Authors: Stephen England
7:55 A.M.
“I know, I know—put Michelle on it,” Carter instructed, slipping a thumb drive into the side of Daniel Lasker’s terminal. “I need you running comm for the extraction.”
At twenty-eight, the short, fair-haired Lasker looked more like an office temp than the head of CLANDOPS communications, but such was his title at Langley. And he was one of the best. “We ever tried to pull off an operation on this scale, Ron?”
Carter responded with a shake of the head. “Twelve assets. Nine countries. And it’s only the beginning.”
He felt a presence at his elbow and turned to find Harry standing there. “How are things coming along?”
“We’re positioning teams across the Middle East,” Carter responded. “Try to pull our people out before they can be snapped up.”
“You could drive a car through the hole that’s gonna leave in our HUMINT network,” Harry observed, a grim edge to his voice. Human intelligence, the community’s ace of spades.
“I know. But until we find the Director…we have no other choice.” The analyst shrugged. “Was there something you needed?”
“Matter of fact, yes. I need to speak with Carol.”
Ron frowned. “I’m not sure that’s the best idea. Why?”
“She didn’t finish running the profiles on Korsakov.
I just need to talk with her a couple minutes, figure out where she was headed, particularly on any possible U.S. connections. Where is she?”
“Down in Interrogation Room A-13,” Carter responded after a long pause. He reached for the phone on Lasker’s desk. “I’ll tell them you’re coming.”
6:03 A.M. Mountain Time
Airport
Albuquerque, New Mexico
Parting with his brother had not been one of the highlights of the trip for Richards, but that was nothing new. Relations had been strained ever since he had left the family ranch in Texas to join the Marine Corps at the age of nineteen.
They had been a man short that summer with him gone, a bad summer of drought—disease among the cattle. Not much he could have done to stop it, even if he had stayed, but there were elements of his family that viewed his departure as something akin to desertion.
Five years later, the ranch had gone under and his family had moved back to the Mescalero reservation in New Mexico. End of story.
He sighed, watching as the Gulfstream IV taxied in from the west, an unusual sight on the small runway. He only had one bag, traveling light as he had for the past fifteen years of his life.
A chill December breeze rippled across the small airfield, his jacket flapping back to expose the holstered Glock on his hip. He was ready. It was time to go…
8:05 A.M. Eastern Time
CIA Headquarters
Langley, Virginia
The NCS ready room was deserted, just as Harry had expected it to be. He left the lights off and moved quickly to his equipment locker, on the far side of the room.
Swiping his CIA identification badge unlocked the door and he reached inside, withdrawing his Colt 1911 and another pistol-sized weapon.
The Colt was loaded, as it always was. He racked the slide and chambered a round, carefully putting the safety on before slipping the big pistol into the paddle holster on his hip. Cocked and locked.
Moving across the room, he laid the second weapon, a Taser X3, on the table. The stun gun, which looked for all the world like an artist’s conception of a laser pistol gone bad, had been developed in 2009 as a response to the law enforcement community’s main critique of the original X26: its limited, single-shot capability.
The new and improved Taser aimed to address that problem, utilizing a neuro-muscular impulse rotating across the firing bays to engage multiple targets. It was capable of three shots, one right after the other. And then it was empty, but that didn’t bother Harry in the least. From the surveillance footage of the interrogation room, he only had three targets.
Finishing the weapons check, he slipped the Taser into an inner pocket of his leather jacket, in a cross-draw position. Eight minutes past eight o’clock. He had fifteen, maybe twenty minutes before someone realized he had looped the security footage down in the interrogation rooms.
It would be time enough…
7:12 A.M. Central Time
An apartment
Dearborn, Michigan
“How many died?”
Nasir al-Khalidi looked up from the breakfast dishes to see his brother Jamal standing in the kitchen doorway of the small apartment they shared.
“The Americans aren’t saying,” he responded, gesturing with his head toward the TV in the corner. “Looks like a car bomb to me.”
He would have known. Both young men had spent their childhood in Lebanon, dodging the bullets and car bombs of a bloody civil war.
“Maybe it was one of ours.
Insh’allah
.”
If God wills it.
“You shouldn’t talk like that,” Nasir began, glancing back at his brother. “If the wrong people heard you…”
His older brother snorted, picking up his jacket. “Pick up a case of Mountain Dew at the store when you go, will you? We’re almost out.”
Ignored
. At the very least, it was better than one of Jamal’s typical rants.
“What time should I expect you home?”
“Classes until mid-afternoon, then I’ll be at the mosque. I don’t know, really.”
“I should be off the garbage run by five,” Nasir nodded, pulling the last saucer from the water and placing it on the rack to dry. He spent his days riding on the back of a garbage truck, a constant reminder that he, unlike his brother, wasn’t in the U.S. legally.
If he’d been able to get a student visa…things would have been much different. A lot of things.
He heard the outer door close behind Jamal and sighed. Something was going on at the mosque—had been the last couple months. And his brother was changing, this country had done something to him.
These United States.
Nasir snarled something profane under his breath and washed his hands, grabbing his jacket as he headed for the door himself. It was turning into a cold December in Michigan.
8:13 A.M. Eastern Time
CIA Headquarters
Langley, Virginia
As he passed from one section of the building to the other, Harry displayed his security pass to the guard at the entrance and was waved through without so much as a second glance. Even on this day.
It wasn’t to be wondered at. He had spent the last fifteen years of his life working from the building.
Turning the corner, he quickened his pace, footsteps like handclaps against the tile as he hurried down the whitewashed corridors. A death march.
Just another few yards. Despite the slight chill in the building, his hands were damp with perspiration. In all those years, he had never attempted anything like this.
No illusions. He knew how his actions would be perceived. At the door of A-13 he spoke to the security guard standing watch, a man named Kauffman.
“Everything clear?”
Just a nod by way of reply. “Ron told me you were on the way.” A tall, muscular man in his late forties, his blond hair now streaked with gray, he’d been a part of Langley’s security force for as long as Harry could remember. Ex-military, and no one to be trifled with.
The guard’s face softened as he turned to swipe his passcard at the door. “Don’t take too long, Harry. She’s been through hell this morning.”
“I understand,” Harry replied with a grim smile of acknowledgement, reaching for the handle of the door.
One thing was certain. When he reemerged, he would be a fugitive…
Gone. It seemed almost impossible to comprehend. That after so long, he could be lost to her once more. A childhood spent longing for his presence, an adolescence feeling the pull of an absent parent. The bittersweet pain of their reunion.
All gone now. All for nothing.
An electronic beep signaled the opening of the door and Carol passed a hand over her eyes, angrily wiping away the tears. Her hand came away streaked with mascara, dissolving in the evidence of her grief.
She no longer cared.
The soundproofed door closed behind Harry with an ominous
click
. He turned, forcing all emotion aside.
Calm
. Become the eye of the storm.
His gaze swept the room, a threat assessment. Two guards were with Carol, both of them armed. Lopez and Hendricks, he realized, recognizing them both.
“Morning,” he greeted, a nod to the guards as he crossed the room, moving past them.
Hendricks gave him a tight smile. “Morning, Harry.”
“Ron says you need intel on Korsakov,” Carol managed, looking up as the NCS team leader moved toward the table where she sat, reaching inside his jacket. “Is he responsible?”
He seemed to hesitate, something unusual there in his eyes. He glanced from her to Lopez, the ranking security officer. “This discussion is well above your clearance, I’m afraid. Can we have the room?”
Lopez inclined his head toward the window covering one wall of the interrogation room. “We’ll be on the other side of the glass.”
It wasn’t the way he had planned it—but plans had to adjust to compensate for a situation that might best be described as “fluid”.
“Make sure the mikes are off.”
“Roger that.” He waited until the door had closed behind them before leaning toward her, his hands on the table. “This isn’t about Korsakov—this is about your father. He sent me.”
She flinched as if he had struck her, pain glistening in those eyes. “My
father
is dead.”
And my friend
, he thought…but now wasn’t the time. Or the place. “I know,” he responded, glancing toward the window, the one-way glass reflecting his own image back at him. “And he believes that you’re next. I have to get you out of here.”
He had her attention now, a look of disbelief. “We’re underneath the CIA Headquarters Building, Harry. Shapiro has given me a protective detail. It doesn’t get more secure than this.”
“Your father was given the Agency’s protection as well.” It was a statement as brutal as it was necessary. “ ‘Evil in high places at Langley’, those were his words. We have to run.”
She lifted her head to look him in the face, some of her father’s defiance glittering in her blue eyes. “No, I don’t. The men who killed him are still out there. Finding them…that’s what I
have
to do. And that’s what I will do.”
“Not if they find you first.”
8:16 A.M.
NCS Op-Center
The trick to appearing stone-cold sober was not to spend too long in the presence of any one person. Thomas swiped his card at the door, straightening his jacket as he entered the op-center. Time to make this look good.
Harry’s workstation was unexpectedly deserted and Thomas hailed a passing Daniel Lasker.
“Harry’s down in Interrogation,” was the reply. “There’s a print-out of possible targets on his desk—said he wanted you to work up mission protocols.”
Busy work, Thomas thought, staring at Lasker’s retreating back. Working up mission protocols wasn’t his job. His job was to execute them.
A chill danced up and down his spine. Was he being sidelined already?
8:18 A.M.
A-13
“So we’re done here?” Hendricks asked, re-entering the interrogation room with Lopez right behind him.
Done?
Not so you’d notice it—only one thing seemed to matter to her, and it wasn’t her own life.
She was her father’s daughter, no question of that.
Harry nodded, reaching for the door—his face well-nigh expressionless as he slipped a hand into his jacket. “I believe so, thank you.”
And he saw it in her eyes, the sudden knowledge of what he was about to do. Her lips parted, as if to issue a warning.
His hand came back out, the Taser a blur as it swung up to eye level, aimed directly at Hendricks’ chest.
Shock and alarm on the face of his target and he squeezed the trigger, sending a pair of electrodes lancing in slow-motion through the air.
The guard cried out and fell back, his body twitching as he slid to the floor.
Distantly, as if in a nightmare, he heard a woman scream. Recognized Carol’s voice. Pushed it aside.
Lopez already had a hand on his weapon, his Beretta half-way out of its holster as he reacted, surprise filling his features.
The electrodes bit into his chest in mid-draw, stopping him cold. His body shook as though in the grip of a seizure and he crumpled to the floor, his head striking the edge of the table as he fell.