Extraordinary Retribution (13 page)

“Reassignment, sir?” The young man’s face suddenly constricted.

“Details in the morning, to be delivered to you at Reagan Airport at zero eight-hundred. Be there on time. Good-night.”

A finger tapped the mouse again, and the video window disappeared, the confused face of the young agent contracting to a point. The hand from the shadows picked up a smartphone and entered a long series of digits. After several seconds, a beeping tone was heard. There was a click, and the shadow spoke.

“This is Loyal. We have a problem, Lophius.”

21

D
isorientation. Bright lights. Strapped to the chair. A knife beneath him, impaling him. Blind agony. His own screams.

Sweat soaked his shirt and dripped into his eyes. His legs ached, blisters on his feet. He was approaching the top of the hill, the terrain uneven, the ascent steep along this direction. He had chosen it for this very reason. It was near the edge of his stamina, but he had learned to calibrate his body like a precision instrument. The physical exertion was manageable.
Discipline
. Of mind more than anything. The greatest threat was emotional.

As if on cue, another flashback assailed him. Visions flooded his consciousness.
More disorientation. Lines of people, waiting. Tellers. Marbled columns. A gun was in his hand, a frightened woman at the other end of it, shoveling money into a sack. More lights. A computer terminal, passwords hacked, access granted, information stolen. Blood. A gloating face, floating before flames, the laughter of a tormenter beneath the sands.

Sunlight blinded him. He stumbled across the tree line, breaking into a more barren landscape. He paused a moment, doubled over more from memory than fatigue, his breath in gasps. He clicked the bottom on the stopwatch and glanced at the time.
Better
.
I’m nearly ready for the next stage.

He removed the backpack and dropped it on the ground in front of him. Crouching down beside it, he grabbed a water canister and drank. Replacing the bottle, he turned over on his back, lying down on the rough soil and rocks. A slight intake of air was all that revealed the residual pain that this action elicited. As it faded, he closed his eyes and instantly fell into a dream. A repeating dream, one that he knew his psyche needed to relive as much as his body required the continued input of steroids and nutrients to rebuild itself. The old man waited far below, and he waited deep in memory.

“No!” the solid form corrected. “Your stance is key. It doesn’t matter how many fancy moves you have if with one quick motion I can unbalance you!”

With that, the old man showed just how deadly he was, or must have been in his youth. The youth saw the move coming and countered it, but in doing so lost his footing. Instantly, the old soldier was standing over him, the bright desert sun blinding him from above, a knife in his hand and held to the throat of his defeated student.

“Again you are dead!” The old soldier reverted to Russian, issuing a stream of curses. “We are wasting our time. You are too old to unlearn so much. We can’t go forward because your past holds you back!”

He stepped away from the youth, the exertion clearly having tired him, straining his aging body so that his step carried a more pronounced limp. The youth knew the old man by now. Knew his strength of will. He must be in great pain.

“How many have you trained?”

“What?” said the soldier, sitting on a rusted barrel.

“For the army, how many have you trained?”

The old man laughed. “Not just for the army, boy. Once they knew my value, my skills were used for more elite forces.”

“These were grown men. Like me.”

“Yes, but men with years of prior training! What you wish to do, it is crazy. I am crazy to help you. You must become superman.”

“Then why do you help me?”

The old soldier scowled. “You said it. Justice.”

“Maybe.” The youth rose and brushed the dust from his clothes. “But it’s more.”

The soldier nodded. “Yes, maybe it is.”

“You want to see if you can do it. You want to make superman.”

The man sighed. “No, it is hopeless.”

“Then you must try more. Push harder.”

The soldier eyed the youth warily. “You are mad, boy. You know this?”

“And why not? What do you know of it? I’ve seen things you can’t imagine!”

The old man stood up slowly and set his shoulders. “Don’t lecture me on the horrors of war, child. Or I will teach you a lesson you will not forget.”

The youth suppressed a smile. “Then teach it to me, old man.”

The alert tone from his smartphone broke through his meditation. He detached the phone from his belt and answered the call.

“I’m at the top.” The reception was poor here, but he could make out the old soldier’s words.

“You are progressing too fast.”

“Good. I will rest here half an hour and then return.”

There was an exhalation on the other end. “
Da
. If you are so determined, then we commence limited combat exercises today.”

The wraith smiled. “We already have.”

“What do you mean?”

He lay back down on the rock and closed his eyes. “Never mind. I will be ready. Were you able to arrange the shipments?”

There was a bitter-sounding laugh on the other end. “Barely. It is only your obscene money supply that greased these wheels. The Americans are so stupid, so terribly afraid of immigrants. They should not fear hard workers but fear the other things that can be smuggled across their borders.”

“As long as the arms and equipment arrive—the money is not important. I have more than enough.”

“Someday, I will need to study your investment habits.”

The wraith smiled. “Only if you are not risk averse.”

Another laugh from the phone. “Enough talk. I am waiting.”

The wraith closed the connection.
Yes, much is waiting to be done.

22

A
 black Lincoln town car pulled to a stop alongside the rusted hulk of a long-abandoned John Deere harvester. Pebbles and dust rained briefly behind the tires, but silence returned quickly to the countryside, punctuated only by the cough of the engine shutdown and the intermittent pinging of metal as the car cooled. The untended wild grass and wheat behind the harvester whispered softly in the evening breeze, the shafts painted in a bright golden hue as the sun plunged behind a farmhouse across the road.

The back doors of the town car opened, and two older men in dark, pressed suits emerged from opposite sides of the car, closing the doors and walking together to a gate in front of the yard. One of the men resembled the slumping electrical posts near the house, his wiry, long frame bent slightly from age and use, a slight limp in his walk. The second was stockier, bordering on overweight, yet with an unmistakable presence of strength that belied his age. He walked upright, casting quick glances across the landscape.

Upon more careful inspection, the farmhouse appeared anomalous. The rusted wrought-iron gate was far more stable and secure than it appeared from a distance. It inserted into what appeared to be a broken-down, and yet unusually high, cobblestone wall that ran a perimeter completely around the farmhouse. At close quarters, a discerning eye could see that the stone was a facade, and that the wall was composed of reinforced concrete. A series of micro-wires connected the gate to the wall and ran along the wall, inside and above, leading to miniature cameras and motion detectors disguised as stone defects. Even at this distance from the house, like the whine of a nearby mosquito, the telltale buzz of a powerful underground generator could be heard purring.

The larger man laughed. “They don’t make country homes like they used to, Nexus.”

“It’s not perfect,” began his companion, “but it’s the best we could do given time and resources. We had to pull in a lot of favors, Bravo. A lot. I think we’ve cashed in all our chips. Close to state-of-the-art security, power. And inside it’s, shall we say,
weaponized.
”

“And isolated.”

“Yes,” said Nexus, removing a thumb-sized keypad from his jacket. “From hostile as well as friendly fire.” He pressed several closely spaced buttons on the device. A whirring and clicking sound followed, and the gate parted in the middle, splitting into two segments, each portion moving at opposing angles inward. The opening allowed each man to enter single file. Smiling, Nexus placed the controller back in his jacket. “Let me show you around. We’re all going to be here for a while, it seems.”

“One less now, with Phoenix gone.”

Nexus shook his head from side to side. “He was always weak, but I didn’t think he would so completely collapse. I hope he fitted the barrel correctly. The death is longer if you miss the brain stem. Things may be bad, but I plan on weathering this storm.”

As they passed through, the motion sensors noted their position, and soon the gate clanged shut. Walking to the middle of the lawn, Nexus gestured toward the wall.

“We can see every approach angle and several around the gate. A monitoring station is located inside. A second set of cameras tracks with the motion sensors, covering eighty percent of the surface area within the perimeter. Pressure sensors underneath the fake lawn cover the rest. No one gets in without us knowing.”

Bravo grunted. “All the King’s horses and men didn’t help Lopez. You saw the paranoid safe house he had. The wraith walks through security walls, Nexus.”

The taller man sighed. “We’ll see.
If
he finds us.”

“He’ll find us.”

“If he’s still alive.”

“He walked out of that hospital, Nexus. He’s alive.”

“Yes, likely alive.” Nexus looked up into the night sky. As the daylight faded utterly, the stars began to filter through. “He’s a shape-shifter.”

Bravo turned toward his companion and arched an eyebrow. “From the medical reports?”

Nexus lowered his gaze and nodded. “It looks like his ancestry is not quite so Northern European as we had assumed from the initial descriptions.”

“Extreme measures,” began Bravo, “but this begins to complete the puzzle.”

“Indeed. It’s becoming all the more certain that this is connected to the removal units.”

“Certain?” came the irritated response from Bravo. “There’s more you’re not telling me.”

“We have the confirmation about the Syrian black site.”

“Gone?”

“It is nearly impossible to get anything out of that tinderbox now. All connections are cut. Well, nearly all.” Nexus sighed. “But yes, it’s gone. Burned to the ground. I saw the photos. No survivors that we can locate, although we can’t locate much in that nation right now.”

There was a long silence and a soft moan as the wind gathered strength. Bravo looked east, as if gazing across the world to the sands of the Middle East.

“That’s where it began.”

“No, Bravo, it began before that, in the plans we made after 9/11, in the choices we made and the actions we took. It began with contracts to Boeing, flights out of North Carolina. It began when we crossed lines.”

“Don’t lecture me, Nexus. I don’t hold your insecurities. I’d do it again in a moment.”

Nexus laughed, shaking his head. “It was always helpful to have your unwavering presence during those years, Bravo. But I expected nothing less from the man that practically ran Guantanamo for half a decade.”

The large man turned to face his companion, a hard expression on his face. “What this new information means is that we have a route to identifying this wraith. There can only be a limited number of candidates who would match the missions and personnel. The teams are identified by the body trail. The black site by its destruction.”

“Yes, yes,” Nexus said, waving away the stern stare. “The research is underway.”

“What about our meddlers? The woman?”

“She and the priest were at the hospital. Presumably, they got a look at the records.”

Bravo exhaled. “This should have been prevented!”

“Too many assets were already involved! Those present were concentrating on finding the wraith.” Nexus drew himself up to his full height. He seemed to regain his authority. “There is little reason to suspect that either Houston or the priest could understand the significance of the records.”

“That is not the only thing that worries me,” said the large man, yielding no ground. “Now they will know others are also looking.”

“Perhaps they already knew, Bravo. The Houston woman is considered a good agent.”

Bravo stared briefly at the taller man and then looked away. “Yes, perhaps.”

“But I believe their usefulness is now outweighed by the dangers to us that they pose.”

“I agree.”

“We’ll encourage them to abandon this effort.”

“And if they do not take to
encouragement
?”

Nexus sighed. He was tiring of this verbal chess game. He pulled out the small device, turned his back on Bravo, and walked to the farmhouse.

Let him figure it out.

23

T
he pounding on the door startled them both.

Houston checked the spy hole and opened the door quickly, and a heavyset man stumbled into the room panting. “Jesus, Fred, what the hell happened? You look like shit.”

Lopez had to agree with Houston. Fred Simon looked like he had been through a forced march. In his mid-sixties, overweight, and sporting an ill-fitting and disheveled suit, his full shock of gray hair appeared violently windswept, as did his loosened tie.

“Fred, what’s going on?” Houston asked, her initial shock transitioning to an analytical concern.

“Quiet, Sara! Close the door!” Simon whispered harshly. He sprang to the window and looked outside for several seconds, his eyes scanning the parking lot outside their room. Lopez was suddenly aware that a gun was in his right hand, and he glanced nervously over to Houston who was bolting the door, never taking her eyes off Simon. Finally, satisfied, the CIA man placed his gun inside his suit and wiped beads of sweat from his forehead.