“Everyone hates some part of what they do. The hours and the stress get to all of us.”
Though Athena undoubtedly suspected who Jake worked for, he still couldn’t tell her what he did. “My boss and I often differ on the best way to accomplish our goals.”
“Like the Symi?”
Jake nodded. The death toll from the Symi might end up being a rounding error if Yaxaas dispersed the bioweapon into the general population.
“Have you thought about doing something else?” she asked.
“Protecting my country is what drives me forward.”
“Could you do it somewhere else, maybe work for a different group?”
Jake stood there in the kitchen, watching Athena eat leftovers with her fingers, and realized that she’d zeroed in on exactly what was bothering him.
“No,” Jake said. “I need to be exactly where I am to counterbalance my boss. It’s where I can do the most good.”
“Then you’re in the right place. You have the first half of your answer.”
Jake nodded again. It was as if a weight had been lifted from his shoulders.
“What’s the second half?” he said.
“Can you do this job and have a personal life?”
Jake walked to Athena and took her hands in his. “I can if I work harder at it.”
She kissed him gently on the mouth. “Let’s go for a walk on the beach.”
Jake smiled. “I’ll get the Land Rover.”
“Not tonight.” Athena pointed to her casual shoes. “Go say hello to my father while I bring the car around.”
* * *
—
JAKE WATCHED HER walk up the driveway, with her footsteps crunching on the gravel and her silhouette framed by the soft exterior lighting. Athena looked over her shoulder and saw him. They both smiled as she walked out of sight. It was a warm night for December, with clear skies and a single songbird chirping in the trees. For the first time in a long time, Jake felt at peace.
But it all changed in an instant.
SIXTY-SEVEN
THE SKY FLASHED orange and the ground shook, followed by a deafening roar a fraction of a second later.
Jake sprinted up the driveway toward a column of smoke that was billowing into the night sky. Broken glass and debris littered the ground: The Land Rover wasn’t much more than a collection of twisted metal and charred plastic. Tendrils of flame rose from its frame.
Jake climbed into the wreckage, shielding his face from the heat, until he reached Athena in the driver’s seat. He lifted her out and laid her gently on the grass.
He checked her neck for a pulse. It was fast but weak. She’d already lost a lot of blood and her heart was pumping furiously to circulate what was left.
“Athena!”
Her eyes flickered.
“Stay with me,” Jake said. She was tiptoeing along a precipice. If he left her now, she might tumble away from him forever.
Her breathing was fast and shallow.
“Stay here, Athena!”
Her breathing stopped.
Jake started CPR, pressing down hard and fast, but the trauma was extensive.
Giánnis walked out of the house a minute later and stared at the burning wreck.
Jake wiped the blood from his hands and went to him.
“I’m sorry,” Jake said as a distant siren began to wail. “This was meant for me.”
The old man stared at the wreckage, hypnotized by the flames.
He still didn’t understand.
Jake took him by the hands and looked him in the eyes.
“Athena is dead.”
SIXTY-EIGHT
THE SIRENS GREW louder.
Jake’s recent appearance in Athena’s life, his light cover story, and the private jet with the impenetrable ownership structure would immediately make him a prime suspect. The Hellenic police would detain him while they conducted their investigation and, with Jake out of the picture, there would be no one to stop Yaxaas.
A million people might die.
Jake sanitized the house, removing all traces of his presence. He grabbed his duffel bag, wiped away his fingerprints, and deleted his calls and contact information from Athena’s phone. He drove the speed limit as he left the estate and passed an ambulance and two police cars headed in the opposite direction. He glanced down at his clothes. His shirt was singed by fire and stained with Athena’s blood. He was innocent, but he was acting guilty and he looked guilty—and he had to expect the police to treat him as such if he was caught. He stopped at a gas station once he was clear of Vouliagmeni, tore the shirt off, and held it to his face. It was his last connection to Athena, but it was also a ticket to jail if the police found it. He balled it up and buried it in the trash.
* * *
—
THE AGENCY PILOTS were used to abrupt changes of schedule.
Jake had called them from the road, and the Gulfstream was idling on the tarmac by the time he arrived. They took off under visual flight rules, a rarity for a high-performance corporate jet, especially at night, but it allowed them an immediate departure from Greek soil. Once they were airborne, they filed a flight plan to Djibouti. They refiled for Mogadishu a few hours later.
The flight to Somalia was like torture. Jake wanted to run, to scream, to find some way to vent his rage—his guilt. Instead, he sat in his seat and stared blankly out the window, clenching and unclenching his fists, his mind stuck in an endless loop that constantly replayed the last few hours of Athena’s life: the car that had followed him from the airport, the clarity that had followed their conversation in the kitchen, and the joy he’d felt watching her walk to the Land Rover.
The truck he’d driven every single time they’d gone to the beach.
Except this time.
Someone had learned their routine and wired a bomb to the ignition circuit—expecting to kill Jake, but ending Athena’s life instead.
* * *
—
THE MOGADISHU AIRPORT was right next to the ocean, and the winds were gusting over thirty miles per hour as the Gulfstream touched down. Thick clouds muted the sunrise.
The copilot said something to Jake as he walked down the plane’s stairs, but Jake wasn’t listening. A few raindrops landed on his face as he walked past the United Nations jet, past the mechanic working on the gray helicopter, past other things that had once seemed to matter.
He texted Pickens and hailed a cab to a local hotel as part of his regular security routine.
It all seemed so pointless.
Pickens was waiting at the hotel in the beige Daihatsu.
“Didn’t expect to see you back so soon,” he said.
“Lots to do.”
It was the morning rush hour and the Makka al-Mukarra boulevard was clogged with cars, bicycles, Bajajs, and a smattering of pedestrians. Traffic was forced to stop completely for a few minutes when a pickup truck drove the wrong way down the divided road just so it wouldn’t have to make a U-turn at the next intersection.
“You just missed Clap,” said Pickens. “He took off for Germany to check on his guy.”
“He left you a present,” Pickens continued, but Jake was silent, staring out the window.
“You all right?” asked Pickens.
“Just tired,” Jake said.
Pickens took a harder look and decided he wasn’t buying it.
“Lady trouble?”
“You could say that.”
“Sorry, brother.”
Pickens turned onto the main boulevard, following one of his regular surveillance detection routes. They drove around a traffic circle and passed a pair of AMISOM armored vehicles that were parked outside the soccer stadium, then turned onto a residential side street.
It was as if rush hour had ended in an instan
t.
The traffic disappeared: the Bajajs that were angling for the same section of road, the pedestrians who were meandering across the streets, the trucks that stopped in the middle of the boulevard to unload their cargoes.
They were all gone.
Jake instinctively went into high gear.
He reached into the glove compartment and grabbed the 9mm Glock pistol he kept there. He pointed it at the floor and press-checked it, moving the slide forward a quarter inch to confirm that a round was in the chamber.
“This doesn’t feel right,” he said as he surveyed the street.
No sooner had the words left his mouth than a white pickup truck with dented sheet metal and off-road tires appeared from a side street and skidded to a stop a hundred feet in front of them, blocking the intersection.
Pickens stopped the car.
Three men with rifles jumped down from the bed and started walking toward the Americans.
Jake checked his side mirror. A van with more gunmen had stopped behind them.
Jake glanced at his partner. The big man still had his pistol holstered.
“It’s game time, Pickens. Get that weapon out.”
“It’s just a shakedown,” Pickens said. “Let’s not do anything that’s going to get us killed.”
But Jake had been through private checkpoints before. Rarely were they inside the city limits, and they never targeted a single vehicle.
“Somebody tried to kill me in Greece and they’re trying again now.”
Pickens was frozen. The gunmen were halfway to them.
“Athena is dead,” Jake said.
Pickens was speechless.
The gunmen split up. One stayed in front and one walked to each side of the car.
Pickens looked back and forth between Jake and the approaching men.
“I’m not going to let them take me,” Jake said. “I’m going to fight this one out.”
“We’re outgunned, brother. Let’s just pay them and be gone.”
“Money isn’t going to make this problem go away. We’re going to have to resolve this.”
Jake checked his mirror again.
“On three,” he said. “One, two, three!”
Jake raised the Glock and fired three times, dropping the gunman on his side of the car, but Pickens was still frozen with his hands on the wheel. His sidearm was still on his hip.
Jake swung his weapon to the left and fired three more rounds just a few inches from Pickens’s face, shattering the driver’s-side window and striking the gunman in the gut. The man dropped his rifle and slid down the side of the car, his face pressed against the bloody glass.
“John! Engage!” Jake yelled, but Pickens was sitting motionless behind the wheel, his foot still on the brake.
Jake jumped out and ran between two buildings as the gunmen sprayed the car with automatic weapons. He caught a glimpse of the group’s leader, standing behind one of the vehicles and screaming at his men.
It was Nacay.
Jake braced himself against the house on his right and raised his weapon. Rounds snapped past his head and ricocheted off the nearby buildings as half a dozen men fired at him, but Jake lined up his sights and pulled the trigger.
The round caught Nacay in the side of the head, just behind his eye.
He crumpled to the ground instantly, as if his entire skeleton had suddenly been removed. Jake fired more rounds at the shooters, trying to draw their fire from Pickens, but the volume of incoming fire soon forced him behind cover.
Jake took a deep breath, dropped to one knee, and popped out from the wall. He skipped a few bullets under the truck, hoping a ricochet would neutralize some of the gunmen and maybe save Pickens, but they kept firing. The staccato reports of the AK-47s echoed through the narrow street as they raked the car with gunfire.
Lead chunked into the sheet metal.
Bullets shattered the glass.
Rounds smashed through the seats.
And that’s when Jake saw the windshield . . .
Covered in Pickens’s blood.
SIXTY-NINE
JAKE YELLED TO his partner, but there was no reaction.
Pickens’s head was slumped forward, his chin resting on his chest. The windshield was covered with blood. He looked as if he’d taken a round to the back of his skull, straight through the brain. Not even former outside linebacker John Pickens, built like a tank and nearly as tough, could have survived it.
Nacay yelled for his men to redirect their fire to Jake.
Jake shot back and quickly wounded one of the gunmen, but he had only a single magazine and his attackers had enough ammunition to fight a war. The volume of incoming fire quickly pushed him back behind cover.
With his back against a nearby house and the gunmen closing in, Jake dropped his magazine and checked how many rounds he had left. He’d been serious when he’d said they weren’t going to take him alive.
He was down to his last bullet.
He saved that one for himself.
Instinct drew him to Pickens. Abandoning Athena moments after she’d died had blown a crater in Jake’s heart, and he knew that leaving his fallen partner would be almost as bad, but there was nothing he could do. Getting killed while trying to stop a biological attack was one thing, but sacrificing his life for a man that was already dead was just a waste.
Jake darted between the houses while voices shouted, engines revved, and tires chirped in the street behind him. But the surrounding streets were dense with traffic, and Jake was light and fast and driven. He lost the shooters in just a few blocks and was able to hail a passing Bajaj.
It was a thirty-minute taxi ride back to the safe house and three years since Jake had felt a real connection to a woman. And watching the last threads of life drain from Athena’s body while he cradled her on the ground had been excruciating.
Pickens had sensed it. The two friends had survived more close calls together than Jake could count, from muggings by street hoods to ambushes by Somali warlords. They had been threatened, kidnapped, and shot at, but the one constant through all of it was that they’d had each other’s back.
And now Pickens was gone too.
Jake stared out the open side of the Bajaj, completely skipping any sort of surveillance detection route, and took it directly to the safe house and walked inside. It was a reckless move after being the target of two assassination attempts in the past twenty-four hours, but Jake had reached a point where he just didn’t care anymore.
Not about himself.
Not about Yaxaas.
Not about anything.
Everything Jake had ever valued had been stripped from him. From his parents, to the life he’d rebuilt, to the friends he’d made working for the Agency, and ultimately, the women he’d loved.
They were all gone.
Death followed him everywhere.
Jake sat in the kitchen, staring at the Glock in front of him on the table.
It had a single round in it.
It would be enough.
The people closest to him always suffered the most. It didn’t seem fair that he should live when they were dead.
Jake stacked guilt on top of anger until their combined weight nearly suffocated him. He second-guessed every decision he’d made since coming to Africa, from meeting Yaxaas at the Bakaara Market, to involving Athena in his war with the pirates, to ignoring Pickens’s advice about engaging the men at the checkpoint.
And now Jake was alone once again. It was a crossroads he’d visited before, and each time he’d dug deep and fought the temptation to quit when it would have been the easiest thing in the world to do. Most people thought of evil as an abstract concept—the opposite of good. But true evil was more destructive, and Jake had seen it manifested more than once. Allowing Yaxaas to use the Iranian bioweapon wo
uld make Jake no better than the warlords.
And that was unacceptable.
Despite the pain, despite the frustration, it wasn’t what Jake stood for.
It wasn’t what the United States stood for.
It just wasn’t right.
He had been so focused on what he’d lost that he’d lost sight of what he still had.
Though both had been tested severely in the past few weeks, he still had his faith in God and country. Jake understood that he was not the center of the universe, but when pain was piled upon loss, it was easy to lose sight of the beliefs and ideals that put his existence in context.
And while he was struggling mightily with survivor’s guilt, that very survival obligated him not to waste the rest of his life feeling sorry for himself or blaming others. Jake had always distinguished himself by his ability to maintain a level head and keep pushing forward when the world around him was crumbling, and it was time to do it again. The forces of good needed him back in the fight.
He would have to be his best when he felt his worst.
It was time not only to accept that death followed him but to embrace it. If the Ground Branch men, Athena, and Pickens had to die, then so would Yaxaas and the other sons of bitches who’d made Somalia a living hell. Jake would use that energy to once again drive him forward.
All the pain. All the suffering. All the death.
It was like sharpening the sword.
SEVENTY
JAKE TOOK THE Glock off the table.
It was time to get to work.
Jake had never let hatred guide his actions. Hate was too emotional, too unfocused—more a product of internal strife than external forces. And Jake did not take lightly the act of ending another man’s life. He’d done it many times since joining CIA, but killing had never been the primary goal—it had simply been necessary to accomplish the mission.
But not this time.
He’d decided days ago that Yaxaas had to die, but that had been business—just a tactic to achieve a objective.
Black Flag Page 23
