Blue Warrior

by Mike Maden

  “Interesting paint jobs,” Pearce said.

  “They paint them bright orange so that when they crash we can find the bodies more easily and send them back home.” She flashed a smile. Soldiers weren’t the only people with guts.

  A big man in stained coveralls and a crew cut ambled heavily out of the open hangar door, like a bear walking on two legs. He stuffed an oily rag into a rear pocket as he approached the plane.

  Judy and Pearce stepped out of the cargo door, stretching out their tired muscles.

  “Judy!” The big man dashed over, surprisingly fast for his size. They hugged. Judy nearly disappeared in his massive embrace.

  “So good to see you, Whit.”

  “You, too, sister. Who’s this?” Whit’s green eyes beamed through a pair of rimless glasses. His hair was so blond it was nearly white, and the bristles in the crew cut were as thick and stiff as a shoe brush.

  “Whit, this is Troy Pearce. Troy, this is the Reverend Whit Bissell. He runs the AMF division in central and west Africa.”

  Whit thrust out a meaty paw. “Great to meet you, Mr. Pearce. And call me Whit.”

  Troy took it. The man’s hand was a vise. “Name’s Troy. Mr. Pearce was my father.”

  “I just put on a pot of coffee back at the house. Should be ready in a jiff. You two want to clean up while we wait?”

  “We need to fuel up and get going, Padre. We have an emergency.”

  “What kind of emergency?”

  “A friend in trouble. We need to go get him,” Judy said.

  “What kind of trouble?” Whit asked. He frowned with pastoral concern.

  “Not the kind of trouble you can help with,” Troy said. “Unless you’re handy with a—”

  “We can use your prayers, Whit, that’s for sure,” Judy interrupted, throwing Pearce a nasty glance. “And a refuel.”

  “I can pray, but I’m not sure how much fuel I can spare. How far are you going?”

  “Heading up north. Cameroon,” Judy said, lying by omission. “We’re bone-dry and we need a full tank to get there.”

  “How much is a full tank?”

  “Five hundred and twenty-eight gallons,” Judy said. “And 80/87 avgas is fine. We don’t need the fancy stuff.”

  “Sorry, but I can’t spare it.”

  Pearce pointed at an old GMC fuel truck parked a hundred yards away on the far side of the airstrip. “Is that thing full?”

  “Half.”

  “That must be, what, fifteen-hundred-, two-thousand-gallon capacity?”

  “Two thousand.”

  “So we take five, we leave you five. What’s the problem?” Pearce asked.

  “We’re glad to pay for it,” Judy said.

  “It’s not that, though we could surely use the donation. The problem is, we need the gas. We do a lot of medical missions and emergency transport. Just got back from one yesterday, as a matter of fact. And I’m the fueling hub for two other agencies. Avgas is hard to come by in this part of the world. When the refinery has it, I have to make a six-hundred-mile round-trip to go get it, and they say it will be another four to six months before I can restock. I’m sorry, but I can’t do it.”

  “Our friend is in trouble, Whit. We really need that fuel.” Judy laid a hand on his forearm.

  Whit shrugged. “I understand, but I’m sorry.”

  “I think Jesus wants us to have that gas, Padre.”

  The missionary’s broad back stiffened. “I don’t take kindly to blasphemy, Mr. Pearce.”

  “I’m not blaspheming. I’m quoting scripture.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Sermon on the Mount. ‘Give to every man that asketh of thee; and of him that taketh away thy goods ask them not again.’ So I’m just askin’—can we please have that fuel?”

  “No. I’m sorry. There are too many other lives at stake.”

  “Our friend’s life is at stake, too,” Judy said.

  “Then I’ll pray for him.”

  Pearce stepped closer. “There’s another verse, Padre. Something like, if a man strikes your face—”

  “Troy.” Judy’s eyes flared.

  Whit didn’t back down. “You’d rob a mission? We’re doing the Lord’s work here.”

  “Didn’t David eat the Bread of the Presence from the tabernacle?”

  “The Devil can cite chapter and verse, too.”

  “Then pray for us sinners, Padre, but only after you help me get that damn fuel loaded.”

  Whit tugged on his ear, then laughed. “You might be a horse’s ass, Mr. Pearce, but somebody’s darn blessed to have you as a friend.”

  13

  Zhao residence

  Bamako, Mali

  6 May

  The Malian boxer was ten centimeters taller and at least ten kilos heavier than Zhao, but it was his face and not Zhao’s that was drenched in sweat and bleeding heavily over the left eye.

  Both men were shirtless and ripped. The black man kept his gloved hands up by his face, one hand carefully guarding the eye now swelling shut. He kept driving cautiously toward Zhao, who was springing on the balls of his feet, dancing half circles around the squeaking parquet dance floor, first left, then right, then back again, a smile plastered on his handsome face, his bare hands loose and bouncing in front of his broad chest.

  Guo stood at parade rest. The boxing ring was in Zhao’s colonial mansion. Previously it was a ballroom with a giant crystal-and-gold chandelier dangling overhead. Guo disapproved of the entire house and its furnishings—a garish historical anachronism. Everything about the house screamed excess and self-indulgence. Guo preferred the sleek linearity of his modern high-rise apartment in Beijing, or the spartan efficiency of a military barracks, to this European monstrosity.

  It was an honor for Zhao to personally request Guo’s services. Zhao was the kind of man the Party groomed for leadership. If Zhao’s star continued to rise, he would inevitably reach the Standing Committee, perhaps even the presidency. Weng emphasized the importance of this mission to Zhao’s career, which meant, of course, his own. Their fates were now intertwined. The two men were practically mirror images of each other: ambitious, intelligent, powerfully built, and ruthless. They were even the same height. The primary difference was that Zhao fought in boardrooms, Guo on battlefields. Politics versus blood. In Chinese history, the two were often commingled.

  “You read the files I sent you, Guo?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The Malian threw a lightning left jab into the space where Zhao’s head had been a nanosecond earlier. Threw a second. Missed again. Zhao laughed.

  “What did you learn?”

  “Mossa Ag Alla is a dangerous opponent, that he is to be killed upon contact, and that I am to conduct operations without revealing my identity or location while in country.”

  Zhao danced right, then left. “Correct on all counts. And secrecy is vital. The Mali government would be outraged if they knew you and your team were here.”

  The chiseled Malian charged again, throwing a vicious right cross, lowering his left hand just a few centimeters.

  Zhao saw the punch coming in the man’s eyes even before he threw it. As the African swung his enormous right fist, Zhao spun on the ball of his right foot and launched a devastating roundhouse kick. His heel crashed into the boxer’s left temple, just behind the swollen left eye. The African boxer grunted as his brain short-circuited. His upper body still twisted on a right axis, following the centripetal weight of the failed right cross, and the strike from Zhao’s heel into his skull accelerated the spin. The big Malian pirouetted on his right leg, then tumbled to the floor like a bag of wet meat slapping wood. He didn’t move.

  Zhao sauntered over to a gilded table and pulled a bottle of water from a champagne bucket brimming with ice. He tossed it over his shoulder at Guo, who caught i
t in one hand. Zhao cracked one open for himself, pointed it at Guo. “Ganbei.”

  “Ganbei!”

  Mali was hot. Guo was glad for the cold water. He drained it.

  But Zhao sipped his water, Guo noticed. The man also wasn’t breathing hard, and didn’t seem to be sweating much, if at all.

  “So tell me, Guo,” Zhao said, smiling. He nodded at the unconscious African. “What should we do about him?”

  “What do you mean, sir?”

  “You said that you were to conduct your mission without revealing your identity or location while you were here. And yet you revealed both in front of this man.”

  “I assumed he was in your employ, sir. Otherwise, you would not have summoned me in his presence nor inquired about my mission.”

  “Not an unreasonable assumption. He does work for me, but he is an African. Where do you think his loyalties are?” Zhao knelt down next to the boxer, felt for his pulse.

  Guo flushed with humiliation. It had been a test, and he’d failed. He drew his combat knife. “I’ll take care of him now.”

  “No need. I already solved your problem.” Zhao stood, held out his hand for Guo’s knife.

  Guo turned the blade in his hand and extended the handle to Zhao. His mission was over before it began.

  “I was told you were the best,” Zhao said. He drained the last of the water and let the bottle tumble to the floor.

  “I am the best.”

  “That’s disappointing.” He lifted the heavy combat knife in his hand. “Nice weight. Well balanced. Is it a good thrower?”

  “Yes, sir. It is.”

  Zhao glared into Guo’s emotionless eyes. Raised the razor-sharp blade behind his ear to throw it.

  Guo didn’t flinch. How one died mattered even more than how one lived.

  The blade launched from Zhao’s hand. It thudded heavily between the shoulder blades of a naked young French woman combing her long red hair. The carbon steel blade buried itself into the plaster wall behind the old oil painting.

  “Never really cared for Degas,” Zhao said. “You?”

  “I don’t have an opinion, sir.”

  “Be sure to keep your blade sharp. And don’t make me clean up your mess again.”

  “No, sir.”

  Zhao picked up his shirt and pulled it on. “My bartender makes a fantastic Rusty Nail. We’ll drink a few and talk some more about your mission. I especially want to hear more about this Pearce fellow you are supposed to capture, if you have the time.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Of course Guo had the time. He had all the time in the world now.

  CIOS Corporate Offices

  Rockville, Maryland

  CIOS wasn’t unique. American defense and intelligence agencies like the NSA contracted with thousands of private, nongovernmental companies to handle their enormous workloads. CIOS was just one of hundreds of contractors like Booz Allen Hamilton, the infamous former employer of NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden.

  As an authorized NSA contractor, Jasmine Bath had either legal access to NSA resources or the knowledge to gain access to those resources, and the ability to cover her tracks while doing so in either case. She had been subjected to the pervasive scrutiny of security-clearing authorities, not only before she was initially hired by the NSA, but also during and after her government employment, then reexamined again when she applied for her contractor authorization. Those investigations themselves were conducted by a private contractor, National Investigative Services. Bath easily penetrated the NIS mainframe and wrote her own glowing clearances.

  She was also well aware that her bank accounts, e-mails, and all other data footprints were subject to constant, randomized checks to ensure her continued loyalty and fidelity. But since the day she entered Berkeley, Jasmine had been prescient enough to sanitize her own records and to create the necessary fictions to maintain the illusion of purity.

  As far as she was concerned, it didn’t matter that her job was to violate the privacy of other people in the name of national security. It was no one’s damn business but her own to know whom she slept with, which nineteenth-century German transcendentalists she read on her Kindle, or how often she ordered Kao Pad Poo at the Smiling Panda.

  It also didn’t bother her one whit to dig wherever she was told to dig, especially by The Angel. What did it matter to her that she generated lists for him of Dark Web porn downloads, offshore painkiller prescriptions, or secret organ-donor purchases of certain committee chairmen, Treasury Department undersecretaries, and Senate staffers? Politics was a game of sharp elbows and vicious cross-checks. Bath wasn’t playing the game. She wasn’t even keeping score. She was just supplying the sticks and blades for a hefty fee.

  That morning she had received a new research request from The Angel. “Lane, David M.” She knew the name. Had watched his pathetic announcement a few days earlier. The congressman seemed earnest and sincere in his speech, but those qualities in politics were about as useful as a floppy drive on a MacBook Air, so she dismissed him out of hand as a loser.

  So why the research query from The Angel?

  Hers not to reason why, only to cash the checks. She ran her searches, a digital colonoscopy. But Lane came up clean.

  As in, nothing. As in, not doctored or laundered or sanitized, or even a fictional legend concocted for some CIA spook needing a cover. Nope. Nothing.

  “You’re sure?”

  “Positive.”

  “Then you need to create some catastrophic filth. Put it out there in a credible way, the way you do better than anybody else.”

  “No problemo.”

  “Get started on that right away, but don’t let it out. Yet.”

  “You got it.”

  “I’ll be in touch.”

  Lane, David M. Sincere, earnest . . . lame.

  Like Justice Tanner. Tanner killed himself, sure. Jasmine looted the coroner’s hard drive. Saw the crime-scene photos. A bloody mess. Jasmine hated that. But it wasn’t her fault. She didn’t put the gun in his mouth, did she? Or pull the trigger? No. But maybe she supplied the bullets, metaphorically speaking.

  Screw the metaphors.

  Screw Tanner. And David Lane.

  Not her problem.

  Her problem was Margaret Myers. The former president was a software engineer in her own right and owned her own software company. The truth was, the two of them had a lot in common. In another reality, or a J. J. Abrams parallel universe, the two of them could’ve been friends.

  But Myers wasn’t her friend. Myers had been sniffing around the Tanner suicide for weeks. The initial queries had been clumsy, almost like a drunk walking into a plate-glass door he had trouble seeing. But Myers came back, slowly, cautiously, and from new directions, using bots, mostly, tapping into a wide variety of public databases, then breaking through passworded accounts and, finally, private nets, all unaware of Jasmine’s presence monitoring her searches. Or, at least, so Jasmine hoped. What was clear to Jasmine, however, was that Myers was assembling the right data set. But just to be sure, Jasmine broke into Myers’s toy box and took a look around. Then there was no question.

  Myers knew, or at least was on the verge of knowing.

  Jasmine informed The Angel. Now Myers was his problem.

  “Are you sure?” he asked.

  “The only way to be metaphysically sure is when the feds come rolling up to your driveway in a fleet of those big black Suburbans.”

  “Can’t you steal her database? Drop a virus into the network?”

  “If she has any brains—and she does, believe me—she’s got hard copies of everything, or cloud backup, or both. But even if she didn’t, once I broke in there and stole everything, she’d know that we know, so you’d alert her and she might be forced to act or go deeper. I think it makes more sense for me to sit tight and watch what
she does. If she alerts the black-Suburban boys I can let you know, but there are a whole lot of intermediary steps she’ll be taking before she gets to that point, and right now I’m completely invisible to her.”

  “Sounds like a plan, so long as you’re sure you’re invisible to her.”

  “Guaranteed,” Jasmine wrote. “Trust me.”

  14

  Myers residence

  Denver, Colorado

  6 May

  Vin Tanner was the first U.S. Supreme Court Justice to commit suicide while in office. That’s how he would always be remembered in the history books. Myers chose to remember him only as her friend.

  She’d known Tanner for twenty years before she nominated him to the Supreme Court. Knew his wife and kids well. Their two skiing families vacationed together in Vail several times. Justice Tanner sent her a handwritten note when her son had been killed, and enclosed an old Polaroid of their two young boys in soccer jerseys, skinny arms draped over each other’s shoulders, gap-toothed smiles and sweaty foreheads, best friends forever.

  But Myers didn’t nominate Tanner because they were friends. He was a brilliant jurist, but more important, a thoughtful and prudent political theorist. Small government, small businesses, and small farms were his Jeffersonian mantra. Her opponents on the Senate Judiciary Committee hung the libertarian label on him at the televised hearing, thinking that the old canards about legalized prostitution and disbanding the FDA would scuttle his chances, but his effortless, irrefutable defense of limited constitutional government silenced his critics. His confirmation sailed through with only two dissenting votes.

  Myers was certain at the time that Tanner’s appointment would be one of the highlights of her presidency. She hoped it would be the beginning of the end of the “tyranny of black robes.” She believed Tanner would cast a number of crucial swing votes that would finally begin to push back the overwhelming encroachments of federal legislation and administrative decrees that now impinged upon nearly every facet of American life. But to her chagrin, he cast the deciding vote in favor of upholding sweeping new regulations promulgated by Senator Fiero’s finance committee, regulations that would only serve to further empower the largest banks and enlarge yet again the role and opacity of the Federal Reserve.