly forty-eight hours and no one had heard a word from him. Not a sighting, an e-mail, a phone call—nothing. This was a very bad sign.

  In the war room, only Lefebvre seemed concerned about this. The rest of the Ascendant team continued to play their online games, trade in futures contracts, and keep an eye on world events. Lefebvre knew they were military creatures of habit; they would do what they were told until they were told to do something different, and if they were told nothing, then they would sit around and wait. That’s what it was to be a soldier. If you left them without orders for too long they would probably just get drunk.

  Lefebvre was a soldier as well, but the fact that he’d never seen combat—and there wasn’t a day in his life that he didn’t regret that—meant he wasn’t war-weary. He’d never grown accustomed to waiting for orders. Left to his own devices, Lefebvre figured out what he should do, and then he did it. And every bone in his body was telling him that it was time to get the hell out of the war room. Fast.

  Lefebvre knew that Garrett Reilly was constantly pushing the envelope, and now he suspected that Garrett had pushed that envelope too far. Perhaps it had to do with what Garrett and Celeste had discovered about China; maybe it was about his decision to send Celeste to hunt down the Tiger. Or maybe it had to do with the fact that he hadn’t told any of this to his superiors. Lefebvre hadn’t said anything either, and that made him complicit. Whatever had happened, Lefebvre guessed that the shit was about to hit the fan.

  He found Bingo at a game console and told him that he was going back to the hotel. “Storm’s coming. Keep your plans to yourself,” Lefebvre said. “I don’t want to know what you know or what you’re going to do. Your secrets are your own.”

  “I’ve never said anything bad about this country. Or the president,” Bingo said, his voice rising anxiously. “You’ll vouch for me, right?”

  “They can’t put you in jail for criticizing America,” Lefebvre said.

  “They can’t put you in jail for that. They can put me in jail for anything.”

  Lefebvre sighed. He and Bingo came from radically different universes, and there wasn’t time to argue that particular point of politics and fairness. He called a cab to take him back to the hotel, and was just slipping out the door of the war room when a hulking military policeman stepped into his path and told him that he was being detained for questioning. A second MP had Bingo in a corner and was rifling through his bike messenger bag.

  Lefebvre tried to signal to Bingo that it was going to be okay, but he couldn’t catch Bingo’s eye: Bingo was holding his hands above his head like an arrested criminal.

  They brought Lefebvre to a windowless conference room on the third floor of the Pentagon’s D Ring. First came a duo of military policemen. They poked around in the standard places: his contact with outsiders in the past few weeks, had he revealed any classified information—knowingly or unknowingly—to anyone, anywhere?

  “Absolutely not,” Lefebvre said, and that was true. He’d kept his mouth shut.

  Then came two Army intelligence officers, and they ran down a checklist of questions about the war room, and what he had seen. Again, Lefebvre was truthful.

  “Nothing out of the ordinary,” he said. “But I wasn’t really looking, either.” He kept his answers short and to the point, telling only what they asked him to tell them.

  Lefebvre was cautious, but not scared—he had decided right away that he would reveal everything he knew about Garrett and Celeste’s Chinese rebellion theory, even if he had promised Garrett that he wouldn’t. Lefebvre was part of Garrett Reilly’s team, but he was also a military officer, sworn to protect his country. He hadn’t joined the Army solely to escape from his father’s long shadow; he really was a patriot. He was prepared to tell all.

  Finally, a pair of Homeland Security agents, a man named Bellamy and a woman named Garcia, grilled him. They started with Garrett: What were his political leanings, Democratic, Republican, libertarian, anarchist? Did he drink? Had he flashed around a lot of cash? Had Lefebvre ever seen him do drugs? What about his uncontrolled outbursts of anger? Did he have any odd sexual proclivities? Obsessions? Fetishes?

  Again, the truth was: Lefebvre had no idea.

  Then, suddenly, the questions took a personal tack, and they were directed right at Lefebvre. How much money did he have in his savings account? Why wasn’t he married? Why didn’t he have a girlfriend? Had he ever had sex with a man? Why not? Did he hate homosexuals?

  This caught Lefebvre off guard. He understood that they were testing him, looking for him to slip up, and that answering with even the slightest hint of attitude was a quick and easy way to derail a military career. But he couldn’t help thinking, Why weren’t they asking about what really mattered? What about China? What about the rebellion? Lefebvre had information they could use. He was sitting on a secret, ready to reveal it, just waiting for the right question.

  But that question never came.

  The agents didn’t seem to give a damn about the Chinese. Or a secret war. At first that was baffling to Lefebvre. He’d been in the Army long enough to know that the federal bureaucracy wasn’t without flaws, but if Garrett Reilly had done something wrong, shouldn’t the very people tasked with figuring that out be interested in what he’d discovered? Shouldn’t they be asking what Garrett’s ultimate goal was, not just whether he was ideologically suspect?

  And why were they questioning Lefebvre’s loyalty, of all people?

  When they had told him, a month ago, that he would be babysitting a snot-nosed civilian for some half-baked DIA project, he had accepted the assignment without complaint. And when that civilian had turned out to be as arrogant as advertised, Lefebvre had swallowed his pride and gotten on with it, teaching him as best he could, for the good of the country. He might not be a combat veteran, but he could still take one for the team. He’d even come to like Garrett Reilly—sort of—and was beginning to think of Ascendant not as half-baked but as a stroke of strategic brilliance. Whatever had been asked of him, he had done it.

  But now they wanted to know if he was gay? What was that about?

  In a flash, it became clear to Lefebvre that Agents Garcia and Bellamy were living proof that most people followed convention, and did so with a grim determination. And that idea was strang
ely liberating for him; the internal constructs he’d followed for most of his life—about loyalty and patriotism—were suddenly, ever so slightly, loosened.

  It gave him a measure of psychological breathing room. And in that breathing room, Lefebvre found himself defending Garrett, at least in his head. He could see how Garrett’s refusal to be boxed in—by anyone—was a form of bravery. The group was where you found refuge. But Garrett never sought that refuge—he did the opposite. Somehow, in Lefebvre’s head, pledging allegiance to something and being blindly obedient to it had gotten confused. And that bothered him.

  No, worse. At that moment, it humiliated him. These people were questioning his loyalty while the United States was perched on a precipice. That was tantamount to treason.

  “Where is Garrett now?” Lefebvre finally asked the agents as they studied their notes.

  “We can’t tell you,” Agent Garcia said.

  “What did he do wrong?”

  Garcia and Bellamy stared at the lieutenant as if he were an unruly puppy that had just peed on their legs.

  “Why don’t you tell us?” Bellamy said.

  “I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking.” Lefebvre knew he should shut his mouth, but this was ridiculous. Utterly ridiculous. The Chinese were climbing up their asses.

  “Are you giving us trouble?” Garcia asked.

  “I’m just trying to get to the truth,” Lefebvre said, even though he knew that he was doing just as the agent implied—giving them trouble.

  Agent Bellamy squinted in the dull fluorescent light, staring daggers at Lefebvre. “Exactly whose side are you on, Lieutenant Lefebvre?”

  And for the first time in a long time Lefebvre wasn’t sure of the answer.

  61

  A HOMELAND SECURITY SAFE HOUSE, APRIL 16, 4:32 PM

  On his fourth attempt, Garrett did it. He managed to cup his right hand far enough over his left so that he could slide the universal handcuff key into the cuff’s lock, and twist it, once, slowly, a full 360-degree rotation. The ratchet in the cuffs clicked open, and he was able to pull out his wrist. All of this he did with his hands in his lap, under the edge of the table that sat in front of him, blocked from the view of the video camera.

  After that, he simply waited.

  An hour later, Agent Stoddard entered the room, holding a plate with another chicken-salad sandwich and glass of water in his hands. He set the plate and glass on the table and backed to the corner of the room, never taking his eyes off of Garrett. Garrett made a show of inspecting the sandwich, then shook his head.

  “Can’t I get something else?” Garrett asked. “I’m sick of chicken.”

  “No,” Stoddard said, not moving.

  “Fine. Take it away. I won’t eat it,” Garrett said, leaning back in his chair.

  Agent Stoddard shrugged, crossed the room, and bent at the waist to pick up the plate. Garrett watched him closely, tensing his lower back and planting his feet as firmly as he could on the linoleum floor. The moment the Homeland Security agent’s eyes went from Garrett to the plate—and it was only for a moment—Garrett rocketed his body forward with every ounce of strength he could muster, pushing up with his legs and snapping his head forward like a whip. He aimed the peak of his forehead directly at the intersection of Agent Stoddard’s nose and eyes, and he hit directly where he had aimed, a bull’s-eye. If there was one thing Garrett knew how to do, and do well, it was head-butt another man.

  The crack of skull against skull was distinct and clear, hollow-sounding, like a cardboard box being swatted by a two-by-four, and Agent Stoddard grunted in surprise, toppling over backwards as blood streamed from his nose. He fell on his haunches, hands instinctively clutching his face, as Garrett bent immediately at the waist and jammed the handcuff key into the manacle on his right ankle. In less than a second he was free, but his head screamed in pain, the fault line of his skull fracture erupting like it had been torn open with a jagged knife. Garrett had never experienced anything like it. The sensation was nearly paralyzing—every nerve ending in his body was on fire. He felt as if he were moving in slow motion, the air around him thick like water, shock waves radiating down from his head through his entire body.

  Garrett willed himself to push forward through the pain and grabbed the metal chair he’d been sitting on for hours—maybe days, he no longer knew—and swung it like a tennis racket across Stoddard’s body. The chair legs connected solidly with the agent’s head and hands, a muffled thud of cracking bone. Stoddard didn’t make a sound after that—he went down like a discarded shirt. Garrett didn’t think he’d killed him, but he didn’t care, either, and he turned his attention to the door, which was opening quickly, Agent Cannel charging into the room. Before the second agent could get his entire body through the door, Garrett flew at it, right leg raised, kicking it with all his might.

  The door caught Agent Cannel in the midsection, knocking the air from his lungs, stunning him. In one hand he held a gun, finger on the trigger. Garrett brought the chair down hard on the agent’s gun hand, snapping the weapon out of his grip and onto the floor. Garrett tossed the chair aside and hit Cannel with punches to the face, as many as he could throw without stopping, seven or eight in all, until Cannel fell backwards out of the door, and Garrett threw it open and charged after him. Cannel collapsed to the floor and Garrett stomped his chest as hard as he could.

  He didn’t waste any more time. If there was one thing he’d learned from years of bar brawling it was to hit your enemy hard and then run like hell. Plus, the jagged lightning bolts of blue pain were flashing before his eyes again, and Garrett was worried he might pass out. He stumbled down the hallway of what looked to be an ordinary suburban home. He came into a bare living room, with a couch and some fast food piled on a coffee table, as well as a video monitor showing a live feed of his former jail room. The camera in the room had been kicked over in the fight, and now the image was canted ninety degrees from the vertical and showed Agent Stoddard trying to crawl across the floor, dazed and disoriented, his face dark with blood.

  Well, he’s alive, Garrett thought. I guess that’s good.

  Garrett scanned the living room, assessing if there was anything there of use. He grabbed a raincoat lying on the couch, a bag of french fries, and a ring of car keys, then ran out the door.

  It was twilight outside, a wash of pink still in the sky in the west. The air was cool. The neighborhood was suburban and quiet, the street lined with innocuous one-story homes with green lawns. Other than a man smoking a cigarette on his driveway down the block, there was nobody else outside. Garrett fumbled with the car keys, squinting to focus through the ache in his head and the darkening tunnel vision that was closing in on him, then hit the unlock button on the fob repeatedly. A Chevy Malibu halfway down the block beeped and he walked to it quickly, trying not to break into a panicked run. He climbed inside, started the car, and drove.

  He had no idea where he was, and he didn’t care. He just wanted to get as far away from his captors as possible, and in the shortest amount of time. He followed quiet suburban streets for a few minutes, then found himself on a wide boulevard—the street signs said Colesville Road. He followed Colesville for a few minutes into a neighborhood of bland low-rise buildings and corner mini-malls. A shop sign read “Silver Spring,” and he guessed he was in Maryland, just north of Washington, D.C. His hands were shaking on the steering wheel; a noise had blossomed inside his skull, and was ratcheting up into an insistent, searing screech.

  He passed a pair of police cars without incident, but he wasn’t too worried about the local cops. At least not yet. He didn’t think Homeland Security would broadcast his escape to the general public, and they certainly wouldn’t do it right away. If they did, they’d have to explain why they tortured him, and that seemed like an impractical move. They would need a cover story. He considered turning himself in to the police and telling them everything that had happened, just to put the squeeze on the bastards who had water-boarded hi
m, but he decided against it.

  He wasn’t sure anyone would believe a word he said.

  He pulled off the main avenue and searched the suburban streets until he found an empty home with a FOR SALE sign out front. He parked in the driveway of a spotless Tudor, then went to the fenced-in backyard and washed his hands and face with a garden hose. He ate the agents’ pilfered french fries and drank as much water as he could hold. Feeling stronger, he got back in the car and drove out of Silver Spring to the neighboring suburb of Bethesda. He drove slowly. His vision was faltering. He felt as if he were seeing the world from the bottom of a deep, black well. He was careful not to break the speed limit or run any red lights. In downtown Bethesda he parked the car at a meter and walked into a strip-mall Radio Shack, wrapping the agent’s raincoat around his ruined shirt.

  “Hey,” he said to the teenaged clerk behind the counter, trying to keep his voice steady and calm. The piercing sound in his head was lower, but it hadn’t gone away. Not by a long shot. “I’m in the market for a really fast laptop. You got anything I can take on a test run?”

  The clerk put him in front of a no-name Chinese knock-off brand with a quad-core processor and told him to have at it. Ninety seconds later Garrett walked out of the store with a name and an address.

  And murder in his heart.

  62

  YANGQUAN, CHINA, APRIL 17, 8:21 AM

  Celeste Chen barely had a minute to catch her breath. From the moment in the Pentagon when Garrett had ordered her to go to China to when she got out of the taxicab in the middle of Shanxi Province forty-eight hours later, her life had been a blur. She’d packed a bag in twenty minutes, flagged a taxi to the Chinese embassy, wrangled her visa from a sullen bureaucrat, grabbed another taxi to Dulles, then been the last to board her flight to New York’s Kennedy airport. At Kennedy she forced down a stale taco lunch, changed two thousand U.S. dollars from her online trading account into Chinese yuan at a foreign-exchange counter, then sprinted to catch her flight to China.