by Rawlin Cash
“Jesus. What’s the population of the country.”
“Eighty-one million,” Fitzpatrick said.
“Eighty-one million?” Jennifer said. “That’s bigger than France.”
“It’s a lot bigger than France, ma’am. In terms of population, the Iranians are nineteenth in the world.”
“Isn’t their army made of straw?” Jennifer said. “Remember what they said about the Iraqis before we went in and blew them all to hell?”
“Ma’am, we’ve been suffering casualties in Iraq for almost twenty years now,” Antosh said. “No war is a cakewalk.”
“We’ve got two dead presidents,” she said. “We must respond.”
The men in the room looked at each other. A war with Iran was definitely something on their wish lists.
“We can move those two strike groups into position,” Antosh said. “And we can start mobilizing for a major operation.”
“There’s the issue of Iran’s nuclear capability,” Meredith said.
“Iran has no credible nuclear weapons capability,” Hale said.
That decided the matter.
“Start drawing up your plans, boys,” Jennifer said. “I want to stick it to these guys.”
Everyone cleared the room, leaving just Hale, Jennifer and Meredith.
“You’re sure you’re ready for this?” Hale said to her.
Jennifer sat down. She’d been wearing a sort of armor during the meeting. She’d been forcing herself to say the things she said. Going to war with Iran went against decades of her voting record in congress.
“I’m not,” she said.
“Putting the pieces on the board is the right decision.”
“But,” she said, anticipating his warning.
“Don’t pull the trigger yet. Make no mistake, a war with Iran would be the biggest fight possibly since World War Two.”
“It seems like it would be just more of the same. We’ve been at war in the Middle East since forever.”
“Iran’s different.”
“All right, Jeff,” she said. “I won’t pull the trigger.”
“Very good, ma’am,” he said.
“And tell me, Jeff, where do we stand on finding the assassin? I really would like to get back to DC at some point during this presidency.”
“Hunter’s on it as we speak. The drones that attacked the chopper led us to a lobbying firm in DC.”
“Which one?”
“Dayton MacGregor.”
“Scum bags,” Jennifer said. “They’re in bed with every crocodile in the zoo.”
“I wasn’t aware they worked on behalf of the Iranians,” Hale said.
“I can’t see them sending back a check no matter who it came from,” Jennifer said.
“True,” Hale said.
Thirty-Nine
“Please,” MacGregor gasped.
Hunter looked at his watch. There wasn’t much time. Less than ten minutes. The train had come to a halt in the tunnel between Clarendon and Virginia Square. If they’d travelled in the other direction, they’d have been close enough to the White House that a special response unit would be on its way. Where they were, it was DC transit who’d be coming. That made things easier.
Hunter put the gun against MacGregor’s second knee.
“Don’t,” MacGregor begged.
“Tell me what I need, and fast.”
MacGregor clutched the already wounded knee. He would lose consciousness soon. Hunter slapped him on the face.
“I’ll talk,” MacGregor said.
“Then talk.”
MacGregor looked at him and Hunter knew he hadn’t broken through yet. The man was still stalling.
“You better talk or I’ll put another bullet in you,” Hunter said.
He grabbed MacGregor by the balls. “Maybe I’ll shoot your cock off. A man like you wouldn’t know what to do without it.”
“What do you want to know?”
Hunter was running out of time. He rose up and glanced down the length of the train. There was still no sign of transit officers.
“You know what I want to know.”
He squeezed MacGregor’s balls.
“I don’t,” MacGregor squealed. “I don’t. I swear.”
“Who’s client Y4456?”
“Y4456? What are you talking about?”
Hunter squeezed.
“Okay, okay.”
“Just make this easy on yourself,” Hunter said.
“It’s Project Yellow.”
“But who’s behind it.”
“It’s a foreign government.”
Hunter squeezed the gunshot wound on MacGregor’s leg.
“It’s the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.”
“Bullshit,” Hunter said.
“Really. The Quds Force. It’s their unconventional warfare unit. I swear to God.”
“Who’s your contact?”
“It’s a man here in DC.”
“What’s his name?” Hunter squeezed the wound again, grinding the shattered bone in the kneecap.
“Alireza Eslami.”
“Never heard of him.”
“He works for the Iranians.”
“Out of the embassy?”
“Iran has no embassy in Washington.”
“Bullshit.”
“It’s true. Not since it was seized in 1980.”
“They have something though. They work out of somewhere.”
“Yes. They have an office in the Pakistani embassy. It’s in Cleveland Park. I swear to God.”
A voice called down the train from the next car over. “Hey!”
He was out of time. Four transit cops were approaching.
“If you’re lying, I’ll come back and kill you,” Hunter said.
MacGregor looked at him. There was that look in his eye. Hunter recognized it instantly.
“You’re lying,” he said.
“I’m not. I swear to God.”
“Yes you are,” Hunter said.
Hunter smacked him across the face with the gun and then made for the back of the train. The transit cops followed but wouldn’t open fire. The train was mostly empty but there were four passengers in the next car and two in the car after.
“Stop right there,” one of the cops called as Hunter got to the back of the train.
“Arrest the man I shot,” Hunter said. “I work for the government. Call it in. It’ll check out.”
“I can’t let you leave this train,” the cop said.
Hunter cranked open the door. A bullet struck the back of the train close to his head and ricocheted back into the car.
Hunter looked back at the cop one last time. “Go back and arrest that guy before you kill someone,” he said.
Then he stepped down into the tunnel and began running. No one followed him. He ran a few hundred yards to the first service ladder and climbed up to the manhole. There was an emergency opening mechanism on the inside of the cover. He pushed the manhole out of the way and found himself on a quiet block of Ninth Street North, just behind Virginia Square Towers. He hurried around the building to Fairfax Drive where he hailed a cab.
“You okay, buddy?” the cab driver said.
Hunter had been running and his hands were black with dirt from the metro tunnel.
“Some guy just stole my camera,” he said.
“Fuck, man.”
“I know.”
“You going to report it?”
“Waste of time.”
“Yeah, man.”
Hunter thought about going to the Pakistani embassy but he knew it was a red herring. He’d promised MacGregor he would kill him for lying. He made a mental note to keep that promise.
“Take me to the Saint Royal,” he said.
The driver looked at him in the rearview. “Shit man, nice hotel.”
“Yeah.”
“You staying there?”
“Yeah.”
“Shit, man,” the driver said again.
They d
rove a few blocks and the driver kept looking back at him in the rearview. Hunter preferred not to stick in people’s memory but this guy was going to remember him. There wasn’t much he could do about that.
“Was your camera insured?” the driver said.
“I doubt it,” Hunter said. “Maybe it’s covered with my house insurance. I don’t know.”
They drove on.
“What’s that hotel cost per night?” the driver said.
“I’m at a conference,” Hunter said. “The company gets a special rate. I don’t think it’s that much with their deal.”
“Yeah,” the driver said.
They drove on.
“What’s the conference.”
“Financial auditing,” Hunter said.
They arrived at the hotel and the driver pulled up by the valet. Hunter gave him a twenty.
“Good luck, brother,” the driver said.
“Thanks, man,” Hunter said.
He walked through the rotating door of the hotel. He waited in the lobby for the cab to pull away and then went back outside. He was directly across the street from the Dayton MacGregor building. It was a snazzy office with a big sheet of tempered glass jutting out of the facade.
Hunter was familiar with the building’s layout. He’d accessed it before when he took out Gabriel Dayton from the roof.
He walked along the front of the building and glanced inside. There were three uniformed security guards at a desk. In front of them were monitors. They were talking to each other and one of the monitors was showing a sports game.
Hunter went to the corner and turned. He walked along the side of the building and then turned again into the service alley at the back. There was a loading bay, some dumpsters, and a secure door.
He walked up to the door, put his gun to the key hole, and pulled the trigger. A loud crack rang out over the alley and the door moved on its hinges. Hunter knew a silent alarm had been triggered. He walked back around to the front of the building and glanced inside again. No guards were at the front desk.
He stepped up to the door of the building and pushed it open. There were security cameras but there was nothing he could do about them. He walked through the lobby and straight to the elevator. Some of the floors required keycards to access. The fifth was the highest he could get to without a pass.
He got out on the fifth floor. Directly ahead of him was a guy in his twenties sitting at a counter. There was a stack of white towels folded on the counter. Beyond him were the doors to a men’s and women’s dressing room and then a glass wall behind which was a gym and swimming pool.
There was a basket on the counter full of green apples. Hunter walked up to the counter and picked up an apple.
“You can probably tell that I’m not supposed to be here,” Hunter said.
The kid nodded.
“This can go the easy way or it can go the hard way,” Hunter said.
The kid looked at him. Hunter was dressed casually. He had on a white shirt, a jacket, jeans. The kid had a perfect gym body but Hunter was military. The kid saw instantly the difference between military training and working out in a gym.
“I’ll take the easy way,” he said.
Hunter nodded and took a bite out of the apple.
“You know Scot MacGregor?”
“Of course, he’s the boss.”
“What floor’s his office on?”
“Seventh, I assume,” the kid said. “That’s all management.”
“And how do I get there?”
“I don’t have access,” the kid said.
“How do they come down here? In this elevator?”
“Sometimes.”
“And other times?”
“They have a private staircase.”
The kid nodded toward the corridor to the right. There was a door with a green emergency exit sign above it.
“How about you don’t call this in?” Hunter said. “I’ll go do what I need to do and I’ll be gone before anyone realizes I’m here. Less people will get hurt.”
The kid nodded. Hunter walked down the corridor to the emergency door. It led to a service stairwell, concrete and unadorned. Hunter went up two flights and checked the door. It was locked from this side. He examined it and then forced it open. He’d triggered another silent alarm but that was okay. He had time for what he needed to do.
He was in an open area with four-foot-high, glass dividing walls. There were desks and computers in the cubicles. There were also glass-walled meeting rooms around the edge of the space and large windows with a view toward the White House and mall.
There were people working at some of the desks. They were staring at their screens with headphones on, or surfing the internet mindlessly to avoid going home to their families. No one looked at Hunter.
There were offices with oak doors to the left and Hunter knew those were the executive suites. He found MacGregor’s door and tried it. It was unlocked. He went inside. He stood with his back to the door and looked around the room. He didn’t turn on the light, there was enough coming in from the glass wall.
There was a desk, a laptop hooked up to a monitor, some comfortable seating with a table, a bar cart.
Hunter opened the laptop.
It was password protected.
He unplugged the cables and took the laptop with him. He went back to the door and opened it a crack. Two uniformed guards were at the door to the staircase. They’d attracted the attention of the office drones and were examining the door and asking the workers questions.
They knew they had an intruder.
Hunter didn’t want to kill anyone.
He scanned the room. There were two guards and five other employees. There was no reason for him to hide. He’d been caught on camera and was clearly identifiable by Deke and MacGregor. The firm knew he was the intruder.
With the laptop under his arm he stepped out of the office and walked toward the guards.
“Hey,” one of office workers said.
Everyone turned to look at him.
“Who are you?” the guard closer to him said.
Hunter kept walking.
“Stop right there,” the guard said.
“Calm down,” Hunter said. “I’m IT.”
The two guards had their hands on their weapons. Hunter slowed down and put his hand inside the neck of his shirt as if fishing for a lanyard. The office workers were all wearing them.
As he approached, he held out the laptop to one of the guards while fishing in his shirt with the other hand. As the guard took it, Hunter jabbed him in the throat. The man doubled over and Hunter punched the other guard twice in the face. Then he took the computer back from the doubled over guard who was still clutching it. The man stumbled backwards and Hunter drove his knee into the man’s crotch. He took both guard’s weapons then addressed the group of stunned employees.
“Don’t follow me. In sixty seconds I’ll be out of this building and none of you will ever have to worry about me again.”
He stepped over the guards before anyone could make an answer. He hurried down the seven flights of stairs and pushed through the door to the lobby. There was no one at the front desk and Hunter walked right out.
He could see the flashing lights of police cars approaching but walked toward them calmly, the laptop safely under his arm.
He got on the subway at McPherson Square and took it to Metro Center where he changed lines. He got off the next train at Chinatown and went into the first restaurant he found.
The place was almost empty. There were a few late night customers and one server, a Chinese man in his thirties who was wearing a Nirvana shirt.
Hunter took a table at the back, made note of the exits, and ordered tea and noodle soup. He worked quickly on the laptop, it probably contained a tracker, and found out the true identity of client Y4456 on the Dayton MacGregor internal system.
It wasn’t Iran.
Forty
The Saudi embassy in Washington w
as located at 601, New Hampshire Avenue, Foggy Bottom. Hunter got out of the cab on a section of the street that had recently been renamed Jamal Khashoggi Way, and entered the Watergate Complex that was directly across from the embassy.
Entering the embassy was not without risk. The Saudis were known to maintain squads of killers in some embassies and they would have no qualms killing a single CIA operative.
Inside the Watergate, Hunter decided to call Fawn.
“You back in DC?” he said when she picked up.
“Not yet. You?”
“Yup.”
“And?”
“It’s not the Iranians.”
“How do you know?”
“I just spent half an hour hacking Scot MacGregor’s computer.”
“Hale briefed me,” she said. “Dayton MacGregor were involved. Why doesn’t that surprise me?”
“MacGregor said they’d been hired by the Iranians.”
“Which would make sense. The drones are based on the RQ-170 Sentinel. The one the Iranians captured.”
“But that’s not the only way for that tech to get out.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about someone selling secrets.”
“A traitor?”
“If it’s possible for the government to betray itself.”
“What do you mean?”
“This is America. Everything’s for sale.”
“Not the RQ-170. There’s an export ban.”
“And who has always been able to get around our export bans?”
“Anyone with enough money.”
“And who’s got all the money in the world?”
Fawn was thinking.
“Jack,” she said. “Where are you?”
“Guess.”
“Tell me.”
“You know where I am.”
“The Saudi Embassy.”
“That’s right.”
“Fuck, Jack. If you’re wrong.”
“If I’m wrong, Saudi Arabia will be angry. They’re always angry.”
“It will be a major incident.”
“As major as a war with Iran?”
“I see your point.”
“Here’s what I want you to do,” Hunter said. “Find out if the State Department ever approved an RQ-170 sale to Saudi Arabia.”