by Sean Parnell
“How many were there?” he asked as his jaw clenched. “Do we know how they got him?”
“Not ‘they,’ just one. And your new keeper will brief you.”
That bit of news slapped Steele in the face even harder than Jonathan Raines’s death. He pulled his head back and stared down at Pitts, who was regarding him with some sympathy, because he knew how Steele had felt about Demo. The relationship between keepers and Alphas was akin to police cruiser partners where the cops were working the most dangerous beats on earth. It was a balance thing, with both operators being carefully selected to match one another. It was a marriage where the spouses were both good guys and outlaws. Bonnie and Clyde, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. It was not an off-the-shelf kind of thing.
“It’s too soon, Mike,” Steele said.
“It’s too late, Steele,” said Pitts. His smile had faded and now he was issuing orders. “You haven’t had a keeper for two months now, and you know we don’t work that way. Play ball or retire. Clear?”
“Yes, sir.”
Just then the main access door behind Steele’s back opened, and a man walked through and slammed it shut again with his heel. He was shorter than Steele, cue-ball bald, fiftyish, and built like a fire hydrant. His eyes were polar ice blue above a boxer’s bent nose and lips as tight as a chicken’s. He looked like Ed Harris in The Rock, but not nearly as friendly.
“Excellent timing,” said Pitts. “Eric Steele, I want you to meet your new keeper, Dalton Goodhill.”
Steele just stared at Goodhill’s eyes, which locked right back on his. Neither man extended a hand.
“And, Mr. Goodhill,” said Pitts, “this is Eric Steele, also known as Stalker Seven.”
Something like a sneer curled the corner of Goodhill’s mouth.
“A fucking pleasure,” he growled in a voice that sounded like marbles in motor oil. “Let’s go for a ride.”
Chapter 6
Washington, D.C.
The 1989 cream-white Ford Bronco bounced out of an underground parking garage on H Street, right next to the National Museum of Women in the Arts.
Dalton “Blade” Goodhill was behind the wheel and Eric Steele was waiting outside on the curb. Steele took a full step back as the small truck slewed hard to the right and slammed to a stop. He couldn’t see Goodhill inside because the Bronco had gray-tinted windows, so for a moment he thought the Bronco’s owner must be some twisted O.J. Simpson fan with a thing for serial killers. Then the passenger door swung open. Wrong.
Steele climbed inside, closed the door, and belted in. The upholstery was faded brown leather, the dashboard console featured coffee cup stains, and the interior smelled like stale cigars. Anyone who’d been alive in 1994 remembered how Simpson, the football legend, had murdered his wife and an innocent waiter in Los Angeles, then led the police on a wild chase in exactly that model truck. Now the sight of a white Bronco anywhere invoked images of fugitives and grisly mayhem.
Goodhill started driving.
“Interesting choice of a ride,” said Steele.
“Nobody in our business would ever drive such an obvious POS, right?” Goodhill growled.
“Right.”
“That’s why I bought it.”
Midday traffic in Washington was, as usual, brutal, but Goodhill just sat there relaxed in his seat and avoided using the horn. Steele glanced to the left and looked him over. His bald head was outdoor tan, as if he spent a lot of time on the water, but Steele had a feeling that Goodhill didn’t sail like many of the Washington old-school elites. His skull had more than a few dings and dents, like a well-used soccer ball, and from behind his right ear a permanent red welt ranged four inches down across his bull neck, maybe a parachute riser scar. Free fall junkie, probably Special Forces, Steele decided. Goodhill’s forehead sloped to a pair of thick blond eyebrows brushing his Ray-Bans and his pug nose had taken some hits. His anvil jaw stuck out over a button-down white shirt, no tie, and a blue blazer similar to Steele’s. He was, however, wearing a lapel pin—Boy Scouts. Wise guy, Steele assessed. But not a lot of laughs.
“What’s your handle?” he asked Goodhill.
“Blade.”
“So you’re good with a knife.”
“No, they call me that ’cause I used to be a short-order cook.”
Steele said nothing, but he’d already decided that this was going to suck.
“Look, kid,” Goodhill said. “I’m not here to replace Demo.”
“Good, because nobody can. Did you know him?”
“I knew of him, like everyone else in our world.”
“Our world’s pretty small,” Steele said. “What’s your glory story?”
“Seventy-fifth at Benning, Third Group at Bragg, then A-Squadron and Special Activities Division. Retired out of there and got sucked back in here.”
Strong résumé, Steele thought, though not unusual for upper-tier operators. Army Rangers, Special Forces, Delta, CIA.
“But let’s skip the first-date bullshit for now,” Goodhill said. “We’ve got a man down and it’s not like we’re a full-strength platoon.”
“Concur,” Steele said. “What do we know?”
“Stalker Six, your buddy Jon Raines, was found in an alley on the Left Bank of the Seine. Paris Station recovered him from the Gendarmerie with the help of DGSE and called in a local medical examiner on the embassy payroll. He took a hard groin strike, a cranium fracture, eyeball trauma, both eyes, and then some sort of stiletto blade under his jaw and right up into his brain. That was it, lights out.”
Steele sat there for a moment with those images uninterrupted by a throng of coed congressional interns crossing in front of them at a light.
“Raines was quick, and extremely capable,” Steele said. “No way he would have let some dude ambush him like that. Killer must’ve been one big bruiser.”
“It was a woman.”
Steele looked over at Goodhill’s expressionless face.
“A woman. How’d they figure that out from the wounds?”
“They didn’t. Cutlass Main was trying to make contact exactly at the time he went down. A woman answered his cell.”
“So? That doesn’t mean she was the one. Could have been a passerby.”
“Right, except this chick mentioned the Program.”
Steele felt the blood draining from his face, and suddenly the Bronco’s air conditioner seemed not to be working.
“Say again?”
“You heard me right. Plus, the bitch gloated about killing Stalker Six, probably while his blood was still warm on her blade. Which reminds me, I forgot one detail—he was missing his left ear. And then she made a very clear reference to the Program, the number of Alphas we’ve got, and how now we’d only have eight operators left.”
A tinge of nausea crawled up Steele’s gullet. Someone, a woman, an expert female killer, had somehow honey-trapped one of the Program’s most experienced Alphas, murdered him in cold blood, cut off his ear, then bragged about how she knew exactly who he was and where he came from, and hinted that more was to come.
“Did they get a voiceprint on her?” he asked with a modicum of hope. Standard procedure was to record all secure comms and store them in an impenetrable “cloud,” which was actually an armored server located three floors below Cutlass Main.
“Affirmative, but negative. They got it, but she doesn’t match anything in anyone’s database. Top nerd thinks she’s using some sort of implanted voice chip.”
By “top nerd” Goodhill probably meant Ralphy Persko. But an implanted device to disguise someone’s voice wasn’t something Steele had encountered before.
“You know what this means, right?” Goodhill asked.
“I know what it means,” Steele grunted. “It means the Program is blown.”
“Correct. Which is probably why you’re getting kicked out of your digs.”
“You mean our digs. Or are you just a tourist?”
“Okay, kid. Our digs. I’m new here,
remember?”
Steele was in no mood to give a “Fuckin’ New Guy” any slack. Goodhill turned right onto Rhode Island Avenue, instead of heading straight up Connecticut Avenue toward Dupont Circle. Steele jabbed a finger at the left-hand window.
“Dupont Circle’s that way, up north.”
“I know which way fuckin’ north is, thank you. You have heard of countersurveillance driving, right, kid?”
Steele said nothing. He hadn’t heard map references punctuated with profanity like that since his days in Special Forces, so at least that was somewhat comforting.
They drove another six blocks in silence, with neither man feeling the compulsion to break any more ice. Steele was thinking about the dire implications of an enemy agent knowing not only about the existence of the Program, but its manning strength as well, at least in terms of the spearhead operators. He had no idea what Goodhill was thinking, but the man seemed like one of those old-school, hard corps, Tier One operators who only thought about the next five minutes of his life. He remembered regarding Demo the very same way, before their working relationship turned from worthless lead into solid white gold, and eventually a deep, incomparable friendship. But that wasn’t going to happen here.
Goodhill drove the Bronco around Dupont Circle, straight up Connecticut, and took a hard right onto Q Street NW. He cruised another three blocks, passing Hank’s Oyster Bar on the right, which happened to be one of Meg Harden’s favorites. In the middle of the block between Sixteenth and Seventeenth, he turned left into an underground parking garage and stopped at the drop pole. A sign on the slat said monthly members only. Goodhill rolled down the window, carded the reader, and they descended into gloom.
A uniformed parking attendant was waiting at the bottom of the ramp. He looked much like such lot workers all over Washington, dark complexioned and presumably bored, except his feet were spread like a beat cop and he waved a glowing traffic baton. Goodhill stopped the Bronco, and both men got out.
“Morning, gents,” the attendant said in an incongruous Bermuda British accent. “Show us the money, if you please.”
Goodhill and Steele produced their Program ID cards, which the man examined carefully and returned.
“Very good,” he said congenially. “Are we carrying today?”
“Nothing dangerous,” Goodhill said as he opened his blazer and Steele saw an extremely short, cut-down Remington 870 shotgun, anodized in hard-coat black. A breakaway ring on the rear grip was clipped to a shoulder rig under his right armpit, and the shotgun’s forward grip—nothing more than a three-inch steel rod—was secured by a Velcro belt loop. “It’s only twenty-gauge. Just for those pain-in-ass geese on the Mall.”
“I didn’t figure you for a Miami Vice fan,” Steele sneered.
“I didn’t figure you for anything,” Goodhill retorted.
“And you, sir?” the attendant said to Steele.
Steele opened his jacket.
“Just an empty holster. It’s a metaphor for my effectiveness.”
The “parking attendant” smiled and said, “Off with you, gents. And blazers buttoned, if you please.”
They walked up the ramp, with Steele letting Goodhill take a slight lead. His new keeper turned left on the street and they were facing a pair of glass doors with a sign above that said graceland import exports. Goodhill pulled the door open.
“Somebody’s an Elvis fan,” Steele muttered.
“Probably your ops guy, Pitts,” Goodhill said.
“You mean our ops guy.”
“You can stand down correcting me whenever you’re ready.”
“I’ll take it under advisement.”
There were a couple of white leather sofas in the lobby, unoccupied, and a hefty desk against the north wall under a large Robert Salmon painting of a merchant schooner braving rough seas. A pretty, twenty-something blonde in a business suit with her hair pulled back sat at the desk. Her name tag said merry.
“Good morning, gentlemen. May I help you?”
“We’re here for the conference,” said Goodhill, and both men showed her their IDs.
She pointed off right to a gleaming elevator. “Second floor, right above us.”
“Nice,” Steele said. “Low enough so we can jump if we have to.”
The young woman cocked her head. “I don’t know what you mean.”
Steele smirked. “Of course you don’t, Merry.”
Up on the second floor, the elevator opened onto a submarine chamber, where Goodhill and Steele had to swipe their CAC cards, punch in their individual Program codes, and then have their eyeballs scanned. Another door slid open on bank vault rollers, and they were facing a large empty space that spanned the entire building floor.
The place was crawling with technicians and movers. They were all wearing white Tyvek coveralls stamped with the logos of a phony moving company. One group was hauling in Steelcase desks from a rear cargo elevator, while another group was down on hands and knees, routing electrical cables through narrow trenches in the slate stone flooring. Another crew was unfurling antistatic carpet squares upon which the workstations would perch, while another was assembling VariDesk units so the Program employees could stand whenever their glutei maximi ached. An enormous flat screen was being bolted in sections to the far north wall, while past that to the right, the thick transparent plexiglass slats of a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility were being welded into place around a long, mahogany conference table. Electric drills whined, air compressors hissed, and the place smelled like a Formula One pit at Le Mans.
Steele noted that no one he knew from the Program was there. But that didn’t surprise him. All of these young men and women were probably DoD support personnel seconded over from the Pentagon, or perhaps even JSOC at Fort Bragg. They all had TS clearances, yet that didn’t mean they had any idea for whom they were building this TOC. The approximately forty Program officers, analysts, and security personnel wouldn’t show up until all of the work had been completed and tested. After that, Ralphy Persko and his small crew of nerds would be the round-the-clock troubleshooters, for whenever someone’s workstation belched. Steele jammed his hands in his jeans pockets and frowned.
“It looks cold.”
“What do you mean, cold?” Goodhill said. “The AC’s not in yet and it feels like ninety in here.”
“I mean, industrial. Not like over at Cutlass Main.”
“Get used to it. This is the new Cutlass Main. No Lincoln Bedroom, no commissary full of diplomats, and no nosy press flacks snooping around.”
“I liked the old digs.” Steele turned to Goodhill. “So what are we doing here? This place isn’t going to function for a week.”
Goodhill turned away from him and jutted his lantern jaw across the room. “She’ll tell you.”
Then Steele spotted Collins Austin, marching toward them from one of the multiple side offices he hadn’t really noticed before. Austin was Stalker Eight, the only female Alpha on the team, and she had the perfect cover in that her looks instantly eradicated any suspicion that she might be anything other than a fashion model or Kennedy Center dancer. She was five foot seven, with flame-red hair, light blue eyes, and the figure of a Miss Universe contestant, and she could go from disarmingly charming to flat-out deadly faster than a methanol drag racer. But today she didn’t look very pretty. Her face was drawn and pale, and her full lips were clamped into a tight scarlet scar. And Steele knew why. His stomach dropped as she approached.
“Hello, Maggie,” he said. He wasn’t going to use her real name within earshot of all these strangers.
“Hello, Max.” She returned the cover courtesy in kind.
She was carrying a thick red file sealed with black security tape. For a moment Steele wanted to hug her but instantly thought better of it. Not with Goodhill standing there. He nodded at Goodhill.
“This is . . .”
“John Booth,” Goodhill said as he extended a callused paw. But he didn’t leer at Austin or look h
er over, as most men couldn’t help but do. “The boss had me bring Max over here for the handoff.”
Now Steele was beginning to understand. There was no reason for him to be getting a tour of the new digs, unless Mike Pitts had something special for him and wanted no other Program witnesses. With the killing of Stalker Six in Paris, apparently the ops director was taking extreme precautions. And there was something more. Collins Austin and Jonathan Raines had been very close friends, and then more than just that, only two years before. When Pitts had discovered their love affair, he’d nearly canned both of them, but Steele had intervened to save their careers. Sadly, none of that mattered now, except that Pitts clearly thought that if he could trust anyone with discretion on this particular matter, it would be Austin. There were tears in Austin’s eyes. Steele had never seen that before, and it made him queasy.
“This is the file,” Austin said as she handed it to Steele. “It’s everything we have. Who Jon saw, where he was staying, all his movements as far as we know. There’s some speculation about who that woman was, but nothing definitive at all. SOP on this, Max. Memorize it, but don’t take it with you overseas.”
Steele took the folder. “Where am I going?”
“Where do you think you’re going?” Goodhill snarled at him. “Paris.”
Steele swallowed the urge to smash Goodhill’s Ray-Bans. Collins Austin reached out and gripped the lapel of Steele’s blazer.
“Find her, Eric,” she whispered as she pulled him close. A tear rolled down her cheek and she swatted it away like a plague-infested fly. “And when you find her, kill her.”
Chapter 7
Falls Church, Virginia
Meg Harden body-slammed Eric Steele less than five seconds after he walked through her door.
She had buzzed him into the condo and he’d taken the elevator to the eleventh floor, loosely gripping a bottle of 19 Crimes cabernet sauvignon because he knew she wasn’t much for beer. He’d parked in her underground lot, recovered his 1911 from his car, and locked the red file in the gun box, and he was looking forward to a languid evening of maybe some good food, mild drinking, and mutually satisfying romance before boarding a plane for France. But this sort of welcome, he wasn’t expecting.
