Extraordinary Retribution (26 page)

“Miguel’s not here,” said Houston, again seeming to be a half-step ahead of him.

“I don’t see his name, either. Why?”

“I don’t know. But look—
this
is new. Alongside the agents, another set of names we didn’t see from the CIA records. We didn’t have these files.” They both scanned the document in silence. Houston inhaled sharply and tapped on the screen at one of the lines of data. “The operations dates are much more recent, Francisco. Fred was wrong—they didn’t end the program in 2007.”

“Then why aren’t there records at CIA?”

“Because it’s extra-governmental. It’s outside of CIA, even if it looks like they maintained connections.”

Lopez felt his stomach drop. “This doesn’t sound very good. Why would they pull it out of CIA?” He continued to read through the names. “Wait. Sara—I know some of these names.” He pointed to one of them. “Mitchell Longman, marked April 2010.”

“Who?”

“He was an activist for HRW.”

“That crazy lobbyist for Human Rights Watch? The Sapos guy?”

Lopez nodded. “Yes. I donated to HRW. Have a card.”

“He was a giant pain in the side of the counterterrorist movement.” Houston looked up at him. “So what happened in April 2010?”

“He killed himself. Jumped off his New York City balcony.”

Houston sat upright stiffly, looking between Lopez and the screen. “
Holy shit
. Francisco, there are a lot
well-known
names here.”

Lopez looked again, trying to make associations. Several names were meaningless to him. But as he looked over the list, too many were not. Prominent Muslim activists. A CEO. Political lobbyists. A colonel. He felt dizzy.

Houston sounded hyper. “This is Alicia Whitley—the first-term Tea Party candidate from Iowa. You know, the one who went nuts about violations of the Constitution with the 2012 Defense Authorization Act.” Lopez nodded. “She died in a car crash six months after it was passed. And this! Brian Nurse,
Colonel
Brian Nurse, who testified against indefinite detention and torture in 2009, riling the new Obama administration. Francisco, he had a heart attack a year later.”

Lopez pointed to another name. “Charles Kenneth Thorington Gunter, the Third. Can’t forget a name like that.”

“The CEO of that solar company?”

“Yes! He was a big deal. One of the few American companies that matched Chinese panels in prices. New England blue blood do-gooder—your type.”

“Yeah, he was in the papers a lot. Investigated by Congress and the FBI for fraud. Big brouhaha.”

Lopez nodded. “But
only
after he started his charity, HabeasNow.”

Houston nodded vigorously. “I remember! HabeasNow—they raised millions for litigation of terrorist suspects held at Guantanamo. They were flooding the courts with writs of habeas corpus. Public enemy number-one in several CIA divisions and the DOJ.”

“He’s dead, too, Sara. His private jet went down six months ago in New Jersey. Look at the date next to his name!”

Houston put her fingers to her forehead, pressing firmly. “I don’t want to look.” She closed her eyes. Her hand over the computer mouse tightened into a fist. “Oh, my God, Francisco. This isn’t real. This
can’t
be real.”

Lopez pulled up a chair and sat down. It was too much, the surreal nightmare swirling around him. In front of them was the earth-shaking evidence that these rogue CIA teams had gone far beyond mere efforts to stop terrorism. In front of them was evidence of the murders of political and cultural figures.
Assassinations
, he forced himself to acknowledge. Assassinations of figures who had exerted influence in attempting to end controversial CIA and military practices like torture and extraordinary rendition. Figures who were silenced, their causes thrown into disarray, their impact erased.

“This finally all comes together,” said Lopez, the satisfaction of the jigsaw fitting together not dispelling the full horror of the image revealed. “They had to bury this, and now, they have to bury us, and anyone who gets too close to the truth. If this gets out, it wouldn’t just lead to a scandal and jail. It could lead to a damn revolt.”

Houston nodded, scrolling through the pages of the document. “The killers wanted us to see this, Francisco. Not us, but whoever discovered this.... scene,” she trailed off, gesturing around her. “Miller wouldn’t have just left this file open.”

“Maybe he didn’t have time to close it.”

“Maybe. But it feels like more. Feels like ruination.”

Lopez turned toward Houston and put his hand on her arm. “But at least one name isn’t with the other agents on this list.”

“No,” answered Houston. “Miguel isn’t here.”

“Does that mean he didn’t go along with it? Wasn’t involved?”

Houston shook her head. “I don’t know for sure. How could he not have known? All those years as part of the rendition teams?”

“Assassination teams, you mean.”

“Yes,” she said, swallowing. “It
couldn’t
have started out that way. I can’t believe that. Miguel wouldn’t have signed on—that much I know about him. He had a different vision of America.”

Lopez sighed. “After 9/11, no one knew what to do. Extraordinary events seemed to require extraordinary actions. That’s what Miguel said in the church that night. He said he only wanted to protect us all. It was the last time I saw him.” Houston leaned her head against his shoulder. Lopez reached his hand up and stroked her head. It seemed like the only sane action in the middle of this madness.

“But not Miguel.
He’s not here
. Whether or not he knew about the assassinations, we may never know. But he’s not part of the team. Thank God for that.”

“Amen,” said the former priest. He uttered a silent prayer for his brother’s soul.
Be at peace, Miguel. We know not what we do.

Houston had straightened up and was scrolling through the document. “Page two,” she said. Lopez read a new set of names, several of them well-known senior officials formerly at the CIA. “Here are the directors, the organizers of this nightmare. Miguel’s killer has served them up on a silver platter.”

“Then we need to pay these men a visit,” said Lopez, his voice strained. He was angry again. “But we can’t go public! They’ve taken away all our options. They’ll just throw us in a cell and lose the key. No one will believe our rantings.”

“Even if they did, I think we’re beyond due process now, Francisco. We’re in a game where people disappear their political opponents and kill them. We’ll be dead.”

Lopez exhaled. “The rules are different.”

Houston raised her gun and stared at it. “There are no rules, and we’re running out of time.” She stood up suddenly, put her weapon away, a fiery look in her eyes. “We have to find these leaders. What we’ve discovered is bigger than the murders of CIA agents. It’s bigger than extraordinary rendition of American citizens. It’s fucking
Orwellian
. Time to locate the architects of this death squad. These men have to be put away for life; they’re more dangerous than Miguel’s killers. They’re a cancer inside the body of our government.”

“But how do we find them? These are big names,” he said, looking over the document pages again. “Their addresses are here, amazingly enough. But if they’ve been keeping up with current events, I bet they’re in their own private foxholes by now.”

“No doubt. But we have Fred Simon,” she said, removing the smartphone and photographing the screen. She panned through all the data they had discovered on Miller’s computer, uploading the photographs to a secure and anonymous server they used for private storage. “We’ll be asking everything from him, but I know him, Francisco. This will break his heart. Make him sick. And after a few minutes, make him very angry. He’s got contacts, remember?
The Watchmen
. He’ll do everything he can to dredge this muck up and get it out of the Agency. He’ll find where they’re hiding.”

“OK then, we talk to Simon. And, once—” he stopped, a sound catching his attention.

Sirens
.

Both suddenly turned to the door. The pitch-changing calls wailed from a distance, increasing in volume.

The police were approaching.

43

“T
o the car, Francisco! Through the woods, the way we came!”

They dashed out the door and sprinted across the yard to the trees. Lopez felt like the criminal everyone now believed him to be—in disguise, running from the scene of a horrific murder, the police seconds away. They passed the smoldering wreckage of the truck, and Houston pulled out her gun once again.
Will we be killing police officers next?
He couldn’t imagine such an action.
Who am I now?

As they approached the woods, the sirens increased sharply in intensity, and they heard the sounds of a vehicle braking over a pebbled drive. A car door opened, and Lopez glanced behind him and saw two officers outside their vehicle. One was running into the ruined cabin.
A fine surprise he is going to find.
The other held a microphone in his hand. A voice called over a loudspeaker.

“This is the Delaware County Police! Stop and return! I said stop and come back to the dwelling! This is the county police! Stop and return immediately!”

They did not stop. Instead they plunged into the trees, Lopez praying to God that Miller’s security system was truly dead. An active mine could end their journey very quickly. A gunshot was fired behind them. Lopez instinctively looked behind but could see no one following them.

“Faster!” yelled Houston.

Lopez ran faster. Branches slapped against his face and nicked his cheeks, and he stumbled several times over exposed roots, but he managed to increase his pace. His breath began to come in ragged gasps, his chest feeling like it was going to explode.

The loudspeaker voice called again but much more faintly. “Return to the property! If you do not, you will be considered hostile and subject to arms fire.”

Houston slowed him for a moment. “They’re not in pursuit, or they wouldn’t have called out.” She paused, her breathing labored. “They must be calling for backup. They’ll find the body soon. It will be a giant manhunt.”

“They don’t know what our car looks like or what we look like.”

“It won’t matter if we don’t get out of the roadblock radius. Let’s go!”

They continued their sprint. Soon they were back to the main road and located their car quickly. They cleared some of the fallen branches and leaves that they had used to conceal it and then rushed into the vehicle, Houston driving again. She gunned the engine, rocketing the car out of the ditch and onto the road. Within seconds, they were out of sight of the cabin and headed south, back to the DC area and the lair of the killers. Headed for the mouth of the dragon. Lopez closed his eyes tightly.

Mother of God!

A blond man lay prone on a hill overlooking the Miller property. Through a targeting scope, he followed the movement of the green sedan as it made its escape. He pivoted the scope toward the cabin he had partially destroyed and saw one of the young officers run out of the structure, waving his arms and screaming at the other, who had gone to the edge of the woods.

He rolled onto his back, the rifle held up and away from his body, and sat up. His scope was attached by a thin wire to a small black box. Pressing a button on the box, a credit-card sized LCD screen lit up, and he shuffled through several photos of the man and woman, selecting the best head shots for identification.

Moving to a crouch, he placed the rifle down into a case and removed a smartphone. A Bluetooth transmitter was hooked around his ear, and he toggled a smartphone app to increase the volume from the recording equipment he had left in the cabin. He picked up the officers’ conversation as they entered the structure. Their loud tones cut through the poor audio quality.

“Jesus, Danny! God, I’m going to be sick!”

The unmistakable sounds of retching could be heard. A second voice spoke.

“You okay? You all right, Joe? Okay. Okay,” came an anxious voice. A deep breath followed. “Okay—we call this in. Don’t touch anything!
Damn!
We call this in, and we get the right people here for this. We put out an APB, block all the roads out of the area, as soon as they can set it up. I should have
shot
those bastards!”

He had heard enough. The officers were acting predictably. By tomorrow, the place would become a forensics laboratory, and the chaos would begin soon after. He tapped the screen, and the app displayed a list of recordings and dates. He picked the most recent, and pressed ‘play.’ A woman’s voice could be heard speaking over considerable white noise and static.

“
He’s got contacts, remember? The Watchmen. He’ll do everything he can to dredge this muck up and get it out of the Agency. He’ll find where they’re hiding.
”

He smiled, closing the app, and opened another on the phone. A map appeared of the area with crisscrossing lines for roads and county demarcations. A blue circle pulsed at his current location. Moving away from the blue circle was a red dot. He tapped it, and a small window opened on the map displaying distance and speed. The transmitter he had placed on their car was functioning optimally.

He disconnected the camera from the scope, stowed it in the case next to the rifle, and closed the case. Rising from his prone position on the incline, he jogged down the road to his truck toting his equipment. Opening the door, he stowed the rifle on the rear window rack and jumped inside, slamming the door. He paused for a moment, then removed a handgun from the glove compartment, placing it next to him in the drink rack. He hoped that the local police would not complicate his mission.

Mounting the phone and its map display on the dashboard, he started the engine, turning onto the road along the direction of the red dot. He accelerated, observing their speed and distance, calculating a matching speed to approach them before any major highway intersections. All he had to do was follow them, track them for however many days it took, concealing himself. Their conversation was clear. They were motivated and skilled, especially the woman.