PART FOUR
Thirty-Nine
A six-foot-long tunnel of galvanized, corrugated steel led into the bunker.
Once inside, Tom determined by its dimensions that the bunker was a repurposed shipping container.
Ceilings nine feet high, length easily eighty feet—so not one container but two that had been welded together end to end and sealed against the elements.
And by the depth of the stairs he’d just come down, Tom estimated that the bunker was a good twenty-five feet underground.
So, there was more to the barn’s recent renovations than met the eye.
Tom scanned the bunker, which was more of a state-of-the-art command center than a doomsday prepper’s hole-in-the-ground refuge.
There was a workstation with several notebook computers, multiple monitors, and a server, all connected to a bank of a half-dozen backup power supplies.
Next to the workstation was a ham radio setup and four walkie-talkies in a charger.
Beyond the workstation were two purification systems, one for air, the other for water.
Beyond those was a kitchen and dining area, with a table long enough to seat at least eight people.
On that table was a clear plastic bag, the contents of which Tom immediately recognized as the items he had been carrying in his pockets.
His multitool, the single .45 round he had put in his shirt pocket, his driver’s license, cash, and keys, plus the paper carry permit Conrad had given him.
What the bag did
not
contain was Simpson’s cell.
Cahill handed Tom the bag and led him into the second container. A dozen bunk beds were mounted on its walls.
As they walked deeper into the sleeping area, Tom realized that there was another wing to the bunker—a third shipping container, set perpendicular to the first two to create an
L
shape.
This wing had its own entrance, complete with a heavy-duty door identical to the one up in the barn.
Reaching the doorway, Tom saw that this third container housed the food stores and arsenal, as well as two more bunks and a small medical bay.
So, a panic room inside a panic room.
At the far end of this wing was another table, this one only large enough for four people.
On it were several files, some stacked, others fanned out.
Some of those files were open and the papers they contained spread out as well.
But it was the three people gathered at the table with their backs to Tom that interested him the most.
One of them was Sandy Montrose, who he recognized by her raincoat.
The other two people were busy sorting through files and talking quietly.
It wasn’t till they glanced over their shoulders at Tom in midsentence that he saw the faces of the last two people he had expected to encounter here.
Sam Raveis and Alexa Savelle.
“There are no recording devices in this room,” Cahill explained. “Above us is a foot and a half of concrete, with twelve feet of packed earth on top of that. And the entire shelter is a giant Faraday cage, which of course will shield everything inside from an electromagnetic pulse but also prevents any cell signal from reaching down here. There’s no safer place for us to talk. And all of us need to talk freely now. Nothing held back, just the ugly truth.”
Cahill gestured toward the table.
“There isn’t a lot of time,” he said. “We need to get started.”
Forty
Alexa Savelle smiled as Tom approached.
The last time he had seen her, she had been leaning against the rear bumper of Hammerton’s SUV, her face smudged black by smoke, her eyes glassy with tears, their edges as red as torn flesh.
The last time she’d seen him, he had longer hair and a beard.
Savelle was of course cleaned up now, as was Tom—thanks to Sandy Montrose—but he could tell that she was still shaken.
It was a look in her eyes, one he’d seen before many times in those who’d had a brush with death and survived it only by the grace of another.
He’d seen that look in his own eyes, too.
The stark realization that he owed everything he had, and everything he would have from now on, to someone else.
His life could continue due only to another’s bravery.
Tom nodded once, but he couldn’t smile.
He was spent, but more than that, he was confused by her presence.
As well Raveis’s.
There was no getting his tired mind around that.
As beat and bewildered as he was, Tom didn’t fail to notice that Raveis was watching him with a curiosity similar to the one the man had displayed in the town car two nights earlier.
But what had appeared to Tom as slight curiosity then was now nothing short of keen interest.
When Tom reached the makeshift conference table, Raveis said, “It’s good to see you, Tom.”
Tom didn’t reply.
The comments Raveis had made about Stella looking good for her age and the pearls being a nice touch were still fresh in his mind.
And anyway, whatever interest Raveis had in him now, it was no doubt born of the newfound understanding that Tom had more skills than he might have expected from the average Seabee.
So, a man like Tom could be of use to a man like Raveis.
Nothing else could explain the sudden interest.
And nothing could appeal to Tom less.
They gathered around the table—Raveis, Savelle, Tom, and Cahill standing, Sandy Montrose seated in front of the files and documents.
Cahill was facing Tom, and Savelle was to Tom’s right, Raveis to his left.
“You don’t have clearance for what we are about to share with you, Tom,” Cahill said, “but there’s no getting around that. We need you to know everything we know so you understand what’s at stake.”
Tom nodded. “Okay.”
“Five years ago, while I was recovering in a VA hospital in New York,” Cahill began, “I was approached by a recruiter who offered me a job. The job was subcontract work with the Central Intelligence Agency. The recruiter was a man I’d only met a few times before, back in Afghanistan. He was the CO of the Seabees stationed at Forward Operating Base Nolay.”
Cahill paused, but Tom said nothing.
“You had no idea that Carrington was a recruiter for the CIA,” Cahill said.
Tom shook his head.
Here was yet another shift in his understanding of things.
He braced himself for more to come.
“No idea at all?” Savelle asked. “Carrington didn’t say anything to you? Not yesterday, not five years ago?”
Tom felt all eyes on him. “No. He didn’t.”
“Carrington’s private security firm is a front,” Raveis explained. “A fairly lucrative front, but a front nonetheless. He uses it to screen candidates for the Agency’s special operations division. Most don’t make the cut and end up working in the private sector without even knowing they were being considered. But a select few are recommended for Agency consideration. And an even more select few are accepted and sent off for training.”
“You were actually Carrington’s first candidate,” Savelle said. “He wanted you to be his first recruit. But you passed on his offer so he moved on to others, Cahill being one of them.”
“I had reservations,” Cahill continued. “And I was in bad shape physically. Carrington convinced me, though, that my skill set, combined with my personal background, meant I had something very specific to offer. Though I was no longer a marine, I could continue to serve my county. As it turned out, by the time I’d healed, I was exactly what was needed for a critical operation. I was in the right place at the right time. This operation was unique, though, in that it required I use my real name. No fake backstory, no false identity. But this would leave my family vulnerable to possible retribution, so a very public battle was orchestrated, one that would make it appear at its conclusion that I’d been disowned and disinherited. This battle would also establish in the press that I had a substantial trust fund. And that I was struggling with significant mental health issues. All these elements were crucial to the success of the operation.”
“I understand the need to protect your family,” Tom said. “But why was it necessary for it to look like you were struggling with posttraumatic stress?”
“Emotional instability would disqualify him from both government and private sector contract work,” Savelle answered. “The lawsuit allowed us to get psychiatric reports into the public record. They were false reports, of course, but no one knew that. This way, anyone looking into Cahill’s background would conclude what the Agency needed them to conclude.”
“Which was?”
“That he was an imbalanced trust fund kid on some crazy personal crusade,” Raveis said. “A Recon Marine once, but in no way the man he used to be.”
Tom remembered his dream, but said nothing about it.
“When I informed Carrington that I was in,” Cahill said, “he had me transferred to a private hospital. And when I was released, the charade with my family was put into motion. Once enough ‘damage’ had been done, the lawsuit was settled out of court and I began my training. Six months later, I was given my assignment.”
Tom recalled going to the hospital a second time, only to find that Cahill was gone.
He recalled, too, that Cahill had battled his family in the courts, then mysteriously fell off the radar for six months.
Carrington had mentioned that at Tallmadge’s crypt but claimed not to know what Cahill had done during those six months he’d been invisible.
Or what Cahill had become. Or for whom he worked.
Of course, Carrington wasn’t the only one to have held back information.
Tom looked at Savelle and said, “You knew where Cahill was all the time.”
She nodded.
“So why the wild goose chase?”
“We couldn’t divulge classified information,” Raveis answered. “That alone meant we had to keep you in the dark about a lot of things. But also, we needed you in the dark. We needed it to look like you had found Cahill on your own.”
Tom addressed Cahill. “Why?”
“Carrington had to believe that you’d actually found me. We needed it to add up for him.”
Raveis said, “Forcing his hand was the only way to expose him.”
“As what?”
Without missing a beat, Savelle said, “A traitor.”
Tom looked at her. “Traitor how?”
Forty-One
“Imagine six charter buses entering New York City from six different access points,” Raveis said. “In each bus are eight six-man squads. Heavily armed men, men with real combat experience. Let’s say it’s the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend, which also happens to be Fleet Week, so the city is packed with military personnel and tourists. You were a navy man, Tom, you know all about Fleet Week, right? How jammed the city gets. How many of your fellow sailors are strolling about. Now imagine that one of those squads, armed with easily concealed Uzis, deploys to, say, the 6 train. The team separates, each man steps into his own subway car and, at a predetermined moment, each of them begins emptying mag after mag into the people trapped inside. And up on ground level, at the exact same moment, panel vans and box trucks loaded with IEDs take out the bridges and tunnels. Then imagine the remaining dozen or so squads, armed with a variety of automatic weapons, walking down each of the avenues, firing at every person in sight. Men, women, children, law enforcement, sailors all dressed in white. Those who aren’t hit in the initial barrage run into stores and restaurants for cover. That’s what people do. We saw that on 9/11, remember? We saw it in Paris, too. So now imagine those squads launching grenades through window after window as they move south. Add to all this skilled snipers with fifty-cal Barretts firing from window or rooftop positions. And add to that men firing M134 Miniguns—at six thousand rounds per minute—from the sunroofs of Range Rovers equipped with armored glass and run-flat tires. Finally, imagine that the charter buses used to transport these men into the city contain explosive devices similar to the one you encountered last night. One bus parks outside the Port Authority, another outside Grand Central, another outside Penn Station, with the remaining three placed at other points of egress where people desperate to flee would flock. And to maximize casualties, as well as the strain on emergency personnel, these buses are all set to detonate just minutes apart.”
“The police have been more or less militarized, yes,” Savelle said, “but even with Stryker armored personnel carriers, it’d be difficult to navigate the city when the streets are littered with the wounded and the dead, not to mention all the disabled and abandoned vehicles. Cars, cabs, buses. Block after block of them. Just utter mayhem. And of course, personal firearms are as good as nonexistent in New York, so the unarmed citizens, well, they’re just target practice.”
“The media has done a good job downplaying the danger we all face,” Raveis said, “telling us to be on the lookout for lone-wolf attacks, that this is the extent of our enemies’ reach into the homeland. But the fact is we have known for years that a major ground offensive is the real threat.”
Raveis paused before adding, “We’re talking invasion, Tom. And not by an enemy that wants to occupy. By an enemy that simply wants to kill as many of us as they can before blowing themselves to pieces. You fought that enemy in Iraq and Afghanistan, so you know it well. Imagine fighting that
here
. With panicked civilians adding to the confusion. Worse, imagine the carnage men like that could cause. I’ve seen estimates putting the wounded and the dead in the thousands. One particularly grim assessment puts the casualties at the fifty-thousand mark. That’s equal to the number of Americans killed fighting in Vietnam. That’s almost the total number of GIs lost in the Battle of the Bulge. But this isn’t some war on the other side of the world. And this isn’t over the course of months or even years. This is one day in New York City. One fucking bad day.”
Tom wanted to ask what this had to do with Carrington and the Chechens, but instead he looked at Cahill and said, “What does all this have to do with your boxing gyms?”
“I set up my charities to gather intel and establish a network of informants. Local street gangs often know more about what’s coming through their cities than law enforcement. My objective was to track weapons and explosives funneling in from overseas through key cities. Weapons that were then transported and stockpiled in and around New York City.”
“The CIA’s charter forbids domestic surveillance,” Tom said.
“The Patriot Act is history, but some of the gray areas it created remain. And, of course, being a subcontractor, I’m not technically employed by the CIA.”
“Then who does employ you?”
“I do,” Raveis said.
Tom looked at him. “And who the fuck are you, exactly?”
“I’m the man your fucking government comes to when it’s scared.”
“Raveis operates the camp where I received the majority of my training,” Cahill said. “And his private security firm allows the Agency to get around certain obstacles.”
“Like congressional oversight,” Tom said. “All in the name of keeping us safe, of course.”
“The world’s a dangerous place now,” Raveis said.
Tom looked at him. “When hasn’t it been a dangerous place?”
“Threats today don’t come in the shape of white sails on the horizon. You know this as well as I do.”
“So you take it upon yourself to subvert the Constitution. Because you feel threatened.”
“I would think a man whose girlfriend came pretty fucking close to having her ass sold into slavery would see things differently.”
“I see exactly what you see: an opportunity for you to make even more money for yourself.”
“The last I knew, no one was forcing you to be poor.”
“We’re a nation of laws for a reason—”
Savelle cut in. “Guys, enough, all right? We don’t have time for this.” She looked at Tom. “For four years, Cahill has been providing valuable intel. Not as a government operative, but as a private citizen. He reported to Raveis, who’d pass on relevant information to his contact at the Agency. Cahill identified several means of entry, for weapons and personnel, as well as transport routes and a number of stockpiles. Each stockpile he found was immediately put under twenty-four-hour surveillance. The Agency shared everything it could with the FBI and ATF, but no one knew how they were getting their intel. Cahill’s hiding in plain sight, setting up his charities all over the country, was working. It was brilliant—his cover was holding, nothing connected him to the Agency, everyone was happy. Two months ago, though, we were tipped off that a story was being written about an operation codenamed Voyeur. That was the Agency’s cryptonym for Cahill’s op. Illegal op, technically. The story was quashed before anything came of it, but it meant someone had talked. Someone on the inside, someone claiming to be a whistle-blower. The journalist had never met his source, though. They had only communicated through codes. That sounds familiar, doesn’t it? So even if the journalist had been willing to reveal his source, he couldn’t. But there was no way we were going to risk an asset as valuable as Cahill. And a lot of careers were on the line. So he went dark while we scrambled to identify the traitor. The attempt on Cahill’s life and the murder of Erica DiSalvo kicked everything into high gear. We needed to act. We needed to find who betrayed Cahill, and fast.”
“And at all costs, apparently,” Tom said.
“Yes,” Savelle said flatly. “At all costs. A lot of lives were at risk, Tom. Tens of thousands. Not to mention the hundreds of thousands that would be killed and wounded if we jumped into yet another war on the other side of the world.” She paused before continuing. “And it wasn’t just Stella we were putting at risk. You and I were almost burned alive, remember?”
Tom was silent for a moment.
As before, all eyes were on him.
“You believe Carrington ordered Cahill’s murder, yet he was the one you asked to help find Cahill. Why?”
“Obviously,” Savelle said, “if he was the man who wanted Cahill dead, then he’d certainly be motivated to accomplish the mission we gave him.”
“And if he believed we trusted him enough to come to him for help,” Raveis added, “then chances were he’d think we weren’t on to him. As far as Carrington actually coming here after Cahill once you figured it out—well, obviously Cahill was more than prepared for whatever might show up here.”
“But why would Carrington even talk to some reporter in the first place?” Tom said. “And then two months later hire a Chechen hit team to come after Cahill? What would he gain from that?”
“We believe he was building his own secret stockpiles,” Savelle said. “Remember
Fast and Furious
? The ATF running guns to Mexico? If our operation was exposed and publicly crashed and burned like that one did, and all the stockpiles currently under surveillance were seized, then Carrington’s would be the only ones left, wouldn’t they? He’d make a fortune selling to some pretty panicked terrorists who’d had to abandon their weapons.”
“Why panicked?”
“Amassing weapons isn’t the hard part,” Raveis said. “It’s gathering the small army necessary for the attack. It’s getting them here and keeping them hidden till the time to strike. All three hundred of them. A coordinated attack like that would take months to plan, years even. And if suddenly the weapons they were counting on weren’t available, well, it’d be back to square one—unless, of course, another seller with the right weapons was to suddenly step forward.”
“But that doesn’t explain why Carrington would want Cahill and his girlfriend dead.”
“The brutal murder of a journalist and her secret lover by a Chechen hit squad would no doubt get the right people asking questions,” Raveis said. “You want to break into the twenty-four-hour news cycle these days, kill a young woman. You want to dominate it for a period of time, kill a pretty blonde.”
“All the elements are there,” Savelle said. “Cahill is from a prominent family, but so was Erica. The media loves to cover rich people. Also, the rich have political connections. And Erica’s husband is a loudmouth with both political
and
underworld connections. Plus, investigative journalists from all over would smell blood and come running, especially since Erica was one of their own. One way or another, the right person would make enough noise.”
“We can quietly pressure one journalist into backing off in the name of national security, but we couldn’t stop a horde of them caught up in a feeding frenzy.” Raveis paused before concluding, “Killing Cahill was obviously another attempt by Carrington to expose and ultimately shut down the operation. There was of course no guarantee his death and the death of his journalist girlfriend would be enough to expose the op, though, so we have to assume Carrington possesses other information. Information that he was going to leak at the right time.”
Tom said to Savelle, “But if he wanted me to find and kill Cahill—if that was his objective from the start—then why bring me in at all only to have you and I killed the night we met? I mean, why send men to kill me before I could do what he wanted me to do? And why kill you if you were going to help me help him?”
“He needed Raveis and me to believe he was cooperating,” Savelle said. “Just like we needed him to believe we trusted him. Delivering you to us was his way of keeping up appearances. Maybe he was hoping you wouldn’t actually answer the coded message. Is that possible? And then once you did, he became concerned that he was somehow on the verge of being exposed and decided he’d better get you out of the game as soon as possible, just to be safe.”
“But his own men saved us. They were tailing us on his orders.”
“Hammerton confirmed that he and Simpson were on a tail-and-protect detail,” Raveis said. “We have no reason to think he’s lying. At this point, frankly, we don’t know what exactly’s in play here. It’s possible that the Chechens went too far, as Chechens are wont to do from what I understand. Perhaps Carrington wanted you incapacitated, not dead. Also, Simpson was allied with the men you encountered in New Haven, so it could be they had their own plans for you.”
Tom thought about that, then looked at Savelle. “You said Carrington had stockpiles. Plural.”
She nodded. “Yes.”
“How many?”
“We don’t know for sure.”
“But the place on Front Street was his.”
“We believe so, yes. If it were one we already knew about, one Cahill had discovered, then it would have been under surveillance.”
“Carrington told me I was being sent there by you via Raveis.”
“He lied, Tom,” Savelle said. “Everything he has told you is a lie. He sent you there because he needed to separate you from Stella so his men could grab her. And he needed a private place for his attack dogs to go to work on you. He needed you desperate enough to do what he wanted. He needed to make you willing to kill the man who had saved your life.” She paused. “I’m sorry. I really am. I know what he meant to you.”
Tom said nothing.
“I don’t think he’s the man you knew,” Savelle said. “Five years in the real world is a long time.”
There was, Tom knew, truth to that statement.
Why else would he have lived the way he did prior to finding Stella?
As far off the grid as possible, minding his own business, reading about those who had founded this country and those who had fought for it.
Uncompromising men, incorruptible, proven.
How many men like that would he encounter in today’s world?
Better, then, to rely on himself and only himself.
Looking at his wristwatch, Raveis said, “There’s still thirty minutes or so before you have to call your girl back and check in.” Addressing the room, he added, “I’m thinking we should be able to lay it all out for Tom in thirty minutes, no?”
Tom stared at him. Why was he surprised that Raveis had listened in on his call to Stella?
He shifted his gaze to Savelle, but she would not meet his eyes.
“I understand you got a good look at the serial number of one the Uzis you guys found.” Raveis’s look of keen interest remained. “I’m assuming you memorized it.”
Tom nodded again.
“Good,” Raveis said. “Why don’t we start there?”