Authors: Stephen England
By the time she turned around, he was gone.
6:34 A.M. Mountain Time
Denver, Colorado
Head down, the chill morning wind whipped around her ears, stabbing at her lungs as she breathed. Marika ignored the sensations, never breaking her stride as she ran down the side of the road.
Her morning run, a defiant routine against the increasing demands of “getting older.”
A routine that was becoming less so. Her phone vibrated against her ribs and she swore in frustration, unbuttoning the light windbreaker she wore. “Altmann,” she gasped out, realizing just how out of breath the run had left her.
“Where are you?” Russ.
“Running,” she shot back, glancing at the watch on her wrist. “I’ll be there by seven.”
“You need to get in
now
.” There was tension in the negotiator’s voice, something rattling his unflappable calm.
Marika sucked in another breath of icy air. “What’s going on?”
“Just got a flash from D.C and things have exploded around here. Haskel was found dead in his Georgetown home this morning.”
“Murdered?” She cast a glance down the road as a car flashed past. A mile back to her car.
“No idea. No one knows yet. Just get in here. And, Marika…”
“Yes?”
“Your tech buddy got the results of the cell trace back. The phone is off-grid now, but the last time it communicated with a tower was moments after placing the call to you. Near Vegas.”
She swore angrily.
It was him
. Had to be.
“I’ll be there.”
8:32 A.M. Eastern Time
The White House
Washington, D.C.
“No,” President Hancock whispered, glaring across the room at Cahill. “It can’t be true. I just talked with Eric
yesterday
.”
“And the ME’s preliminary reports indicate that he suffered a massive stroke shortly before midnight,” his chief of staff replied calmly, as if speaking to a child. “I know the two of you were close, Roger. I’m sorry, but he’s gone.”
Hancock turned away, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. He couldn’t show fear—not in front of Cahill. As ruthless a political player as the Irishman was, he would never sanction the lengths to which the President had gone. Haskel’s death was no accident.
“Has Metro uncovered any new developments with Shapiro?”
“Not yet,” came the chilling reply. “One of the Jesuits remembers him entering the church with his kids before the rehearsal. Doesn’t seem like anyone saw him leave.”
First Andropov. Then Haskel. Shapiro?
He was dead, Hancock realized suddenly. Dead or on the run. Dead might, in fact, be preferable—in light of all that had happened.
His fingers shook as he poured himself a drink, a finger of brandy in a crystal snifter.
Blood
. His dream came washing back over him in unsettling clarity. A vision of death.
He hadn’t dreamed the danger. He tossed back the brandy, swallowing hard. “Has the media caught wind of any of this?”
“Not yet.” It was only a matter of time—they both knew that. D.C. was the city of leaks.
“Keep me in the loop…on everything, Ian. We can’t have our intelligence community compromised again. Shapiro has to be found.”
6:57 A.M. Pacific Time
The oilfield
Tehachapi, California
“You can trust him,” Harry observed, placing his equipment bag in the trunk of the car, underneath a tarpaulin.
Tex straightened, looking him in the eye. The sun was just beginning to stream over the hill overlooking the oil field. “What do you mean?”
“Saw the way you looked at Sammy. I know how you felt when he left the team.”
The big man shook his head. “Doesn’t matter how I feel. Trusting him again is another story. Not even sure I can trust you.”
“Yeah.” Harry closed the trunk with one hand, zipping up his leather jacket against the cold. “About that. I never intended to draw you into this.”
“I know,” came the slow reply. “You were following orders, same as always. But what happened to that boy in Beverly Hills?”
“I didn’t kill him.”
“I know…that’s what Carol told me. Still your op.” Tex paused. “We’ll roll with your play for Powers. Long drive, longer odds—but it might pay off.”
He could feel the tension. Harry let out a deep breath, watching it billow into the chill morning air. “Thank you,” he said finally. Didn’t seem like much of anything else to say.
“I don’t have any other options. Just pray it works.”
“As ever.” Harry had just started to turn away when the Texan spoke again.
“How’d it ever come to this?”
“One betrayal at a time…”
10:04 A.M. Mountain Time
FBI Regional Headquarters
Denver, Colorado
“Look, D.C. is breathing down my neck…the freakin’
director
is dead, and you want me to go hunt down a wrong number?” The look on Greg Buhler’s face was one of incredulity.
Marika crossed her legs, wiping a fleck of dirt off her jeans. She hadn’t taken the time to change. Hadn’t seemed like a priority at the time.
“No. I’m following up on a lead,” she replied, favoring the S-A-C with a cold glance. “What do you have to lose? Las Vegas was on your potential targets list. If Russ and I can confirm that…we’ve just found your needle.”
Buhler ran a hand across his forehead. “They warned me that you were a pain in the butt.”
Her face never changed. She had heard it all from men at the Bureau over the years, every name in the book and quite a few too obscene to be put in a book. Didn’t matter.
At length, he looked up, realizing that his comment had failed to provoke a reaction. “Fine,” he relented, a heavy sigh escaping his lips. “But I can’t spare a chopper—they’re all combing the mountains. You and Russell will have to take the next commercial out to McCarran. If you go off the reservation again…well, it will be Powers’ problem, not mine.”
“Powers?”
“Trent Powers, the Vegas S-A-C. Give him my best.” Buhler smiled. “On second thought, don’t mention me as being responsible for sending you. He still owes me drinks.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Marika responded, rising from her chair. She knew Buhler’s type—politicians all the way. Comfortable so long as nothing threatened their bureaucracy.
“Good hunting.”
Indeed
.
1:03 P.M. Pacific Time
The warehouse
Las Vegas, Nevada
“We’ll approach from the north entrance,” Tarik Abdul Muhammad noted, tapping the map with a forefinger. “You have everything in readiness there, don’t you?”
“Yes,” came the imam’s reply. “Your concern will be getting your weapons in.”
“That shouldn’t take long,” Jamal replied, the confidence of the college student asserting itself. He could feel the eyes of the shaikh on him, listening to
his
words. “The entire floor is handicap-accessible—so that wealthy old Americans can gamble away their children’s inheritance. Gambling…a work of Satan, as it was written of the Prophet.”
“You had a point, Jamal?” Abu Kareem asked, clearing his throat.
Jamal flushed, feeling the unspoken rebuke. “Yes. What I have are the cylinders of the nerve agent rigged with explosives surrounding them—each of them weighing roughly twenty pounds. Hard to handle while fighting our way in,
but
we can roll them quickly across the casino on one of the hotel’s luggage carts. Only one man needed for their transportation.”
The shaikh smiled. “Well done, Jamal. That will be advantageous. The Americans have security at the door—here, and here. We will need to take them down before advancing on the theatre.”
“Time?” Jamal looked behind him to see one of the
mujahideen
speaking. His English was rough, but he was an experienced fighter. Jamal had even heard whispers that he had been involved in the planning stages of
Lashkar-e-Taiba
’s assault on Mumbai.
It was a crucial question.
The shaikh glanced at his watch. “From the moment the first shot is fired…we need to have secured her within two minutes. They will make an effort to lock us out of the theatre—we have to be prepared for that.”
“We will be,” Abu Kareem interjected, the older man’s countenance taking on a look of serenity. “
Insh’allah
.”
4:30 P.M. Eastern Time
Theodore Roosevelt Island
Washington, D.C.
The sun was setting, slipping behind the clouds in the west—a chill wind blowing off the water. Bernard Kranemeyer stood off to one side, his dress shoes half-buried in the silty mud of the beach.
The glare of a crime scene investigator’s flashbulb briefly lit the gathering darkness, all eyes focused on the body lying there in the mud.
Michael Shapiro
.
“On the face of it, looks like he washed in with the tide,” the DCS observed, speaking to an FBI agent standing nearby.
“That it does.”
“Who is going to have jurisdiction of the investigation…the Bureau? Or D.C. Metro?”
“We will,” the young man replied without blinking. “National security.”
Indeed
. “Make sure you keep me in the loop on this one, all right?”
“I’m sure you’ll be informed on a need-to-know basis,” came the stiff rejoinder.
Kranemeyer took a step into the agent’s zone, his dark eyes snapping. “Mike…was a friend. More importantly, his death leaves me the acting director of the CIA, serving at the pleasure of the President. I need to know everything. Am I making myself understood?”
“Loud and clear.”
2:17 P.M. Pacific Time
Summerlin, Nevada
“You know what you are supposed to do, right?” Harry asked, glancing in the rear-view mirror above his head.
“Yes,” Thomas replied from the backseat of the car. “I do. All too well, matter of fact.”
Harry shook his head. “We’ve been over this, Thomas. It’s the only way to establish contact.”
“I know.”
Carol cleared her throat from the passenger seat beside him, her words clipped. “According to her Facebook wall, she left for the grocery store fifteen minutes ago. I can monitor Foursquare, but that’s not gonna give us her location in real-time. You need to get in there.”
A nod from Thomas and he stepped out onto the sidewalk as the car slowed.
A roll of the dice
. That’s all this was, Harry realized, watching in his rear-view as he pulled back out onto the road, heading out of the housing development. Long odds.
“What did you mean?”
He took his attention off the road for a brief moment to glance over at Carol. “About what?”
“You said that you needed me.”
He’d known the question was coming, didn’t mean that he was prepared to answer it…honestly. It felt as if there was a wall between them, a wall he had erected.
A wall that had to come down.
“Once this is done…I have to get out. Leave all of it in the past. Everything I’ve fought for—I have to experience it for myself. I want to have a normal life. A family.
Kids
.”
The American dream
. He could feel her eyes on him, felt as if he was naked before her. Stripped of the lies.
Suddenly vulnerable.
It was a long moment before she spoke again, and when she did, her voice was soft. Barely above a whisper. “Do you think you can…leave it all in the past, I mean?”
The impossible question, and his heart whispered a lie.
Yes
. The easy answer, what he
wanted
to tell her.
The truth…was never so easy.
His headset crackled with static before he could respond. Han’s voice, intruding on his thoughts. Drawing him back to the reality at hand. “We’re at the back door. Prepping for entry.”
“Roger that,” Harry replied, his mission voice returning. “Standing by.”
2:31 P.M.
McCarran International Airport
Las Vegas, Nevada
Nothing. Marika ran her calloused thumb over the phone’s screen to remove the “No missed calls” message, cursing under her breath.
So much for hope. She looked up to see Russ emerge from the line behind her, a bag over his shoulder. “Flying two days before Christmas…never a good idea.”