Monster (56 page)

“Don’t finish that thought out loud, Sir. I make allowances for people in command, with very few options. You, Sir, have reached the limit of those allowances.”

“You… you cannot be allowed to carry out personal vendettas you feel necessary, Colonel.” Aginson tried unsuccessfully to hide the tremor in his voice. “You’re out of control.”

“If I were out of control you wouldn’t be standing there telling me I’m out of control. Talk to the Senator, take a deep breath, and remember our job is to kill the enemy. Mero was the enemy. I’d like to take Diane down and brief the rest of the team so I can get more input on al Zoubi’s encampment. We’ll also monitor the newspaper accounts of Mero’s journey into hell.”

Aginson waved a trembling hand in assent, still huddled against the wall. McDaniels led Reskova out of the office. Reskova glanced back at Aginson just before closing the door. He was already picking up the phone from the floor.

* * *

Senator Hokanson walked into Aginson’s office. He saw the desk lying in a pile of papers against the wall and closed the door behind him.

“Inner building Tornado?” Hokanson asked jokingly, returning Aginson’s glare.

“I left it where it was so you could get a taste of how my meeting with that rogue…”

“Did the Colonel tell you he had already talked to me?” Hokanson interrupted.

“You don’t run this place, Fred. I ordered McDaniels not to touch Mero.”

“After talking to whom?”

“I don’t need to be second guessed about logistical operations. We were in active pursuit of Mero’s cell. Now…”

“Now, you watch who fills the vacuum.” Hokanson interrupted again. “You did exactly right following McDaniels’ assessment of the false threat on the hospitals to draw us out. He made you look very good.”

“Okay, I’ll grant you the psycho has skills.”

“Did you really think he’d pull out for Iraq and leave the guy threatening Reskova’s life alive?”

“We had her covered.”

“You mean like when those three goons tried to kill her? If Cold hadn’t been there, you’d have been looking for a new AD. We can’t afford to lose Reskova. Her actions in that warehouse fiasco and the threads that sprouted out of it have been exemplary. Let’s put this behind us. I’ll get you a new desk.”

“That McDaniels is one scary son of a bitch.” Aginson stared ruefully at his ruined desk. “I don’t like to think about how much that desk weighs and how easily he tossed it into my wall.”

“I’ll bet not. C’mon, I’ll buy you lunch.”

“As long as I can get a couple single malt appetizers.”

“My pleasure,” Hokanson agreed.

* * *

Rasheed and Donaldson were reviewing data on their respective computer screens when they heard the office door open. Reskova led McDaniels into the room.

“Kay, is Tom in his office?”

“Yes, Boss, he is pretending to be issuing edicts to Agent Rutledge. Only Allah knows what is truly happening in there.”

Reskova smiled for the first time since leaving Aginson’s office. “What are you two working on?”

“We’re trying to trace a few of the names Colonel McDaniels found out about,” Donaldson answered.

“Yes, we are querying the names on every database in the world,” Rasheed confirmed. “We will know more about them soon, I hope. Is everything okay?”

Reskova glanced up at McDaniels’ face. “You want to take that one, Cold?”

“We’ll live. The Director was less enthused than I anticipated about Mero’s death.”

“Let’s get with Tom and Jen.” Reskova walked over to her old office door. “No use having to repeat all this.”

McDaniels paused near Donaldson. “Pete, we didn’t see Nancy. Where…”

“In detention for now, Colonel,” Donaldson anticipated the question. “Agent Barrington knew your time was short on these guards Mero named. He wanted me to help Kay while he and Agent Rutledge continued work on al Zoubi. I knew you wouldn’t want Nancy around any mention of the names.”

“Good thinking. Any trouble returning your toy?”

“No, Sir, Senator Hokanson’s call smoothed everything.”

“The Senator knows which side he’s on,” McDaniels acknowledged, following Rasheed into Barrington’s office.

When everyone was seated inside Barrington’s office, Reskova quickly came to the point.

“Anyone here not know Mero’s sudden descent into hell was not an accident?” Reskova asked quickly. When no one spoke, she went on. “Alright then, is there any fallout yet or suspicions?”

“We have an ongoing Web Nexus search for any item mentioning Mero’s death,” Barrington answered. “So far, no one thinks he died of anything other than natural causes. The fact Marisol woke up next to him cooled off any police involvement.”

“What about the way her security system was disabled? Any chatter during the investigation about signs of forced entry?”

“I monitored the audio from Marisol’s house during the entire police phase after discovery,” Rutledge volunteered. “If she doesn’t realize her security system’s down until later, she may think something the police did messed it up. No mention of forced entry was made. If the coroner…”

“The Syrians already took the body,” Reskova interrupted. “We need to keep track of what they say now.”

“What will it mean if we can’t find any background information on those guards Mero named, Cold?” Rutledge asked.

“Not a lot. It will just tell me outside of al Zoubi, I won’t be dealing with hardcore world renown Terrorists on guard duty. The important stuff he gave me was the time schedules. Al Zoubi doesn’t anticipate any kind of attack. He only has one guy watching the area at night.”

“Should we get our stuff out of Marisol’s place,” Donaldson asked.

“No,” Reskova answered sharply. “I want that bitch monitored from now on. If she adopts another Terrorist, we’ll assume she’s acting as a half-way house for the enemy.”

“Speaking of fallout,” Barrington spoke up. “How bad was it in Aginson’s office?”

“The meeting ended with Aginson’s desk flying into the wall,” Reskova answered directly. “We’ll have to wait and see how much influence Senator Hokanson asserts over the Director. It’s up to us to make sure
Shaun of the Dead
comes out smelling like a rose so stay on the guard roster connection.”

“You’re getting as annoying as Kay, Boss,” McDaniels muttered as the others laughed. “Do you…”

Reskova’s cell-phone rang and she answered it. A moment later, she smiled at McDaniels. “Yes, Sir, I’ll tell him.”

Reskova put away the phone in her jacket pocket.

“Hokanson wants me to join him and Aginson for lunch. I assume we’re past the firing squad phase. The Senator said to gather whatever you need before you go and keep a low profile. He wants you to come see him personally when you return from Iraq.”

“It is reassuring someone in your government understands what needs to be done,” Rasheed remarked.

“Our government, Kay,” McDaniels reminded Rasheed of his new citizenship.

“You are right. I demand you send me a check for the desk you destroyed in my government office.”

* * *

“Are we celebrating something, gentlemen?” Reskova asked as she sat down.

“Just contemplating our options, Diane, and accepting what we can’t change,” Hokanson answered with a welcoming smile.

“You were pretty quiet this morning.” Aginson sipped from his double Scotch on the rocks.

“If you promoted me to back you up when you’re wrong, you need to find another AD.” Reskova waved off the waiter who had walked over with her.

“So, I was in the wrong? I wanted only…”

“Look, Sir, Cold’s been right every damn time he opens his mouth,” Reskova cut in. “Granted, it frosts my cookies as well sometimes. Until he’s wrong, maybe we ought to just play out the string.”

Hokanson laughed and held up his drink in toasting fashion before taking a long sip. “That’s what I’ve been telling Thomas. The Colonel’s on a roll. I don’t see any reason to get in his way. It’ll be his ass on the line overseas.”

“Are you still doing oversight on the mission, Diane? It won’t be easy with the way you feel about him.”

“If you mean can I do my job, the answer is yes. As to my comfort zone doing oversight on Cold while he’s in the field, it’d be a lot tougher if I didn’t know what was going on.”

Reskova looked around cautiously. “I don’t think we need discuss this anymore in public, especially with you two drinking.”

“Quite right, Diane,” Hokanson agreed. “We wanted to know if you were privy to any more adjustments the Colonel might have in mind before going overseas. It would be helpful to know before they take place.”

“I don’t believe he has anything else in mind, Sir. For the record, I didn’t know about his last adjustment. I think he had help from the usual suspects. We seem to have a few people on staff more loyal to him than they are to us.”

“Sometimes for our purposes,” Hokanson commented carefully, “that’s not a bad thing. We didn’t form the cadre of people under you without some thought as to what they would do. It seems Donaldson fit right in, and again, it was the Colonel’s call.”

“Without Pete, the recent adjustment may have happened in public at a very inopportune time. He has handled Tamara exactly as Cold wanted him to. It’s led to our being on top of recent developments.”

“I’m depending on you,” Aginson said. “Frank has convinced me I need to rethink my latest conflict with McDaniels. I’ll have to trust your judgment in regard to what happens when the Colonel’s involved.”

“Meaning you do expect him to survive this suicide mission he’s going on?”

“The mission has its risks, but I never had it in mind to…” Aginson began.

“Bullshit,” Reskova whispered. “Even with the new information to work with, Cold will have about a ten percent survival chance.”

“It’s a volunteer mission, Diane,” Aginson replied defensively. “You have no idea what Colonel McDaniels has accomplished in the past. We probably don’t even know all he did, simply because no accurate reports exist as to what it took to accomplish his prior assignments in the field.”

“When I recruited Cold to get my niece back,” Hokanson added, “I had a very good idea as to what would happen if I were ever to see her alive again.”

“Then the Hughes thing was a tryout?”

“Not intentionally, Diane. Obviously I didn’t put my niece in deadly danger with a psycho killer just to test the Colonel,” Hokanson answered with some tightening around the mouth. “I don’t have kids of my own. I love that little girl more than anything. I thought if I were ever blessed enough to see Alicia alive again, I didn’t want her having to go through some trial with that murdering piece of shit staring at her in the witness chair. Frankly, I had resigned myself to never seeing Ally again with only Hughes’ death as some comfort.”

“When McDaniels not only brought Alicia out safe and sound but also a dead Hughes against the stated parameters of the mission, Frank called and told me we had our man.” Aginson slurred his wording slightly.

“So no one in fact ordered Hughes’ death?”

“Of course not,” Hokanson replied. “When Cold killed Hughes and then took the heat from the media, I hatched a plan with Tom here to put him on your team. You, Barrington, and Rutledge are three of the best forensics people in the Bureau. What your task force lacked was muscle. We added McDaniels and Rasheed to your team. McDaniels knew intuitively what they were on your team for.”

“Then Cold was right. He would have never ended up in prison even after he…” Reskova stopped before mentioning the Mercado Terrorist cell.

“Nope.” Hokanson figured what Reskova was about to say. “He would not have been in there long. We would have had him transferred to a military facility until the headlines went away.”

“But instead you shipped him out for Iraq?”

“That was his idea, not ours,” Aginson explained. “Anyway, now you know. As I said before, we’re not sending him on a suicide mission. There will be a time on the mission where he will not have any backup. He’s been in that situation before.”

Reskova stood up.

“Thank you for letting me in on this. I think I’ll get back to work.”

“You earned it, Diane,” Hokanson said. “You have my word if Cold needs something special in a tight spot, I’ll make sure it gets delivered, even if it has to be delivered on Syrian soil.”

“You aren’t just saying that because you know Cold wouldn’t ask for it, are you, Senator?”

“No, but it helps,” Hokanson admitted honestly.

Chapter 40

Russian Interest

“Okay, Cold, what did you do?” Rutledge asked after Reskova left.

“Just what Diane told you.” McDaniels was still chuckling over Rasheed’s demand to be reimbursed for Aginson’s desk. “He was about to say something I might have reacted to worse than throwing a desk.”

“I think you are a little too on edge my friend,” Rasheed said.

“I’m still worried about things I probably shouldn’t be worried about. Mero’s gone now. I know you all will keep track of the loose ends with this Syrian cell still remaining.”