Authors: Matthew Dunn
S
heridan could hear the boars grunting and squealing before he stopped his car at the end of the forest-lined track, in front of the remote farmstead. It was eight
P.M
., and the CIA officer knew it was the exact time the fifteen swine got their evening feed. He’d witnessed it before, and it was a terrifying and frenzied display of gluttonous savagery. Because their owners had crossbred male boars with domestic pigs, the boars were twice the size of their wild cousins, had large tusks, coarse hair that was painful to touch, and the strength and ferocity to shred a man to pieces in minutes. As Sheridan stepped out of his car into the sodden night air, the animal screams began to sound like hysterical pagans witnessing a sacrifice.
The sounds revolted him.
Not least because the boars’ favorite food was flesh.
The officer shivered, turned on his flashlight, and walked on, trying not to get his expensive shoes and suit trousers muddy. The complex was in West Virginia, approximately one hundred miles west of Langley, in forested, sparsely populated countryside; it had five main buildings and a cluster of outbuildings. As he headed toward the farmhouse, he passed the barn and could smell the boars’ stench, a combination of musk, piss, and shit; a brutish odor that oozed from three-hundred-pound beasts whose sole joy was to indulge in an orgy of bacchanalian feasting.
The houses in the town of Springfield, Maine, were all spread far apart from each other; between them, trees ensured that residents had privacy from their neighbors.
Some of the houses had garages where owners’ vehicles could be locked away, but others didn’t. Will walked from one property to the next, checking the driver’s seats of the cars and their distance from the brake and accelerator pedals, and glancing around to ensure none of the houses’ lights came on because someone had spotted him.
At the seventh house, he found a vehicle with a driver’s seat that looked to be in the position that Will would put it in if he were driving it. He faced the house, could see no signs of an alarm system, so ran around the side of the house and entered the backyard. Placing his head against the back door, he listened for a moment and heard nothing save the rain. He turned the handle—unsurprisingly, it was locked—and withdrew his lockpick set.
One minute later, he was in the kitchen. It was silent. He stayed still for ten seconds, listening for any signs that people were awake and allowing his eyes to adjust to the darkness.
On either side of him were two large rooms. He turned his flashlight on and quickly checked both; they were empty.
At the base of the stairs, he turned off the flashlight and stood still, listening again for any indication that an occupant had heard him and was getting out of bed to grab his shotgun. He slowly moved up the stairs in total darkness while praying the floorboards underneath were not creaky.
On the second floor, there were four rooms that had open doors. He moved to the nearest doorway, crouched down beside it, and glanced inside. It was a study, and no one was in it. He repeated the same drill in the next two rooms. Neither was occupied: one was a cluttered storage room, the other a bathroom. He crouched beside the last door. It had to be the bedroom.
Breathing deeply, he stuck his head into the room.
Inside were a wardrobe, a chest of drawers, and a bed that was empty.
The owner was not at home.
Will opened the wardrobe. Though the position of the car seat suggested its driver was approximately the same height as Will, there was every possibility that its owner was fat or thin. But after checking the length and waist size of a pair of jeans, Will was relieved to see that they were a good fit. Together with the pants, he grabbed a shirt, sweater, and underwear from the drawers. He’d need a coat as well, and he’d spotted four of them hanging on a rack on the first floor.
He made ready to leave, but paused by the bathroom.
It looked so enticing.
Should he?
He entered the windowless room, shut the door, and stripped out of his clothes.
After filling the sink with hot water, he quickly sponge-washed his body and hair, brushed his teeth with a spare toothbrush, got dressed in his new clothes, grabbed his old ones, went downstairs, and turned the flashlight back on. He chose a winter jacket that looked warm and sturdy but nothing like the kind of thing a man would wear if he’d received specialist military training and was on the run, and moved back into the kitchen. Beside the trash can was a roll of plastic bags. After removing his guns and all other items from his dirty jacket and placing them in his new coat, he chucked all his clothes in the bag. He’d dispose of it somewhere a few miles away. Then he opened the refrigerator and grabbed some food.
He reckoned the clothes he’d stolen and the guilt of eating the man’s food called for two hundred dollars’ compensation. He withdrew three hundred and left the cash on the table.
As he walked fast away from the house and the town, he felt rejuvenated. Just as important, he looked like an ordinary American civilian and not like the man who’d been seen in Nova Scotia and at the New Brunswick–Maine International Avenue crossing.
He was now confident that he could blend in and get to D.C. within a couple of days by train, bus, or other public transportation.
Trouble was, he was also aware that he could be heading toward his downfall.
Being in the presence of the two men always made Sheridan feel uneasy. Augustus and Elijah were fifty-two-year-old twins and looked nearly identical, with straight shoulder-length black hair, bodies that were diminutive yet very strong, circular spectacles, galoshes, and all-in-one overalls that were covered in pig meal and crap. Though they looked a bit odd, Sheridan supposed they would look harmless enough to anyone else who could see them making mugs of coffee in their kitchen.
But most people didn’t know what Sheridan knew—that they were former members of the CIA’s Special Activities Division, where they’d specialized in psychological warfare, physical and mental experimentation on foreign prisoners, torture, and execution. They’d honed their skills during every covert and overt war that the States had been involved in during their service. Few people in the Agency had known about their existence, and those who did rarely liked to talk about their role. They were an unpalatable last resort, and were tolerated by CIA senior management in the same way that psychopaths are tolerated in the ranks of an army when every able-bodied man is needed to stave off a country’s obliteration. But that had ended nine years before, when the twins went too far on a mission in Afghanistan by reenacting the medieval English punishment of hanging a person to near death before emasculating, disemboweling, beheading, and chopping the person into four pieces. It was done in front of a suspected terrorist who they wanted to confess to a roadside bomb attack against U.S. soldiers. Ordinarily, the hanging, drawing, and quartering might have been hushed up by those members of the Agency who knew about the twins and their work.
But the victim was the eight-year-old son of the alleged terrorist.
They’d gone way too far. Even by the standards of Agency men who had no qualms about sticking their hands in blood and guts to get secrets so that they could protect the American way of life.
Sheridan had stepped in to save their necks, arguing that Agency interests would not be served by making what had happened public, and also suggesting that the twins could still be of use to the CIA, albeit completely off the books. The Agency agreed that the twins could return to the States and live off their pensions. It also said that the twins could not be used again, on or off the books. That hadn’t surprised Sheridan, because the Agency says stuff like that a lot, even when it doesn’t mean what it says. In situations like that, what the Agency doesn’t say is more important, and in this case it didn’t say that Sheridan wasn’t allowed to meet the twins again. So for nine years Sheridan had been the twins’ sole point of contact with the Agency, and he’d drawn upon their skills to do the really nasty stuff that nobody wanted to know about. In particular, anyone on U.S. soil whom the Agency didn’t like could be made to vanish when Sheridan involved Augustus and Elijah.
The kitchen looked normal, aside from a work surface that had nineteen large bottles of bleach, an excessive number of meat cleavers hanging from hooks in the ceiling, and clothes racks that were standing next to radiators and had animal skins draped over them.
“What you got for us?” Augustus handed Sheridan a mug of coffee and lit a cigarette that was wrapped in paper as black as his long hair.
Sheridan wondered whether he should drink the coffee, because consuming anything in this place seemed unnatural. “Right now, I haven’t got anything for you. Very shortly, though, I may, and I need you to be ready when that happens.”
“Man or woman?”
“Man.”
Elijah interlocked his fingers, outstretched his sinewy arms, and cracked his knuckles. “Age, nationality, and name?”
Sheridan answered the questions.
“The guy who’s been all over the news?”
“Yes. You got a problem with that?”
“Nope. How much does he weigh?”
Sheridan frowned. “What?”
“Simple question.”
“I haven’t had the opportunity to put him on a scale.”
“You know his height and build?”
Sheridan shrugged. “Over six foot. He’s big. But athletic. Doubt he’s got much fat on him.”
Elijah glanced at his brother. “Should we assume two-ten to two-forty pounds?”
Augustus nodded. “I’m thinking so, and that means at least three days in the chest.”
“I’d say four and a half to be on the safe side.”
Sheridan had no idea what they were talking about. “The chest?”
Augustus inhaled deep on his cigarette. “Chest freezer.”
Elijah added four spoons of sugar to his coffee and slowly stirred the drink. “Few months back, me and Augustus conducted a forensic analysis of the site of our last kill. We thought our methods were good enough to cover our tracks, but we were wrong and found traces of the target’s DNA. Not much, but enough to get us the needle. So, we’ve further refined things.”
Augustus said, “Day before it happens, we turn up the empty chest freezer to maximum cold.”
Elijah added, “When it’s at its lowest temperature, we sedate Cochrane.”
“And put him in a see-through bag.”
“Body length.”
“Sealed over the head.”
“Then we strangle him.”
“No blood.”
“Dump him in the freezer.”
“For four and a half days.”
“Body’s going to be rock solid after that.”
“Easy to put through the wood chipper.”
“Then easy to feed to the boars.”
Sheridan smiled. “All trace of Will Cochrane and his DNA disappeared.” He stood, checked his watch, and decided he could be back in D.C. in time to get showered and changed before going to the FBI ops room for Marsha Gage’s briefing to her newly assembled task force. “What’s your price?”
The twins answered in unison. “Fifty thousand.”
It was money that would come out of the Agency slush fund under Sheridan’s control.
The CIA officer nodded. “You’ll get it once your pigs have turned Cochrane into shit.”
E
llie Hallowes got out of her hotel room bed and stared at the cell phone.
Goodness knows how many times per day she’d looked at the cell’s screen, desperate to hear it ring or receive an SMS, her mind crying out for Will Cochrane to make contact. But every time she glanced at the blank screen it further reinforced her belief that Will had either decided to turn back and flee, or died in the wilderness somewhere in Europe.
That would mean she’d never see him again. She didn’t like that prospect one bit.
And it would mean she would either have to stay quiet about her suspicions that Antaeus knew about Ferryman, or she would have to tell someone else. But who? She recalled what Will had said to her in Norway.
Be very careful. Trust no one.
Maybe she could speak to someone outside the U.S. intelligence community. Perhaps the attorney general or someone like that. She’d seen it happen in the movies, but had never been told how it worked in real life. No instructors on her Agency training course had said to her, “Look, if one of us is a traitor and you can’t trust anyone, then this is what you need to do.”
And even if she did speak to someone who was wholly independent, she decided that nothing would come of it save her being severely punished for meddling in affairs she wasn’t cleared to know about. The president himself had signed some of the documents she’d read in the Ferryman files. So had Senator Jellicoe, Charles Sheridan, and Ed Parker.
Powerful people.
All men.
With huge vested interests in Project Ferryman because it would give them fame and glory when it served up Cobalt’s head.
She wondered if Helen Coombs had established that Ellie had deliberately gotten her drunk so she could temporarily steal her identity. If she had, no doubt Helen would report it immediately to the Agency, and Ellie would be grabbed by CIA heavies and locked in a cell. So much depended upon Will getting into the States to meet with Ellie. And it had to happen fast, or everything she’d done and hopefully Will had done would be a waste of time.
She changed out of her nightgown into a bathrobe, started running a shower, and switched on the TV. After flicking through the channels, she settled on a news network’s story about a bomb attack in Kabul that had left twenty-two dead and three times that number mutilated. A security analyst was saying that the bomb used was sophisticated, containing military-grade high explosive. The type of bomb, Ellie mused, that would be expensive to buy and would be used by terrorists with access to a stack of cash—money that in all probability came from Cobalt.
The anchor cut short the analyst and announced the show was going live to Washington, D.C., where there was breaking news.
Ellie gasped as she saw a grainy black-and-white close-up shot of a bearded Will Cochrane’s face. At the base of the screen were his name and a text feed that stated,
WANTED FUGITIVE I
S IN UNITED STATES.
ARMED AND EXTREMELY
DANGEROUS. DO NOT AP
PROACH. IF SEEN, CON
TACT FBI OR POLICE
.
Ellie’s heart was pounding, her body tingling with adrenaline.
The show cut live to a female reporter who was close to the FBI’s headquarters, the J. Edgar Hoover Building. Standing next to the reporter was a man Ellie didn’t know. He was wearing a suit, held an umbrella over his head, and looked pissed to be standing out in the rain and darkness so early in the morning.
The reporter announced, “I’m with a spokesperson for the FBI. Sir, we understand from Senator Colby Jellicoe’s televised appearance at the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that Cochrane is a member of Great Britain’s MI6 intelligence service.”
The man nodded. “That’s correct.”
“So can you tell us why Cochrane’s on the run?”
“Something he did in Norway while operating on a joint CIA-MI6 mission. But I’m not privy to the details.”
“You’ve confirmed Will Cochrane’s been sighted at the Canadian border crossing into Maine. Do you have any other confirmed sightings of him?
The FBI spokesperson shook his head. “We’ve had one or two possible leads, but nothing substantial. That said, we’re fairly sure he’s headed to Washington, D.C.”
“Why D.C.?”
“I can’t answer that, ma’am.”
“Is he a danger to members of the public?”
The FBI official looked directly into the camera. “He’s a real danger to certain people.”
“What advice do you give if he’s spotted?”
“Stay well away. Then call us or the cops. We’ll send in HRT or SWAT to take him down.”
The reporter frowned. “What’s HRT?”
The spokesperson replied, “They’re the type of men we need to take down Cochrane, and they’re embedded in our task force.”
“Is that standard procedure?”
“No, but this is a highly unusual case. We need to move very fast and with maximum force if Cochrane’s spotted or tracked down.”
The reporter asked, “Can you tell us a bit more about Cochrane’s capabilities?”
The spokesperson’s expression was somber as he answered, “He’s a highly trained and effective operator. This is a dangerous manhunt. I can’t emphasize that enough. If he’s spotted, no members of the public must approach Cochrane.
Nobody
.”
After the hotel room television was turned off, Oates turned to Scott and asked, “What’s HRT?”
“Hormone replacement therapy.”
The former SAS soldiers laughed.
“Feds are using hormones to capture Cochrane.”
“Trying to make him have a sensitive side.”
Scott turned serious. “Hostage Rescue Team. Some of my pals in Delta and DEVGRU joined HRT. They’re good.”
“As good as the Regiment?”
The SAS.
“Don’t be a dickhead.”
“Thought not,” Oates said. “You worried you might have to slot some of those pals of yours?”
Scott shrugged. “Shit happens.”
Oates grabbed his knapsack containing food, drink, three cell phones, and two handguns. Scott had already collected his things from his adjacent room. “Where we taking over from Amundsen and Shackleton?”
Scott nodded toward the blank TV screen where moments ago they’d seen the J. Edgar Hoover Building. “Outside the cross-dresser’s place.”
A reference to the FBI founder’s sexual peccadillo.
“Gage already there?”
“Yeah.”
“Best we go and keep her company, then.”
The long FBI ops room was filled to capacity with Bureau men and women unpacking boxes, arranging their desks, checking phone lines and computer terminals, placing mementos and framed photos of loved ones on their work stations, and catching up with colleagues they hadn’t seen for a while. Including Alistair, Patrick, and Sheridan, the room contained fifty-four people, most of whom were wearing suits, with the exception of eight men who were wearing sweaters, jeans, and boots. Unlike all the other agents, Pete Duggan and his seven HRT colleagues had no need to unpack anything. Their two SUVs, both parked in the building’s secure basement parking lot, contained everything they needed—Springfield Armory’s M1911A1 Professional handguns, Heckler & Koch MP5/10A3 submachine guns with laser aiming devices and SureFire tactical lights, Heckler & Koch HK416 rifles, ammunition, communications and surveillance equipment, stun grenades, plastic cuffs, fire resistant overalls, Kevlar helmets and body armor, and respirators.
The room smelled of coffee, aftershave, perfume, and testosterone, and the combined scent was one that Marsha Gage had been surrounded by on many occasions. As she stood watching her team from one end of the room, she recalled the first time she’d had to give a briefing to a task force. Back then, it had been a daunting prospect, and she remembered the butterflies in her stomach and trying to relax through breathing exercises. But since then, years of detective work, and having kids who didn’t give her one second to think about nerves, had made briefings like these a walk in the park.
Still, this was the first time she’d ever been put on a manhunt to capture a rogue intelligence officer. And though she’d handpicked five agents for the team who were experts in counterintelligence, she knew for a fact that no one on the task force had ever come up against someone like Cochrane. She breathed in deeply. “Okay, everyone. Listen up!”
The room grew silent as all looked at her and ceased their activities. Alistair and Patrick moved to her side, Patrick folding his arms and adopting a look that suggested he was going to kill anyone in the team who asked something dumb, Alistair leaning against a wall with one foot resting over the other and a look of nonchalance.
She pointed at a whiteboard containing two photos of Will Cochrane: one in which he was clean-shaven and wearing a suit and tie, the other the International Avenue border crossing shot. “We’re after Will Cochrane. He works—correction,
worked
—for the two gentlemen by my side. Both are spooks, so try to keep hold of your wallets and sanity if you go anywhere near them.”
One of the agents called out, “They got names?”
Patrick answered, “We do, but you don’t need them. I’m CIA, and”—he gestured toward Alistair—“my friend here’s MI6. Cochrane was a joint U.S.-U.K. asset. We’re here as advisers to Agent Gage.”
Marsha said, “He’s been sighted crossing the Canadian border into Maine. It’s possible he broke into a house in Springfield, because whoever did stole a set of clothes that matched Cochrane’s size, grabbed some food, and left a lot of cash to pay for both. Either way, we believe that Cochrane’s heading southwest along the East Coast toward D.C.”
One of the team members asked, “Why D.C.?”
Marsha stared at Sheridan, wishing she could hold a gun to his head and make him tell her and everyone else in the room what Ferryman was. “He wants to know details about a CIA mission.”
More questions were fired from the team.
“We think he’s still armed?”
Marsha nodded. “Yes.”
“Any assessment on his mental condition?”
“No doubt he’s had better days, but he’s trained to operate for long periods in hostile locations.”
“Is he wounded?”
“He might have some cuts and bruises, but based on the way he moved during the border crossing, we don’t think he’s got any serious physical problems.”
“How much cash has he got on him?”
“I’m told by my CIA colleagues that he had ten thousand dollars when he was deployed to Norway.”
“ID?”
“An alias passport and credit card in the name of Robert Tombs.”
“How did he get to Canada from Norway?”
“Most likely he had help from assets we don’t know about.”
“Has he got assets in the States?”
Marsha glanced at Patrick.
The CIA officer answered, “Before my team was disbanded, two of Cochrane’s colleagues were paramilitary Agency.”
Roger Koenig and Laith Dia, both of whom had served with Will on three missions.
“They’re very loyal to Cochrane, and no doubt would help him if they could. For that reason, I redeployed them overseas as soon as we suspected Cochrane might be heading this way.”
Marsha hadn’t known that, and wondered if there was anything else the damn spies in her team weren’t telling her.
Patrick added, “Cochrane was raised in the States, but his parents are dead and his sister lives in Scotland and doesn’t have contact with her brother. As far as we can tell, he’s got absolutely no one here who can help him. That’s our assumption.”
The youngest member of the team—a male who’d been selected by Marsha because of his cyber intercept expertise, but had no idea about old-fashioned detective work—smirked and stated, “We know where he’s headed and he’s on his own. He’s screwed.”
Marsha locked her intimidating gaze on the junior. “Millions of people commute along the East Coast every day, and they take thousands of different routes.”
The cocky young technician should have kept his mouth shut, but he didn’t. “He’ll stand out like a sore thumb.”
“What, like one of the Boston Marathon bomb suspects did when he went on the run? Boston police traced him to a twenty-block radius and shut down the city. But it still took a day to locate the suspect, and even then he was found by a civilian. Plus, they were hunting an untrained kid.” She walked to a map of the States and pointed at a dot that looked no bigger than a pinhead. “Here’s Boston.” She swept her arm fully outstretched in a complete circular movement over the map. “And by contrast, this is the area we have to search for Cochrane.” She pointed at the technician. “I need you because you’re good with algorithms. But beyond that your opinions are useless to me, so keep your head down and your mouth shut unless you’ve got something important to contribute.”
Now he was quiet, with a look on his face that said he’d just been sucker-punched.
Pete Duggan called out from the far end of the room, “Ma’am, would one of your intelligence advisers be able to comment on Cochrane’s capabilities?”
Marsha was relieved to be once again fielding questions from seasoned members of the team, and particularly Duggan, whom she deeply admired and had specifically asked to be included. She looked at Patrick, who said nothing. She looked at Alistair.
The MI6 controller pushed himself away from the wall and smiled, his superb intellect encapsulated by the glint in his blue eyes. “Ladies and gentlemen, I’m always reminded on occasions like this to jettison loquaciousness in favor of
dicendi campus
.”
Marsha rolled her eyes as she placed a hand on Alistair’s forearm. “Speak in words we can all understand.”
“That’s broadly the English translation of what I just said in Latin.” Alistair’s eyes changed from charm to steel. “William Cochrane spent five years in French Special Forces.”
Duggan asked, “The Legion? GCP?”
“Correct. I didn’t care about that when he joined MI6. What mattered to me was that I wanted to put him through a year of hell. I thought it would break him, as it had done to others before him. It didn’t.” Alistair studied Duggan. “You look like a man who knows a thing or two about hardship.”
When Duggan responded, it was in a tone that was neither bragging nor disrespectful, the tone of a professional operator. “I was in Seal Team 6. Spent most of my career in water. It was a
hardship
and humbling.”