Rogue Commander

by Leo J. Maloney

  “Crew,” he said, “meet Tony and Slam.”

  “A pleasure, gentlemen,” said Lily.

  Hot Shot and Chilly raised fingers. The boxers grunted greetings as Scott pulled a bank envelope from his trouser pocket, slipped out a packet of hundreds, and turned around.

  “As we agreed,” he said as he counted off bills. “Five Franklins apiece up front, and five more if you act as tough as you look.”

  “Hey, you just saw us spar,” Tony said with a Brooklyn twang.

  “Yeah, y’all can chill,” Slam added. “Do we look like we lose?”

  “Nope,” Scott said. He winked at Lily. She gave him an approving nod.

  “Hot Shot,” she said. “Cruise back downtown and orbit the MGM. This may take awhile.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Hot Shot said as he made U-turn on West Charleston and eased back onto South Las Vegas. Then Lily snapped her eyes down at her cell. It was buzzing.

  “Everyone hush!” she ordered, and the van fell silent. “Allo?”

  “Mrs. Sielbolt?” Dotty Singer said, her voice a conspiratorial whisper. “We talked at the hotel.”

  “Yes, yes,” Lily said. “Sank you so much for calling.”

  “I just saw him leaving,” Dotty said. “Got a heads-up from the maid on his floor.”

  “Yes?” Lily said. “Did he...was he with someone?”

  “Not a woman. Two men. Don’t know if that makes you feel better or worse. Cheaters travel in packs. At least mine did.”

  “It’s horrible.” Lily sniffed.

  “I followed them a bit,” said Dotty. “Just out front, but they didn’t get in a cab. They turned left like they were going out for a walk on the strip.”

  “Bless you. I am so grateful,” said Lily. “I shall come back later. Perhaps we shall make more business together?”

  “Whatever you need. Guys like him get my goat, but it’s kinda, well, fun. Gotta scoot.” She hung up.

  “All right, Hot Shot,” Lily snapped as she stripped off her coat. “Let’s see how fast you can fly.”

  * * * *

  Enver Lukacs could not have felt better. He had been to many of the world’s gaudiest playgrounds, but Las Vegas was second only to Macau as the height of imperial, self-indulgent, capitalist-pig lust. The casinos were absurdly ornate and enormous, hunched one after the other like bloated tics. The nighttime shows were ridiculous, the meals disgustingly wasteful, the show girls caricatures of cartoon harlots. The weather was hot, the bikinis tiny, and the liquor flowed like the Volga.

  Such a shame it was only a stopover.

  He strode east along Tropicana Boulevard, wearing a white cashmere turtleneck and brown linen slacks—his silver-blond hair freshly combed back from his high forehead, and his Ray-Bans making him think he looked like a star. He’d been up till three, but he’d left the tables with ten thousand more than his nut, and he’d stayed up till dawn making a Colombian prostitute beg for more. Then it was breakfast at noon, a steaming bath, and now nothing more than a stroll. He was hoping the signal would come tomorrow so he’d have one more night to play.

  “I do not understand these Americans,” Lukacs remarked in Czech to the man on his left. “They gorge themselves on fast food and drink like Russian sailors, but the scent of tobacco sends them into a frenzy.”

  “It is a sign of a collapsing empire,” the other man said. He was bald, with a face like a pale rat, and he was wearing a plaid beret. “When everything is a criminal enterprise, you focus on the one harmless vice.”

  “You are quite the philosopher, Stanislaw,” said Lukacs as he tapped a fresh pack of Marlboros into his palm. “Considering that your only real talent is killing.”

  Stanislaw laughed. His gold front tooth gleamed in the Nevada sunlight. The man on Lukacs’s right said nothing. He was North Korean and didn’t understand Czech, but his job was only to keep Lukacs alive, so the social repartee didn’t matter.

  The three men continued along the sidewalk, where it passed the MGM’s four-story parking structure off to the left. Straight ahead, it widened into a parklike area with a manicured grass oval resembling a golf course green with a canopy of desert cedars. It seemed a good place to steal a smoke in the shade.

  “And so, if I may ask,” Stanislaw said. “What now?”

  “We shall soon be in the final phase,” Lukacs said as he plucked up a cigarette with his thin lips. “Collins has duped their best agent, and now he has the codes.”

  “And after that?”

  Lukacs stopped beneath a large tree and lit up with a silver Zippo. “After that, we collect our fees and go home.” He glanced at his surroundings, seeing no one but waddling tourists. “In the meantime, Stanislaw, do your job.”

  Stanislaw nodded, cocked his head at the Korean, and the two moved away from Lukacs to take up positions higher up on the green, facing out. Lukacs squinted off toward the corner of Tropicana and Koval, where a pair of large men in gym clothes were rounding the bend in an easy jog, laughing at some joke.

  Lukacs turned back toward the boulevard, dragging on his smoke and squinting across the street at the old Tropicana Hotel. It was there, he recalled from his tour book, that Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack had spent many a night indulging their fame, wealth, and lust. Apparently, you could even book Sinatra’s old suite.

  I think I shall do that tonight, he thought. And I shall have sex with an American blonde on his couch.

  That pleasant thought was interrupted when a white Mercedes van pulled up very close, blocking his view. And then, from behind, he heard a muffled shout. He spun around to see a man who looked like a young Sylvester Stallone pummeling Stanislaw’s face. To the right, the North Korean, whose name he still could not pronounce, was spinning in a blurring Tae Kwon Do roundhouse kick. But his leg was instantly trapped by a huge bald black man who slammed his chin with an uppercut. Lukacs heard the crack of knuckles on bone.

  His cigarette fell from his gaping mouth as he spun around to run. But the white van’s door had slid open and a woman was striding toward him. She looked just like...

  Oh no.

  Lily kicked him, her foot whipping up into his balls. And she was wearing boots. Rockets of lightning shot into his eyes as he howled and dropped to his knees.

  She bent down until her blazing green eyes were boring into his now-bloodshot ones. “That’s for Seoul,” she said. Then she brought her right hand up to her left collarbone and sliced her bladed palm into his temple. “And that’s for China,” she said as he keeled over.

  She bent over his writhing form, dragged him up by his hair and said. “And this one’s for Prague and that C-4 strap-on I didn’t fancy very much.” She kneed him straight in the nose, and his nostrils gushed blood.

  At that point, Chilly was leaning out of the van, arms outstretched, and yelling, “Let’s go! Let’s go!”

  Lily stepped back from Lukacs as Tony and Slam came hurdling toward her like linebackers. They hauled Lukacs up like an errant toddler, ran for the van, and threw him facedown on the floor.

  Like champion rodeo riders, Scott straddled Lukacs’s spine while Chilly grabbed his ankles and folded them up. Tony and Slam leapt inside to the back as Lily hopped in and slammed the door. Hot Shot burned rubber.

  Lily crashed back in her seat. She picked up her hat and used it to wipe the sweat from her brow. Lukacs was moaning from the floor.

  “You bastards.” He was shaking and drooling blood. “You cannot do this! I am a foreign national. You have no authority!”

  “Authority?” Lily laughed and jammed a heel in his buttocks as Scott and Chilly cuffed him hand and foot. “We don’t need no stinking authority.”

  Hot Shot gunned it straight out of town.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  It was a cold, misty midnight in Boston. The ceiling in Zeta’s War Room glowed with a languid blue s
ky, winging black geese, and wispy white clouds, but it wasn’t fooling a soul. The long boardroom table was strewn with Chinese food cartons, ravaged microwave dinners, Styrofoam coffee cups, and crushed Red Bull cans, and there wasn’t an empty seat to be had.

  Diana Bloch had the helm, with Paul Kirby hunched at her right elbow, and General Margolis at her left. Kirby’s thin hair was finger-comb crazy while Margolis still looked like he’d just arrived from a ball. The general’s adjutants, both captains, sat quietly plucking at tablets while Shepard and Karen hunched over pairs of humming laptops.

  Across from them, Morgan and Conley sat side by side, perhaps no longer the pictures of youth they’d been way back when but intensely focused nonetheless. And the rest of the chairs were occupied by Diana’s young analysts and interns, who all knew better than to utter a word.

  “Bring her up,” Diana said to Shepard. He nodded and tapped.

  The wall-length monitor behind Morgan and Conley came to life, so they both swung around in their chairs. The screen filled with the image of Lily, waist up, with nothing behind her but a shabby curtain. A series of zeros popped up in the right-hand corner and started ticking off numbers. This was Zeta’s version of Skype—secure and always recorded.

  “Welcome to the witching hour,” Lily said. For an operative who’d recently been through hell, she looked very relaxed.

  “What’s your location?” Diana asked.

  “Safe house,” Lily said.

  “Where?” Kirby asked.

  “If I tell you,” Lily said with a smirk, “it’s no longer safe.”

  “Brief it,” Diana ordered as she bridled a bit at Lily’s tone. The girl was obviously feeling smug.

  “Hold on to your proverbial hats,” said Lily. “It appears that Mr. Enver Lukacs is the linchpin. He put General Collins together with Colonel Hyo and those lovely North Koreans.”

  General Margolis leaned over to his nearest captain and murmured, “Make sure you’re getting all this. That’s a UCMJ life sentence right there.” He meant Uniform Code of Military Justice.

  “Lukacs is the middle man,” Lily went on. “Taking a cut from the DPRK payments to Collins. Apparently, Collins plans to execute his mission and then bugger off and retire to a little place in the Alps. Seems the general was miffed about something, and Lukacs found out.”

  “We passed him over for his second star,” Margolis growled. “Bastard didn’t deserve it with all the crap he pulled in Iraq.”

  “Lily,” Diana said. “This is General Margolis.”

  “A pleasure, sir.” She could see everyone in the War Room.

  “Get to Collins’s objective,” Diana said.

  “It’s a nightmare,” said Lily. “Collins set up the Tomahawk heist for Hyo’s men, eighteen of whom are here. Sleepers, and they’ve been in the States for a year.”

  Morgan was counting on his fingers all the Koreans he’d already killed, and he needed both hands. “Should be only eleven by now,” he said. Conley looked at him as if he was bragging. Morgan just shrugged.

  “Go on, Lily,” Diana snapped impatiently.

  She did. “Six missiles were hijacked. I believe Morgan found three.”

  “Correct,” Kirby said. “Those have been recovered by the FBI’s HRT and secured by the army.”

  “Well, that leaves them with three,” Lily said. “Their plan is to take over a nuclear storage facility, probably somewhere on the eastern seaboard. But that might be a feint. Lukacs doesn’t know where.”

  “Are you sure about that?” Kirby asked.

  “Believe me, he doesn’t know,” Lily affirmed. Shepard and Karen glanced at each other. “Furthermore, they’re going to bring the Tomahawks in there.”

  “What’s the point of that?” Margolis wondered as he loosened his tie. “If they intend to destroy the facility, you can’t just detonate a Tomahawk warhead. It has to be in flight, with the gyros already spun up for it to be armed.”

  “General.” Lily turned her gaze on him. “How does one target a Tomahawk?”

  “You have to have the launch codes,” he growled impatiently. “And then you feed it the target’s coordinates.”

  “Utilizing GPS?”

  “That is correct.”

  “So, then, can one target oneself?” Lily asked.

  Margolis blinked. “What the hell do you mean?”

  “I mean, General, that they bring the missiles into the facility, launch them, and leave in all good haste. The code name of Collins’s hellish little gambit is ‘Boomerang. ’ Are we all on the same page now?”

  Margolis’s mouth dropped open. “Oh my Lord.”

  “If only he were available,” Lily said. “But I believe he’s on sabbatical. At any rate, that’s all I have.” Then she raised a finger. “Wait, one thing more. The point of all this is to false flag the whole thing as a North Korean attack. Apparently, Colonel Hyo has also gone rogue.”

  “Jesus,” Conley hissed. “Those goons are bad enough when they’re straight.”

  “Lily, you’ve done superbly well,” said Diana. She was touching her chest, where her heart rate was up and thumping. “How did you ever get all this from Lukacs?”

  “Ms. Bloch,” Lily said sardonically. “Don’t ask.”

  Diana nodded. She didn’t really want to ask Lily how many fingers Lukacs had left. “All right,” she said. “Hold your position and stand by.”

  Lily issued a two-fingered Boy Scout salute, and the monitor went black. Diana turned to Margolis. “General, your assessment?”

  Margolis rubbed his jaw. “Well, operational nukes are stored on WS Three—that’s Weapons Storage and Security System. It’s a structure of electronic controls and vaults, built into protective aircraft shelters for strategic bombers or ICBMs. Similar arrangement for nuclear subs.”

  “How many such locations are there?” Kirby asked.

  “Scores of them, all over the States. Mostly at big air force bases like Nellis or naval facilities like Kings Bay, Georgia.” Then Margolis waved a dismissive finger in the air. “But I’m not buying this boomerang thing.”

  “Why not, General?” Diana asked.

  “Because Collins can launch those birds from anywhere. He doesn’t have to be on-site. He can set up in a field in Ohio and just target a nuke dump in Nevada.”

  “No he can’t,” Morgan said. Everyone in the room turned to Morgan.

  Margolis glowered at him. “State your case.”

  “If it’s a false-flag op,” said Morgan, “his Koreans have to engage the base security guards, hand to hand, face-to-face. And they’ve got to leave at least one witness alive to finger them later. If they just stand off and fire, no one’ll know who did it. It’s a useless blind hit.”

  Margolis leaned back in his chair and stared at Morgan’s unblinking expression. “Morgan,” he said, “you’re a whole lot smarter than you look.”

  “That’s what everyone says,” Conley said.

  Morgan dipped a thank-you nod at the general, thinking, this teamwork thing might have some merits after all.

  Diana pushed away from the table and got up to pace. “Speaking of blind, that’s us,” she said. “We don’t have a clue where he’s going.” She turned to Margolis again. “We’ll have to flash the Pentagon, General, have them alert every facility in the States.”

  Margolis turned to his nearest captain. “Wells?”

  “Already composing that, Sir,” the captain said as he typed. “Skipping condition Bravo and going right to FPCON Charlie.”

  “This is absurd,” Paul Kirby moaned. He took off his glasses, dropped his face in both hands, and massaged his furrowed forehead. “It’s like telling all the national banks that Bonnie and Clyde are out there, somewhere. We’re completely impotent.”

  “Speak for yourself, Paul,” Conley sneered.

 
“People!” Diana snapped. “I’ll thank all you to...” Then she stopped as she noticed Shepard waving his hand in the air.

  “Morgan,” Shepard said breathlessly. “I’ve got an intercept here: call coming into your cell.”

  Morgan pulled his head back. “You’re ambushing my calls now?”

  But Shepard tore off his headset, arched across the table and nodded furiously. “Take it, take it!”

  Morgan grabbed the headset and pulled it on. “Morgan here. Speak.” Then his eyes went wide, he covered the boom mike, looked right at Margolis, and whispered, “It’s Schmitt.”

  Margolis shot both hands in the air, trigger fingers up, demanding silence. No one moved.

  “Commander,” Morgan said into his mike. “Slow down.” He closed his eyes and listened intently for a while before saying, “How the hell did you do that?” He listened some more as he nodded over and over, and a small smile curled his lips. “Roger, copy. Now listen. I know you’re toast, but you’re all we’ve got at the moment. Stay on him, but don’t try to take him.” He covered the mike again and whispered to Shepard, “Lock on her cell.” Shepard shot him a thumbs-up and pointed down at his laptop. He’d already done it. “All right,” Morgan said to Schmitt again. “Hang tight. There’s no way to thank you for this, but we’ll try.”

  He tore off the headset. “That woman’s frickin’ Joan of Arc.”

  “Spill it,” Margolis snapped.

  “I was sure she lost Collins in Brookline,” said Morgan. “But she didn’t. Instead of trying to take him, she tailed him, almost all the way down to Washington on I-95.”

  Margolis slapped the table. “He’s going for Kings Bay in Georgia. The nuclear sub pens.”

  “Negative.” Morgan replied. “He made a U-turn at a rest stop in Maryland and headed back up north. She doesn’t think he made her. He was just trying to shake any tails.”

  “Is she still on him?” Kirby fumbled his glasses back onto his face.

  “Yes. She’s just outside New Haven, Connecticut, heading east on I-95.”