Dark Heart

by James Phelan

  Lewis passed over the Glock. Harvey put the Colt .45 in the concealed holster under his jacket, took the Glock, checked it, then with his free hand he picked up a book from the shelves. About an inch thick, leather binding.

  Walker looked to his father.

  “Jed, I didn’t know it was these two,” David Walker said, meeting his son’s gaze. “I knew it had to be one of the eighty people on that secret think tank. I looked them all over, front and back, again and again. But I didn’t know. I went to Syria to investigate. To make contact with the people smugglers, see where the trail went. Then that all went to hell.”

  “Well, now you and your son know the truth,” Harvey said. “Ain’t life just grand?”

  “What are we going to do?” Lewis asked. The guy was way out of his depth. Walker could see the Senator sweating, lines of it running down his forehead and face.

  Harvey glanced across to him.

  “What’s the deal with you two?” Walker asked Muertos.

  Muertos said, “He—”

  “I got her out of a jam in Syria,” David Walker cut in. “I saw the opportunity and I took it. I gave Rachel a way to contact me, and helped her with a false ID and transport to get back into the US, and money to use to find you, and fund this mission.”

  “This mission?” Walker asked.

  “Uncovering these two,” David Walker said. “Stopping Zodiac.”

  Walker pictured it in his mind. Muertos handing over the thick wad of cash to those guys in the SUVs for transporting them in San Francisco. The private jet across the country must have cost twenty or so grand. Her escape from that military hospital in Germany, and finding Walker’s location by using a DoD computer before she’d bugged out. She hadn’t had access to a false ID from the State Department—his father had supplied it for her. He’d been trailing her all along. He’d have known they were at the Watergate, might have even followed them there.

  “Cut the bullshit, David,” Harvey said, bravado in his voice. “Come clean for your boy. You’ve been working with us all along.”

  “He’s lying, Jed,” David said to his son, and looked him in the eye. “I checked these two, separately, at the very start. There was nothing indicating it was them. But you found what I couldn’t, because they’ve got sloppy, and you forced them to make mistakes. And now we know they’re in it, driving Zodiac, together.”

  “What’s with the people-smuggling?” Walker asked his father. “These two working with Almasi to get illegals into the country. I’ve seen their background—they don’t need to do it for the money.”

  “You think it’s about money?” Harvey asked.

  “It’s about people,” David said. “They wanted people.”

  “Shut him up,” Lewis said to Harvey. “Make them stop.”

  Walker looked to Lewis and Harvey.

  “They facilitated the influx of people into the United States,” David said, “through official channels, gave them new identities—”

  “Harvey, would you please—”

  “What, Senator, you suddenly going weak at the knees?” David asked. “You’ve known what you were doing since the beginning. Attacking your own country. Killing your own people. Own it.”

  “He’s right,” Harvey said, looking from David to Lewis. He passed him back the Glock. “Own it.”

  •

  “We’ve got snipers across the road,” the leader of the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team said to Somerville. “We’ve got visuals but no clear shot unless one of them gets right up against the window. And now with two more potential friendlies in there, it’s a far more difficult proposition.”

  “So,” Somerville replied, “we have to rush the room?”

  “There’s one way in and out, the big wooden door,” he said, tapping a schematic laid out on the hood of their armored vehicle. “And we have three friendlies between us and two armed targets. I’d have two of my team do simultaneous breaches at the windows, here and here. We’ll attempt to take both targets down with less-lethal rounds, but there’s every possibility they’ll get their own shots off.”

  Somerville was uncertain. “There’s too much risk.”

  “We’d go in fast and heavy,” he replied. “Survival rate of your three is pretty good, compared to doing nothing.”

  “You really think that?”

  “From all you’ve told me, yes ma’am, that’s what I think.” There was finality to it. Confidence. The FBI’s HRT were among the best in the world for this type of thing.

  “If we wait?” Somerville asked. “Get a negotiator?”

  “Due respect, that’ll force their hand. We can wait and see if they’ll take your people out as hostages, and we can take them down on the street with less-lethal weapons. But I’d rather we did this while we have them trapped. Out in the open, with them being armed and pressured by my team to comply, who knows how they’ll react.”

  “Block Massachusetts Avenue,” Somerville said. “Let’s prepare for them getting out. And be ready to enter the room as well.”

  “Roger that,” he said, and relayed the instructions into his tactical radio.

  Somerville said, under her breath, “Come on, Walker . . .”

  71

  “The people they’re bringing in,” David said, “they’re not refugees.”

  “Can you shut him up?” Lewis said to Harvey. He looked to the gun in his hand, unwilling to use it.

  “They’re terrorists, Jed,” David said. “That’s what this Zodiac cell was. It’s got nothing to do with people-smuggling en masse, setting innocent parties up here for money. It’s about getting terrorists into the country. Almasi was the facilitator, and presumably the leader of this cutout Zodiac cell. They’ve been bringing in the worst of the worst that the Mid East has created since nine-eleven, and they’re setting them up here in the US as sleepers, to be activated at any time, given a certain command.”

  “Shut up, David,” Lewis said. “I’m warning you.”

  “You hid them in plain sight,” David Walker said, staring at the Senator, as though daring him to act. “In suburban America. Working regular American jobs, with social-security numbers and medical insurance, given middle-class houses and cars, all of it approved by you two grand patriots. Setting these sleepers up with fake identities, having them wait for the time to emerge and play their role in attacking the United States from within. How are you activating them, Senator? Hmm? How many did you get into the country?”

  Harvey and Lewis were silent.

  “Why would you do that?” Muertos asked them. “Why . . .”

  Lewis looked ill. Not at what was said, but because it was being said out loud, that it was out there. Harvey was grinning.

  “They’re doing it because they’re in the business of war,” Walker said. “They want the front line brought back here. They want to use it to elevate themselves to the highest office, to make their mark, to shape the future of the nation.” Walker took a step toward Harvey and said, “You want all that will come with having a war play out right here in the homeland.”

  “We’re making America great again,” Harvey said with a big grin. “Ain’t it grand.”

  “Too bad you won’t be around to see it,” Walker said.

  Harvey put the book to the barrel of the pistol—the book acting like an improvised silencer—and pointed it at Walker.

  “Harv,” Lewis said. He moved closer to Harvey. “Have some of your agents take these three someplace and make them disappear, yeah?”

  Harvey kept his weapon trained on Walker, and side-stepped to Lewis. They spoke in hushed tones that Walker could not make out.

  “Why not tell me about these two?” Walker said to his father.

  “I was nowhere near sure, Jed. Since the start I’ve gone over everyone connected—I couldn’t see what you found.” He looked to the floor, his voice quiet. “I’m sorry it’s led to this.”

  “You set me up for this. You knew I’d follow Zodiac to the end. What that would me
an.”

  “I knew you wouldn’t let it go. You can’t. Because I can’t.”

  “I can’t because you started it!”

  David nodded. “And all this time I hoped someone else would catch who was behind it.”

  “And here we are.”

  David looked up at his son. “Here we are.”

  Walker was silent. His father looked old. Like he’d aged twenty years over the past two years.

  “I know what you’ll do,” he said. “And what that will mean. Son, you’ve got your life ahead of you.” He paused, watching his son. “Don’t ruin it, not for them.”

  “What else can I do?”

  “Don’t. Let someone else handle it.”

  “What can they do?”

  “What can you do?”

  “I can end it. Right here, right now.” He gestured to Lewis and Harvey. “These guys are where Zodiac starts and ends.”

  “Oh, Jed . . .”

  Then, inside two seconds, three things happened.

  72

  David Walker was the first to move. Forward, and to the right, toward Walker. He was just lifting his leg to make the move when Walker saw it, and he started to move, toward Harvey. Walker wasn’t as worried about Lewis; the Senator wasn’t as familiar with a pistol, and while he currently had the Glock in his hand, his arms were hanging by his sides, not ready for action. But he knew that Harvey would react, fast.

  That was the first thing.

  The second thing was Harvey’s reaction. It took half a second. He was talking with Lewis but watching the three people across the room. His pistol was still trained on Walker, still snug up against the book. Harvey saw the first movement—David Walker—and he moved the pistol to a new target. Instinct. Muscle memory. Training. His reaction was to adapt to the unfolding situation, designate the new target and take action. Inside a second.

  The Colt 1911 was set up for four pounds of pressure on the trigger to fire. The .45 round would travel over 800 feet per second. The distance from Harvey’s pistol to David Walker was no more than twelve feet.

  Harvey’s finger applied pressure and the gun fired. The sound was a muffled boom. The book seemed to disintegrate—bits of paper debris filled the air. To Walker’s left, his father fell. He’d managed to clear the body of the fallen giant, Krycek, still unconscious and spread across the floor like a speed-bump in the room between the two parties. David Walker had leaped the giant with his second stride, then the Colt had gone off, and he was pushed backward by the force of the first round, then he started his fall to the floor. The first shot got him in the chest. He was still flying backward as the second shot hit him, in the arm.

  All the while, Walker was moving forward, toward the target, Harvey. Harvey started to turn his pistol back to the younger Walker.

  Then the third thing occurred.

  The windows behind and to Walker’s right exploded inward, and a figure burst through each. Clad head to toe in the dark green tactical operations gear of the FBI Hostage Rescue Team, each carried a suppressed Heckler & Koch sub-machinegun with laser sight, and each acquired their target as the first, most imminent threat emerged: Lewis, armed with the Glock, in the process of aiming it their way. Whether the Senator was planning to shoot anyone with the firearm would never be known, because his body was shredded with dozens of 9-millimeter rounds, and he was pressed against the far wall from the barrage of bullets, leaving a red mist in his wake.

  That was how the first two seconds played out.

  The next moments were scrappier and more drawn out. As Walker got to his target, the door to the room was blasted off its hinges and fell inward, plaster and wood flying as HRT members rushed the room.

  Walker hit Harvey low, hit him with everything he had. His left shoulder slammed into Harvey’s chest and his body ducked under Harvey’s arms, so the .45 aimed high when another round went off as they crashed to the floor between the Chesterfield sofas and the wall.

  Harvey’s reaction was to pull his arms down and squeeze at Walker, who was now on top of him. Walker heard shouts from the HRT members as they spilled into the room to subdue any further threats. He blocked out their shouts. Not intentionally; he started to black out from the pain exploding in his chest, his shattered ribs cutting into the internal organs they were designed to protect, sending all kinds of hideous feelings through the nerve clusters in his sternum and spine back up into his brain, his body telling him to stop, his mind telling him to stop, fighting some primeval instinct and desire telling him to beat his attacker.

  He hit Harvey hard with the only weapon he could bring to bear—his head. His forehead connected with Harvey’s nose and the quick snap smacked the back of Harvey’s head against the thick maple floorboards. He saw Harvey’s eyes roll back like he was a boxer who’d taken a heavy blow, but he was only dazed, not out of the fight. Harvey’s constricting grip around Walker’s body slackened, and Walker lifted his left arm across his body, clamping his hand around Harvey’s elbow and pressed his thumb and fingers into the joint. He felt muscle and fat and bones and tendons, and he kept squeezing until he felt things move in the arm, muscle and fat and bone and tendons shifting in ways that they weren’t supposed to, and the .45 went off again, and then Harvey dropped it to the maple floorboards, and his grip around Walker went limp and he shifted away from the fire of pain erupting in his arm.

  Walker slumped off Harvey, and sat up. He looked at Harvey lying there, uncertainty in his eyes. Fear. He didn’t know what to do. Maybe for the first time he could remember, he was on his own, and spooked, and unsure of his future. Once all the power and influence was stripped away, he was a man, as fragile as any other. His gaze went from Walker to Lewis, who was sat up against the wall behind Walker, lifeless, a smear of blood down the beige paintwork behind his body. Harvey closed his eyes as the FBI agents got to him, turning him roughly onto his face and placing flexicuffs on his wrists.

  Walker turned to see the life fading from his father.

  73

  “I hope you didn’t kill him,” David Walker said to his son.

  “I didn’t.” Walker sat next to his fallen father. He held his head up, and put pressure on the chest wound.

  “You need to find out . . . who, and where, all the sleepers are . . .”

  Walker knew then, for sure, that when it came to Zodiac, his father stood on the right side of history.

  “He’s alive,” Walker said. He shifted so that his father’s head was resting in his lap. Walker had shrugged off the offered help of the FBI team and crawled across the room, over the giant, to his father’s side. David’s chest wound was catastrophic, and he was close to bleeding out. Walker kept pressure on the gauze. The HRT medic had started an IV, but shook his head when Walker had searched for news. “You did it, Dad. I’d always questioned where you stood, but in the end, you did it.”

  “I never doubted you.”

  Walker smiled through tears. “I hated you for a while there.”

  “I know.”

  “For what you did to Ma, and me, and then this . . .”

  “I know.” David started to cough. At least one of his lungs was shredded and collapsed and filling with blood. “I’m sorry.”

  His father didn’t say anything else, but he stayed alive for another minute. They held each other’s hands in one big grip. His father’s hands, which had always seemed so impossibly large, looked smaller now. Walker knew that this was the end of so much of what had been his life, and as the life left his father’s eyes, Jed thought of Eve, and what he and his job had done to her, and he knew he needed to start a new chapter. It was life, not death, that was triumphant this day.

  EPILOGUE

  The Walker family ranch was south of Amarillo, Texas. Right in the panhandle. The sun was rising not setting. Walker was crouched down at the grave plot, where three generations on his father’s side were in the ground. And now both his parents. He’d put the urn of his father’s ashes in a deep hole in the ground and to
pped it off with shovelfuls of tightly packed desert dirt. The morning was crisp, his breath fogged. Fingers of light were reaching over the red cliffs of Palo Duro Canyon.

  The long squat adobe house, empty for years, was brought to life today. The lights were on inside, the yellow glow of progress. Eve was at the kitchen window, making coffee. Her movements and expression reminded him of memories of her spanning over half his lifetime. That was his future, right there. The vermilion sun glanced off roof tiles. Birdsong woke the day. Somewhere distant a lonely bobcat called in a kill.

  Walker kneeled down and finished scraping the barren desert earth over his father’s plot. There was no headstone. He saw the movement of a rattlesnake as it sought the first rays of sun, slithering out atop a small hoodoo and curling up in a bright nook. You know about Mojave rattlesnakes? his father had once said to him, as a boy, when his dog had been bitten and died graveyard-dead moments later. Mojave rattlesnakes have a neurotoxic poison, David had said. You need to respect them. Walker had wanted his father to find and kill the snake. We protect them, his father had said. We have come here into their world, they’re letting us share in it. We must respect that. He’d sat there, with his father, his dead dog in his lap, the two of them looking out over the vacant spaces of the desert canyons that looked the same today as they did that morning, thirty years before.

  The crunching of the gravel on the path roused him from his memories.

  “You think they’ll know they’re together down there?” Eve asked.

  “When you die,” Walker said, standing up, “I figure it’s the same as if everyone else has died too.”

  Eve stood next to Walker and handed him a steaming cup of coffee, black. He wrapped an arm around her and drew her in. They watched the rattler loosen its coil to capture more sun.

  “You really think it’s over?”

  “Zodiac is done.” Walker brushed the dirt off his hands. “Somerville called late last night. They found data on a private email server at the Senator’s house. Some obscure lines that meant nothing to anyone, but there was a pattern to it. It was my father’s work, from the Zodiac think tank, meant to be destroyed, but the Senator had kept a copy. It’s the smoking gun, and the blueprint to how Lewis and Harvey then planned Zodiac to unfold. So, yeah, it’s over. The FBI are conducting raids all over the country as we speak. Our friends around the world too.”