The Last Line (40 page)

Curious. There were no blue dots anywhere along that stretch of beach. What the hell were two people with Cellmapped phones doing half a mile out in the water? It was possible, he thought, that there was a party boat out there—but his first thought had been that someone might be coming ashore.

They needed to get up there
now.

“I see them,” he said, gesturing to Dominique to start the car, to get going, and
fast.
“Did you get in touch with the McDee earlier?”

“I did.”

“Better let her know about this contact. And … it might be a good idea to have the Activity in on this.”

“Way ahead of you, buddy.”

“We're headed for the beach south of Indian River Inlet now.”

“Right. I'll let you know if I hear anything new.”

“The McDee?” Dominique asked, one eyebrow arched.

“Colonel Audrey MacDonald,” Teller replied. “A woman whose career is devoted to making my life a living hell. Fortunately, like me, she doesn't care for Klingons.”

“Whoa there, cowboy. You're going way over my head.”

He sighed. “Colonel MacDonald is my boss at INSCOM. I report to her—at least I do when I'm not playing with your friends at the Company.”

“Klingons?”

“The CIA isn't real popular with most of the other intelligence agencies, okay? We call it the ‘evil empire.' Or the ‘Klingon Empire.'”

“Ah.”

“No offense.”

“I
may
forgive you. And why is it a good thing that Colonel MacDonald doesn't like us?”

“Larson, Wentworth, Vanderkamp—they seem to have convinced themselves that there's no danger of those nukes coming ashore from the sub.”

“Yes…”

“So I told Frank to give MacDonald a call. She likes him, I think. If
I'd
called her, she wouldn't have listened. But Frank told her that the CIA was screwing the pooch on this one, and that it gave INSCOM a clear field.”

“For what?”

“To try to find that sub.”

“I see. Did it occur to you that the Agency might still be on top of it? They just wanted
us
to stand down, so we were out of the way?”

“That's stupid.”

“No more stupid than having different agencies competing with each other, like it's some kind of game. What will you do next—drag in the FBI? Homeland Security? How about the NSA?”

“If I have to, yeah. It
is
a game. It just happens to have some extremely serious consequences if we lose.”

“It doesn't work that way, Chris. INSCOM is supposed to provide military intelligence to the army and DoD. The CIA provides foreign civilian and political intelligence to the president. The FBI handles domestic security. You're going to have different agencies tripping over one another, and why? Because you want INSCOM to get the credit?”

“Fuck the credit. You know as well as I do that things aren't all clean and nice and neat in the real world. We have a direct threat to the United States here, and I really don't give a damn how we stop it, okay? U.S. intelligence—and by that I mean
all
of the intelligence services, all sixteen of them—they …
we
are this country's last line of defense before someone, the military or the president or Congress, has to take direct action.”

“Ouch,” Dominique said, reacting to Teller's anger. “I think I hit a hot button, didn't I?”

“I dunno. Maybe.” Teller hesitated, wondering how much to share. “I had a good friend, a mentor. DIA, army intelligence. Back in 2000, he was part of a secret data-mining project called Able Danger, looking at intelligence intercepts right here in the United States. He actually uncovered two of the three terrorist cells operating in Virginia—the very same cells that went on to launch the 9/11 attacks, and he did so a whole
year
before the government will admit that those tangos were in the country, even now. But the DIA refused to share that intel with the FBI because of … legal issues. What was the army doing eavesdropping on people inside America's borders? He also briefed the DCI personally three times. Nothing was done,
nothing
—and three thousand Americans died.”

“My God.”

“When the finger pointing started afterward, U.S. intelligence was blamed. It wasn't intelligence. It was the sheer glacial
stupidity
of bureaucratic turf-holding and empire-building and ass-covering. That last line of defense I mentioned just doesn't work when the people who put it there don't pay attention.”

“And your friend?”

“Forced to take early retirement. He was … inconvenient.” Teller laughed, a bitter sound. “They called him a cowboy.”

“So … you really don't care who catches the bad guys.”

“Of course not. If the Klingons want the glory, they're welcome. If they want to pretend everything is fine so they can blame someone else, that's fine, too.
Just so someone stops the Tangos from setting off those nukes.
”

“Which explains why you're freelancing.” The term meant that Teller was working for himself now, not for one of the agencies.

“Hah. I wouldn't have put it that way, but hey, if no one else will,
someone
has to do it.”

“And you could go to prison for it.”

Teller had given that a lot of thought. When he'd walked out on Wentworth and the others back at CIA headquarters, he was no longer on loan to the CIA, nor was he working again under the aegis of INSCOM. He was on his own, a captain in the U.S. Army, with no particular authority of his own.

Even as just an army captain, though, he was still under oath.
To support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic
 …

There was his personal credo as well.
What's the next right thing to do?

“Then I go to prison,” he said. “But I figure that won't happen.”

“Why not?”

“Because we're going to
catch
those bastards. I just hope MacDonald was able to redeploy some subs offshore.”

“Subs?”

“The absolute best way to catch a sub is with another sub,” Teller told her. “I figured MacDonald would talk directly to either COMSUBLANT or the Joint Chiefs and scramble some L.A. boats to the area.” He gave Dominique a sidelong look. “So how about you?”

“What about me?”

“I asked you to drive out here with me. You were taken off the op, too. Why'd you say yes?”

“Oh, Jesus, Chris,
someone
has to look out for you.”

REYSHAHRI

INDIAN RIVER INLET, DELAWARE

2246 HOURS, EDT

Reyshahri stepped out of the car and walked down to the high-tide line. A strong offshore breeze whipped at the jacket he was wearing and tasted of salt.

He turned his binoculars toward the bonfire down the beach. From here, he could make out eight or ten people—probably teenagers—huddled around the fire. The breeze brought snatches of shouts and laughter across the sand.

All of them were turned inward, facing the fire—and that meant their night vision was ruined. They would not be able to see a raft approaching the beach through the surf.

Swinging the binoculars back out to sea, he studied the night, the pounding surf. There were no more signals from the submarine now. The plan had called for them to submerge right out from under the raft once it was loaded. Mohamed Hamadi would bring the first package ashore. The second, with the Mexican, Hector Gallardo, would head for a second rendezvous on a beach along the southern coast of Long Island.

At least … that was the plan. Reyshahri knew better, though, than to expect any given plan to go right. There was always
something
 …

He heard the drone of a small motor above the hiss and crash of the half-meter surf. Reaching into a jacket pocket, he pulled out a flashlight, aimed it out to sea, and flicked the switch on … off … on … off …

Moslehi joined him. “I see them.” He pointed. “There.”

He handed Reyshahri the NVDs. He put them on, and the black ocean shifted to lighter shades of gray beneath a silver-gray sky. Yes … there. He could see the raft a hundred meters out, moving toward the shore with the gentle but irresistible movement of the swell.

With
two
figures aboard.

Minutes passed, and the raft drew closer, guided in by Reyshahri's flashlight. The craft was a commercial Zodiac, a rigid-hull rubber boat with a 90-horsepower outboard motor for propulsion. As the boat lifted and surged toward the beach with the tumble of a final wave, Reyshahri and Moslehi splashed out into the water a few meters, grabbed hold of the safety line around the boat's gunwales, and helped haul it up onto the beach.

“Welcome to the United States,” Reyshahri said in Farsi as the two men aboard clambered out and helped drag the boat across the sand.

“The Great Satan, you mean,” one replied in the same language. “Sunrise.”

“Eagle,” Reyshahri said. Sign and countersign.

“I am Hamadi.”

“Sarvan Reyshahri. This is Moslehi.” He looked into the Zodiac. “I take it our plans have changed.”

Hamadi nodded. “They have. An American submarine picked us up an hour or so ago. The submarine's captain did not want to be trapped against the coast.”

“We follow the backup plan, then,” Reyshahri said, nodding. “Let's get these into the vehicle.”

An American submarine just off the coast. What did that mean? A chance encounter? That was possible. The American navy had major port and base facilities at Norfolk and Portsmouth, less than 250 kilometers to the southwest of this beach.

It was also possible that the Americans knew something of the plan. If they did, they might be closing in now.

Almost, Reyshahri wished that he had a cell phone.

He did not carry one while on a mission—
ever.
American intelligence had ways of tapping into cell phone conversations, and they were rumored to be able to use them for electronic eavesdropping as well.

“The two of you,” he said as they climbed into the car. “Do you have phones?”

“Of course,” Hamadi said.

“Get rid of them.
Now.
”

“Don't be ridiculous,” Hamadi said. “How are we supposed to coordinate—”

“
Now!
Throw them away!”

Both men pulled cell phones from their pockets and hurled them away into the darkness.

“Good,” Reyshahri said. “Now we can proceed.”

“I think, Saeed,” Moslehi told him in Farsi, “that sometimes you are too paranoid.”

“Quite possible,” Reyshahri replied. “But the Americans have not found us yet, and I intend to keep it that way.”

“I wondered why you didn't want
me
to carry a phone, when we joined up in Arizona.”

“We
know
they can listen in on conversations,” Reyshahri replied. “Any signal sent through the air cannot be considered secure.”

“Yes, but a phone that's not even on?”

“I would put
nothing
past the Americans,” Reyshahri said, “and it is imperative now that we remain invisible.”

With the car loaded, the packages in the trunk, Reyshahri gunned the engine, moved up the beach to the dirt road that led to the highway.

Turning right onto the main road then, they sped north into the night.

 

Chapter Twenty-One

TELLER

INDIAN RIVER INLET, DELAWARE

2315 HOURS, EDT

21 APRIL

Traffic was light on Route 1 this late at night, but the highway was not entirely deserted. As they drove north from Fenwick Isle, they'd encountered several other vehicles—particularly as they passed through the resort towns of South Bethany and Bethany Beach.

Now they were driving through a wilder, more desolate stretch. Teller continued to stare at the laptop screen with intense concentration, watching as they drew closer and still closer to the two blue dots that had just come up out of the sea.

“Whoa,” Teller said suddenly. “Slow-slow-slow-slow … here! Right! Turn right here!”

Dominique swung the car off of the highway and into the mouth of a hard-packed sand road leading up over a dune and then down toward the beach. The headlights showed empty sand and the roll and splash of the waves.

“Shit,” Teller said. He'd been expecting to see two men coming ashore in a boat. Pulling a flashlight from the glove box and his pistol from its holster, he slid out of the car.

“The two contacts?” Dominique asked.

“Yeah, the ones that came ashore from the ocean. They're
here.
”

She was out of the car now as well. She'd left the engine running, and the headlights glared across sand, surf, and black water. “There's a fire on the beach over there.”

“No. According to the Cellmap, we're within a few yards of them. Maybe over here…” He probed ahead, probing through the dune grass with his light.

“What's that down there?” Dominique asked, pointing up the beach toward the left.

“Let's see.” They jogged down the beach together. Teller's flashlight fell on a wet gray shape.

“A Zodiac!” Dominique exclaimed.

“Yeah.” Teller laid his hand on the outboard engine, then snatched it away. “Still hot. This is definitely how they came ashore.”

“But where are they?”

“Look.” He shone the light on the wet sand. Footprints, a number of them, led from the Zodiac up the beach.

“The tide's coming in,” Dominique said, “but it hasn't had time to reach those prints.”

“No.” Teller swept the flashlight up across the empty beach. “I think they're gone. But we can't have missed them by more than a few minutes.” Holstering his pistol, he reached for his cell phone instead.