Act of Vengeance

by Michael Jecks

  ‘If I hadn’t been betrayed, yes. If the Service hadn’t called you to tell you I was in fact a murderer, that would certainly be true,’ Jack said. ‘But since they’ve lied about me to you, I think my loyalty has been a little misguided, don’t you? Besides, you two have been on their lists too. I saved you from two gunmen, remember. Did you ever get their ID?’

  ‘You know we didn’t,’ Debbie muttered.

  ‘Because they’re linked to this mob as well. It’s well funded because it’s got the deputy head of the CIA in charge, and he can sign cheques, I guess? And who’d argue with a matter of Homeland Security after 9/11?’

  ‘Enough!’ Frank said. ‘Jack, this is the place Sandford said he was to meet with Stilson. Washington Harbour.’

  ‘What do you want to do now?’ Debbie asked.

  ‘Let me go and see if he’s there,’ Jack said, his hand on the latch.

  ‘No. We’ll wait here and keep a look out. I don’t want to spook him,’ Frank said. He had his telephone out already, and dialled. ‘The guy may know your face, Jack. He’ll probably know mine, if he was involved in deciding to have me shot.’

  In a few minutes there was a tap at the window. Frank’s friend from Hostage Rescue, Tony Knussel, was a tall, broad shouldered man of German extraction. He had appeared as Jack and Frank were returning to their vehicle from talking to Sandford, having followed them all the way there in an ancient-looking white Subaru Legacy estate. Tony climbed into the back seat, grumbling about the size of Frank’s sedan, and then Frank explained about their chase after Sandford, the crash, and what had happened to Sandford already that evening. Tony nodded, chewing gum all the while.

  ‘Shocking to think a guy could be killed like that,’ Jack said, when Frank had stopped.

  ‘There’s been worse. A mob contract killer called Kuklinsky did people for fun. He trapped them, stuck them tied down in a cave where rats lived and left ’em there till they were eaten alive,’ Tony said laconically. He sniffed, and added, ‘Course, he came from New York.’

  Tony looked at Frank.

  ‘What you want to do, Frank? Your call.’

  Frank agonised over it for a while.

  ‘Tony, can you get out and check the car park? Stilson’s car was a Blue Sedan. I’m pretty sure it was a Lincoln town car.’

  ‘OK, but I reckon there’ll be a few.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Frank agreed. This was a wealthy area, and there were all too many Cadillacs, Lincolns and more expensive European and Japanese cars. ‘Let’s just hope, eh?’

  Tony left, climbed into his old Subaru, and drove off into the car park. Only a short while later they saw a dark Lincoln pull out from the car park and stop at the road’s edge before pulling away. Immediately behind it was a white Subaru.

  Frank’s phone rang.

  ‘Tony?’

  ‘Tell you what, Frank. Duck. He’s coming round behind you,’ Tony said.

  ‘Down!’ Frank said, slumping in his own seat until his head was below the seat. ‘Where now?’

  ‘Oh, he’s parked three vehicles behind you. I’ve gone on to the top of the road. I couldn’t stop. He’d have seen me.’

  ‘Good. Can you see him still?’

  ‘I’m parked up about two hundred yards behind you in a side alley. I can see you, but I doubt he’ll see me. There’s enough trash around here to hide a tank.’

  ‘Good. Tell me when he moves, will you? We’ll get him from there.’

  ‘You’re the boss.’

  ‘We’ll trail him with us behind him first, then you. All right?’

  *

  22.41 Langley; 03.41 London

  It was only later, as Stilson drove home listening to WASH-FM, that he picked up on the mention of a car accident. A Saab that had flipped over. The driver was in hospital, critically injured.

  ‘Shit!’ Stilson said. Still, the news shouldn’t impact him too badly, nor the project.

  He considered the plans and decided that all was fine to go ahead. When he reached his home, he picked up his STU-III phone and dialled Amiss.

  ‘Sir, I’m afraid Sandford’s had an accident from the sound of it,’ he said, and told Amiss what had happened.

  ‘I see. Will it impact our ability to continue?’

  ‘Not so’s I can see, no. If anything, we just have to move things on a bit. Take all the detainees over to the new facility now it’s ready. And then we can begin to get all we can from them.’

  ‘Very good. I’ll give the order right away. And Mr Stilson?’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘I think you should go there too. Perhaps a little time away from DC would do you good.’

  Stilson nodded and chuckled as he signed off from the phone. He left his car and walked to his house to pack his bags. As he walked up his path, he heard a car. Looking up the road he saw a pair of cars – one dark, one white. The white one drew in almost half a block away, but the other carried on going. He eyed it suspiciously, and saw that it pulled into the kerb a hundred yards away. But no one got out.

  The white Subaru driver was out of his car. He slammed the door, locked it, and then sauntered down the road without looking in Stilson’s direction.

  He pulled his front door open. He walked inside, slammed the door, and immediately turned to peer out between the drapes in the front. He saw the guy in the street carry on walking, all the way past the dark car, but the guys in that one stayed put. It was enough to make Stilson’s hackles rise. The dark car must have a surveillance team. He was sure of it. Could be the police, could be the Feebies, he didn’t know and he didn’t care. He took the stairs at a run, opened his wardrobe doors, and grabbed for two boxes of ammunition. He had his Glock on his belt already, with two magazines fully loaded, and now he took two spare mags and threw them into a suitcase with his ammunition. He grabbed clothes at random, flung them into the case, zipped it up, and locked it, before pulling on a fresh jacket that gave him an easier draw. He tested it three times, flicking the bottom of the material aside, grabbing for his gun. It was all too easy. He was experienced.

  He turned on the bedside lamp and then turned off the main light before carefully going down the stairs with his bag. Halfway down the stairs, he closed his eyes and rested them to acclimatize to the darkness, and he listened with his mouth open, straining to hear any strange sounds in the darkness. Satisfied, he continued down, stepping quietly on the soft carpet, until he reached the ground floor. There was still no sound to alarm him.

  Crossing the floor, he walked to the window, and peered out. The dark car was still there, the man from the white one had disappeared, which was odd. Out of place. The man walked further up the road there, but if he wanted to park up, he could have parked his Subaru closer. Stilson stared into the street, and now every cell of his body was tingling as the adrenaline rushed through. He picked up his STU-III and called.

  ‘I have been followed tonight,’ he said when the phones had gone secure. ‘There are agents in front of my house and another one’s at the back.’

  He returned to the front room from where he commanded a clear view of the street while he spoke. There was a security TV there, and he turned to a four-way view, two cameras at the rear, one at either side. When he flipped the rear cameras to infrared, he picked out the man there like a beacon, standing by a tree.

  He could feel the expectation like a surge of energy, and he grinned wolfishly.

  It was like being back at war.

  *

  22.52 Langley; 03.52 London

  Jack glanced at the house and nudged Frank as the upper lights dimmed.

  ‘See that?’

  ‘It’s late. So he’s gone to bed.’

  ‘You reckon?’ Jack said. ‘Somehow seems odd for him to come straight home and tip into bed. Doesn’t it seem early to you?’

  ‘He’s an agent. I know Amiss is said to appreciate guys who get in early. He doesn’t like to find his offices quiet,’ Frank said with a shrug. ‘So maybe this Stilson appreciates ea
rly nights too?’

  ‘What are you going to do?’ Jack demanded.

  Frank was already on the phone.

  ‘Speak to Houlican,’ he muttered to Jack from the side of his mouth. ‘It’s up to him now. We’re just holding this one down. That’s why Tony’s gone to the back, to make sure he doesn’t try to escape.’

  ‘I need to get out and stretch my legs,’ Jack said.

  ‘OK, but don’t do anything dumb,’ Frank said.

  Jack sneered in reply and shut the door moderately quietly. He walked out along the road, with his collar up and his hands thrust into his pockets, scuffing the pavement as he went, like a tired worker on his way home. None of the gardens here had any cover, he saw. No separations like hedges or fences to conceal a man edging nearer a house. Jack kept on walking, crossing the road and taking a right up the next street. Here, once he was out of sight of the front of Stilson’s house, he began to move more easily. Tony had come up here, and Jack was looking for him.

  He found the HRT man at the top of the road leaning against a tree. Tony turned and spoke quietly.

  ‘Hi, Jack. Any plans about what we do now?’

  ‘I think Frank just wants to see what he does,’ Jack said.

  Tony sniffed.

  ‘I have to admit, I don’t like it,’ he said. ‘The whole idea of this is fucked. We’re sure of our man. If Frank is ready we ought to arrest him.’

  ‘Can’t disagree with that,’ Jack said. ‘He’s already implicated in taking hostages and torturing them, and if Sandford was telling the truth, in having them murdered too. Frank’s talking to his boss, so we ought to know before long what’s happening.’

  ‘Right.’

  Tony’s phone rang quietly, and he answered it.

  ‘Yeah. What?’ He threw a blank look at Jack, and then shot a glance over his shoulder towards the car where Frank and Debbie were sitting. ‘No sign of him out here, no. What are you saying? Yeah. OK.’

  Shutting off the phone, he said, ‘Frank’s boss wants a firecracker up his ass before he’ll sanction anything. We’re escalating it through my chain of command. You OK here for a while?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Just watch. Do not try to apprehend or get in anyone’s way, OK? Just wait right here. I won’t be long.’

  Jack nodded. He turned and watched the back of the house with a frown on his face. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw the HRT agent walking back towards the car. He walked entirely naturally, with a loose gait that belied his power.

  Leaning against a tree, Jack waited. Tony wandered all down the road, then quickly climbed into Jack and Debbie’s car.

  It was one of those situations Jack could understand all too easily. He, himself, had had situations before now where operations had been on a tightrope, and a quick discussion was needed to decide whether to continue or not. Frank and the others would be holding talks with Frank’s boss, cajoling and pleading, while he pushed them for ever more information. Perhaps he would agree, perhaps he wouldn’t.

  Fifteen minutes by his watch. He heard vehicles moving about further up the roads, the distant rumble of traffic, but there was no light or sign that Stilson was awake. Perhaps he had gone to bed. His windows were all dark, the curtains drawn in the upstairs window, apart from a small triangle of blackness.

  That was when Jack realised something was wrong. A short while ago there was no triangle there. It had been entirely covered with the curtains. Someone was there, watching him, he guessed.

  He heard the car door slam, and saw Tony clamber from the car. Jack stood, and was about to call out, when he realised he had his phone. He grabbed it and dialled Frank.

  ‘Frank, we’re being watched, I think and…’

  Suddenly the air was full of the sound of car engines racing. He saw three dark cars coming up the road behind Frank’s. There was a blur, and he saw Tony draw his pistol. Jack was about to bolt after him, when he saw Frank and Debbie turn and stare at the approaching cars. The lead vehicle screeched to a halt, the door was thrown wide, and Jack saw the Uzi’s barrel flame with white and yellow. Tony was already firing, but he didn’t stand a chance in the open. Half a magazine ripped into his body, and his pistol flew through the air. By a miracle he didn’t fall, but stood, his hands wide as though in an urgent plea, and then he slowly toppled to his knees, gradually falling forward to lie on his face.

  Jack bellowed, reaching for his own gun, beginning to run to Tony, but even as he did so, There was a sickening crash of a blackjack against his skull.

  He saw Frank’s car draw away at speed, heading away off east, and Jack didn’t care, because he felt the second thud-thud of metal against his skull, over his ear, and the shock of the blow seemed to start in his belly and roar out to encompass his whole being. He took two steps and fell, his face on the gravel, and the pistol was tugged from his hand. Then there was another club over his ear and he felt himself pitching headlong into Sandford’s pit.

  *

  He was going to be sick.

  Jack felt his belly roil and heave, a sweaty heat came from his stomach as he tried to open gummy eyes. The gravel under his cheek was painful, and when he moved he could feel the stones sticking into his flesh. Each small scratch and jab felt like a new piercing of his skin. He opened an eye a millimetre, and snapped it shut again as the light stabbed his senses, and his body convulsed.

  ‘Aw, shit, the son of a…’

  He opened an eye and blearily gazed around. There was no gravel, no pavement, and no road. He was on a couch of some sort. It moved – thrumming –and, as he came to, he could hear the rumble and whine of jet engines. A small jet. Perhaps a Lear or similar small private jet of some sort.

  Trying to push himself up, he found his wrists were painfully constrained, and he could only stay there, staring at the vomit so near his nose. The stench was enough to make him begin to retch, and he was almost glad when someone kicked him in the belly. He curled up, taking his head away from that foul-smelling pool, and he did not mind the prick at his neck as the needle went in.

  The oblivion that came afterwards was a relief.

  *

  10.30 Langley; 15.30 London

  Amiss left his man at the door and continued on into the chapel.

  It was good to see that Will Barnard and Louis Keen had already arrived. Brian Gutterson wasn’t, of course. He had gone to the facility, as had Stilson. Brian Peachfield was already there. His position as head of intelligence for the Deputies made it essential that he should be there.

  Last night had been a disaster. After so many months of careful planning, the whole damn thing was blowing up in their faces. The only good thing was that it should be possible to keep a cap on the affair. The facility was ideal, and unless they were enormously unlucky and a breach of security happened, they should be able to keep it that way.

  He walked to the front of the chapel and bent his knee as he genuflected, then turned and walked to the front pew. There was no glance to either side as he sat. He had no need to look at Barnard or Keen. They knew him and he knew them. Their friendships had been burned and tested in the filth of the jungles and stinking villages of Vietnam.

  Amiss could miss those times – So much solidarity amongst his companions, so much commitment and conviction. But that was before Philip Agee had gone back on his word as an agent, and broken ranks to tell the world that the CIA had been involved in torturing people. Of course the CIA had tortured people. Jesus, a man who was determined to protect his nation must sometimes go to extremes if he was going to protect innocents.

  Some tried to use specious arguments to justify their actions. Amiss was not prepared to sink to that. There was no need. He knew his motivations: he was perfectly prepared to sacrifice any foreign national who might have any information that could help to prevent his country being violated by terrorists. It was that simple. Americans should not be harmed, but non-Americans were fair game. Whereas in the good old days of the sixties and seventies it was j
ustifiable for CIA agents to get involved directly, in more recent years Amiss could understand that the public might be squeamish. That was why rendition was designed to allow suspects to be kidnapped and flown thousands of miles to compliant states where the victims could be held, broken, and given the chance to divulge all they knew while under the watchful eye of CIA agents, with questions being prompted by those same agents. It was an irritation having that two-tier system, prolonging the delays. It would have been faster and easier if the interrogations could have been conducted nearer home, with all the technology that the CIA possessed, and with the CIA actually responsible for all the questioning, but the public didn’t want to think that their own people were doing the breaking of the bodies. And the citizens’ squeamishness meant that many of the prisoners were routinely killed as a result. Better to leave a couple of bodies in Uzbekistan than discover an embarrassingly ravaged prisoner turning up at Guantanamo.

  But the new President ruined even that. When he vowed to close Gitmo and stop rendition, he destroyed one of the crucial arms of American defence. Didn’t he realise that? Dear God Almighty, Amiss prayed, Couldn’t you have shown him? But maybe not. It wasn’t a part of His scheme to show a weak, vapid President from Illinois how to protect the nation. If the people of America were going to elect a Godless man like him, who supported abortion, and probably wasn’t even a true Christian, they had only themselves to blame.

  So it was that God had shown Amiss how to protect the people of his land. He must himself work to protect them, whether they liked his methods or not.

  The Mass was deeply satisfying. He never failed to feel that awe and thrill as the priest spoke and, at this time of year in particular, he felt it still more deeply. The way that the lower sun cut through the windows and illuminated the whole of the interior, made him feel that the eye of God was here on him, on all of them, every time. It was a comforting thought.

  After the Mass he walked through to the porch with the others, as they did every Sunday. He nodded to his guard, who stood at the doorway beside the pillars, looking more substantial than the white-painted round of timber. Amiss smiled and shook hands with the priest who had opened the door to the meeting place underneath the church itself.