Dead Edge

by Jack Ford

  ‘Well, someone has to look out for her.’

  Cooper opened his arms. Wide. Bemused. Hell, no, he was pissed. And big time. ‘Am I missing something here? Have I suddenly stepped into the wrong life? The life which has you in it. Which has Austin Rosedale Young telling me about my own kid. Now that is crazy. And if I didn’t know better I’d say you had a dog in the fight.’

  Rosedale flicked up his cowboy hat and leant to the side and crossed one foot over the other and smiled and winked and said, ‘No dog, Thomas. Just telling it how it is. Let’s call it concern.’

  ‘What’s going on?’

  Maddie stood behind Rosedale, who immediately stepped aside for her to pass. Her brown hair tumbled over her brown face which held her brown freckles and hid her brown eyes.

  ‘Well? Levi, you want to tell me what’s going on?’

  ‘Can a man not sit here and have a Mountain Dew without interruption?’

  In his ear, Cooper said, ‘I knew it.’

  Throwing her Tiger Anderson rifle on the table, Maddie turned to Cooper. ‘Is this funny to you, Tom? Because I don’t think there’s anything funny about you and Rosedale at each other’s throats. We’re supposed to be a team.’

  He sniffed. Irritated. Trying to hold onto the last drops of patience. ‘Rosedale thinks it’s okay for him to tell me about Cora.’

  Maddie gave a small smile to Rosedale. ‘Well, somebody needs to tell you. Our daughter needs better, and the thing is, you know it.’

  Cooper didn’t have to look in a mirror to know he’d turned red. Red like the desert paintbrush plants which grew high up in the Colorado Mountains by Little Bear Rock.

  ‘Maddie, I don’t think this is appropriate to do this here.’

  ‘Don’t you? And why would that be, Tom?’

  ‘I know you’re pissed with me and I’m sorry I’ve hurt you, but doing this is not okay. So I’m asking you to stop because everyone in this Goddamn place seems to have lost their minds – but especially you, Maddison.’

  ‘Don’t speak to her like that.’

  Cooper whipped round quick. ‘Rosedale, keep out of it.’

  ‘The hell I will, Thomas.’

  The touch on Rosedale’s arm from Maddie didn’t go unnoticed by Cooper.

  ‘It’s okay, Rosedale.’

  ‘You sure?’

  Cooper said, ‘Yeah, she’s sure. My wife is sure.’

  At which point, Dax Granger prowled past the open doorway like the solitary lynx, not bothering to turn to look, not bothering to stop, just growling his orders as he disappeared down the hallway. ‘All of you. In my office… Now. And that means you too, Levi.’

  19

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  The four of them stood in Granger’s office, reminding Cooper of the times he’d stood in front of the principal back in high school when trouble had followed him like the winter followed fall.

  Through the side of his mouth, Cooper whispered to Maddie. ‘When the hell did you and Rosedale get so cozy?’

  Whispering back but determined to turn it into a hiss, Maddie replied, ‘Shut up, Tom.’

  ‘I think we need to talk.’

  ‘There’s nothing to talk about. So just drop it.’

  Leaning back on his brown leather chair, Granger hard-stared Maddie and Cooper. Glanced down in disgust at the salad his wife had made him. Let out an annoyed grunt, irritated by the fact it was ultimately a pile of Goddamn leafy lettuce and not the Pastrami double white crusty sub with the added delights of onion, cheese, and yellow beer mustard that he’d asked for.

  Transferring his culinary disappointment towards his employees, Granger said, ‘You two finished your conversation? Finished your gassin’? Because maybe it’s escaped your notice but I’ve got a business to run.’

  With transference clearly the order of the day, Cooper, still pissed and ruminating heavily over Rosedale, snapped at his boss. ‘We’re not kids, Granger, and my days of standing to attention finished when I left the military.’

  Granger sat up. Leaned forward. Picked up his fork just so he could shake it at Cooper.

  ‘Here’s the deal. I don’t want to get into any conversation with you. You’re lucky you’re even here after the stunts you pulled this year. If it wasn’t for Maddie pleading your case, this place would be a no entry sign to you. You understand what I’m saying?’

  ‘Oh, I understand alright, Granger, but it may surprise you to know that the only thing I want to do is my job. Nothing else. No fights. Nothing. So no conversation suits me just fine.’

  Granger pushed his glasses up his nose and raised his eyebrows. ‘The job is all you better do, and I’ll be watching.’

  Cooper said nothing.

  ‘Okay, so this job came through last week. They came to us because Onyx has a worldwide reputation of being the best in the business.’

  Taking a long, drawn-out pull of his cigar and letting the smoke slowly twist and rise over his face to hit the brim of his cowboy hat, Rosedale winked, ‘So you like to say.’

  ‘Put that out, or at least open the window. And you can give me one whilst you’re at it. And don’t say anything about I shouldn’t be smoking, I’ll look after my own Goddamn health if it’s all the same with you. Plus, for your information, I don’t just like to say. It’s a fact. We are the best, No job is too big or…’

  ‘… too much trouble.’

  The fork was pointed at Rosedale. ‘Is my business a joke to you, Rosedale? Because if it is, you can get the hell out too… Now, this job. It’s sensitive. So no questions. No straying from the objective. And yes, that’s directed at you, Cooper. What we have is a missing ship. A small general cargo ship, owned by a Turkish company.’

  Maddie said, ‘What’s their business?’

  ‘Import and export. Shipping everything from olives to live stock.’

  ‘That’s what you call sensitive?’ Maddie asked.

  ‘Look, to tell you the truth, I don’t care if it’s olives, meatloaf or Goddamn waffles they’re into. If I say you treat this job as sensitive, that’s exactly what you do… It’s not the usual kind of job where the bank is owed, or a private firm wants their money. Nobody owes anything. Probably the first time we’ve ever had that, but as our success rate in locating high value assets from all over the world is markedly greater than those of our competitors, it makes sense for a company to contact us, for tracing purposes only… The ship’s believed to be at a location just off the coast of Tubruq, Libya. In fact they’ve given me the ship’s coordinates.’

  ‘If they’ve got the coordinates then how can it be lost?’

  Granger banged his fist down on his walnut desk and wasn’t too perturbed to see his lunch box, along with wilted salad, knocked onto the floor. There and then he decided there’d be nothing else for it, he’d have to go and get a crusty sub. ‘Jesus Christ, Cooper, I told you not to ask questions.’

  ‘Come on, Granger, there’s asking questions and then there’s common sense. Why don’t they go and see themselves?’

  ‘Enough, okay… This is the deal: the coordinates show the ship is roughly twenty miles off the coast of Libya, but the shipping company can’t be one hundred percent sure it’s there.’

  ‘They’ve never heard of tracking? AIS tracking? LRIT equipment? The crew must have radioed in vessel data position at least every six hours?’ Maddie mused.

  ‘What is it with you people? No questions. This is what they want.’

  ‘Come on, Granger, you’re asking us to go and fetch a ship off the coast of Libya and do a job without knowing details.’

  ‘Actually, Maddie, I’m not asking you to take back the ship to them. I’m asking you to go and see if it’s there.’

  ‘But then you want us to take it back to port, right?’

  ‘No. The specific orders are not to board the ship.’

  ‘What?’

  Granger, red faced now, shook his head. ‘The brief is, go and speak to the owner. Then go to the location. See if it’s the
re. Report back to the owner. Period.’

  ‘But…’

  ‘No Maddie, no more. But for your information – and this is only so you’ll shut the hell up – all the tracking and long range radios are turned off. That’s all I know myself.’

  ‘I don’t get it. They can’t. There are regulations.’

  ‘They can and they did, and it’s not for you to get. It’s for you to do your Goddamn job.’

  Maddie pushed some more. ‘But what about the crew?’

  ‘What about them?’

  ‘Well, what happened to them?’

  Granger shuffled in his seat, and shuffled the papers on his desk, though Maddie suspected his uncomfortable look was less to do with his positioning and more to do with what he was holding back on.

  ‘Broadly speaking, Maddison, they got into trouble.’

  ‘What kind of trouble? And why didn’t they radio coast guards for help? Or failing that at least send out a signal? Someone would’ve come. To quote the UN Maritime Convention on the Law of the Sea…’

  As quickly as possible, because he certainly wasn’t in any kind of mood to listen to Maddie quote anything, much less maritime law, Granger cut in. ‘Spare us on that one.’

  ‘Well, my point is if they’d signaled for help the other boats and ships around would’ve proceeded to render assistance.’

  Granger got up from his chair and walked across the room to the door and with something like relief, opened it and signaled for them to leave. ‘Unlike you, Maddison, they listened to orders. Now if you wouldn’t mind, I need to make a phone call.’

  ‘I’m not following.’

  ‘Maddison, the crew’s orders were not to radio for help under any circumstances… Now look, I’ve told you everything I can. You, Rosedale and Cooper will be leaving on Thursday, you’ll get all the other details later today. Levi, you’ll be doing the usual administration and base support stuff here at home. I’m flying to New York tonight so I won’t see you till you all get back. But let me say this. You three, I’m warning you. God knows I am. Locate the boat, then just come back here. That’s it. That’s the objective. Nothing else. Just do your job.’

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  USA

  20

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  Chuck wasn’t sure what it was about the White House coffee but it always tasted as if it’d been made with a splash of resentment. A spoonful of democratic antipathy towards anybody who wasn’t a liberal sympathizer.

  Putting his cup down, he faced President Woods. Crossed his mind how well the man looked, compared to the last time he’d seen him when he’d looked positively ill. Not that the President’s health was his concern, nor problem. His problem was Woods’ policies, which hindered, restricted, curtailing his ability to protect the country he’d spent his life trying to protect.

  Frustrated, Chuck snapped the top onto the silver fountain pen he never used. Faded away from his own thoughts and faded back up into the conversation, to hear – for what must have been the eighth, ninth time, in less than half an hour – the words ‘no way’ from the supposed people’s President.

  ‘No way, Chuck. Abdul-Aziz bin Hamad? He’s affiliated with Al Qaeda. No. We discussed it a few weeks ago at length and my same reply stands; it’s not even on the table.’

  ‘So you keep saying, Mr President, but I don’t understand your stance on this. Prisoner swaps, prisoner release, lifting sanctions and negotiation. These are nothing new. I don’t have to give you a history lesson but it’s been going on since the time of George Washington.’

  ‘And in some kind of shape and form it’ll continue, but prisoners who the United States government deem to be terrorists, will no longer be used as high value negotiation chips.’

  Chuck looked around at those present. Woods, Lyndon, who thankfully was keeping quiet and Teddy, Chief of Staff. ‘You know what keeps me awake at night, Mr President? It’s how to keep America safe. I ask myself the question, am I missing anything? Is there something more, however unorthodox, which I and the CIA should be doing? And it’s the unorthodox which helps keep my department one step ahead. What is detrimental to us is, as Donald Rumsfeld said, our failure of the imagination on what is likely.’

  Woods, not wholly without flippancy, replied, ‘I prefer to work on factual.’

  ‘To work solely on the basis of factual would be to fail in my duty, Mr President. It would be an impossibility to do so. Most times my field agents only have the luxury of factual when our imagination has worked out what is likely. Rumsfeld was right when he talked about how when we have the likely, the likely takes us down the road of risk and uncertainty, and only at the end of it, likely may turn into an actuality. It is after all about the known unknowns.’

  ‘But that’s exactly why we have you and the CTC. To find out those things, whether through human intelligence, data or visual technology.’

  ‘And it’s still HI which gives us the most intel, but that’s only because the CIA are able to negotiate with countries and governments who sympathize with the ideology of the terror groups. And as you know, Mr President, prisoner release using high value detainees, such as Bin Hamad, are essential to that negotiation for the CIA.’

  ‘There are other ways, Chuck, and I know other administrations have been more open to this course of action, but not this one…’ Woods paused, finally succumbing to the plate of chocolate cookies in front of him, then added, ‘I’m not changing my stance on this, Chuck.’

  Watching crumbs from the chocolate cookie flake off, at the point of entering Woods’ mouth, and float down onto the highly polished table to form a circular pattern, Chuck, irritated by what he saw as dangerous liberal thinking, shook his head. ‘You’re making a big mistake, Mr President.’

  Woods took a large gulp of the simple black coffee Joan had made him. He didn’t know what it was but there was something about the White House coffee; it always tasted pretty damn good. ‘I won’t go against the American people. As we speak, America’s afraid. We’re on code red. We’ve had bombs and suicide bombs and people are afraid out there. So we need to stand as a nation. That’s the only way we’re going to win the war on terror. To stand as one.’

  As was Chuck Harrison’s practice, he said, ‘Bullshit…! This isn’t a union address speech, or some campaign trail to pick up votes. This is real, Mr President, and I know what we’re up against. The only people who stand as one out there is us. The CIA. We’re in the field. On the ground. We go in way before you bring any of the red team analysts to weigh up the odds of collateral damage, before you sit around this table watching in real time the military offensive, and before any hi-tech drone strike. And the only reason why any of those guys can do their job is because we’ve paved the way. Alone. Without back up. Without assurances that what we’re getting into is really what it seems. So, with respect, the idea that somehow the nation stands at one, is complete bullshit.’

  Woods thought.

  Contemplated.

  Weighed up.

  Wondered if.

  Then decided not to haul up Chuck for the way he’d spoken. Passion often induced the versing of tongues towards the expletive. ‘I’m sorry, Chuck, but I made an oath to serve the American people, and I won’t, when they’re not looking, release the terrorists who’ve waged war against and masterminded attacks on our nation.’

  Chuck, in a tone which did not rise or did not fall, said, ‘You really don’t know what you’re doing, and a lot more people will get hurt unless you act now. You’re putting lives at risk.’

  Woods, using his tongue to dislodge a piece of cookie from one of his back molars, which needed fixing, pointed at Chuck. ‘I think you’re on dangerous territory, here. I don’t appreciate at all what you’ve just said, and I certainly don’t appreciate the way you’re saying it.’

  ‘You may not, but it’s a fact. A hard fact. Like it’s a fact that you want me to go into battle, but you’re sending me into the ring with my hands tied behind my back. I don’t h
ave to tell you that war is not just played out on the fields. It’s behind the scenes. The communication. The negotiation… The deals we are compelled to do whether we like them or not. There’s been many a possible conflict which has been prevented by all of the above. And that’s what I’m saying is: to help us fight terror, Mr President, I need to be able to make deals. I need a way to find out about the whens, the wheres and the hows.’

  ‘Chuck, I have to call a close on this meeting soon, but to put it straight on the table, I don’t want the CIA being what it was. It’s a new dawn. More transparent. More ethical. The reputation needs to be rebuilt.’

  ‘I don’t know what you think we’re running here, Mr President, but trying to turn the CIA into a political PR stunt just isn’t going to work. All the politicians on either side love to holler about making America great again. But I’d settle for making it safe again right now.’

  Losing his temper, slightly – a lot – Woods growled. ‘And how the hell are we supposed to do that when you want us to release prisoners like white doves at a wedding?’

  ‘Nobody’s saying that. What’s important is the selected few. We need to keep friends with some of these countries. Sometimes we have to realize the prize is bigger than the stake. To release a prisoner, to transfer him back to his own country – even if that prisoner is a major league terrorist – in exchange of vital intel from unusual, uncooperative or even hostile governments is worth it. I know it may stick in our throats, but let it stick. Let it choke, compared to having to stand and watch another 9/11 because we weren’t willing to play the game.’

  ‘This government won’t be blackmailed.’

  ‘Not blackmail, Mr President, just how things need to be done. This is a new era. The Middle East is a complicated animal, and sometimes you need to feed it. Countries such as Qatar, where Bin Hamad is from; as you know, it’s paramount we’re able to maintain good relations so we’re able to keep our military base there. We all know that without it, things would be so much more difficult to monitor. We couldn’t keep an eye on the Gulf, or Iraq and Iran, or the terror groups within them. Not only that, Mr President, but we rely on them to mediate between us and groups like the Taliban. Mr President, I’m advising you as the acting head of the CTC that you shouldn’t rule out the necessity of prisoner release and transfer.’