Recon

by David McCaleb

  Usually rough play meant Lori’s clothes were off and the bedroom door was locked, Red thought. Somehow this wasn’t nearly as satisfying.

  Dawn had to be less than an hour away, since in a dim golden glow he could make out the smile on Penny’s face as she leaned on her mother again.

  Red tried to roll. “My ass is on fire.”

  Lori hopped off. “Shit. I mean, sorry. You need me to dress it? I’ve got—”

  “No! It’s just fine,” he snapped, surprised at the new, sincere tone in her voice. “I’m a slow mover, but still faster than Penny. If you can carry her a while, we’ll make good time. Could be there by noon, latest. And silence those keys in your pocket. I heard them rubbing together.”

  She frowned. “We shouldn’t move during the day.”

  Right. Standard escape and evasion. Move when least likely to be observed. “But there’s time to consider—or the lack of it, in this case. Every hour we aren’t captured near Pikes Peak, the enemy’s field of search will widen. Once they figured we haven’t headed for the city, their next logical assumption would be Cheyenne Mountain, just as you reasoned.” If they didn’t move fast enough, it would be easy for their pursuers to set an ambush along the way. That was what Red would do, at least, if he were working for the other side.

  “Plus, we had a Jamaican operator spot us in the dark. He had to have night optics to do it. Any additional risk of moving during daylight is negated by getting out of the woods faster. The sooner we’re inside the air base’s fence, the better for all of us.”

  “Is he the one that shot you?” Lori asked.

  Red exchanged a knowing glance with Penny. “No. I’ll tell you about it later. After a couple glasses of cabernet.” He rolled over and pulled his good leg beneath him, then stood like performing a one-legged burpee. The limb jiggled with fatigue. “Just wish I knew who we were up against,” he added as he limped to the edge of the shadow cast by the branches, raising both forearms to shield his face from the needles’ scratch.

  A heavy breath from Lori behind him, almost a sigh. “I may have an idea.”

  Chapter 20

  Truth

  “You what?” Red spun to face Lori’s dark outline. She gripped Penny’s legs, holding her piggyback, blanketed by the huge tree’s shadow.

  She let go, and Penny slid down her back. “Mossad. I think they’re the ones on our trail.”

  Red reached overhead and clutched a prickly pine branch. “On our trail?”

  She drew a deep breath. “OK. On my trail.”

  Thoughts fired as he tried to comprehend the magnitude of this cloud. “As in, all of Mossad, or one rogue agent?”

  “I don’t know. Both are possibilities.”

  This was very bad news. One didn’t clean up a problem with the Israeli Secret Service by knocking off a few of their operatives, as Red had recently. They tended to frown upon the practice. “Why would Mossad be after you? Your guys help them, cooperate on financial intelligence. Your accounting geeks give numbers to their money grubbers, and they provide the inside scoop on stuff like that national bank in China…and other crap.” He waved his hand in a rolling motion. “Why would they be trying to scratch you out?”

  Lori glanced at Penny, now sitting back on the ground, head hung as if falling back asleep and poking at the dirt with a twig. Lori stepped close to him. “We do that. But more.”

  A moment of silence passed and, once again, a breeze brought the lilac scent of Lori’s shampoo. He resisted an urge to sweep dangling bangs from covering her eyes. Maybe she was hoping he’d fill the quiet by moving to a different subject.

  He didn’t bite.

  Eventually, she gave an annoyed huff. “I’ll explain later. For now, understand these guys may be Mossad operatives. But more likely, a skilled outsourced team. Assume we’re up against the best. Well equipped. Throw in a sniper for good measure.”

  He’d felt better when she was silent. Sweat was burning the bullet hole in his glute. “Sometimes you’re not much fun.”

  “Be serious.”

  “I am. Hard to imagine this could get worse, yet you’re telling me it just did. How’d you earn the wrath of Mossad? Misplaced decimal point? Couldn’t you’ve picked on Chechnya instead?”

  “It’s not important now. I just wanted to warn you before we head out, about what we may be up against.”

  “I’ve got a hole in my ass cheek screaming like a hot poker that says it is important. And what if it was Penny they’d hit? What if we’d had the boys with us? I’ve been too patient, too long. Tell me the whole story. Now.”

  She glanced back at their daughter, who was lying on her back on the ground now. Probably about to fall back asleep. Gripping Red’s arm, Lori pushed the two a few steps farther away. Leaning her head to one side, she said, “I’m a mole. But not the kind you might think of.”

  He closed his eyes and rubbed swollen lids. “So, not the traitorous, deserves-a-firing-squad, on-the-run-from-CIA kind of mole?”

  She shoved his chest, hard. “You asked, so hear me out. US policy on sharing financial intelligence with Israel is too strict, most everyone in the field agrees. On both sides. I provide fintel to them in an unofficial capacity. Info that’s in US interests for them to have. It’s not officially CIA sanctioned, but it’s been going on for decades. We call it a back door, one that’s good to keep open in case the front one gets blocked. And I’m the gatekeeper.”

  “And this back door, I’m assuming it’s not an entrance?” He rotated his wrist as if turning a key. “The kind with a brass knob? One I can breach with explosives?”

  “Secured communication system, like email.”

  “And how does all this lead to a two-hundred-fifty-pound Jamaican manhandling Penny and threatening to blow off her feet?” Even in the dim light, Red could see the whites of Lori’s eyes grow wider. “Yeah, so how ’bout I tell you that story after you explain what you did to piss off Israel.”

  “I didn’t piss them off!”

  Hmm. Defensive. And louder than he’d like.

  “Every agency has its problems,” she added. “Mossad has theirs. I provide financial intel for counterterrorism: hard-to-track bank account info, numbers, transaction amounts, dates. They asked me to verify some accounts from a report passed to them. I confirmed, providing the next few layers of detail at the same time, though they hadn’t asked for it. Why? Because the request had seemed urgent, and it came when Al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups were rattling sabers. I gave a year’s transaction amounts, sources, and destinations. The account was from Belize. None of the names or addresses ever prove legit, so that’s not important. But whoever the account belonged to, I stumbled into a hornets’ nest. Several inquiries followed, then stopped. And the back door closed. Locked tight.”

  “Yeah. Well, I still don’t see the threat.”

  A snort from Penny and both turned to her. Her chest lifted and fell. Must’ve been a snore.

  Lori continued. “A month later, I get a ping from my contact at Mossad.” She shifted her weight to one leg and back again, as if stalling to choose her words carefully. “We had a routine. Routine is trust. Trust is everything. He’d broken routine with silence for three weeks, then just popped back onto the grid all of a sudden.”

  “And? Get to the point.”

  “It was a warning, in brief. Disappear. The door closed again. From then on, all communications bounced back.”

  “So maybe you misunderstood. Maybe your contact was the one who disappeared.”

  A long wisp of hair blew across her lips as she shook her head. “Too coincidental. It happened right before everything went to hell, when the wet team hit our house, and I was dragged off to Iran.”

  Red’s stomach cramped at the memory of waking in their home’s hallway, head bloodied, Lori gone. “But, we’ve still got the guys responsible in custody
. And that op last winter to North Korea, it was supposed to fix this.”

  “It tied up some loose ends, but didn’t eliminate the problem.”

  Red pursed his lips and grunted. This was why he could never be a spook. Just give him a weapon, an objective, and get the hell out of the way. “Who do we need to take out to get these guys off our backs?”

  “That’s why I’ve never brought this up. I can’t wave my hand in the air and yell for help from the CIA, or else when the backdoor information sharing comes to out, they’ll all turn tail, deny any knowledge of it, and I’ll be stuck looking like a real mole. If I stay quiet, Mossad’s still chasing my ass. You see, there are some things an op can’t remedy.”

  Bullshit. He spat upon the pad of dry pine needles. “There’re few problems a well-placed copper-jacketed bullet can’t fix.”

  Another sigh. “My section chief and I’ve studied this from every angle. But we’re only seeing part of the picture. Our fintel is irrelevant without Mossad’s perspective. And that door’s been closed. We’ve tried official channels, but our inquires get blocked at every turn. So all we’ve got is a bunch of numbers.”

  She reached a hand slowly to stroke his beard, the same cheek where ten minutes earlier she’d aimed a fist. He leaned back, breathing shallowly. His throat stung as if he’d inhaled salt water, and ribs ached where her knee had struck him. Or maybe it had been the rabid Jamaican. She stretched her arm, cupped his head, and drew him into a kiss. This time he didn’t resist. Her lips were warm, but her chapped skin scratched against his own. Always trust your team shouted a stern voice in his head, the echo of an old commanding officer’s, one who’d given his life to save Red’s. He grabbed her waist and pulled her close, reaching his hand around to—

  “Yuck,” came Penny’s rough whisper. “You guys are gross.”

  Must’ve woken up.

  Lori withdrew, brushing at his shoulders as if dusting off a jacket. “You do see now? I’ve got no fix for this. It may be my fault. I don’t know for sure. But there’s nothing to be done.”

  He turned and eyed the cluster of flashing red lights atop Cheyenne Mountain, like hemorrhaging stars. “Carter’s been investigating this for a while. His angle may pan out. He told me he was getting close.” He pointed to the red dots. “In the meantime, we keep moving.”

  She grasped his arm. “Thanks for not being angry.” She leaned in again and pecked his cheek.

  He jerked away. “Oh, I’m mad as hell. But choosing to trust you…for her.” He pointed to Penny. “Surprised you even wanted to get near me. I smell like cat piss.”

  “Cat?” She leaned her nose to his neck and sniffed. “No. Just sweat and BO.”

  Nose to shoulder, he inhaled deeply as he could where the feline’s mark had misted against him. Nothing. Had he only dreamed it? No, he’d been awake for certain. He shook his head. Maybe a hallucination. He’d sensed this threat to his family for months, stalking his trail. Now, it was gradually taking form.

  Reaching around to the small of his back, he felt for the grip of the .357 Magnum wedged beneath his belt. He held it out to Lori. “You may need this. Got it off the dead Jamaican operative, after he nearly crushed my skull.”

  She popped out the cylinder and held it close to her face in a faint beam of starlight.

  “It hasn’t been fired,” he added. “They should all be full rounds.”

  She snapped it shut and wedged it into the front pocket of her jeans, where it bulged like an eighties cell phone. “Tell me about the Jamaican.”

  He shot Penny a glance, and she lifted both palms, shaking her head. He smiled, turned, and pressed through the branches, out into a growing dawn.

  Lori’s urgent whisper followed behind him. “What Jamaican?”

  He pressed forward, his wounded leg’s step always crunching a little louder than the other. Two hundred meters ahead, a crouched shadow slipped beneath the tall, dark cone of a Douglas fir. The wildcat again? Another sniff at his sweater’s shoulder, but he smelled only the faint remnant of winter’s mothballs. The shape could’ve been anything.

  He tightened his grip on his own pistol and limped toward bleeding stars.

  Chapter 21

  Pebble Plug

  Ripples from the silver lake lapped against the toe of Lam’s boot. A low fog only a few inches thick rose from the cold water, early morning rays peeking between trees setting it aglow in two fiery circles, the face of a leviathan rising from the depth. A bass leaped from the water between the glowing blazes, visible only as a metallic flash before it sunk back into the blanketed mist. A splash sounded, but no spray rose through the hazy covering.

  He winced at the throbbing burn of the fresh .45 caliber hole in his shoulder. But he couldn’t head to the hospital yet. Red and his little girl even now could be being stalked by the same predators who’d killed Andi and put the slug through his flesh. Even in his agony, the crisp, moist air enlivened his hunter instincts.

  “You OK?” Elway asked. The tall, slender park ranger had pulled into Dark Canyon just as the first light of morning had struck the generator house’s keyhole. He wore crisp green uniform pants, gray poly shirt, and a wide, flat-brimmed straw-colored cap, the illegitimate spawn of a cowboy hat and a sombrero. Unrelated to the fabled Super Bowl champion quarterback named Elway, the man’s personality was weak in comparison as well. The ranger had busted Lam two years earlier for poaching elk in Rocky Mountain National Park, but had let him off with a warning. Everyone knew the place was overrun with herds. Sure, not as bad as Estes Park, but they still needed to be culled, or else disease and starvation would set in. Funny how Lam had beamed this morning at the sight of the man from whom he’d always tried to hide.

  Lam bent his knees and scooped up a handful of pebbles. “I’m OK. Mind’s wandering. Just short on sleep.” He thumbed through the wet rocks, comparing each to a 9mm cartridge Elway had lent him. Lam selected a gray one with black dots, rounded from centuries of water washing across its surface, tapered at one end. He stood and tossed the round back to Elway, pausing for a second as a head rush passed.

  Elway pressed it back into a spare seventeen-round magazine, slipping the metal container into a pouch on his belt. He studied the dead Jamaican near his feet. The assassin’s huge white eyes stared at the sliver of a moon about to set. “You look like hell. You shouldn’t be walkin’,” he said, as if to the dead man.

  “Shoulder stings, but only if I move it.” He lied, the wound a bit worse than when he’d helped a farrier buddy shoe a mule. The long-eared beast was eighteen hands tall and had kicked Lam square in the chest. It’d taken him a week to catch his breath.

  Elway turned, pointing a brown boot in his direction. “Listen. I believe your story. ’Specially with what went on yesterday on the Peak. But you’ve got two bodies here and—”

  “Three bodies,” Lam corrected. “I told you I killed the Jap sonofabitch that shot at us on the way in. You saw the doughnut in the road?”

  Elway pushed his brim up with a finger. “Yeah. Figured some kids were just pretendin’ to race the Pikes Peak Hill Climb. Road was tore up most the way here.”

  “That’s where the Jap started shootin’. That guy’s dead. Plus Andi.” Lam pointed to the body splayed in the middle of the parking lot. “And that bastard makes three.”

  Elway followed him toward the Jeep pickup. “Like I was sayin’, you got two bodies, maybe three if we find this other fella. You can count on a good couple days of questions from the feds.” He gazed up beyond the tall, bare tree line. “It’s like a volcano erupted up there. News agencies. FBI set up camp at the Glen Cove way station.”

  Lam winced as he leaned onto his back, sliding on gravel, scooching beneath his truck. Gas fumes lifted as he stirred the dirt. Elway had redressed his wound, wetting the gauze with peroxide that soaked through his T-shirt. As he lifted his good arm to push the pebble into
the bullet hole in his fuel tank, the Colt 1911 dug into his back. He reached around and placed it on the gravel next to him.

  “What the hell you doin’?” Elway yelled.

  “Plugging a hole.”

  “Not that. You got a license for that gun?”

  “Ain’t mine. It’s the dead guy’s. Plus, don’t need no license if I open carry.”

  “Lam, you shouldn’t have touched it. We’ve got to leave the scene as sterile as—”

  What a numskull. “I told you, someone else shot him with it. I was too busy talkin’ to the angels after a forty-five caliber bullet knocked me on my ass. I sure as hell wasn’t going to leave it there.” Elway reached for it, but Lam snatched it from the ground. “Trust me! I know it looks bad, me alive and three people dead. I’ll tell the FBI the whole crazy-ass story. But I got somethin’ to do first. Gimme a rock.”

  Elway jogged to the edge of the parking lot and grabbed a baseball-sized stone. Probably the only exercise the man got in his life. Lam took it and tapped the gray pebble till it was wedged tightly into the metal. The bullet inside the tank clanked with each strike. “Behind my driver seat there’s a red-and-blue toolbox. Inside it on the top tray there’s a bar of Ivory soap. Get it.”

  Elway handed it to him, and Lam rubbed the cube hard against the pebble and surrounding bare metal. The dampness of the remaining gas dissolved it into a soft seal. Lam smiled at his work. Soap, a rock crawler’s best friend.

  He slid out and untwisted the gas cap. “She’s a beast. Fill her with both cans.”

  Elway scowled, but his expression softened when his eyes fell on Andi’s body in the truck bed.

  “I ain’t leavin’ her here,” Lam said.

  Elway nodded, then hoisted a jerrican from the back of his own pickup. A poor excuse of a vehicle. Tiny Ford Ranger, two-wheel drive, bare stock. Probably got stuck the first puddle it drove through. “Feds are on the way. They said to not move anything, to leave the bodies right where they were.” He tipped the bucket, and gas flowed into a metal funnel Lam held, the cold liquid chilling his fingers. “If you move her, it might mess up the evidence, stop them from finding who did it to her.”