by Peter Nealen
He knew all too well what the cost of emotion-driven decisions could be. Which was why he generally didn’t allow emotions to act as anything but background noise when he could help it.
But ever since Chad and the attack on Sam Childress, who was still in and out of a coma, he’d experienced more frequent episodes like this. Times when his thoughts turned dark, and the rage started to build.
The man who had tortured Childress was dead. Roger Hancock had killed him at point-blank range. He’d shot him in the face, so close that he’d gotten some of the blood spatter on him.
But Brannigan couldn’t help but wish, just a little, that he’d sent Roger to Chad, so that he could have been there and killed the man himself.
He glanced up as Hector Chavez, dressed in polo shirt and slacks, slid into the booth next to him, but said nothing.
Hector looked more like a businessman these days than the hard-charging Marine officer he’d once been. He’d been within sight of Brigadier General’s stars when his heart had failed him and gotten him medically retired. That had been just before the incident in Africa that had seen the end of Brannigan’s Marine Corps career.
He was shorter than Brannigan by a full head. He was getting portly, and his graying hair was thinning. He’d started growing a mustache, though much smaller and neater than Brannigan’s bushy handlebar, and it was showing even more gray than his hair.
He eyed the bottle on the table, then his eyes flicked to Brannigan’s face, his brows creased in a frown. “I never thought the Turkey was your poison of choice, John,” he said carefully.
“It’s not,” Brannigan said, still staring at his half-empty glass. He needed to slow down. But he wasn’t feeling the alcohol yet, not really. That alone probably wasn’t a good sign.
Chavez’ frown deepened. “What’s going on, John?”
Brannigan tossed off the last of the drink and put the glass down, determined not to touch it again until the meeting was over. “Where’s Mark?” he asked.
“He’s coming,” Chavez replied, his eyes searching Brannigan’s face. “We’ve got another one joining us; Mark was linking up with him first.”
Brannigan pinned him with a stare. “Who?”
Chavez shrugged. “Some backroom intel guy,” he said. “I don’t even know which agency he works for. Name’s Abernathy, or something.”
“Mark should have told me,” Brannigan said grimly, half inclined to call the meeting off. But he might need backup, and Mark Van Zandt, General, USMC (Ret.) was in a position to provide it.
A lot of the Blackhearts’ jobs in the last couple of years had come from Van Zandt. Which was occasionally uncomfortable, given that Brannigan and Van Zandt had a history. Van Zandt had been the man who had overseen his cashiering out of the Marine Corps.
They’d mostly gotten past that, especially as the Blackhearts’ operations had revealed to Van Zandt, who was working for some super-secret intelligence office in Northern Virginia, just how the world really worked. But there was always that momentary flash of memory and remembered bitterness.
Even as he spoke, though, Van Zandt, dressed similarly to Chavez, appeared in the doorway, squinting as he took his sunglasses off to scan the murky interior of the bar. The shorter man beside him slipped inside, stepping away from the door and into the shadows, only silhouetting himself in the “fatal funnel” for a moment.
Brannigan’s eyes narrowed as he watched the smaller man. That movement had been practiced.
As he studied the oncoming figure, he only found more questions. At first glance, the man looked slightly stooped, his gray hair parted, his face somewhat kindly behind a pair of reading glasses. But on further study, the stoop was slighter than it had initially appeared, and the man was still tall and powerfully built. He was taller than Van Zandt. And there was still a lantern jaw behind the wrinkles, and the eyes on the other side of the glasses were steely and observant, taking in everything they glanced at.
He didn’t know who Abernathy was, but he was dangerous, that much was certain.
Van Zandt spotted them and wove his way through the tables to join them in the booth, glancing at the bottle of Wild Turkey with a frown even as he suppressed a cough at the tobacco smoke in the air. Abernathy, for his part, looked unfazed.
“Okay, John, we’re here,” Van Zandt said cautiously. “This is Clayton Abernathy; we’ve done some work together, and his outfit has taken an interest in the Front and their activities.” He glanced at the bottle of bourbon for a moment. He looked like he wasn’t sure if he should be worried that Brannigan was drinking it, or if he was going to want a stiff snort of it himself in a few minutes. “What’s going on?”
Brannigan reached down and picked up the file, tossing it onto the table next to the bottle. “Jason Bevan,” he said flatly.
Van Zandt’s eyes flicked to the folder, then to Brannigan. “You know where he is?”
“Presuming that Dalca’s information is good, yes,” he said. “And we’re going after him.”
“Dalca?” Van Zandt asked, suddenly even warier. “I’m not sure we can trust her, John. I’m kind of surprised that you’re giving her the time of day.”
“Dalca’s not quite what you think,” Abernathy said. His voice was the slightly gravelly rasp of a long-time smoker. “She’s an information broker, first and foremost. Sure, she makes a living smuggling all sorts of other things; you’d be amazed how much money she makes on bootleg cigarettes and caviar in Europe. But information is her main stock in trade, at least on the underworld side of things. If she started passing bum scoop, she’d be out of business in a short while, and all of her rivals who are already sharpening their knives would take her out of the picture in a matter of hours.”
“So, what did this cost?” Van Zandt asked, nodding toward the folder.
“Unknown, as yet,” Brannigan replied. “She said it was gratis, but time will tell. I doubt that woman does anything without carefully mapping out some advantage for herself.” He wasn’t going to mention her attempt at seduction; it wasn’t relevant to the question at hand, and he still wasn’t entirely sure what to make of it, himself.
“Where is he, then?” Van Zandt asked, picking up the folder. From his tone, he was clearly hoping that it could be dealt with without committing the Blackhearts. Brannigan’s demeanor and the presence of the whiskey bottle probably had him thinking that he needed to step carefully. He was probably wondering about Brannigan’s emotional and mental stability, especially since he was well aware of what had happened so far between the Blackhearts and the Humanity front.
“Argentina,” Brannigan replied, dashing Van Zandt’s hopes. “Way up in the Altiplano, with escape routes to Peru and Bolivia. Presumably he’s got the same level of security that got the FBI shot to ribbons trying to detain him.”
“Shit,” Van Zandt whispered as he flipped through the dossier. “I guess the question is, is he really worth the effort and expense to go after him? He’s a rich dipshit. Sure, he’s been a major contributor to the Front, but what celebrity or Big Tech CEO isn’t? Do we really have enough on him to justify sending a black bag team down to Argentina after him?”
“Page Six,” Brannigan said, pointing to the dossier.
“Oh, he’s definitely a bit more than that,” Abernathy agreed, leaning back in his seat and lighting a cigarette. As Van Zandt flipped through the pages, he continued, “Bevan would have been up on Federal charges a long time ago if not for his image and his political friends. He projects this carefully curated image of a naïve, idealistic twerp, just trying to make the world a better place—hmm, where have I heard that before?—but he’s bought off judges, Congressmen, Senators, you name it. Our estimates have the amount of dirty money he’s moved around in the hundreds of billions. And a lot of public money has disappeared after it’s been donated to his fundraisers, most of it presumably going to the Front. We also know of at least two ‘charitable foundations’ he’s set up that are shells for Front operations.
Didn’t mean much until Chad, but now that the mask is off, it means a lot.”
“So, he might well have inside information?” Van Zandt didn’t look up; he was still scanning the file.
“Almost certainly,” Abernathy replied.
“That’s not the only indicator,” Brannigan said. “Take a look at Page Thirty.”
Van Zandt, still frowning, flipped to the indicated page. His eyebrows rose, and he looked up. “Holy shit,” he said. “Is that place made of solid gold?” He’d seen the figures that the shell company had put into building the villa where Bevan had fled.
“Not judging by the imagery,” Brannigan said. “Which raises the question of what else they might have there. Especially after Chad. Whatever it is, it’s worth billions of dollars, and they don’t want anyone knowing about it.”
“You’re thinking it might be another bioweapons lab?” Chavez asked.
“Maybe,” Brannigan replied, rubbing his chin. “It’s remote enough. We don’t have any figures for numbers of personnel there, or equipment. They don’t have the population of human guinea pigs that they did in Chad, but that might be seen as an advantage after what went down there; if they keep their experimentation in-house, then they don’t risk exposure so much.”
“I don’t know, John,” Van Zandt said, leaning back in his seat and folding his arms. “I mean, it sure looks like a cut-and-dried target. I won’t deny that. But coming from Dalca…?”
“Let me see it,” Abernathy said. Van Zandt passed him the folder, and the old man opened it, adjusting his glasses as the cigarette smoldered at the corner of his mouth.
“I think you’re misapprehending my reasons for calling you, Mark,” Brannigan said grimly, leaning forward and propping his elbows on the table. “I’m not asking permission. I’m informing you that we’re going after Bevan.” He jerked his head toward the folder in Abernathy’s hands. “I’ve developed a few sources of my own over the last year and a half or so.” Actually, Ben Drake had developed them and let Brannigan use them, but he wasn’t going to sell Ben down the river to Van Zandt. His work with Drake, the Grand Old Man, was carefully compartmented from Van Zandt’s shadowy office, whatever private security shell company it was using this week. “I’m confident enough in the information to go ahead with it. The only question I have for you is, are you going to support us, or are you getting cold feet all of a sudden?”
There might have been a moment’s temper that flashed in Van Zandt’s eyes. The two men had put aside many of their differences over the last year or so, but they still came from markedly different philosophies of action. Van Zandt was used to being the man in charge, and the fact that Brannigan wasn’t really a subordinate, but an independent contractor, still took some getting used to. Especially when it came to a decision like this.
“I’d say that yes, we will,” Abernathy said before Van Zandt could reply. Van Zandt glanced at him sharply, but the old man was watching Brannigan, his eyes glinting behind his glasses. “I agree; if this information is legit—and as I said, Dalca has a vested interest in making sure any information she puts out is legit—then Bevan presents our best lead into the Humanity Front’s operations and leadership. The real leadership, not the public Board of Directors or any of the pretty useful idiots they trot out in front of the cameras at the UN.”
Chavez was looking back and forth between the other three men. He seemed like a little bit of a third wheel, but he usually handled a lot of the financial and logistical legwork for the Blackhearts—all of it shielded by several shell companies, of course. “Why is Bevan such an important target?” he asked. “The Front is huge; there’s got to be a crack somewhere.”
“You’d think,” Abernathy said dryly. “But there’s more money than I think anyone really understands at work, along with a lot of politics. The Front has powerful friends; we still don’t know which ones are bought, and which ones are True Believers. And finding out is an uphill battle; we’ve already had every one of our dozen major leads dry up.”
Something about the way he said it made Brannigan look sharply over at him. He nodded. “Oh, yes, it’s like something out of a mafia movie, only it’s international. Witnesses disappearing or suddenly mysteriously managing to commit suicide, wealthy sponsors becoming suddenly unavailable, you name it. Entire accounts have disappeared. Servers have been destroyed. Investigative teams have been threatened and backed off.” He took a deep drag on the cigarette and blew smoke skyward. “None of which is really all that surprising. You get an organization as high-profile and rich as the Humanity Front, and you’re bound to have a hard time taking it down. Especially if it’s spent as much time and money cozying up to the Powers That Be for the last decade as the Front has.”
“Okay,” Van Zandt said, reluctantly, his arms still folded. “I’ll grant all that.” He peered at Brannigan, glancing meaningfully at the bottle of Wild Turkey. “What I’m worried about is your motivation, John. Is this a mission? Or vengeance?”
“Right now?” Brannigan said, waving at the waiter to bring three more glasses. “It’s both.”
Chapter 4
Hancock’s phone rang and rang. Brannigan waited, the cell phone he had always resented owning to his ear, his frown deepening.
It’s probably nothing bad. Roger’s probably just surfing. Or skydiving. Or racing. Or any one of a dozen things I told him he needs to back off from if he’s going to stay on the team.
Roger Hancock had been an adrenaline junkie for as long as Brannigan had known him, which was going back quite a few years. When they’d still been in combat arms, he’d managed to maintain with training and the odd combat operation. Once he’d retired, though, he’d turned to a number of “extreme” sports to get his fix.
The trouble with that was that Brannigan had watched him almost spin out and wreck in a racecar, just before the Burma operation. Since Hancock was his second-in-command, due to take the reins of the Blackhearts if something happened to Brannigan—and it had, on the Tourmaline-Delta platform—Brannigan had laid down the law. If he was going to stay with the team, Hancock had to take it a bit easier when it came to risking his life while at home.
He was about to give up, figuring that Hancock was out and about, doing something dangerous, and try again later, when the call was answered.
“What’s the job?”
Brannigan’s frown deepened. Hancock’s voice was flat, dead. He almost had to check the phone to make sure he’d called the right guy. It didn’t sound like the Roger he knew.
“Retrieval,” he said slowly. “Involving our new friends.” There was only so much information he was going to put out over the phone. “You all right, Roger?”
“How long?” Hancock asked, in the same flat, disinterested tone of voice, completely ignoring the query. He wasn’t slurring his words, so he wasn’t drunk. But something was definitely off.
Brannigan checked his watch. He wouldn’t push; not yet. For one thing, trying to push over the phone was usually a bad idea; all Roger had to do if he didn’t want to answer was hang up. But they would deal with whatever was going on.
They had to. A teammate with his head in the wrong place could be a disaster for a small team. And disasters in the Blackhearts’ line of work meant dead men.
“Forty-eight hours,” he replied. “The usual place.”
“I’ll contact Jenkins, Javakhishvili, Bianco, and Burgess,” Hancock said. “Pretty sure they’re all in the same place, anyway.”
“Fine,” Brannigan said. Whatever was going on with Hancock, he’d let it lie for now. He could already hear the man’s professionalism taking over. There was reason to be concerned, but not when it came to the job.
Roger Hancock’s weaknesses manifested when he didn’t have a job to do. They usually went away when he had a mission and an objective to meet.
“I’ll see you in two days,” Brannigan said. “And Roger? We’ll talk.” He let a bit of iron into his voice when he said it. He wasn’t making a reque
st or a suggestion, and he was making sure that Hancock understood that.
Hancock hesitated for a moment, but finally said, “Understood. Forty-eight hours. I’ll be there.”
Then he hung up.
Brannigan looked down at the blank face of the phone for a moment, his frown getting deeper. He suspected that he knew what was going on, and it wasn’t good. Even a man like Roger Hancock had a breaking point.
But he’d known the man long enough that he figured he owed him a chance to sort it out, and to let him know when he couldn’t handle his problems anymore. Roger Hancock was a grown man, and Brannigan wasn’t all that big on treating his men like kids.
He got back to the list of phone numbers to call.
***
Erekle “Herc” Javakhishvili stepped out into the woods, scanning the trees around him for a moment before pulling the pack of cigarettes out of his pocket and lighting up. He took a deep drag and let it out, the cloud of bluish-gray smoke rising into the damp, early morning air.
The Northern Virginia humidity felt downright homey to him. He’d grown up on the Black Sea coast, not far from Poti in Georgia. He’d worked and lived in much drier climes in the years since, but he always preferred a bit more moisture in the air.
He took the time to enjoy the cigarette and the quiet of the woods. It helped take his mind off how little he was helping inside.
The small farmhouse behind him was a front. The illusion would last even if someone walked in the door; the kitchen and living room had been left intact. It appeared to be nothing more than a down-home, country farmhouse, complete with a fireplace and rocking chairs in the living room. Only once anyone got to the bedrooms and the study would anything start to seem amiss.
The first indicator would be the faint smell of antiseptic, followed by the quiet beeps of medical monitors. Only once anyone got down the hallway and looked into the rooms themselves would the illusion that this was just another small family farm in Virginia be completely dispelled. Each room was a fully-equipped hospital room, with a bed and every monitor and medical apparatus known to man available. Only one of the beds currently had an occupant, and that occupant was why Javakhishvili was there.