C
HAPTER
35
T
ogether, Morgan and Conley made it through training at The Farm, two of the twelve recruits who did out of the ninety-nine who started in the program. The others couldn’t hold up to the mental strain and the physical punishment and washed out.
Those who remained graduated in the fall. The ceremony was understated and without fanfare, but none was necessary. Every single one of the recruits standing there together knew that they had accomplished something few others could.
“Gentlemen,” said Powers, standing at the podium in The Farm’s single lecture hall, “you have just completed the finest training this country has to offer.” He had notes on the lectern, but he spoke with the fluidity of a well-rehearsed speaker. “The skills we have taught you make you powerful, but they cannot grant you the virtues that must guide you in your service to your nation—responsibility, honor, patriotism. But above all, you will need unwavering loyalty. You, gentlemen, are special. The work you do will be crucial to maintaining America’s stature as the greatest country in the world.”
The recruits stood quietly, reverently, as Powers went on. “Tomorrow, you choose your assignments. Some of you will work in the headquarters at Langley as analysts, while others will be placed as attachés in foreign embassies and will be primarily responsible for gathering intelligence. These are both noble callings, vital to the functioning of our agency and, thus, to our country.
“But the boldest among you”—he looked intently at the graduates—“will choose to go into Black Ops. Those few will live lives that are dangerous and, odds are, short. They will do things that most are not capable of doing. But these men will have the unique opportunity to make history through their actions. I trust that when the time comes, you will choose wisely.”
“But first,” he said, breaking the solemnity of his tone, “I want you dressed in civvies and ready at 1700 hours sharp. We’ll all be going out for an informal, relaxing evening at the Snapping Gator across town. There’ll be good food, music, and I heard there might even be a woman or two.” He finished with a smile, and a round of cheers rippled through the room.
The new graduates reported back at 5:00
P.M.
, and they joked with one another as they jostled for seats near the front of the bus so they could be the first out. But not Morgan, who was calm and stress-free for the first time in months. He took a seat toward the back of the bus, reclined, and sighed a contented sigh. It was over. He had done it. Even though he knew the hardest part was about to begin—actually being a spy—for the time being, he wanted to bask in the accomplishment.
He closed his eyes in the darkness of the bus, its glass windows painted black to prevent them from knowing the location of The Farm. As he felt the bus pulling away, he drifted off to sleep amid the sound of his fellow graduates roughhousing up front, until the bus brakes whined to a stop.
“Gentlemen, we’re here!” said Powers. “Everybody, out!”
“Come on, Cobra!” said Conley, moving on excitedly up ahead of him. But Morgan took his time. The bar wasn’t going anywhere, and after a year of constant strain, this time there was no pressure, no hurry.
By the time he had gotten off the bus, all the other graduates had run out ahead of him. He stepped down to the ground, and he knew something was wrong before he even heard the footsteps of a half dozen black-clad masked men, who surrounded him completely and cut him off from the bus. Behind him, one of them swung some sort of club, hitting him in the back. Another’s fist hit him in the jaw, and he staggered and fell backward onto the gravel.
They closed in. Morgan struggled, throwing kicks and punches wildly, but there were too many of them to fight off. He felt a hand close over his nose and mouth, and the pungent smell of chloroform engulfed his senses. He faded fast, struggling with the single-minded desperation of a trapped animal, until he completely lost consciousness and his body fell limp, like a rag doll.
When Morgan woke up, his head ached, his throat was dry, and his arms were heavy and numb. He couldn’t see anything, and it took him a moment to realize that this was because he had a rough canvas sack over his head. He tried to bring his hands up to remove the hood but found that they had been cuffed together behind his back to the chair he was sitting on. His next instinct was to work the sack off by moving his neck, but he found he couldn’t budge. His head was taped tightly to a pole that rose from the ground behind him.
He heard voices, but he was too disoriented to make out what was being said. As the fog cleared, he realized that the reason he couldn’t understand them was that they were not speaking English. It was a foreign language, one he recognized readily enough as Russian.
They pulled the hood off his head, and a blinding light shone into his face. There were at least two men in the room, but he couldn’t see anything except vague silhouettes. He screwed his eyes shut, but it helped only slightly. He still felt the bulb’s heat on his face like a furnace.
“Who the hell are you people?” he demanded. “What do you want from me?”
The response was a fist smashing into his face. He tasted blood.
“Shut your mouth, American,” said one of them, through a thick accent. He was tall and thick like a gorilla. “You only talk if you are answering our questions.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
The man punched him hard in the gut, smashing him against the back of the chair. Morgan’s reflex was to double over, but the harness on his head held him tightly. He retched in pain.
“Where is the secret CIA training center?”
“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. You people are luna—” A meaty fist smashed into Morgan’s right cheek, and blood oozed into his mouth.
“What are the names of those who trained with you?”
“I’m telling you, I don’t know what you’re talking about!” The Russian sank his fist again into Morgan’s gut.
Use your training
, thought Morgan, through the pain.
Take yourself out of yourself. Go somewhere else.
The beating continued until Morgan lost track of time. For what seemed like days, he was brutally hammered, with no sleep, no food, and no water. They periodically cut his head free, covered it with a wet towel, tilted his face toward the ceiling, and poured water over his nose and mouth. It felt like drowning every time. They threatened him with electricity and held an ice pick to his face, hovering inches from his eye.
Whenever he lost consciousness, he was doused with cold water, and then the beatings would start again. He didn’t know how long this went on—how much time passed—until one day, the enormous Russian smacked him out of his delirious fog to attention when he told him, “We have got another American here with us. Another damn spy. He is not so tough as you, but we are convinced that he has told us everything he knows.”
He heard yells and detected some movement past the door to the room. “Please! Please, no!” It was a voice he didn’t recognize, but it was American, all right. “I won’t tell anyone—just don’t kill me!”
He told Morgan, “If you do not talk, he will die.”
Morgan felt a wrench in his gut worse than any of the Russian’s blows, and it twisted every time he heard the man pleading for his life in an adjacent room.
“Tell us what you know!”
Morgan gave him a look of furious resolve that said everything. The Russian said something to a man, who then left the room. The American was still screaming.
“I have a family! Please! Please, d—”
A gunshot, and then there was silence.
“Bastards!” cried Morgan. “I’ll kill you for this. I’ll kill you all!”
The Russian crouched in front of him and said, in an almost friendly voice, “No, my friend. You will not kill anybody. You can no longer save your countryman, but you can still save yourself. Just answer our questions.”
Morgan spat, the bloody saliva hitting the man in the face. The man struck back with a punch that landed squarely on Morgan’s nose with a crunch. It bled profusely. The Russian got up, wiping himself with disgust, and addressed another one of the men in the room.
“He will not talk,” he said. “It is time.”
The Russian pulled a gun from inside the waistband of his pants.
This is it,
he thought. There was no more hope of rescue or escape. His only satisfaction would be to know that he had not broken. He had not betrayed his country.
He felt the cold barrel of a gun on the back of his head.
“One last chance. Where is the secret training facility?”
“Go to hell.” He waited for the gunshot. A strange thing, to wait for a gunshot he would never be aware of, that would scramble his brain before he had the chance to feel a thing. But he faced the thought of death head-on. He would die honorably rather than talk. He would not have the chance to serve his country as he had hoped, but at least he had this. This bullet would be his service, his sacrifice.
But it didn’t come. The barrel of the gun was withdrawn. Through the thick haze of hunger and dehydration, he thought he heard laughter.
The blinding light in his face was shut off for the first time since he woke up in that chair, and bright, clear lights came on overhead. Through swollen eyes, he saw two men entering the room. They cut his neck loose and then undid the cuffs. Morgan tried to swing his fist at one of them, but he was too weak, and he collapsed to the floor from the effort.
One of them put a canteen to his mouth, and he drank through ragged, bloody lips, sweet, cold water flowing into his mouth, which was so parched, it hurt. The two men helped him to his feet. His knees buckled, but the men held him up. He heard approaching footsteps and saw the vague outline of a man appear at the door. It took a minute for his mind to make sense of what he was seeing.
It was Powers.
“Traitor! Goddamn traitor!”
With the last of the strength that was left in his limbs, he tried to hit him, still yelling, “Traitor! Traitor! You’re gonna fry for this!” while the men supporting him held him back. He could barely tell that Powers was trying to talk to him, until suddenly the words got through to him.
“It’s okay, Cobra,” he was saying. “It’s okay. You just passed your final exam.”
C
HAPTER
36
“
I
don’t know what you think you’re trying to prove, Cobra. What good are those photographs to you if you’re dead?”
T pulled on the length of barbed wire. The loop tightened around Morgan’s thigh, rusty teeth digging into his skin. He held back a cry of pain, but he couldn’t help his breath coming out heavy and irregular, wheezing through the oily cloth in his mouth.
Not. A. Sound,
he told himself, quieting his breath, trying to maintain a steady rhythm.
“This pain,” she said, tugging once more, a little harder, the claws pulling on his flesh, “it can stop. All you have to do, Cobra, is give up. Just swallow your pride and tell me where the memory card is.”
He heard the hum of something vibrating. Natasha looked at a small device on her waist. She grumbled something to herself in Russian, then looked at Morgan, narrowing her eyes menacingly, and ordered, “Sit tight.” She walked out of the room, taking a last look at him before closing the door behind her.
Morgan listened for her footsteps, and when she was far enough away, he raised his head, fighting the exhaustion and forcing himself into alertness. He tried to turn all of his attention to escaping, but it was hard to keep his mind straight. T had left him there in the windowless cell for what he assumed was all night, with a boom box, just out of reach of his foot, blasting some awful noise that someone, somewhere called music. It kept him from falling asleep at all—the blaring music, playing on a loop, echoing around his exhausted mind. All night, desperately holding on to his sanity, he tried to break free from his handcuffs, first looking for anything that could be used as a lock pick and then, frustrated beyond reason, he tried brute force until his hands bled and his skin was raw.
But the pain was good. The pain brought adrenaline, made his body awaken. It gave him a fighting chance.
T had left the length of barbed wire embedded in his thigh. It stuck up like a dead tree, its roots digging into his leg. If he could only get ahold of it, he might be able to use it to pick the cuffs open. He contorted his body, trying to bring it within reach of his left hand. As he did, the tensing muscles in his thigh caused the barbs to bite deeper into him. He gritted his teeth and strained. The end of the wire grazed his fingertips. So close . . . if he could just get a grip . . .
Footsteps were approaching. Straining to hear, he made out two sets instead of one. Who the hell was T bringing here now? He forced his attention back to the wire. He might still be able to do it, pick the cuffs, tear his legs loose, and find a way to overpower her.
No,
he decided. It was too late. He slackened his hands and waited as Natasha and her mystery guest drew closer. With a dull sound of metal against metal, the dead bolt was drawn open, and T walked in.
“Someone is here to see you,” she said with displeasure. “Say hello to our guest. I believe you will recognize him.”
The other person walked in. It was a man, carrying a thin briefcase. He was tall and handsome, with gray hair and a winning smile, a smile belonging to the most trusted politician in America.
“Cobra,” said Nickerson, enunciating the word carefully, as he pulled the dirty rag from Morgan’s mouth. “What a terrific name. What a marvelous animal. Quick, deadly, ruthless. I’ve been hearing a lot about you in the past few days. I must say, even though you’ve been a pain in the ass, I’m impressed. Truly, I am. You proved even harder to deal with than your old friend, Cougar.”
So Nickerson and, consequently, T, really didn’t know Conley was still alive. Good. Whatever happened to him, at least Cougar would be there to carry on.
“Edgar Nickerson, you asshole,” said Morgan. “I didn’t think you’d have the stones to show your face like this.”
“You’re right. I usually let the help deal with the vermin. But since you have turned out to be a particularly resilient specimen, I thought I would come here in person and make you a proposition.”
Morgan scoffed. “You can’t torture me into talking, and you think a bribe will do it?”
Nickerson looked at him with amused puzzlement. “You misunderstand me, Cobra,” he said. “That’s not the kind of proposition I’m here to make you. I would like you to come work for me.”
“
What?
” he barked in unison with T, who looked as incredulous as he did. She moved toward him and stood menacingly close, her furious eyes locked on his. “Cobra is mine, Senator.”
“Cobra has a choice to make,” said Nickerson, turning away from her and toward Morgan.
“You think I’m going to bargain with you, Nickerson?” said Morgan.
Nickerson walked over to Morgan and crouched in front of him, so they were eye to eye. “You’re not going to hold torture and attempted murder against me, are you?” he said, with gentle mocking. “After all, a man like you should know, it’s just business.”
“You didn’t just mess with me. You messed with my family, my friends, my
dog
. And trust me, Nickerson, I’m a son of a bitch who can hold a grudge. So tell me, what in the world do you think could convince me to work for you? What do you think you can offer me that would be more valuable to me than bashing your face in?”
“Simple. You want to do the right thing, in your own stubborn way. Don’t forget, I read your file, and the Agency knows everything there is to know about you. You can be a merciless killer, but you are a principled man, Mr. Cobra. You want to be a force for good in a dangerous world. I can offer you that power.”
“I gave that up when I left the CIA. Turns out it wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.”
“You know as well as I do that the CIA has grown gutless and officious. The government is inept. They aren’t willing to do what it takes to protect this country. Hell, they were spineless even back when you worked for them. Remember Libya? We could have eliminated Gaddafi then and there. No bombing, no collateral damage, just one bullet from your rifle to the bastard’s head.”
Morgan looked at him with faint surprise.
“Oh, yes, I know about that,” he continued. “State secrets aren’t so secret when you know how to ask. Come work for me, Cobra, and you will live a life that matters again, and even more so than before. None of that congressional oversight nonsense, no weak-willed pencil pushers backing out at the last minute. With me, you can help shape the world in our image.”
“By moving opium and using the drug money to fund the enemy? By supplying the weapons that put American soldiers into danger?”
“Necessary evils, I’m afraid,” said Nickerson, with just a tinge of feigned remorse. “I believe it is something you are personally familiar with. It’s no simple matter to make enough money to change the world, and change the world I will. We will not allow bloodthirsty, America-hating dictators to live. We will hunt terrorists and criminals down wherever they may hide. We will be a force for good in the world again.”
“Bullshit,” said Morgan. “You don’t give a shit about the world.”
“Perhaps,” said Nickerson candidly, “but even so.” He picked up his briefcase, set it down on the table, and opened it. Morgan watched as he pulled out three large photographs and set them on the floor in front of him, where he could see them.
“Do you know this man?” Nickerson asked, pointing at the first photograph. It was a video still of an Arab with a long, scraggly beard and crazy-looking eyes. “Jawhar Essa. Propagandist for Al-Qaeda. Hiding in Yemen and untouchable by our government. Killed two months ago by one of my agents.”
Nickerson moved on to the next one, a long-range shot of a laughing Latino man wearing a Panama hat and large gold chains around his neck that hung down on his chest, visible through his open shirt. “Porfirio Aguilar. Head of the Juárez cartel—that is, until we got to him in January of this year.”
He moved on to the third picture, a middle-aged, Eastern European–looking man with graying temples and mustache. “Janek Kovar. Czech arms dealer and human trafficker. Killed not two weeks ago by—you guessed it—us.”
“What’s your angle, Nickerson?” said Morgan. “I
know
you’re not doing this shit out of the goodness of your heart.”
“What does it matter?” said Nickerson silkily. “Good work is being done. Thanks to me. To us.” He nodded to Natasha, who was leaning against the wall in a corner, watching him with contempt. “I can offer you that opportunity again, Cobra. To change things the only way they ever get changed. To shape the world according to your own ideals.”
“Maybe, Nickerson. But you forgot one thing.”
“Yes?”
“My ideal world doesn’t have you in it.”
Nickerson laughed, as if Morgan had told a very funny joke. “Is that your answer, then? You won’t reconsider?”
Morgan spit on the floor in front of him, spattering the pictures Nickerson had laid out.
“Very well. He’s all yours, Natasha. Enjoy yourself.”
“I’m going to kill you, Nickerson,” Morgan said, with a strange calm that surprised even himself. “I promise you. You will die. Soon.”
“I’m trembling in my shoes,
Cobra
,” said Nickerson, deadpan. He turned to Natasha, who was looking at him with anger. “You’re wasting your time with this nonsense. So what if he doesn’t talk? If he dies, the photographs are lost forever, and that’s that. Meanwhile, you have more important things to worry about. The big day is Saturday.”
She looked at him incredulously, motioning toward Morgan.
“Oh, what’s he going to do?” said Nickerson. “He’s a corpse. He just doesn’t know it yet. And let me make this clear—make sure he’s goddamn certain of it soon. You have more important things to do.”
She took a lingering look at Morgan and said, without turning away, “Cobra and I are not done yet.”
Nickerson scoffed. “Revenge. So tacky, so small-minded!” He pulled the door open to leave. “It just better not interfere with the plan.”
Natasha followed him and closed and latched the door behind her. Morgan wondered how long she would keep him alive. This could be the last time he was alone in the room. It might be his final chance for escape.
He shifted his body, again trying to grab hold of the wire, contorting his torso, stretching his right arm around the pipe behind him. He edged closer, closer, his thigh screaming in pain until,
yes!
Two fingers wrapped around the wire, which he carefully bent so that he could hold it in his hand. Working it slowly, carefully, he unwound it from his thigh, each barb stinging as it came out. It made him bleed more, but it came loose. He held it firmly in his hands.
Now for the handcuffs.
The wire was thin, but it was still far thicker than ideal for the task. He tried to work an end of it into the lock, but it kept slipping out.
Focus. You can do this,
he said to himself.
Again, he worked it in, and it slipped out. Frustrated, he tried to jam it in carelessly. A barb caught his finger unexpectedly, ripping the skin, and he released reflexively. The length of wire, which had curled into a loose spiral, bounced and rolled just out of reach.
Shit
.
Morgan tried to snag it with his foot and came up a few inches short. He strained and shifted, trying to bring the chair closer to it, trying to give himself a few extra inches, but it was no use. It was out of his reach, and there was nothing he could do to get it back, nothing he could do to open the handcuffs, and nothing to do now but wait for T to come back and, if he was lucky, kill him right away.
And then he heard a loud hissing, like radio static. He whipped his head around, looking for the source, until he realized the shushing sound was closer than he thought. The earpiece! It had gone dead with Conley out of range, and he had forgotten all about it.
“Come in, Cob . . . ” said Conley’s voice, breaking up in static.
“Cougar!” he said, in a loud whisper, splitting the difference between his excitement and his fear that T might hear. Given the range of the device, Conley couldn’t be farther than 500 yards away, and probably closer, considering the apparent thickness of the concrete around him.
“. . . bra c . . . in. Are yo . . . ere?”
“Cougar, Congar, come in, can you hear me?”
“. . . obra? Cobra, is that you?”
“Cougar, I’m in a small room, behind a heavy iron door. I think I’m underground somewhere.”
“I’m coming, Cobra.”
“Be careful. T and Nickerson are around here somewhere.”
“Roger that.”
There was silence for some time, and then Morgan heard hurried footsteps outside the door, coming his way. The door unlocked, and in burst Natasha, murder in her eyes.
“Looks like you and Nickerson aren’t quite on the same page,” said Morgan calmly.
Natasha went straight for him, put one heavy boot against his chest, and grabbed him by the hair. “I’m no longer amused by this, Cobra.” She slapped him across the face. “I’m going to go get a hammer and some pliers, and I’m going to start doing some serious damage.” She pushed off him with her foot and stormed out, banging the metal door behind her.