by Joshua Hood
Hayes changed directions, threw himself off the edge and down the hillside. He tumbled head over heels, the scrub brush slapping his face, tearing the night vision from his head.
By the time he reached the bottom he was cut to shit—his mouth filled with dirt and bits of leaves and bark. But he was alive and knew that if he wanted to stay that way he needed to find some cover—fast.
He hobbled into the low ground and ducked behind a boulder and was checking his pack, making sure that he hadn’t lost the pills, when he heard his pursuers crashing through the undergrowth behind him.
Hayes brought his pistol to bear and was squinting through the darkness, ready to engage the first target of opportunity, when he heard the guttural bark of the Boerboel.
You’ve got to be shitting me.
But there was no mistaking the hulking silhouette that burst out of the trees or the lifeless bounce of the figure dragging behind it.
Run.
Hayes shot to his feet and, throwing caution to the wind, raced toward the dock, figuring that he had a better chance of outrunning the dog than a bullet. He ran as hard as he could, taking long, loping strides, but Hayes had never been a sprinter and knew that if it weren’t for the added deadweight of the handler, the Boerboel would have easily run him down.
He hit the gangway at a full sprint, eyes locked on a rusted twenty-six-foot trawler pulling out of its slip. Hayes had no way of knowing how many men were on board, or if they were armed and, honestly, at this point, he didn’t give a shit.
The only thing that mattered was getting away from the hellhound snapping at his heels.
He was halfway to the T intersection at the end of the dock when the captain swung the bow, aiming for the buoy that marked the channel mouth.
Hayes was almost to the end, the dog so close he could feel its hot breath on the back of his legs. All that was left was a hard right turn and a dash to the crates stacked at the far edge of the pier and he was free.
Might want to slow down for that turn, the voice suggested.
Hayes hazarded a glance over his shoulder, saw the beast preparing for a lunge, and knew there was no way in hell he was slowing down. Instead he reached out, hooked the last pylon with his hand, and, using it as a pivot, swung his body into the turn.
The dog tried to stop, but the wooden planks were slick, and that plus the weight of its dead handler slingshotting past it while it skittered to a halt sent it flying into the water with a colossal splash.
With the dog off his ass and running parallel to the trawler, Hayes focused everything on his makeshift springboard at the end of the dock. He poured on a last burst of speed, praying that the captain kept the boat close to the docks, and then he was clambering up the crates, flinging himself into the air.
12
WASHINGTON, D.C.
It was almost noon when Shaw emerged from the Congressional Visitors Center, the unfamiliar navy-blue tie tight as a garrote around his throat. He clawed at the knot and after tearing the tie free, unbuttoned his collar and started down the stairs.
The four hours he’d spent before the committee had taken their toll and Shaw was exhausted—his body stiff from the uncomfortable chair, his mind wrung out like a dish towel after the verbal judo session with Senator Miles.
He reached the bottom of the stairs, his driver, Luke Carter, already hustling around the car and opening his door.
“How was it?” he asked.
“Boring,” Shaw lied, shoving the tie into his pocket and handing over his attaché case.
“That’s good, right?”
“Listen, kid, why don’t you head back to the office? I think I’m going to take a walk, maybe grab some lunch while I’m at it.”
“You want me to come with you, sir?”
“No, head back to the office. I’ll give you a buzz when I’m done.”
“Yes, sir,” Luke said.
Shaw watched the Town Car pull out and waited until it was out of sight before turning east, toward the National Mall.
It was a shit day for a walk, the sky over Capitol Hill was sullen gray, the winter wind that blew in from the east sharp as a blade across his bare skin. But he was too busy thinking about his next move to care.
That Senator Miles was out for blood was no surprise; he’d been wanting his pound of flesh from Hayes since the moment he became chairman. And while Shaw had done everything he could to protect his star recruit, he was slowly beginning to realize that all he had accomplished was to put his own neck on the chopping block.
He skirted the White House, hands shoved in his pockets as he started across Lafayette Square, the senator’s parting words echoing in his mind.
“If you don’t give me Hayes, I promise you, this committee will find someone who will.”
Shaw stopped at the intersection of H and 16th, the sight of the Hay-Adams hotel making him realize how badly he could use a drink.
He glanced at his watch, saw that it was a quarter to one, and then thought about the work waiting for him back at the office.
The hell with it.
Shaw started across the street, angling for the front door, confident with the knowledge that he wouldn’t be the only one at the hotel enjoying a midday cocktail.
The Hay-Adams was more than a Washington icon—it was an institution, the meeting place of choice for ranking senators, senior aides, and political dilettantes to plot and scheme over trays of East Coast oysters or plates of Dover sole.
Shaw stepped inside, the warm air of the lobby thawing his face as he crossed to the stairs leading down to the aptly named Off the Record. He hit the landing, cold hands still in his pockets, the only thing on his mind the lowball of Blanton’s waiting for him inside—so close that he could taste it.
He was almost there when a whisper of fabric followed by the scrape of a shoe against tile sent the hairs on the back of his neck standing on end. Shaw turned, alerted by the premonition of danger, hand darting to his sleeve and the carbon fiber blade hidden inside.
Shaw jerked the blade free and whirled to face the threat, muscles taut as a bow at full draw, ready and willing to kill when he saw his would-be attacker’s face.
“Easy, killer,” the man said, hands held palms open in front of his chest.
“Mike?” Shaw asked, the tension easing from his muscles. “What the hell are you doing out here?”
“Figured if even half of what I heard about this morning’s hearings were true that you’d be needing a drink.”
“And you decided to greet me by waiting out here in the shadows?”
“Old habits,” he shrugged.
“Good way to get yourself killed,” Shaw said, returning the blade to its sheath while he studied the man.
As the deputy director of operations, Mike Carpenter wasn’t just the CIA’s chief spy, he was also the Agency’s heir apparent, the man tapped to take over for the director when she left at the end of the year, a role that made him the second most powerful man at the Agency.
“You following me, Mike?”
“Nope, just in the area.”
“Is that a fact?” Shaw asked.
“Yep. Now, how about that drink?”
“Lead the way,” Shaw said.
Carpenter nodded and headed for the entrance, where the host stood waiting.
“Good afternoon, gentlemen,” he said. “If you will follow me, I have a private room already set up.”
In the neighborhood, my ass.
“What would you gentlemen like?” the host asked, after seating them.
“Blanton’s Single Barrel,” Carpenter said.
“Make it two,” Shaw said.
“Right away, gentlemen.”
Shaw waited until the man was gone and then pulled a black box the size of a deck of cards from his jacket pocket.
“
An RF scanner? Seriously?” Carpenter asked, a hint of a smile twisting the corner of his lips as Shaw wanded the room. “Where’s the trust, Levi?”
Satisfied that the room wasn’t bugged, Shaw adjusted his chair so he could keep one eye on the door and the other on Carpenter.
“Trust, Mike?” he sneered. “You’ve got to earn trust.”
The two men had history, not the good kind, but Shaw was too well trained to ask why he was here. So he sat and studied the room in silence, searching the crown molding around the ceiling and the joints of the walls, anywhere the cagey cold warrior could have hidden a camera or some other device the scanner hadn’t picked up.
“It’s clean,” Carpenter said.
Yeah, okay, he thought.
The waiter returned with the drinks, placed them on the table, and after asking if they wanted a menu and receiving a curt “no” from Carpenter, stepped out and shut the door behind him.
Shaw took a sip of the whisky, savoring the heat of the rye and the mellow caramel finish, and nodded in approval. He returned the glass to the table and turned his full attention to Carpenter, who cut right to the chase.
“Miles isn’t playing around. He wants Hayes.”
“Tell me something I don’t know,” Shaw said.
“Okay, he knows about the deal, knows you gave him six months to make a decision.”
Shit. How?
“Not relevant,” Carpenter said, reading his mind. “What is relevant is that right now you are in the way.”
“So, Miles sent you here thinking I’d tell you where Hayes was for old times’ sake? C’mon, Mike, you know me better than that.”
“Listen, Levi, I get it,” Carpenter said, leaning across the table, his eyes deadly serious. “Hell, part of me even respects what you did, but it’s time to pick a side. Not tonight, not tomorrow, but right now.”
Dammit.
If it had been any of the other directors who ruled the CIA from the seventh floor sitting before him, Shaw would have told them to fuck off and never lost a wink of sleep. But Mike Carpenter hadn’t risen to the number two man at the Agency because he was a bureaucrat. No, the only papers he’d ever pushed were the toe tags he’d handed out wholesale during the past twenty years of the war on terror.
“He won’t come in easy.”
“Why do you think I’m here?” Carpenter asked, leaning back in his chair.
Fuck.
“When is his next check-in?” Carpenter asked.
“Twenty-four hours,” Shaw lied.
“Fine. If he’s not back stateside in forty-eight, it’s game over, understood?”
“Yeah, I got it.”
“Good,” Carpenter said, getting to his feet.
He dropped a few bills on the table and started for the door, pausing just short of the knob. He turned back to the table.
“And Levi, one more thing.”
“What’s that?”
“Don’t go anywhere.”
13
MOGADOR
Hayes knew the moment he launched himself from the dock that he’d shorted the jump. Knew that instead of landing gracefully onto the deck, he was going to hit the side.
Shit.
His chest slammed into the hull, the impact blasting the air from his lungs and tearing the pistol from his hand. The STI went cartwheeling through the air and Hayes reached up for the gunwale, kicking his legs, desperate to find a toehold.
But the hull was slick, and he couldn’t get a grip. He was falling, grip weakening, boots sliding closer toward the dishwater-gray surface of the sea.
Get your ass up there, the voice ordered.
Summoning the last of his strength, Hayes managed to hoist his armpits over the edge, relieving the pressure on his slipping grip and, once secure, kicking his leg over the edge. Hooking the lip with his toe, he hoisted himself up and over.
He crashed onto the deck, rolled onto his back, and was trying to catch his breath when there was an angry shout from the pilothouse.
“Who the fuck is that?”
Hayes staggered to his feet, spied the STI wedged underneath a crate on the far side of the deck. But before he had a chance to recover it, four angry sailors were blocking his path.
Can this day get any worse?
“Captain, it’s him,” one of the men shouted in Arabic. “The one they are looking for.”
“Kill him,” came the reply.
“Guys, can we talk about this?” Hayes asked.
“Afraid not,” the man said, pulling a wicked-looking blade from the small of his back.
The rest of the sailors were quick to arm themselves with whatever was lying around on the deck—junkyard weapons—a lead pipe, a length of chair, and something that looked like a small harpoon.
“Look, I’ve got this anger thing that I’m working on,” Hayes said, hands open in front of him, “and I’m really trying to make it through the rest of the day without killing anyone else . . .”
But the man with the knife wasn’t interested in talking and slashed at his head, forcing Hayes to where the man with the section of lead pipe stood waiting.
Well, I tried.
While Hayes was fully capable of killing with a knife or a garrote, he’d been trained to avoid getting too close to his target. Putting himself into a position where he could be identified—or worse, shot. In his world, a fair fight was to be avoided at all cost. Which was why Hayes spent so much time and energy stalking his prey—analyzing his target’s every move.
Always waiting. Always watching.
Until it was time to take that one perfect shot.
But a street fight was an entirely different story and, outnumbered four to one, Hayes knew that the only way he was going to survive was by inflicting the maximum amount of damage in the minimum amount of time.
The man with the knife tried to stick him in the side, but Hayes landed a hard ridge hand to his throat that dropped him to his knees. Before the man with the harpoon had a chance to strike, Hayes rolled across the deck, snatching the STI from beneath the crate.
He came up in a crouch, snapped the pistol onto target, and just like a day on the range, engaged the targets from left to right.
By the time the last expended shell hit the deck, the men were all dead.
“So, what do you say there, Cap’n?” he said, turning the pistol on the openmouthed man standing in the pilothouse. “Feel like a swim?”
* * *
—
An hour later Hayes cut the engines, grabbed his bag, and stepped out onto the deck. To say the meeting with Luca had not gone according to plan was the understatement of the year. Hayes might have come out on top, but he hadn’t walked away unscathed.
He was wet, tired, and generally beat to shit—and definitely not looking forward to swimming to shore.
Hayes had ditched the bodies at sea—weighed them down with lengths of chain—and would have piloted the boat all the way to shore if it hadn’t been for the quarter ton of raw hash he’d found in the hold.
Still screwing me, aren’t ya, Luca?
He moved to the rear of the boat and stood there staring out into the darkness.
Without the night vision, Hayes couldn’t see the coast, but he could smell it—the nauseating mix of unwashed bodies and meat roasting over an open flame. So close that he could almost feel the hot shower and the cot waiting for him at the airfield five miles away.
But first he had to get there.
Hayes opened the pack and double-checked the ziplock bag he’d put the pills in, made sure they were airtight before taking off his boots and stuffing them inside. He grabbed a Petzl headlamp, shouldered the pack, and snapped the sternum strap across his chest on his way aft. At the transom he looked over the side—the water shimmering like motor oil in the headlamp’s red glow.
<
br /> Hayes had been fading fast during the last leg of the trip, and even with the windows of the pilothouse open he’d fought to stay awake. But he knew that was about to change.
Might as well get it over with, he thought.
Even though it was summer in Morocco, the North Atlantic was frigid, the ice-cold water cascading over his body instantly taking his breath away. Hayes bobbed to the surface, his pack filling with water—trying to drag him under as he kicked off. The distant sliver of the shore was suddenly impossibly far.
Dumping the assault pack wasn’t an option, so he turned onto his back, hoping what air hadn’t been pushed out of the pack would keep him buoyant as he forced himself into a backstroke.
Free will, the ability to quit, wasn’t a Treadstone trait, which was why it was one of the first things they’d removed at the behavior modification laboratory. Only problem was, just like any high-performance machines, Treadstone operators required the occasional tune-up to keep them running at peak performance.
“Retreading” is what the docs called it, and Hayes hadn’t had one in almost three years, which meant that while he got to keep all the shitty side effects—the anger, nightmares, and brain-splitting migraines—his once razor-sharp edge was starting to dull.
Bet you’d sell your soul for a chem right now, the voice said.
Since the first recorded history of organized warfare in the fifth century BC, man has sought better weapons—sharper swords, stronger metals, faster horses—anything to give them an edge in battle, only to learn that in the end, the difference between the living and the dying had less to do with the weapon and more to do with the man wielding it.
It was this knowledge more than anything else that drove the Treadstone doctors in their pursuit of the perfect soldier. An assassin who could kill without thought or fear. A man or woman who could outlast, outthink, outfight anyone in the world.
But there was only so far the human body could go, and no amount of motivation could take the icy chill out of the water or replace the calories Hayes had already burned.