Enemies Within
I N T E R C E P T
A Jack Coyote Thriller
Season 3
J. S. Chapman
Enemies Within
I N T E R C E P T
A Jack Coyote Thriller
Season 3
J. S. Chapman
Copyright © 2018 by J. S. Chapman
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Weatherly Books
Chicago, IL, USA
This book is licensed for your personal reading enjoyment and may not be resold or given away to others. Reproduction in whole or part of this book without the express written consent of the author and/or publisher is strictly prohibited and protected by copyright law. Short excerpts used for the purposes of critical reviews is permitted. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Table of Contents
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From the Author
I was born on the prairies where the wind blew free and there was nothing to break the light of the sun.
«»
Geronimo
Chief of the Bedonkohe band of the Chiricahua Apache
1
Annapolis, Maryland
Monday, August 11
INSIDE THE HEADQUARTERS of the Homeland Intelligence Division, John Sessions was nursing a drink late into the night. Several drinks. It was fitting for his melancholy mood. He had switched off the overhead lights. Except for the crane-neck lamp perched on his desk and its glowing amber shade, his office was whiskey dark, his thoughts darker, and his soul black as coal slag.
The morning edition of the Washington Gazette lay across his desk. He had swept his arm across the surface and pushed everything else aside, leaving just the whiteness of the broadsheet. It resembled a shroud covering a corpse at a crime scene, making everything appear pristine even while bullet-riddled victims lay beneath. The article was the first of an explosive exposé written by veteran journalist Victoria Kidd, whose byline read like the nom de plume of a romance novelist. The story started on page one and continued to pages two and three. Her writing wasn’t the stuff of romance but of scandal. She had the facts down cold, which meant she had an inside source. John took an educated guess of who the source might be.
As deputy director of the Technical Bureau in the Homeland Intelligence Division, HID for short, HIDden as an inside joke, or the Firm to disguise the agency’s secret agenda, he didn’t like what he was reading. Not one bit. More to the point, the article put the fear of God into him, more fear than he ever experienced in his lifetime, including when his son was struck by a hit-and-run driver. He needed something to calm him down and peel away the spider web choking off the very air he breathed. He reopened the bottle of vodka and poured a third drink, his absolute limit he told himself, even while knowing the vow was a damnable lie.
He glanced into the bullpen, deserted and deadly quiet. Lit here and there by blue-screened monitors, the open cubicles and prefabricated desks loomed like tombstones in a midnight graveyard. Everyone had left hours ago. He was the only one left, working late, justifying his worth, excusing his mistakes, facing his doubtable future, and eating his poisoned pie after the revelries.
A colleague called him an hour ago and gave him the heads-up. Or was it two hours? Or three? It was hard to remember, difficult to think. He had given his wife a lame excuse about a crisis at the office. He told her not to wait dinner for him. Then he told her not to wait bedtime, either. She was used to his late nights. His job took everything. It had almost taken his marriage, but Stacee was a brick. He loved her to death.
Having read and reread the article, he had to see the words on newsprint, something he could hold between his hands and make real. He slipped into the night, jogged down the street, and purchased the early morning edition from a coin-operated kiosk, hot off the press. It was real, all right. Real as could be. So real, the words could never be expunged.
The leaking of the Spinnaker Papers was no less than a time bomb with a slow fuse. Heads would roll. Lives would be ruined. People would go to jail. Some could die, either from self-inflicted wounds or by faceless visitors in the night. There was no place to run and nowhere to hide. Only lie, lie, lie until the lies became vomit dripping through fingers of supplication raised imploringly toward God. God, though, would turn a deaf ear.
The secrets revealed within the paragraphs—shocking though they were, damaging as they were about to become in the light of day—was only the beginning. The scandal had the capacity of reaching all the way to the White House, possibly to the President herself.
When the soft hum of air conditioning cycled on, John jerked involuntarily. He swore at his weaknesses, from his bum knee to the many cowardly decisions he made along the way, as if one compromise after another would never catch up to him or have dire consequences, even while everything he stood for was crumbling beneath his feet. Over the years, the fissure had widened inch by inch, foot by foot, mile by mile. Last month, when three of HID’s own people were felled, each in their own hellish way, the crack irrevocably split apart, exposing truths that could fill a cleft in the earth traveling halfway down to the Indian Ocean, the antipode of continental America. Soon the earthquake would rumble and roar and swallow him and everyone he knew into its bottomless depths.
He shivered. Looked down at his shaky hands, newsprint ruffling between their grasps, the air whispery with vibrations. He released the paper. It settled onto the desktop with a slippery whoosh. He had already read every word three times over, surfed the internet for updates, and uploaded live feed from major news organizations. This was bad news. The worst ever. The article covered in gruesome detail the inner workings of HID. It named names, called out code words, drew attention to unlawful snooping activities, and outlined the damnable proof of a spy program perpetrated by a government agency on its own people. HID’s dirty little secrets were out in the open, down to its widespread surveillances, blanket eavesdropping, wholesale data collection, comprehensive dossiers, and special operations perpetrated against supposed enemies of the state, everything done in the name of national security.
This was the bombshell everyone had been dreading for years. Plausible deniability, as the term was bandied about like a talisman, was no longer an option.
The inside source, of course, had to be Jack Coyote. Even if his name wasn’t mention, his fingerprints were all over the piece. He had worked at HID for less than a year and was arrested just last month for the murder of his associate. Since both people worked under John, his department came under fire, and why the hell not. The details of the murder were horrifying enough, a sadomasochist ritual carried out while the attacker and his victim were in drug-induced stupors. After recovering from his near overdose, Coyote was arrested, arraigned, and held over for prosecution, bond denied. Everyone adjudged him guilty as charged, including John. Coyote took the rap as a sexually depraved loner who just happened to work for a government agency. No story here, folks. Just move along.
After mourning the innocent victim and cutting off ties from her accused killer, the Firm went on as before. But the story would not die. Within weeks, new evidence came to light, putting into question Coyote’s guilt. He was released on electronic monitoring and placed under house arrest pending an upcoming court date.
The palm of his hand sweaty, John reached for one of two cell phones sitting on his desk. He called two colleagues, one a subordinate and the other a fellow deputy director. The first was groggy with sleep but dutifully went online and read the article, clearly disturbed by its contents. The second had already been apprised of the bombshell but told him it would blow over like everything else and not to worry. He broke the final connection, disquieted, and curiously pondered the vodka bottle, still more than half full. His mouth was parched. He wanted another taste. He wanted to sluice the burning liquid around his mouth before swallowing it and sending it into his bloodstream. Better yet, he wanted to shrink to the size of a housefly and dive straight into the bottle, and would have. Except this fiasco was the doozy of all fiascoes, in fact a monumental calamity and the rock bottom of his career. A little voice told him he had to be sober enough to deal with the aftermath. With deliberate care, he screwed the cap onto the bottle and locked it in the bottom drawer.
Ever since Milly’s death and Coyote’s arrest for her murder, John had been on the hook for professional malfeasance, irrespective of his not knowing Coyote was a sexual deviant in addition to being a cybersecurity genius. If the Firm were implicated in any of the events leading up to the murder, his department would take the blame and he would be held professionally if not morally responsible. Not only were the circumstances unimaginable, there was no getting around them, no explaining them away, no credible refutation to be offered, and no believable veil of deceit that could be constructed. John would make a convenient scapegoat for everything.
When Coyote removed the electronic bracelet, jumped bail, and became a man on the run, the rumor mills began to churn. He was hiking across the country. He was holed up in a cabin in the woods. He was sighted in Brazil. No one really knew where he was or what he was up to. Already thousands of posters displaying his mugshots—front and profile—were plastered across the walls of post offices from coast to coast, describing John Jackson Coyote as armed and dangerous, and offering a monetary award in exchange for information leading to his capture.
What if he wasn’t? What then? John didn’t want to think about the repercussions. They were too unimaginable.
Two weeks ago, Coyote hijacked John right from under the roof of HID’s company garage, ordering him at gunpoint to drive him helter-skelter all over Annapolis. John feared he would be dead before the ride ended, though for what insult or infraction he could not guess. Coyote looked and acted like a madman, his boyish handsomeness having been replaced by inner turmoil and exterior dissolution. Signs of injury were stamped on his haggard face along with something John found difficult to define. Something like desperation. Even savageness.
Eventually he ordered him to park on a busy commercial avenue, out in the open where John would feel safe. Then he appealed to his conscience, challenging him to blow the lid off the Homeland Intelligence Division by publicly revealing what he knew about Spinnaker and every other dirty operation conducted under its watch. He made a good case, John couldn’t fault the man for that. Maybe he really was the fall guy proclaimed by conspiracy theorists. Possibly he had a guilty conscience. Whatever Coyote’s true motives, John had been fighting with himself ever since. Sleepless nights followed distracted days. In the end, he did what he always did. He laid low.
Since that encounter, there had been no credible sightings, publicized dragnets, or reports of his imminent arrest. Some speculated he was in a safe house. Or picked up off the street and renditioned to a black ops site. Or buried at sea, chained to a concrete block. Irrespective of others believing one or another wild rumor, for John, there were no lingering doubts. Coyote was alive, loose, and wreaking havoc from afar. The Spinnaker Papers proved it. One day, his fate would be forever stamped in the annals of history, his name either engraved as a symbol of righteousness and the American Way or forever accursed as a traitor and a coward.
Immediately after reading the article the first time, John believed the damage could be contained. But when he reread it, and understood this was but the first in a series, he realized the only way out for a man like him, a man of integrity, was to do the right thing. Indecision was more destructive than fighting the inevitable. He had to come clean. And with the thought, just like that, his hands ceased their trembling. The liquor helped, numbing the worst of his fears, but it was more than that. It was the pin hitting the floor, making a tiny ping on contact, and relieving him of further indecision.
He put in a second call to the person who advised him not to worry. It was answered on the second ring. “We have to talk.” They agreed to a rendezvous. Someplace isolated, private, and bug free. Thirty minutes, John suggested.
“Make it an hour,” his contact said. “Can you hang on until then?”
“Sure. Whatever. But if you’re late, I won’t be there. Or here.”
Sessions marked out the time. Some forty minutes later, he got up from his desk. Feeling the aching creaks in his bum knee, he walked like a very old man even though he was but fifty-three and in the prime of his life, or so his wife always told him. He took the elevator to the top floor, accessed the maintenance door, and climbed one more storey. His hard-soled shoes echoed on the concrete stairs.
He exited through the rooftop fire escape and approached the ledge. The view toward Washington D.C. and its glittering illuminations epitomized the shining city on the hill. Even from this distance he could make out the Capitol, the Washington Monument, and the Lincoln Memorial. The view had always thrilled him with a tingling in his gut. Tonight the tingling felt like fire, licks of flame eating him up alive from the inside out. Doubts resurfaced. Maybe this was a mistake. Maybe he should just stay quiet. He could go with the flow and cope with whatever came along, sharks though there may be. Then something curious happened. He grew calm, perhaps calmer than he had ever been in his life. He took a deep breath of cleansing night air. He knew what had to be done. He reaffirmed his decision. He would resign. He would go to the FBI. He would make his mea culpa. He would name names. He would do his penance. He would be absolved of his sins and washed clean.
He had made peace with himself.
The door opened at his back. He twisted around. A rush of questions tore through his mind. Who are you? What are you doing here? And where’s ...? Before he could utter a single word, a flash of fear rose from his throat but stopped at his lips. He froze where he stood, unable to move, or even to cry out. His fate had arrived on wing-tipped shoes with rubber soles. Even though he recognized the stranger as a man and not a vision, he seemed more like a malevolence composed of energy instead of bone and blood. The ogre rushed at him, encased him in a bear hug, put him in a hammerlock, lifted him over a shoulder, swung him around, and flung him away.
When you reach for a casserole dish only just removed from the oven and unthinkingly grab the glass lid, you don’t experience the burning sensation. Not at first. It takes a second, two seconds, maybe three, before your neurons transmit the signal from fingertips to brain. Your mind shouts, This is hot and not cold! It will burn! Drop it! The message arrives too late. By then, your fingers have been scorched and the damage done.
John had touched fire. By the time he realized it, it was too damned late. Too late for him. Too late for his wife. Too late for the kids. And too late for regret.
Terror rose in his throat, but he couldn’t scream. He could only grunt and feel a strange sensation of looseness, as if muscles were being ripped from bones. He panicked, flapping arms and pumping legs, but feeling no resistance, no solidity beneath his feet and no barrier against his hands. He was flying, soaring on wings through nocturnal air, his arms outstretched, the starlit sky above, the g
round below, and the night air balmy of a summer’s eve yet cool as spring rain. The floaty feeling was comforting. He became serene. Until he realized what had just happened. He had been thrown over the roof’s protective ledge by meaty hands belonging to a stranger who benignly smiled at him and said his name with a lilt of hope before incapacitating him with brute strength and tossing him like so much flotsam into the darkness.
There wasn’t enough time to see his life flash before his eyes. He started to scream for his mother. The pavement came up to meet him before he got the chance.
2
New York City, New York
Monday, August 11
A MAN CAN get lost in New York City, especially a man on the run, above all a man with no name.
He walked south on Seventh Avenue. Night yet lay heavy over the town. He traveled light, carrying a backpack stuffed with a change of clothes, a toilet kit, extra underwear, and a laptop. He gripped a copy of the Washington Gazette. The headline read like the title of a dystopian novel. SECRET SPY PROGRAM!
Victoria Kidd’s exposé of the Homeland Intelligence Division and its involvement in a warrantless electronic surveillance program called Spinnaker had finally broken. Nearly every major paper and media outlet was picking up the story. A photo of the purported whistleblower appeared below the fold. He had been charged with the murder of his girlfriend, released on bond, and was the subject of a manhunt. His mug shots depicted a thirty-something guy with dark hair, sleepy eyes, pale complexion, and the flat cheekbones of his Apache ancestors. Some said his unexcitable, almost expressionless face camouflaged an evil man. Others speculated he belonged on the cover of a celebrity magazine.
He hailed a taxi and instructed the cabbie to take him to the airport. Barely glancing at his passenger, the hack tripped the meter and pulled away from the curb.
In subtle but definable ways, Jack Coyote had changed since those infamous photos were taken. Though always in good shape, he was never physically imposing. These days, the long muscles of his arms and thighs were more defined, his neck broader, and the cleft in his chin deeper. His beard was thickening, and his hair was long enough to pull back into a ponytail. Over the past few weeks, he lost ten pounds, excess body fat having been sculpted into lean muscle mass. Instead of the grubby t-shirt look, his attire ran toward the layered lived-in look, a cross between hippie revolutionary and Afghan refugee. If he were to open carry an Uzi and a round of ammo, he would have looked dangerous. As it was, his durable face posed no immediate threat to casual observers, nor did it bring recognition.
Enemies Within Page 1
