She stepped back and eyed her handiwork.
It would have to do. She was out of time. The cabin was now nearly engulfed in flames.
44
Thursday, September 10, 1987
1:35 p.m.
Atlantic Ocean, somewhere off the U.S. East Coast
Tracie turned and sprinted back to the burning structure. She burst through the door then skidded to a stop, stunned at how quickly the blaze had spread. Bright yellow and red flames licked their way up the far wall and a quarter of the way across the ceiling. Deadly black smoke roiled, filling the top two feet of the cabin, poisoning the air and turning it into a deadly toxic stew. Red-hot sparks showered from a support beam running the length of the ceiling.
From behind the closed door, Tracie could hear Secretary of State Humphries screaming, now in a state of full-fledged panic, his words tumbling over one another in a flood of desperation and terror.
“I’m coming,” she shouted, screaming at the top of her lungs to make herself heard over the noise of the fire. It sounded like an onrushing freight train, roaring and wailing as it devoured the building.
The heat was intense, suffocating. Tracie kicked the closed door just below the knob. Its cheap latch provided almost no resistance and it whipped open, smashing into the far wall with a loud bang and rebounding violently.
And there was Humphries.
He had been shackled to a heavy iron U-bolt fastened to the floor of the otherwise-empty room. Four feet of chain ran from the U-bolt to his wrists, leaving him room to stand but not to escape. His clothes were filthy and his skin soot-blackened.
He looked at her in a panic for a half-second before continuing to tug and yank insistently on his bindings. Tracie could see that all rational thought had left him. He was consumed by the need to escape the fire, but had succeeded only in bruising his wrists and rubbing the skin raw. He was bleeding freely from both hands but seemed not to notice.
Tracie stepped close and grabbed Humphries’s shirt with both hands, forcing the panicked man to look into her eyes. “Mr. Secretary, I’ll get you out of here, but you have to trust me!”
For a moment he stared at her in apparent incomprehension, then nodded wordlessly and stopped struggling.
She bent and examined the restraints. A set of handcuffs had been placed on Humphries’s wrists and then the short steel links between the cuffs had been secured to a longer chain threaded through the iron ring. The man could pull on the cuffs until hell froze over and his efforts would be rewarded only with more pain.
She squatted over the ring, putting her body between it and the secretary of state. Then she placed the barrel of her weapon against the metal chain, angling it so the slug would not ricochet and strike either herself or Humphries.
She hoped.
Then she squeezed the trigger.
The Beretta roared, the chain snapped and J. Robert Humphries was free. He stood over the U-bolt as if uncertain what to do next, swaying drunkenly from shock and fatigue.
The blaze continued to eat away at the little cabin. Smoke poured into the room through the open door. It gathered quickly at the ceiling, thick and black, and moved toward the floor as it accumulated. Out in the main living area, Tracie heard a loud crash as something structural gave way.
The building would soon be nothing more than a smoking pile of rubble.
Tracie took Humphries by the elbow and began leading him into the teeth of the raging fire. He resisted at first, unwilling to face the wall of flame, but there were no other options—the room’s single window was much too small even for Tracie’s petite frame to fit through, never mind the much larger, slightly overweight body of Secretary of State Humphries.
She tugged insistently, screaming, “This is the only way out! We have to go now!” and finally Humphries allowed himself to be pulled along.
They hit the door at a fast walk, Tracie stunned at how the fire had progressed. She estimated she had been inside Humphries’s prison cell for no more than a minute, and in that time the blaze had exploded in intensity. The stifling heat struck her in the face like a closed fist. She felt her eyebrows singeing and smelled burning flesh and wondered abstractly whether it was her own.
Behind her, Humphries was repeating, “Goddammit, goddammit, goddammit,” like a mantra, his incantation interrupted only by a hacking cough every few seconds as he tried to breathe the fetid, superheated air.
Tracie stepped behind the secretary of state and shoved him hard toward the cabin’s only entrance. The smoke was so thick the door was invisible. “Hurry!” she screamed, and Humphries stumbled forward, moving marginally faster now than he had been before. Tracie followed behind, right on his heels.
She hoped neither of the Iraqis had been able to work themselves free of their jerry-rigged bindings, because if they had, she would be sending Humphries right back into their arms. But she needed to be behind him to ensure that she would be able to redirect him toward the door if he became disoriented navigating the ten feet of smoke-choked cabin.
They burst into the cool, fresh ocean air, coughing and gagging on the landing. Tracie stopped Humphries and stepped around him quickly, Beretta at the ready, uncertain of what she would find. Her eyes were watering so badly she could barely see.
She held her weapon up, blinking madly, aware that they were both sitting ducks until her vision cleared. After a moment, she could see through the tears streaming down her face that both of the Iraqis were still exactly where she had left them. The one she had struck in the head was moaning softly, blood trickling out from under his hairline, conscious but still plainly confused. He wouldn’t be attacking anyone for a while.
The other man glared at her from under hooded eyes. He was fully conscious but also fully neutralized.
She returned her attention to Humphries in an effort to assess his condition. The older man continued to cough and wheeze and his features glowed bright red under the soot covering every inch of exposed skin, but to Tracie he seemed already to be improving, if slowly. He was no longer hawking up gobs of blackened phlegm and his coughing fits lacked some of the wracking violence they had earlier inside the burning building.
The intensity of the heat radiating from the burning shack was indescribable. They had only minutes left before the tinderbox shack collapsed in on itself. Tracie eased the secretary of state down the steps and as she did a loud roar from directly behind them signaled the end for the doomed building.
Flames leapt toward the sky and red-hot embers billowed outward in all directions as the shack fell. Humphries screamed as a burning chunk of wood the size of a quarter landed on his arm. Instantly, the fabric of his shirt ignited and flames raced up his arm.
Tracie dragged the secretary of state to the rocky, sandy ground and fell on top of the much larger man, covering his arm with her body and smothering the fire. He lay panting for a moment and then said quietly, “Holy shit.”
“Are you all right?”
He shrugged. “I guess so. I don’t know at this point.”
She flaked blackened cotton ash off his arm and rolled what was left of his shirtsleeve up to examine his burn. The skin was raw and pink, but under the circumstances, and considering the filthy bandage covering his injured hand, Tracie decided one skin burn was probably the least of his worries. Humphries barely seemed to notice it.
She pulled him to his feet and said, “Come on. I know you must be exhausted, sir, but I’m not sure how many people are meeting these guys or how long it will be before they arrive. Let’s get out of here while we still can. That smoke will be visible for miles out on the water. If the Iraqis have reinforcements coming—and there’s no question they do—we might be down to our last few minutes to escape.”
Humphries began following Tracie, moving slowly. “What about them?” he said, indicating his captors with an incline of his head.
“They’ll be safe. The fire will burn itself out on the rocky outcropping and they’re far enough away from t
he remains of the building that they won’t be in any serious danger.”
“I don’t give a damn how much danger they’re in,” Humphries growled. “That’s not what I’m getting at. They have to come with us. They need to pay for what they’ve done.”
Tracie grabbed a fistful of Humphries’s shirt, as she had done inside the burning building. She tugged at it forcefully, almost dragging him along. “No way,” she said. “We’ve got a pretty significant hike ahead of us, and keeping those guys under control would cost us more time than we probably have. My number one priority is to get you to safety. When we’re in the boat and a safe distance from here I’ll fire up the radio and call in the cavalry. They’ll descend on this island en masse and will have those assholes in custody in a matter of an hour or two.”
Humphries shook his head obstinately and Tracie thought he was going to argue further, but he surprised her. He sighed deeply and continued trudging behind, following her into the thick woods. “Where’s everyone else?” he asked.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, where’s the rest of the rescue team?”
“There is no one else. I’m it.”
“You’re it? What is that supposed to mean?”
“It means I’m the only one who knows where you are, and nobody else knows where I am. The rest of the United States Armed Forces thinks you’re in a helicopter flying low-level to North Carolina where you’ll be transferred to a waiting private jet and whisked out of the country.”
“You’re it,” Humphries repeated dubiously, eying her petite frame.
“I’m it,” she agreed.
“My God,” Humphries said, looking anxiously behind him before picking up the pace. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
45
Friday, September 11, 1987
1:05 p.m.
McLean, Virginia
The driveway leading to Aaron Stallings’s home was long and winding and immaculately maintained. The house itself stood well back from the road behind a grove of evergreens and was invisible to anyone driving past. Although Tracie knew the house had been constructed within the last decade, it had the look and feel of a Revolutionary War-era home, like something George Washington might have lived in. Mount Vernon a couple of centuries later.
She parked in the circular turn-around and climbed out of her Toyota. The home’s front door swung open and the corpulent body of the CIA director filled the open space. He had clearly been waiting for her. He scowled, watching her approach, saying nothing.
When she reached the door, he said, “You’re five minutes late.” Then he stood aside and gestured at the interior of the house in what she interpreted as an invitation to enter.
“Your house isn’t easy to find,” she said. “It’s a little off the beaten path. And besides, I’m unemployed, remember? I’m not used to having any place to be.” Stallings’s eyes narrowed in annoyance and she brushed past her former boss into a foyer featuring gleaming hardwood floors and elegant raised panel wainscoting on the walls. A cut-glass crystal lamp that Tracie guessed cost more than she made in a month hung over the entryway. In the back of her mind she wondered how a career civil servant could afford such high-end furnishings.
“Come with me,” Stallings answered, pointedly ignoring her comment. He led her down the hallway into a massive study. Bookshelves filled nearly to overflowing with a collection of hardcover volumes, many leather-bound and very old, lined the walls. A television had been placed atop a walnut chest in one corner, angled to face a massive desk. Stallings squeezed behind it and eased into a leather chair.
He motioned Tracie to sit. It occurred to her that the only difference between this home library and Stallings’s office at CIA headquarters was the added privacy it offered, and even that advantage was questionable. Her cursory examination upon entering the room revealed potential locations for surveillance devices too numerous to count.
They sat in silence for a moment. The hell with it, Tracie thought. It’s one thing to put up with this cloak and dagger bullshit when I’m getting paid for it, but this is ridiculous. “Why am I here?” she asked bluntly.
Stallings stared, his eyes revealing nothing, and then said, “I felt we owed you a debt of gratitude. I gave you an assignment and you completed it satisfactorily, despite little official support. Thank you.”
Tracie laughed bitterly. “If by ‘little official support’ you mean being harassed nonstop and subject to constant second-guessing, being badgered to approach the assignment from the wrong angle, and then being accused of malfeasance and summarily fired with no recourse, then, yes, I have to agree. There was ‘little official support.’”
Stallings’s face reddened and Tracie felt a stab of satisfaction. His jaw tightened and he said, “Has it ever occurred to you, Tanner, that sometimes you should just shut your mouth?”
“All the time. But I don’t work for you anymore, remember? I wasn’t particularly concerned about what you thought of me when I did, and I definitely don’t care now.”
He slammed a fist down on the desk and Tracie sat quietly. She refused to give him what he was looking for. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you, goddammit; I want you back!” He sat ramrod-straight in his chair and stared in exasperation up at the ceiling.
Tracie gazed impassively at her former boss. She had considered the possibility that this meeting might be about an invitation to return to the agency. Discussing the issue here, away from Langley, would allow Stallings to speak freely while providing deniability to the director should Tracie refuse his offer.
“Nobody comes back after being terminated,” she said evenly. “You know as well as I do that it just doesn’t work that way.”
“It’s my agency, I’ll run it the way I see fit,” Stallings said. “Besides, you wouldn’t be returning to the same position. You would, of course, remain in an operational status—that’s where your strengths lie—but your duties would be a little more . . . shall we say . . . undefined.”
“More undefined than covert operations? What are you going to do, make me invisible?”
Stallings looked as though he had just bitten into rancid meat. “Your sole responsibility would be to take on assignments of a similar nature to the one you just completed. Your duties would be unofficial, off the books. You would report directly to me.”
“A tightrope with no net.”
“You could look at it that way.”
“There is no other way to look at it.”
Stallings shrugged. He held all the cards and he knew it. If Tracie wanted to resume her career in service to her country she would do so on the terms of a man she knew to be ruthless and amoral, a politician/intelligence official who combined the most distasteful aspects of each calling into one monumentally untrustworthy package.
And she would do it.
Her career was the only thing in her life she cared about.
Except…she flashed back to Marshall Fulton and his offer to buy her a drink when their search for Secretary of State J. Robert Humphries had ended. No one would ever replace Shane Rowley, but she had been flattered by his offer, and touched. She hadn’t seen Marshall since that early-morning hug outside Ocean City, but the idea of sharing a drink with him seemed…intriguing.
But that was a possibility for another day. For now, she needed to focus on Aaron Stallings and his proposal. She paused a moment for effect after his shrug and then said, “What action are we taking against the Iraqis?”
Stallings furrowed his brow and glared at her. “You haven’t accepted my offer yet. You said it yourself: you’re just an unemployed citizen. I’m not sharing classified information with an unmotivated layabout.”
“If I come back into the fold, will you fill me in?”
Stallings shifted in his seat. “I’ll share what I can,” he said, his eyes shifting evasively.
“Fine,” she said. “I’m in.”
Stallings smiled. To Tracie he looked exactly like a used car s
alesman who had just closed a deal to move the rusted-out shitbox from the back of the lot. “Was there ever any doubt?”
“Actually, there was. I don’t appreciate being hung out to dry and pushed in a particular direction solely due to political considerations.”
Stallings snorted derisively. “Welcome to the world of twentieth-century intelligence gathering. Political considerations always play a part in everything we do. Wake up and smell the reality, Tanner.”
Not to me they don’t, she thought, but didn’t say it. Instead, she opted for, “Okay, I told you I’m in. What action are we taking against the Iraqis?”
Stalling shrugged. “Nothing.”
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me. We have no actionable evidence of a plot by the Iraqis to kidnap the secretary of state and frame the Soviets while using the distraction to overrun Saudi Arabia. There is no concrete action we could take.”
Tracie was stunned. “No actionable evidence?” she said, her voice rising in anger. “I followed the kidnappers from the Iraqi embassy straight to the abandoned building where Humphries was being held! I listened as they spelled out the entire plot, and later I heard them speaking to each other in Arabic. What the hell is not actionable about that?”
Stallings waved his hand dismissively. “Those men you captured are in custody and are undergoing intensive interrogation even as we speak. They refuse to talk; refuse even to give us their names. And we’ve thus far been unable to establish any connection whatsoever between them and the Iraqi mission to the United States.”
“And you won’t, either! That’s the whole point, remember? Plausible deniability? It’s exactly how we operate. It’s how everyone operates.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” the CIA director exploded. “Grow up, will you, Tanner? Of course we know the Iraqis were behind the kidnapping plot. But knowing it and acting on it are two entirely separate issues. President Reagan wanted to go after Saddam Hussein five minutes after the story was laid out to him. But he was talked out of it. You want to know by whom?”
Tracie Tanner Thrillers Box Set Page 49