Savage Road

by Chris Hauty

  “I wonder how Richard Monroe got his hands on that gun? Who supplied him with the blanks? Who’s been unusually close to a man now revealed as a Russian intelligence agent?” Clare asks, with a flair for the rhetorical. She leans closer to Hayley, eyes narrowed and mouth drawn tightly across her face. “I’m going to flatten you, Ms. Chill. You’re roadkill.”

  Hayley watches the Homeland Security secretary stand and stride out of the bar at a measured pace, seemingly confident she has her young adversary’s number.

  * * *

  SATURDAY, 10:13 P.M. The mostly bare studio apartment in Columbia Heights smells of dog piss and mildew. He didn’t dare take Yazat out for a walk, not in broad daylight. With nightfall, Rafi Zamani figures it’ll be safe to venture outside. The dog badly wants release, bored out of his little dog mind. Too bad. Yazat will just have to wait. With the help of the single, greatest technical achievement of mankind—the Internet—Rafi has been following the progress of the FBI’s pursuit of the notorious Cyber Jihad. Laying the groundwork for his revenge against Clare Ryan is of equal importance.

  The FBI is no longer a credible threat. According to the emails and text messages he intercepted in real time, the nation’s best investigative agents believe Rafi has fled the region. Besides prepping a safe house, he took the precaution of leaving a paper trail for a faked exit strategy. At this minute, the FBI believes their suspect is driving north to Canada. The NSA contractor purchased an airline ticket from Montreal to Ecuador to throw off investigators. Hell, judging by the latest communications he’s intercepted, the bureau isn’t even entirely certain Rafi Zamani is Cyber Jihad. Some authorities credit his disappearance to illicit activity unrelated to the cyberattacks. Without additional evidence that Rafi was involved, federal agents currently explore a theory that the cyberattacks were a Russian diversion to aid Monroe’s exfiltration.

  Clare Ryan, of course, is a soft target. Rafi took the trouble to initiate full-spectrum cyber surveillance of the DHS head at the outset of their contact. Naturally, he wanted to vet the cabinet secretary’s precise intentions thoroughly. Once he had determined she was not part of an NSA-sponsored sting operation, Rafi continued surveillance of her emails and cellular SMS. To be on the safe side. And who should reappear in those phone texts but Hayley Chill? He believed the threat posed by the White House aide was sufficiently inoculated by his information dump a few days ago. Hayley’s messages two hours earlier, essentially demanding a meeting with Clare Ryan, signals that she has resumed her vigorous pursuit of him. Rafi needs a deterrent that will buy him a few more precious hours. Fortunately, he kept ammunition in reserve exactly for this purpose.

  Without a doubt, he has to do something about the West Wing staffer. But Clare Ryan is Rafi’s reason for remaining in town just a few hours longer. He is hell-bent and determined to do a number on that two-faced, duplicitous bitch. Leaking incriminating evidence of her involvement with his illegal activities—documents that would undoubtedly lead to her arrest and imprisonment—would be too pedestrian for a computer jockey of his skills and proclivities. No, Clare Ryan deserves a more fitting send-off. Her scheduled departure on a United Airlines flight to Mexico City later that night was the perfect opportunity to give her one.

  * * *

  SATURDAY, 10:16 P.M. April is awake. Encouraged by the reduction of swelling in her brain, doctors brought her out of a coma two hours earlier. Having been moved out of the ICU and into a regular hospital room, the patient is even allowed visitors.

  Hayley stands next to the bed, relieved by her friend’s partial recovery. “Pays to have a hard head I guess.” Obscuring her true feelings with mild mockery is less than courageous, but these two have insurmountable walls between them.

  “You’re going to look a lot worse after I get out of here.” April is tired and half-blitzed with medication. Nevertheless, riposte was mandatory.

  Hayley nods. Her friend is going to be okay after all.

  “I’m still getting after him. Only a matter of time,” says Hayley.

  “Did I miss anything?”

  Hayley’s smile could go for miles. “Not much.”

  “Fine. Don’t tell me. Finding out on my own gives me a reason to live.”

  “You’re going to live either way.”

  With half-open eyes, April says with a grin, “God, I hate you.”

  Hayley squeezes the patient’s hand. “Gotta go.”

  “About time.”

  “One more thing.” Hayley never really stops. The mission is never far from her mind, not even while seeing her grievously injured friend in the hospital. “Did you ever get the chance to ask the manager at the Iron Pony if he knew anything about Zamani?”

  “You didn’t give two shits about how I was doing. Just wanted the goods.”

  “Is it that obvious?”

  “I never got there. That Honda kinda landed on me first, remember?”

  Hayley turns to go.

  “Hey…”

  She stops and turns to face April again.

  “Don’t forget to duck.”

  This second time Hayley can only smile with her eyes.

  * * *

  AS SHE EXITS the hospital, Hayley checks her phone for messages. Three more irate messages from Andrew Wilde will have to wait. Glancing at her work phone, she comes to a dead stop on seeing a new email from Rafi Zamani. Her heart begins pounding. Hayley feels the rush of blood in her head as she opens the email. The message is brief: The Truth Will Set You Free. A single-page PDF is attached to the email. It’s a report from an unidentified investigating officer with the Marine Corps Criminal Investigation Division, drafted in a nearly indecipherable blend of legal jargon and military acronyms. But Hayley can glean from it a single, shattering allegation: Corporal Charles Hicks is suspected of having fed coordinates “with malicious intent” to coalition officers in an operations center far from the front lines, leading to a Marine jet fighter executing a bombing run that killed Lance Corporal Thomas Chill.

  Hayley remains rooted in place, where she stopped on the sidewalk outside of the hospital’s entrance. Devouring the contents of the classified document again and again, she feels light-headed. The world seems to spin at her feet. Fury rises, threatening gale force. She craves destruction. Nothing else matters anymore. The mission be damned. The pain will subside only when everything around her is in shambles.

  10

  ZERO DAY

  Charles Hicks murdered my father.

  Standing on the sidewalk outside of George Washington University Hospital, Hayley finishes reading the CID document for a fifth and final time. The reality of the shocking truth is just sinking in. A best friend and brother-in-arms—a fellow Marine!—intentionally killed Tommy Chill. That fact goes a long way toward explaining Hicks’s reluctance to meet with her face-to-face. The most obvious questions demand answers. Why did Hicks do it? And how can he be sitting behind a desk at the Pentagon if the allegations remain unresolved? What malevolent forces must be at work behind the scenes to have the ability to bury the investigative report? Hayley shudders at the thought of a rogue element within the US military, of the danger such a group might pose to the nation’s democratic spirit.

  But what will be her more immediate reaction to this shocking revelation regarding her father’s death? When eight-year-old Hayley pried open Tommy Chill’s military casket and bore witness to his obliterated body, destruction ensued. She had utterly lost her shit, the first of many rage-fueled episodes that have occurred throughout her life. Indeed, Rafi Zamani’s first data dump had the intended effect. Hayley’s loss of control effectively shut down her pursuit of the rogue NSA contractor. The pattern is usually the same. After the fury burns off, she regroups and gets back on track.

  Today must be different.

  Pausing outside the GWU Hospital, the memory of her father and words he once had said to her clear the angry fog clouding Hayley’s thoughts. Smart beats angry any day of the week.

  She will res
pond to Charlie Hicks’s hateful act, but not today.

  Hayley returns the phone to her pocket. Can she spook Clare Ryan into forcing Rafi Zamani to stand down? Assuming as much might be overly optimistic. Something about Zamani’s Joker smile convinces her he will never stop.

  The Iron Pony Tap Room is a twelve-minute Lyft ride away. Hayley walks through the doors a few minutes after eleven. In the blackout’s aftermath, Washington nightlife hasn’t yet fully regained its footing. She finds less than thirty patrons inside the bar, despite it being a Saturday night. The mood is subdued. The same skinny, tattooed bartender pours drinks.

  “I’m looking for the manager,” says Hayley, wishing she’d lucked into someone more cooperative.

  The bartender regards her with suspicion. Reluctantly, she points out a man sitting at a table in the back.

  Aaron Beckett, in his early thirties and dressed with hipster flair, is categorizing receipts when Hayley approaches. There’s a cup of black coffee in front of him. A longtime veteran of restaurant and bar work in the city, he had stopped drinking alcohol years ago. The alternative is death before the age of forty.

  “Excuse me?” Hayley asks, interrupting his work.

  The bar manager looks up. He regards her with the expression of someone who expects a problem and is confident he can solve it. “What can I do for you?”

  “I’m looking for Rafi Zamani. He’s a regular, I think.”

  Beckett’s chin dips. His shoulders curve in like he’s preparing for a fight. “Okay.”

  “I need to pay him some money back. Do you know where I can find him?”

  The bar manager grins, skeptical. “Need to pay him back, huh?” He gestures toward the chair opposite him. “Have a seat.”

  She sits. Her gut instinct regarding Beckett is positive. Without a radar for bullshit and bad actors, life can be a misery of serial failure. Hayley Chill, up to this point, has been a fairly decent judge of character. With a couple of significant exceptions.

  Aaron Beckett doesn’t have such a lousy instinct for people, either, and intuits all of that. “You don’t have to lie to me. I told you, I know Rafi.”

  “Great. Talk to me.”

  “Look, I don’t think the guy’s been laid once in his life. That does weird things to a dude in his late twenties.” He gestures toward the bar. “Stephanie, my bartender, absolutely detests him.”

  Hayley nods, musing on the bartender’s inexplicable hostility. She thinks I’m a friend of Zamani!

  “He’s stalking you or something?” Beckett asks.

  “Not exactly,” she says. “I just need to find him.”

  “You check his apartment?”

  “On F Street?”

  “Yeah.”

  Hayley shakes her head. “No good.”

  “What about the other one?”

  “What… other one?”

  “I think he has another place. In Columbia Heights.”

  Hayley tempers her growing excitement. She recalls something else her father once said to her. A little luck doesn’t hurt. A little luck, indeed!

  “Another apartment? What are you talking about?”

  “I was out riding with him two weeks ago. After midnight. We were going to a street race, out in Forestville. Quarter-mile straightaway sprints. On a good night, you can pick up a grand or two in those races. Rafi got a flat heading out. There was no place or time to get it fixed at that hour. He jumped on the back of my bike and we rode over to some dump on Fourteenth Street, where he grabbed a backup bike from the garage there.”

  Her excitement becomes a storm. Zamani has a safe house!

  “Can I have the address?”

  Beckett is dubious. “Sure you wanna do this?”

  “Don’t worry. I can handle him.”

  “Yeah. I bet you can.” The bar manager racks his brain. “Euclid at Fourteenth Street. Building just west of the BP gas station on the corner. Justice Park Apartments, I think.”

  Hayley stands.

  “Let it go, huh? He’s not worth the hassle.”

  She appreciates the bar manager’s concern. It would be easy for him not to give a shit. Over her shoulder, Hayley says, “You can tell your bartender Rafi Zamani won’t be coming around here anymore.”

  * * *

  2310 TRACY PLACE, in Washington’s exclusive Kalorama neighborhood, was the consulate of Portugal in its former life. The seven-thousand-square-foot four-bedroom Georgian Revival home comes with high-profile neighbors, a well-tended, postage-stamp-size front lawn, and a property tax bill of just slightly under $55,000 a year. Clare Ryan and her husband had purchased the place when their son, Otto Jr., was one year old. Currently, however, a whole week can go by without the three of them being under its roof at the same time. More often than not, Clare’s handsome surgeon husband is “in hospital.” Or “at a conference.” Otto’s philandering doesn’t bother the Homeland Security secretary all that much. It feels like another lifetime ago she could say the two of them enjoyed each other’s company. The daughter of divorced parents, Clare isn’t concerned about what effect the marriage’s inevitable dissolution will have on her son. He’ll thrive, just as she has thrived. No point in equivocating. Time to leave.

  After receiving Rafi Zamani’s threatening texts, Clare’s initial reaction was to continue fighting. Persistence is her default mode. She could dispatch another assassin to eliminate Zamani before he did more damage. But Clare realizes now this was only so much magical thinking. The gnawing despair that began with Zamani’s texts became a raging terror when the White House aide made her allegations. How Hayley Chill arrived at her suspicions makes no difference. The accusations were an unmistakable jolt of truth that Clare cannot afford to ignore. Her dream of protecting the country is hopelessly and irrevocably at an end.

  Heading to the magazine-perfect house on Tracy Place, Clare intends to pack bags for her and Otto Jr. and go straight to the airport. Her flight bound for Mexico City departs from National at 11:55 p.m. As she hurries home in her chauffeured car, Clare reflects on the series of events of the last two weeks and feels a profound, nearly debilitating sadness. She never meant for things to get so out of hand.

  The chauffeured SUV glides to a stop on Tracy Place. Clare can’t precisely remember her husband’s schedule—it changes with the day—but doesn’t expect to find Otto Sr. home. His absence would be preferable, because she has no intention of including him in her getaway plans. Climbing the front steps and unlocking the door, Clare enters the house. She locates her eight-year-old son in the kitchen with the nanny, Sophia. The man of the house is indeed out. Clare can safely presume her husband is holed up somewhere with his young girlfriend. Will he miss his son? Perhaps. Once the dust has settled, Otto Sr. can always come to visit them in Mexico or wherever she finds extradition-free refuge.

  With only a few words to her son and nanny, Clare heads upstairs and retrieves three suitcases from a hallway closet. Otto Jr.’s things barely fill a single bag halfway. Packing it takes only a few minutes. Selecting her personal effects and clothing for a new life requires more time and attention. As Clare sets to work—laying out items and then carefully stowing them in Mark Cross leather trunks—the soon-to-be-former head of DHS feels her prior depression lifting, replaced by a whisper of exhilaration. Recent events prove the United States is finished, a faltering democracy on a downward spiral. How else to explain the election of a Russian mole to the nation’s highest office? Lesson learned. Now is the time to focus her remarkable abilities on the safety and well-being of her son. Her detractors might argue that her flight from justice is self-serving, but Clare doesn’t see it that way. An eight-year-old boy needs his mother more than anything else in the world. With self-imposed exile, she is protecting Otto Jr., not herself.

  Clare brings the bags down one at a time. Arriving downstairs with the third bag, she finds Otto Jr. and his nanny waiting at the front door where she had left the first two suitcases.

  “What’s going on?” So
phia asks. The twenty-two-year-old daughter of French immigrants, the nanny is self-possessed and intelligent, and she has a natural affection for her eight-year-old charge. The young woman’s opinion of Otto Jr.’s distracted parents is less favorable. Sophia has long worried about the emotional health of the boy.

  “Unexpected trip!” Clare announces too brightly.

  “What? Where?”

  The Homeland Security secretary doesn’t bother answering the nanny. She opens the front door and gestures to her driver waiting inside the vehicle parked at the curb. The portly middle-aged man in the dark suit exits the SUV and heads up the walkway to retrieve the luggage.

  Sophia presses. “I’m confused. Are you going to be away for long? I was scheduled all this week.”

  Clare offers a bank check she’d already prepared. “Everything we owe and an additional three month’s severance.”

  Stunned, Sophia accepts the check. She doesn’t know what to say.

  Clare takes Otto Jr. by the hand. “Come on, darling. Time to go!”

  The boy resists his mother leading him out the front door. “I’m tired.”

  “You can sleep in the car, dear.”

  “I don’t wanna,” says Otto Jr.

  His mother begins pulling him out the door. She says to Sophia, “Tell my husband I’ll be in touch.”

  The nanny is still processing what’s happening. “Your husband… ?”

  “Does not need to know until I’m gone, Sophia.” In Clare’s tone, there is an implied threat.

  Clare hustles her sleepy, mewling child down the porch steps and into the waiting SUV. The driver has just finished loading the suitcases. Within a few moments, all are safely stowed inside. The vehicle lunges from the curb and speeds off, heading east on Tracy Place.