Moreau said nothing, but the searing hatred on her face told Harwood everything he needed to know.
“Basayev?”
“Yes. Khasan Basayev left it for me,” Moreau said. She was sitting with her arms wrapped around her knees. “He is a great man.”
“He’s a terrorist, who killed several American soldiers,” Harwood snapped. “How’d he get my rifle?”
“He rescued your Samuelson,” Moreau said, pointing over his shoulder. “And found your rifle.”
Smooth inflections of French surrounded her English syntax.
“Where’s Basayev now?”
“I don’t know, but Khasan is not a terrorist. He is a freedom fighter just like you,” Moreau said. “No different. Tell me, Reaper, what is the difference between you shooting Taliban commanders who are growing poppy and me shooting American generals who are stealing and importing that same poppy?”
Harwood paused. It was a good question. With a few legal distinctions there wasn’t much difference, he had to admit. “We’re at war in Afghanistan.”
“Please, Reaper. The world is at war. There are no front lines, anywhere.”
A cloud passed across her eyes, as if she retreated inward to a different place.
“Vick, I didn’t know it was your rifle. I did help her get onto Fort Bragg. She found the best position to shoot from. It was purely an accident that you were in the same location when she killed General Sampson.”
“I don’t think any of this is an accident, Jackie. If you’re not completely complicit, you’re being used by her,” he said.
“It’s true,” Moreau said. “We are using each other. I kill her enemies. She gets me access.”
“Killing your enemies, also, Nina,” Harwood said.
“True. Xanadu raped me repeatedly. Nonstop. He came close to killing me many times over the last three months. Thanks to Jackie, I am free now. Her brother was killed by these men. I owe her the retribution she seeks. Nothing more. Nothing less.”
Somehow it wasn’t that simple. Harwood detected a contrived story. Three months in a coffin gave the mind plenty of time to churn through plans and possibilities … unless the plan was to be in the coffin in the first place.
“When I saw you,” Harwood said, “you were fighting off Xanadu and his men.”
“You mean when you prevented Khasan from coming to rescue me,” Moreau countered.
“My duel with Basayev had nothing to do with you,” Harwood said, emphasizing Moreau’s irrelevance to him at the time. She might be highly relevant today, right now, but at the time she was an interesting mention in an intel report.
“There were four men with rifles raiding our house. The girls they took were fifteen and sixteen years old. Beautiful young women. Both virgins. I seriously doubt they’ve been able to save themselves for marriage since their abduction.” Moreau’s accent transitioned from smooth French to a more guttural German or Arabic base.
“But you knew this was happening several weeks prior to your kidnapping. Why place yourself in the line of fire, or abduction as it were?” Harwood asked. “How did you even breathe in there?”
More furtive glances away and back at him. Shifty eyes. The truth lurking out there somewhere, but perhaps not here in the small cabin of a Boston Whaler Outrage.
“They had an oxygen-circulation system. A quite simple modification to carry live cargo as opposed to deceased remains, as you call them. Just enough oxygen, food, and water to survive.”
“Your face. Your hair. I remember it now when I was running the other day. You were driving a car near Forsyth Park.”
“That was me,” Moreau said.
“But why? Why me?”
The million-dollar question. Why him?
Jackie spoke into the silence.
“Nina told me what those men did to her. I know what they did to Richard. They’re disgusting, yes, but powerful. No amount of us going to the authorities would have worked. At first I didn’t know, Vick. You must believe me. Nina said she was going to confront General Sampson, not shoot him.”
“I don’t have to do anything, Jackie, but I’m listening. Right now, I’m the number-one wanted man in America. Maybe the world. You’ve helped kill a senator. You’ll get the needle.”
“She didn’t have anything to do with it,” Moreau said. “She drove me into Fort Bragg, sure. But that was it. I was hiding in your buddy’s trunk the night I shot the two cops. Right before you got out, I crawled out and set up in the woods. I do what I want. Tracked you to Macon. You’re right, though. I wanted into America. I let them kidnap and rape me. I’m here. You wouldn’t understand the motivation, Reaper. Things were done years ago that must be completed. That is why I am here. This has nothing to do with her. Your girlfriend is clean.”
“But what? And why?” Harwood asked, but he thought he knew and Moreau would not be admitting what he believed was at play. “What about tonight? Jackie, you helped her escape tonight. And she’s been staying on your boat.”
“No,” Moreau said. “For the record, I’m not here. Nobody will testify that they saw me get on this boat. If this boat is tied up at the River Street Market Place by five A.M., no one will know it was ever missing. And by then, I’ll either be dead or gone and there will be no trace of Jackie’s involvement.”
Harwood said, “This is a woman I used to love.”
“Used to?” Jackie asked.
“What? You think we’re all square?”
“Vick, come on. Yes, this is risky, but it’s not any worse than what Milk ’Em’s been doing. It’s not terrorism.”
“That’s precisely what it is. You’re harboring a terrorist. She may not have a bomb on her, but she’s killed six Americans.”
He looked at Moreau when he spoke. More furtive glances. There was a bomb, just not on her. Had to be somewhere. That was the play. Get the world focused on him. Use Jackie’s painful loss to get her involved. Make her complicit and use her for access. FBI, police, media all looking at him, like a magician’s trick. Hey, look at this hand over here, while I move the coin … or bomb … in the other.
“What’s next, Nina?” he asked.
Moreau shrugged, pursed her lips, looked away, and said, “Kill sheet isn’t done. I’ll find a way.”
“No more killing,” Harwood said. “My dilemma is if I turn you in, Jackie goes down with you. If I let you go, you’ll keep killing Americans.”
“We all have made difficult decisions, Reaper,” Moreau said. “The kill sheet must be finished.”
“Not with Jackie involved.”
Moreau shrugged. “I will find a way to finish. General Markham is the head of everything. And Ramsey Xanadu raped me every day. So, you tell me. If that was Jackie, would you be okay?”
Harwood paused. No, of course he wouldn’t be okay, and he couldn’t promise he wouldn’t kill everyone associated with the crimes.
“Where’s the bomb?” Harwood asked. Time was up. He needed the answer. That was her play; possibly even Basayev’s trade.
Bring her back! Trade?
“I will show you the bomb,” Moreau said.
Helicopter blades thumped loudly in the distance. Harwood climbed onto the deck to inspect. Moreau stood abruptly and dashed toward the steps, angled her body to the left, took the stairs two at a time, and bolted onto the deck of the boat.
“Watch her, Sammie,” Harwood called over his shoulder.
A small splash accented Samuelson’s report. “She’s already in the water.”
CHAPTER 26
Harwood and Jackie stood on the deck. The helicopter had turned north, away from their position, still searching. Their last sight of Nina Moreau was that of her feet kicking as she disappeared into the murky moonlit estuary.
“She grabbed one of those Sea-Doo diving propellers,” Samuelson said. “Thought about shooting her, but didn’t want the helicopter to see the flash.”
“You did the right thing,” Harwood said. He wasn’t disappointed that
Moreau had escaped.
“I never expected that,” Jackie said. “She can go at least two to three miles with that thing.”
They watched the bubbles disappear and Harwood imagined she was going to link up with Basayev. He needed to act now.
“Why did she want this boat back at the River Street Market Place?”
“Where my slip is. Security guy is always checking on me. He comes on duty at five A.M. He sees the boat and there’s no issue, no suspicion.”
Harwood nodded, thinking. He retrieved his phone from the baggie in his rucksack and put the SIM card in it for the first time in two days. He was beyond caring about being geolocated by MLQM or the FBI. When the phone powered up, he dialed the FBI.
“This is Vick Harwood, the Reaper. Patch me through to Special Agent Deke Bronson.”
After some back-and-forth and some switches and clicks, he heard a baritone voice answer.
“Bronson.”
“Meet me at the Breakfast Club on Tybee Island in thirty minutes. Don’t come in with guns hot. You won’t like the result.”
“You get religion?” Bronson asked.
“Big-time. You need me. I know everything. Be there.”
He hung up and turned to Jackie. “Let’s go. You’ve been there before.”
Jackie nodded, unable to hide the fact that she had provided the platform for Moreau to shoot the two guards in the towers of Markham’s gated Tybee compound.
“Doesn’t matter about Moreau,” he said. “You can redeem yourself.”
“I’m actually feeling okay with myself. A little guilty, Vick, because I’m truly sorry that you got sucked into this, but she just killed General Bishop, whose kid gave Richard the drugs.”
Eye for an eye. He never saw that coming from Jackie Colt when he met her four months ago. “Okay. Let’s go.” They moved to the center console and Jackie cranked the engines.
“Was going to shoot her, but wasn’t sure,” Samuelson said, again.
“You did the right thing, Sammie.”
Perhaps Samuelson was still programmed from the Stockholm syndrome. Told to drive to pick up the Reaper and he did. Drop him off at a certain parking lot. Sure thing. Stand watch while they talk. Roger that. He didn’t act without instructions, a common result of severe traumatic brain injury and especially brainwashing. The cognitive functions responded better to instructions than independent thought. Confidence in one’s own abilities to think and act independently was muted if not lost.
But when it mattered most, Samuelson had acted independently to stop the conveyor belt and save his Ranger buddy.
Harwood patted Samuelson on the shoulder. A tear slid down his spotter’s face. The moonlight cast a weak glow and the tear briefly caught the light. Samuelson’s eyes were fixed on the distance; he knew he had lost some measure of himself. Perhaps he was wondering if he would ever be fully whole again.
Aided only by a sliver of moonlight, Jackie took forty minutes to navigate the twists and turns that led them to the Atlantic Ocean south of Markham’s compound, which stood like a Spanish fortress on the tip of Tybee Island. Blastproof red-tiled shingles and stucco walls, floor-to-ceiling windows that were equally bulletproof, and multiple wings all rose from the sandy point upon which it sat as if it were designed to prevent naval ships from passing. The only things missing were the cannons and firing ports, but more lethal weapons were most likely aimed at them right now.
They docked at the Breakfast Club, where a disheveled but well-built and attractive African American man stood on the pier with his sleeves rolled up and a pistol in plain sight on his hip. A helicopter sat in the parking lot, engine ticking. Only because it was one in the morning was there not a crowd gathering.
“Special Agent,” Harwood said as he stepped onto the dock and held out his hand.
“Reaper,” Bronson replied. “And I’m assuming that’s Jackie Colt driving the boat?”
Harwood looked over his shoulder, realizing that whatever an assassination team might look like, Jackie, Samuelson, and he certainly fit the description.
“Roger.”
“And the young man sitting in the front staring out to sea?”
“That’s my former spotter, Sammie Samuelson. Traumatic brain injury. Maybe torture at the hands of Basayev.”
“The Chechen.”
“Yes. The Chechen is here.”
“We know that.”
“Yes, but you don’t know why.”
“I think we do. He wants to kill you.”
“No. Well, yes, eventually, but he needed me as a distraction.”
“A distraction from what?”
“When I was a private, I was stationed here at Hunter Army Airfield. That was in 2009 and 2010. Lots of rotations in and out of combat. I was out of combat in 2010 when Savannah police caught three Russians walking down the road near Hunter carrying shovels and rucksacks.”
“I know about that,” Bronson said. “I’ve got a situation going down on MLQM property right next to Hunter Army Airfield. Now give me something I don’t know or I’m firing that puppy up and heading back.”
“You don’t know shit, Special Agent. So just listen. There were four, not three, and the one that ran was Basayev. And he’s here now. To finish the job.”
“And you know this how?”
“I saw him the other night in the elevator at the hotel Savannah police raided. I’m sure he called in the police to get me on the move.”
“Why did you run?”
“Because I’m a black man who can shoot a rifle and nowadays that’s a tough spot to be in,” Harwood said. Bronson remained stone-faced, but the words worked.
“The other night when Samuelson dropped me off near where the two police officers were killed I heard digging and scraping. Back in 2010 when I was a private, we helped the Savannah police look for the fourth man. No one told us a name, but the word was that they had parachuted in and buried an RA-115.”
“Suitcase nuke?”
“Right, only nobody in U.S. intelligence has really ever seen one. Could be an artillery shell. A briefcase. Who knows. It’s just small enough to carry. Supposed to weigh about fifty pounds. We didn’t know what we were looking for, but we looked. Scrolls to the road, as we called it.” The Ranger insignia was an olive-drab patch designed to look like parchment, with the battalion number embroidered on it. “Stanislov Lunev.”
“Officially, I know nothing about Lunev. Unofficially, he allegedly told our government that there were four-man teams that were smuggling tactical nukes into the United States. Unofficially, he’s in witness protection somewhere. So I think he’s safe.”
“But we’re not.”
“So you’re saying Basayev came back, dug up a previously planted nuclear device, and it’s somewhere about to blow in Savannah.”
“That’s half the story. He came back, framed me using his wife, Nina Moreau, and put every law enforcement agency on my trail instead of his. Classic misdirection.”
“Moreau is the shooter?”
“Yes. I think you’ll find her wherever you can find Ramsey Xanadu or General Markham. They’re her next targets.”
“Milk ’Em?” Bronson asked. “We’re all up in their grille.”
“They’re either there or getting on the airplane,” Harwood said.
“Milk ’Em’s airplane?”
“That or Markham has an airplane, too.”
“I saw both. They’re seven-thirty-sevens.”
“Think about it, Special Agent. If he has drugs and women in safe houses what do you think he’s got on the airplane?”
They stood there looking across the street at the restaurant. Images of Monisha popped in his mind. Her smart mouth and slanted, knowing grin. Her loud cackle. Thinking of Monisha gave way to images of his foster sister, Lindsay. Both abused by weak men. Markham and Xanadu were morally weak men, as well.
But that didn’t mean they were more of a threat than Basayev, who had repeatedly demonstrated his resilie
ncy and strength. Parachuting into the United States, possibly with a nuclear weapon. Fighting alongside the Taliban in austere terrain. Falling in love with a tough woman like Nina Moreau.
“It doesn’t really matter where Markham and Xanadu are,” Harwood said.
“To me it does,” Bronson snapped.
“You should be focused on Basayev. Everything else has been a distraction.”
Bronson stopped walking, leveled his eyes even with Harwood’s.
“I should arrest you, you know?”
“But you’re not going to. You’re going to take me to Hunter in your helicopter and we’re going to put a full-court press on finding and disarming this nuke. We’re going to shut down the Milk ’Em airplane. And then you can focus on Markham and Xanadu.”
“We did find an Instagram account that we think Basayev has used to communicate. The account has a picture of a falcon and of the Oatland Island Wildlife Center sign. We’ve had three or four people say they saw someone fitting Nina Moreau’s description walking to and from the center late one evening. And we found disturbed earth near the back of the aviary big enough to hold a duffel bag. We scanned social media using the term Oatland and found that account. Then traced it to a phone. Last-known location was at the hotel where Basayev stayed.”
“Sounds about right,” Harwood said.
They both turned at the distant sound of a helicopter lifting from the roof of Markham’s compound a mile south. The blinking lights showed it banking hard west toward Savannah and then disappearing into the night.
“They know their time is short. Markham’s about to board his jet for one of a few countries,” Harwood said.
“Jackie has to get that boat back,” Samuelson said.
Bronson flinched at Samuelson’s voice. The spotter had approached them quietly.
“Tell her—”
It was too late. She and the boat, too, like the helicopter, were disappearing into the night toward Savannah.
“We’re with you, Agent,” Harwood said.
“Question is, do I put you in cuffs or kit you up,” Bronson said.
Ghost Target Page 24