The Joe Brennan Spy Thrillers

by Sam Powers

  ‘Hey! Hey, buddy! Slowdown!’ the plainclothes officer yelled, trying to immobilize him by twisting his arm behind him.

  A second officer stepped forward, baton extended. ‘Just cool it, guy…’ he suggested.

  Brennan dropped low, his body weight wrenching him from the officer’s grasp. He swung his left elbow out in a semi-circle, hammering the cop in the groin.

  As his partner stepped in to strike, the agent’s left fist shot out, catching him flush in the side of the knee, the interior cruciate ligament tearing, the cop yelping as he stumbled to the ground.

  Before anyone could intervene, the agent was upright again and back into the crowd, the two cops lying prone on the sidewalk as the onlookers gathered around and wondered what they’d somehow missed.

  SCARSDALE, New York

  From David Chan’s suite at his country club, Jonah Tarrant watched the parade on the massive flat screen that had risen from the floor. Chan was a few feet away in a leather armchair.

  Adrianne Hayes sat next to the CIA man, waiting for her opportunities. She knew Jonah well enough to know that eventually, he’d leave an opening to be embarrassed, something that might make his position available to the right ambitious individual. He lacked the self-control to be a great director of Central Intelligence, but that was obviously his intention.

  ‘So far so good, deputy director,’ Chan said with a broad smile. ‘It seems that all of this has been, as I suspected, blown terribly out of proportion.’

  Tarrant’s instincts said his opposite number was wrong, that there had been too much traffic, too much activity. But so far, the day had gone smoothly, he had to admit. ‘Let’s hope that’s the case, Mr. Chairman.’

  ‘Please… I grew up here. It’s David.’

  ‘Fine.’ Tarrant suppressed a little smile and a profound sense of internal satisfaction. There was no immediate benefit in letting the man know how much he admired him. Chan was the heaviest of political hitters, a man with the wealth and authority to perhaps one day rule his nation, should he get enough capitalist reformers on side. And Tarrant harbored ambitions of his own. Former director Bush had set the template for how a man from the service could make the sideways move into the senior political ranks. His own family was just as connected, just as old money. He’d been a Skull-and-Bones man at Yale, just like the Bush boys, and long before his moment of heroism, five years earlier, in taking out an armed colleague, he’d been an effective fundraiser for the Young Republicans. ‘Call me Jonah, David. If nothing else positive comes of this weekend, at least we can establish a mutually beneficial working arrangement, something that helps both our countries.’

  He’d thought about leaving it as a question, seeing how Chan would react. But the man’s hospitality suggested pushing ahead.

  Chan smiled politely. “Of course.’

  Tarrant’s phone rang. ‘Jonah Tarrant.’

  ‘Sir, my name is Claude Boetcher, and I’m the federal agencies liaison down here at JFK…’

  ‘Yes, Mr. Boetcher… I’m surprised to be getting this call directly… were you able to talk to my assistant…’

  ‘Sir, no… it’s not like that. They patched me over from your building in Langley…They said you’d want to talk to me directly.’

  ‘Okay… what can we help you with today sir?’

  ‘We’ve got a woman down here who was caught trying to enter the country on a stolen passport. It got flagged by CBP and we took her into custody. She almost broke loose – broke an air marshall’s nose and knocked out his front teeth in the process. He’s pretty mad about that…’

  ‘Sir… the woman?’

  ‘Yes sir! Anyway, she seemed pretty desperate to talk to you or a ‘Joseph Brennan’. She identifies herself as ‘Daisy Lee’, said you’d know what she meant. She doesn’t have a scrap of legitimate identification as far as we can tell, and the really weird bit on top of all of it is she doesn’t have any fingerprints; they’ve been removed. So, when she mentioned the CIA I figured she might be telling the truth and was not just some kook.’

  ‘You made the right call sir. Hang on for just a moment.’ He lowered the phone and looked over at Chan. ‘Looks like we’ve landed one of yours at the airport on bad papers.’

  Chan frowned. ‘Really? I wasn’t aware of anything like that going on during our visit…’

  ‘It’s Daisy Lee, the woman was working with Brennan. Shall I have them cut her loose?’

  Chan gave it some thought. ‘Hmmm… she was apparently with him when he visited the site of Legacy. She might have valuable intel.’

  ‘True.’

  ‘On the other hand, some of it may be China-centric or specific, and not for foreign ears. Would you be terribly offended if we took her off your hands and debriefed her in private? In the spirit of the day, we’ll certainly share anything about Legacy, although…’ he nodded toward the television, ‘… it certainly seems so far as if Madame Mao’s only real legacy is to be a forgotten political figure.’

  Jonah gave him his broadest smile. Nothing fazed Chan, it seemed. ‘That’s fine, fine.’

  ‘I’ll have someone from our New York consulate run by and pick her up.’

  Two birds with one stone, Jonah figured. If Legacy had any legs at all, Chan would want to use it to further their co-operation, and in the meantime, Joe Brennan had no reason to potentially upset any apple carts.

  Everything was going perfectly.

  MANHATTAN, New York

  Drabek held Zoey’s hand so that they wouldn’t get separated in the crowds. They’d made good time, staying ahead of the parade.

  Zoey had butterflies in her stomach but was determined not to show them. She kept peering through the mass of bodies and heads, looking for gaps, hoping to catch a glimpse of Ben. She didn’t even know if he’d look the same. She couldn’t believe it still mattered to her, but for some reason, it did.

  ‘Stay sharp, kid, we’re getting near the end of the parade route,’ Drabek said, speaking up so she could hear him over the din. He kept looking for signs of Parnell and Mah but feared they’d already passed them. ‘There’s an old school up here that’s been converted to offices for a few years and there’s a seniors’ center next to it. I guess the Premier is supposed to meet some centenarian from the old country…’

  Zoey remembered the CIA agent, Brennan, bringing up their effort to cancel that part of the Chinese leader’s trip. She chewed on her lower lip nervously as they continued to elbow their way through the crowd. It was hard for her to understand how anything in a world so harsh could be so important as to risk all these peoples’ lives. If word ever got out that they’d known about a terrorism threat…’

  She lost herself in the thought for a moment. Perhaps that was the best thing to do, once everything was over. Perhaps she needed to tell her story to a newspaper or TV station. She thought of Brennan’s boss, Jonah, and the hatchet-faced woman who followed him around, Adrianne. They didn’t seem to care about any of the people involved in their little drama, just the political fallout. Maybe they’ll give a damn about the rest of us when they’re the ones being judged. Maybe seeing their names in headlines would teach them some humility.

  She realized she’d lost herself in thought and almost stumbled over a small child. ‘Sorry!’ she told the little boy as she straightened up and they resumed their pace. She looked across the throng.

  She only saw him for a split second, but she could have sworn…

  ‘Ben! He’s here!’

  Drabek stopped short. ‘What?! Where?’

  She looked back across the road. ‘That direction. For a second I thought…’ But there was no sign of him. ‘He must have moved into the crowd…’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  She wanted to say yes, but Zoey knew nothing good had ever come from being full of shit. And she knew she couldn’t be certain.

  She shook her head. ‘It was just a glimpse.’

  Drabek looked across the road, trying to see what she migh
t have seen. There were just as many onlookers over there. He tried to peer through the same gaps. There seemed to be a thousand different faces, but none familiar. The side street was blocked by a city fire truck.

  He looked back down the street; the President’s limousine was just a block back, crawling ahead slowly as the crowds waved their miniature Star-Spangled Banners. ‘If we try to skip the cordon, someone will just nab us on the other side,’ he half yelled. ‘Maybe this is as far as we get…’

  Zoey let go of his hand and moved through the crowd, toward the old seniors’ center. It had three wide front steps. She used the extra foot-and-a-half to look over the crowd once more.

  Drabek joined her. ‘Any sign?’ he said, looking up at her.

  She shook her head. ‘Nothing. I don’t know, I guess… I guess maybe I imagined it.’

  Her face was lined with tension, and Drabek felt the urge to reach out. He grasped her hand like a knowing grandparent and shook it a little. ‘Don’t worry, kid. You don’t owe anyone a damn thing.’

  For a few scant seconds, Zoey felt a warm glow run through her. She hadn’t felt like that much lately, as if there was someone who cared. She looked toward the back of the convoy. ‘I still can’t see… Norm! I see… I think it’s Parnell, back at the end of the block. She’s leaning down for something… Damn it. I lost sight of her.’

  Ahead of them, the crowd’s cheers swelled. A kid six feet from the steps said, ‘Look, Mom, look! It’s the President!’

  At the end of the retinue, Mah and Parnell followed the last limousine, their two plain clothes associates just inside the cordon, within reach of the onlookers. Parnell kept Mah in her peripheral vision. The last cross street before the senior center, Lafayette, was approaching.

  They were far back and the onlookers were ignoring them, their stares toward the front of the convoy. She glanced both ways quickly; the plain-clothes officers were watching the crowd and the vehicles as well, not what was going on behind them. Parnell reached into her suit jacket pocket, then broke her stride, changing direction to angle her way over, next to Mah.

  ‘What are you doing?’ he demanded, not changing his volume, aware she could hear him clearly though the earpiece. ‘We need to cover both sides properly.’

  ‘No, we don’t. Look!’ she said, pointing ahead and to the left. Mah’s head’s turned and she withdrew her hand from her pocket, quickly slamming the hypodermic syringe into the side of his thigh. He grasped at it, took one shocked look at her, then stumbled forward, grabbing at his chest.

  ‘This man, he’s having a heart attack!’ she yelled toward the crowd. A few turned their heads back to look at them, a buzz building over the man lying in the street. Parnell knelt next to him. The plainclothes officers were nearly half a block ahead already, and no one was stopping the onlookers who climbed under the cordon and gathered around.

  Mah looked up, his eyes wide and terrified, staring at his assailant, his vocal cords paralyzed along with most of the rest of his body, including his lungs. He felt them shudder to a halt, then seemingly disappear, the air no longer able to reach them as he began to asphyxiate.

  ‘Someone get a doctor!’ Parnell yelled, standing up. The other people kneeling didn’t rise with her, and the last thing Mah saw before he lost consciousness was the NSA agent striding toward the intersection ahead.

  44/

  Levitt and Gessler sat in the cab of the truck, shrouded from the sun, the vehicle’s big diesel engine idling. If Water was on schedule, she would be pulling barricades from each corner across the last intersection. The crowd would be gathering behind the last vehicle, blocking off retreat.

  He reached down under the seat and pulled out a touchscreen pad. It held a video image. He clicked a few on screen settings and the image switched to the other camera. Each gave him a high corner view of the final two blocks. The signal might be picked up by a security sweep, he knew, but it would be too late.

  Levitt watched the crowd swelling as people from further back moved toward the seniors’ center. Enough got out of the way that he could briefly see the two wooden barricades, people assuming the block was closed now to traffic and milling across the makeshift pedestrian concourse. ‘She’s in place,’ he said. ‘The lead vehicle is approaching. We are go.’

  Gessler stood on the gas and the fire truck lurched to life, pulling forward with surprising acceleration. It immediately struck several pedestrians, scattering them to the side like bowling pins. The crowd began to scream but the men inside the truck couldn’t hear them and wouldn’t have noticed anyway. It crossed into the road and blocked it, cutting between the Chinese Premier’s limousine and its protectors, one car ahead.

  Both men leaped out of the cab wearing flak jackets, each carrying a modified AK-47. They strafed the limousine with gun fire, disabling its tires, the armor-piercing rounds beginning to carve holes into the vehicle’s plating, its bulletproof windshield quickly spidering. Gessler turned and leaned into the truck, and when he turned back was carrying a long metal tube. He mounted it on his shoulder and sighted the limousine.

  Levitt turned, gun fire ringing out behind them as the two plainclothes officers tried to intercede. Parnell had told him what to expect and he swivelled to each in turn, gunning both men down with a quick, accurate burst of fire. The limousine ahead was trying to back up, guards beyond it trying to remove the barriers that closed off the street, but unable to get through the stampeding, panicking crowd. Shrill screams filled the air.

  Gessler depressed the trigger and the launcher roared, its payload rocket shooting out in a perfect line, finding the underside of the limousine. The rocket blew, and the Premier’s limousine flew skyward, flipping over backwards end-to-end, pedestrians struck by thousands of pounds of flying steel, blood spewing across the asphalt.

  Brennan heard the explosion and saw the car flip from two blocks back, screaming chaos overwhelming the crowd, people running in all directions, knocking each other down, uniformed officers heading the other way, toward the danger. He didn’t dare draw his pistol, not without them knowing him. But he had to get there, he knew, and his feet pounded the pavement as he shoved people aside.

  Ahead, a balding man dropped what looked like a rocket launcher beside the fire truck that blocked the road. Then he unslung the assault rifle from his shoulder and began to take out the onrushing police officers with precise, methodical aim.

  Men were trying to crawl out of the limousine, all black suits and white shirts, sunglasses. Bodyguards. The man with the assault rifle lowered his aim, strafing them, their bodies convulsing as the shells tore through them.

  Ahead, through the smoke, Brennan could see another man heading in the other direction, toward the President’s limousine. His rifle was held high as he walked, his aim swinging from one secret service agent to the next, picking them off methodically before most could even level a weapon.

  Levitt. Brennan ran past the first shooter along the sidewalk, drawing his pistol from the back of his waist band. But before he could line the man up, he saw the muzzle flash to his right, felt the ‘thwip’ of the bullet pushing air past his left ear. He turned to the source and fired, aiming ‘center mass’ in the rush of the moment.

  Parnell collapsed, the bullet passing between her rib cage, chipping bone before puncturing her lung, her gun clattering to the pavement. She clutched at the wound as blood began to gurgle up her throat, pouring out of her lungs with each breath. ‘Fire…’ she wheezed. ‘Help… me. Help… me, Donny…’

  Gessler paused from his assault, freezing for a split second. He stared down at her, but there was no flicker of emotion, nor recognition that he’d known Amy Sawyer since they were little kids together, so long ago. He stared just long enough to retrain his sights and put a bullet through the prone agent’s head.

  Then he went back to his task, the limousine eviscerated, the barrage impossible to survive.

  Brennan shut out the noise and panic around him. He lined Gessler up for a hea
d shot and slowly squeezed the tr…

  ‘Sir, drop the weapon! NOW! DO IT!’ the voice came from behind him.

  “I’m CIA! Agency!’ Brennan yelled.

  ‘Drop it, now, or I’ll shoot!’

  Goddamn it, not now!

  In the block ahead of the fire truck, the President’s limo sped down the street, out of the line of fire. Whether Levitt saw it or not, Brennan couldn’t be sure; but the man who’d once been a caring young soul named Christopher Platt was in trouble, without cover and outnumbered. He ran, infantry style, back toward the old school, firing behind him to clear his egress. Gessler spotted him and followed, bullets pinging off the building’s façade as the agents and police tried to take them out. The sidewalks had cleared, terrified members of the public out of range. Both men put shoulders to the door, and it burst inwards.

  Drabek saw the vehicle speed out of the alley almost immediately and realized just as quickly what had been wrong with the map. He grabbed Zoey’s arm and pulled her behind him, up the stairs and into the seniors’ center. He couldn’t be sure the truck wouldn’t explode, and it was the nearest cover.

  Gunfire erupted, partially drowning screams from the parade goers. Inside the lobby of the seniors center, the gathered elders hit the floor when the first bullet shattered a front window.

  ‘We need to go out there!’ Zoey screamed. ‘If Ben is out there, I have to see him. I have to know…’

  ‘No way!’ Drabek asserted. ‘There are more than thirty federal agents down there and you have no protection from bullets.’ Then he turned to the rest of the room from his kneeling position and said, ‘Everyone stay calm, I’m a police officer. Stay low and stay inside. Don’t go near the windows. Are we clear?’

  The silence suggested everyone had the message.

  ‘If he sees me,’ Zoey went on, ‘maybe he’ll snap out of it; maybe it’ll make him pause or break the hold someone has on him.’