by Gary Ponzo
“What do we know, Dave?” Nick asked.
“Nothing yet.”
Nick looked at the elite group. Before he could ask the question, Matt beat him to the punch.
“What are we all doing here, Dave? I mean the last time we were all in the same room together . . .” he raised his eyebrows.
Tanner seemed to recognize the reference to a false intelligence report of a dirty bomb in Manhattan three years back. “I don’t know,” he said. “But Walt doesn’t call us all in without good cause.”
“The safe money is on Rashid,” Matt said. “What else could it be? I’m sure he hasn’t flipped, but I’ll bet we got something. Something that nets us Kharrazi, maybe?”
Tanner nodded vacantly, but if he knew something he wasn’t giving it away.
There was an edginess to the banter now in the bullpen as the Bureau’s finest minds spun their wheels in anticipation. A red ball meeting was urgent, so the hurry up and wait routine added to the anxiety.
Nick nodded toward the closed door at the end of the hallway. “Who’s he with?”
“No one,” Tanner said. “He’s on the phone. We’re waiting for him to call us in.”
From his chair, Ed Tolliver called out, “Hey, Matt, I hear that was the first time you were caught without your Glock since you were in the crib.”
This provoked a round of laughter that caused a few secretaries to look up and smile.
Matt gave a tight-lipped scowl and saluted Tolliver with his middle finger.
Another boisterous roar lit up the room.
“Knock it off,” a voice boomed from the end of the hallway. A broad-shouldered man with dark chocolate skin leaned out of his office with the door half-open.
“Bracco,” Walt Jackson said. “Get in here.”
Nick felt his stomach tighten as Jackson shut the door behind him. The big man disappeared and left an overt silence in his wake. Nick looked back at the team and saw something approaching compassion in their eyes. Matt seemed confused. He’d never been apart from his partner in a meeting before. Nick looked at Tanner and got an open-palmed shrug.
Finally, after a long moment, Matt said, “Better get in there and find out what’s going on.”
Nick moved toward Jackson’s office like he was walking to the gas chamber. It had to be Rashid, he thought. Maybe some attorney found a loophole in their arrest. Shit, they were being shot at like fish in a barrel. How do you squirm out of that? Never mind the other eighteen charges that were awaiting his apprehension.
Nick opened Jackson’s door and saw the immaculate desk he’d come to expect. What he didn’t expect was a chair in front of his desk. A lone chair that he’d never seen before. Not even for meetings about nuclear threats or assassination attempts. Jackson always preferred people use the sofa against the wall.
Jackson gestured toward the chair. “Sit.”
Walter Jackson was the Special Agent in Charge of the Baltimore field office. As SAC’s go, Jackson was regarded as a prince. He was a laconic man who asked only for competence and loyalty. In return he provided unending support and sanctuary from the brass at FBI headquarters just down the road in D.C. Baltimore was far enough away to stand on its own, yet close enough to draw comparisons. It was the main reason the Team was harbored there. Besides being Baltimore’s SAC, Jackson was also the Team leader and Nick was his point man.
Jackson sat behind his desk and leaned back to open a miniature refrigerator behind him. He pulled out a bottled water and tossed it to Nick.
Nick studied Jackson’s solemn expression as he took his seat and twisted open the water. “What’s going on, Walt?”
Jackson clicked his laser mouse and examined the flat screen computer monitor to his left. He tapped a couple of keys on his keypad and swiveled the screen around so Nick could see its content. At first the image was fuzzy, but Nick was familiar with the program. As the solid completion bar at the bottom of the screen moved to the right, the clarity sharpened. By the time it reached seventy per cent Nick could tell that the image came from a surveillance camera. Two men sat side-by-side at a green-felt table. At eighty per cent he knew it was a black jack table. When it was complete, Nick felt the room get warm. The man on the left side of the screen was his brother. The man on the right he couldn’t identify.
“Phil,” Nick muttered.
Jackson nodded. “Yes.”
Nick pointed to the man next to him. “Who . . .”
“Don’t recognize him yet?”
Nick shook his head.
“Keep watching.”
Nick studied the man’s face. He wore a beard, sunglasses and a wide brim hat you might see on a tourist, yet there was something familiar about his mannerisms. The way he carried himself, full of confidence and bravado.
Jackson punched a couple of keys on his keyboard and the figures came to life.
“This is seven hours ago,” Jackson said. “About two-thirty in the morning, Vegas time. It’s a surveillance recording from the Rio. I understand Phil frequents the place quite a bit.”
Nick’s eyes narrowed as he struggled to make the man next to his brother. There was no audio, but it was obvious the two men were having fun. Phil’s normally bloodshot eyes were in full bloom. The man elbowed his brother as if they were old buddies while Phil tossed back the last of his rum and coke with a flip of his wrist. The drink was so fresh it still had a full complement of ice cubes. It was his brother all right, Nick thought. He’d never seen Phil allow a drink to linger.
Now, Phil raised his hand to a cocktail waitress. The tourist pulled Phil’s arm down and raised his own hand, waving a wad of folded bills. Phil made a half-hearted attempt to decline the offer, but the tourist seemed determined to buy Phil a drink. By the way Phil swayed, it wasn’t the first drink he’d accepted.
Nick breathed a sigh of relief. Phil must have gotten swindled by a pro and Walt was offering to keep it confidential. Let the FBI handle it in house. It was something Walt would do. It made sense now why Nick was called in alone.
Except he was wrong. Dead wrong.
“There,” Jackson said, stopping the playback. In the frozen image the tourist had lowered his sunglasses and seemed to be looking directly at the camera. His expression transformed into a sinister glare. His eyes were like black holes and his smile was pure acid.
Nick’s tongue instantly dried up.
“Recognize him now?” Jackson said.
Water spewed from Nick’s plastic bottle as he clenched his fists. Sitting next to his brother was the face of death. Kemel Kharrazi. Nick stared so intently at the image that he tried to will himself into the scene, or better yet, suck Kharrazi out of the image and pummel him from head to toe.
“Nick, what exactly did Rashid say to you during the arrest?”
Nick noticed that Phil was wearing his lucky shirt. The Preakness Stakes shirt that he wore the day he hit the pick-six for fifty thousand. Nick never had the heart to remind him that he wore the same damn shirt every day for the next three months until he relinquished every last penny back to Pimlico.
Nick looked at up at Jackson and said, “He’s got four kids.”
Jackson nodded. “I know.”
The silence was filled with a heavy sigh from Jackson and the crumpling and uncrumpling of Nick’s water bottle.
“Rashid asked me if I knew who would come after me,” Nick finally answered.
“I see.”
Nick stared at the image. It was the most incongruous pairing he’d ever seen. Like Hitler next to a ballerina.
Nick tried to remove emotion from the equation and mine the analytical side of his brain. He sensed Jackson watching him and he was careful not to overreact. He didn’t want to give Jackson an excuse to keep him off the case. “Tell me about it, Walt. What does he want?”
“He wants to trade your brother for Rashid.”
Nick kept his voice even. “We’re going to trade an alcoholic gambler for a known assassin? That’s the deal?”
“All right,” Nick said. “Exactly how many nanoseconds did you wait before you said no?”
Jackson frowned. “He’s still your brother, Nick.”
“He’s dead already and you know it.”
Jackson squeezed the back of his neck like he was juicing a grapefruit. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. We just received the fax an hour ago. I’m still trying to assemble a strategy.”
Nick placed the deformed, half-empty water bottle on the corner of Jackson’s desk, leaned forward, and stared hard at his boss. “Now tell me what’s really going on here, Walt.”
Jackson stood and began a slow pace. He carried his large frame smoothly, like a cougar on the prowl. Back and forth he strode. Nick’s eyes followed him like match point at Wimbledon.
Jackson flipped off the overhead lights and pulled a remote control device from his pants pocket. When he clicked a button on the remote, an illuminated image was projected onto the white wall behind his desk. The faces of more than twenty Kurdish terrorists came to life. Some were grainy surveillance shots, while others were clear mug shots. Although their names were unknown to the American public, they were as familiar to Nick as Babe Ruth was to a Yankees fan. They belonged to a militant faction of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party known as the Kurdish Security Force. The name was a direct response to the Turkish Security Force, which had been tormenting the Kurds for more than two decades. They were better known as Kharrazi’s death squad. When President Merrick ordered troops to the area, his intention was to prevent Kharrazi and the KSF from dividing Turkey along ethnic lines.
Jackson passed a laser pointer over the medley of terrorists. “Langley has reported these soldiers missing from Kurdistan. More importantly, three of them have been sighted illegally entering the country. One was detained in a Miami airport. One spotted departing a cruise ship in San Diego. Plus, we already know about Rashid and Kharrazi. I suspect the cockroach theory might be applicable here. For every one we know about there are probably twenty more that have evaded our intelligence.”
Jackson clicked off the projector and turned on the lights. He sat down and kept a careful eye on Nick.
“I’m okay,” Nick said, clenching every muscle that was undetectable. “I need to know everything. Don’t skip a comma.”
Jackson hesitated, then lowered tired eyes. “The CIA had an agent infiltrate the KSF in Kurdistan a couple of months back. Ten days ago he arrived in Toronto with two groups of soldiers, including Kharrazi. He was with the lead group as they were about to enter the United States on horseback. Somewhere in the Canadian Rockies. The agent was with them up until 2 AM Tuesday morning. At that time they were five miles from the border. That’s when Langley lost communications. Kharrazi discovered the plant.”
“How can you be sure?”
“Because Thursday morning the agent’s family received a package. The agent’s six-year-old daughter anxiously opened the box she thought was a present from her daddy in Turkey.”
Nick held up his hand to prevent Jackson from finishing the story. He already knew the ending.
Jackson nodded. “That’s right. The agent’s severed head stared back at his little girl.”
Nick covered his face with his hands and took deep breaths. He imagined the look on his niece’s face as his brother’s head was delivered to their home.
“I’ve been going to too many funerals, Walt.”
“Let’s not bury Phil just yet. There’s still reason for hope.”
Nick looked up to catch Jackson’s expression. It was sincere, without pity.
“Why?”
“Because,” Jackson said, “we’ve got explicit directions. There are timetables to be met and corroborating evidence of his health included in the demands. Kharrazi wouldn’t throw those in if he were going to bluff us into believing Phil’s alive.”
“Okay,” Nick said. “Now tell me why we’re just hearing about this plant. Kemel Kharrazi is in Canada with a couple of dozen KSF soldiers—the best trained infantry in the world, and Langley waits until they’ve breached our border before we’re notified?”
Jackson leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs. “That’s the big question isn’t it? Apparently, Langley felt they deserved an opportunity to bag Kharrazi as he crossed over the border. It’s a gigantic political mess that I’m not willing to navigate right now. Suffice it to say, they gambled and lost. They knew where he was with five miles to go, but Kharrazi is shrewd. He must have taken a more circuitous route. They simply waited too long. Morris admitted as much to me just before you came in. That’s who I was on the phone with.”
“You’re kidding. That asshole actually admitted he was wrong about something?”
Jackson grinned. “You know, I thought the same thing myself.” Then the smile faded and his eyes locked on Nick. “What do you want to do about Phil?”
Nick took a breath and let it out slowly. “Where are they?”
“We don’t know for sure. Surveillance shows them leaving by way of a limousine. Phil seemed to be going under his own will. I’m sure Kharrazi knew just what to offer him. We’ve leaned on every limo company in the city and came up empty.”
“Kharrazi is worth what? Ten billion? He’s got plenty of hush money to spread around.”
Jackson nodded. “Still, we have every runway, train station and interstate covered. The analysts say they’re still in Vegas somewhere.”
“What’s our timetable?”
“Nine AM Eastern time. Rashid needs to be completely free. No tails. No bugs.”
Nick didn’t need to ask what happened if Rashid wasn’t out. He lowered his head and massaged his temple with his fingertips. It seemed like he’d been chasing terrorists forever. Now it felt different. It wasn’t a job anymore. It was personal.
“You still haven’t answered my question,” Jackson said. “What do you want to do about Phil?”
Nick looked up. “What about regulations?”
Jackson grimaced. “I’m going to sit here and tell you the details of Phil’s capture, then preclude you from getting involved because of regulations?” He leaned back and folded his arms across his large chest. “I can take the heat. It’s what I do. But I need to know if you’re prepared to deal with what you might find.”
Nick understood. Identifying Phil’s body would not be easy. He nodded. “I have to try and get him back, Walt.”
Jackson reached into a desk drawer and came out with a pair of airline tickets. He slid them across the desk. “The flight leaves at seven. Take Matt with you. I have every available agent in Nevada waiting for you. Meanwhile the rest of the Team will stay here and browbeat every informant we have. Something’s happening out there. Something bigger than Phil and Rashid.”
Nick reached for the tickets and stood to leave.
“Keep in mind,” Jackson said. “There’s a possibility that this is a—”
“Trap?” Nick said. “Yes, I know. Kharrazi’s too sharp to think we’ll release Rashid. He wants me. That’s what the glare into the camera was all about. Phil is just bait. Kharrazi intends to honor Rashid’s threat.”
A modest grin tightened the corner of Jackson’s mouth. He had the satisfied look of a teacher appraising his star pupil.
Nick put the tickets in his jacket pocket and turned toward the door.
“One other thing,” Jackson said behind him.
Nick turned.
Jackson’s grin mutated into something wicked. “Tell Matt, if he gets a clear shot at Kharrazi . . . make it a head shot.”
Nick could already see the smile on Matt’s face, and he hadn’t even left the room.
Chapter 5
In the heavily-wooded suburb of Hampden, Maryland, Nick opened the front door of his two story house expecting to see his wife’s easy smile. Julie had a knack for seeming excited to see him even when he was precisely on schedule. That sur
prised expression she first showed off when he knelt down to propose and continued to shine at him every time he came home. As if the mere act of finding his way back home was an accomplishment to admire. How he loved that expression. If only he could find a way to verbalize those thoughts, those emotions that remained hidden deep inside. She had to know, yet the words somehow escaped him.
Nick circled back through the kitchen, then the den. “Honey,” he called.
When he returned to the front foyer, a sound came from upstairs. He leaned over the banister and heard someone sobbing. Nick ran up the stairs two at a time. As he moved toward the master bedroom, he slid the gun from his holster. He could hear Julie whimpering now. His heart jumped as a loose thought ran through his mind. Kemel Kharrazi.
With his gun drawn, he crept up to the doorway of his bedroom and peeked inside. His heart sank. Julie sat on the floor with her back against the side of the bed. Her knees were pulled up into her chest while she wiped away tears with an overused ball of tissue. Without looking up she said, “I just got off the phone with Lynn.”
Nick holstered his gun and sighed. She had just spoken with his brother’s wife. She knew about Phil.
He watched her sniffle with bloodshot eyes and streaks of moisture blotching her face. Her short brown hair was twisted into sharp angles. Yet as distraught as she appeared, all he could think about was how striking she was. Even at her very worst, in her most awkward moment, he adored her. He couldn’t imagine anyone or anything more beautiful. He wanted to tell her right there, right then. But he didn’t.
He sat next to her and gathered her into his arms. He sat quietly while Julie blurted out her sorrowful thoughts in small dosages. “Poor Lynn,” she sobbed. “The kids don’t know yet.” More sobs. “They think he’s just away on business.” Her firm body wilted in his arms.
“It’s okay,” he whispered.
“I’m so sorry, Nick.” She looked up at him with big Bambi eyes. “He’s dead, isn’t he?”
Nick pulled her closer and she dug her wet face into his chest. He caressed her cheek with his fingertips. It was strange to see her so distressed, she had such a strong personality and so few low points.