by Sean Parnell
“FBI, sir,” he said. “John Loughran, special agent in charge.
“Oh, freaking wonderful.” Lansky’s voice dripped disdain. “Farro’s dead, the barn door’s already closed, but the G-men are here. Hallelujah.”
Agent Loughran’s face flushed crimson.
“And where’s Farro’s keeper?”
“She’s down in Nashville, sir,” Pitts said, referring to Valerie Fontaine, the Program’s only female handler.
“Good. Tell her to stay right there, and have his funeral service down there too. We’re not doing the National Cathedral underground coven for this one. We’ll bury him at Arlington afterward, but on the total QT, roger?”
There were nods and murmured rogers from around the room.
“All right, you people.” Lansky walked back behind his desk, dropped his pipe in the ashtray, stuffed his hands in his suit trouser pockets, and looked down at his pile of paperwork. He seemed to sag for a moment, as if he was about to relay further bad news and was reluctant to do it. Then he looked up again. “This is where it’s at. I want that Cutlass Main II disaster over at Q Street completely shut down. It’s freaking useless now anyway, and until somebody can tell me, with a bona fide forensic report, the who, what, where, and why of what happened, it’s to be treated like Ebola central. I’m sending over a security team from DIA and I want nothing and nobody over there. You’re all on stand-down until we figure out what the hell’s going on here. Are we clear?”
Lansky’s “guests” nodded, and also sagged, mimicking his posture.
“And you, Loughran.” He glared at the FBI SAC. “I want that goddamn stiletto woman. I want her caught, or killed, don’t care which. And if you nab her alive, I want her at Guantanamo Bay, not some friggin’ federal resort. You can shave her head like a French collaborator and build her a women’s wing right next to all the crazy male jihadis down there if you have to, but I don’t want some bleeding-heart limousine liberal Harvard lawyer getting her off. Understand me?”
The FBI agent said nothing. Lansky’s order was supra-legal and everyone in the room knew it.
“And now, somebody tell me . . .” Lansky threw his hands up at the ceiling as if his last appeal was to God himself. “Where in the goddamn hell is Eric Steele?”
No one said anything for a moment. Then, with a nod from Pitts, Betsy Roth spoke up.
“He’s en route from Helsinki, sir.” She finger-curled a lock of her blond hair and blinked behind her glasses.
“En route,” Lansky snorted. “And with Goodhill babysitting him, right?”
“Correct,” Pitts said.
“Helsinki. Jesus. What’d they do, stop over for a sauna and some fresh herring? And I’ve seen that guy Goodhill in action, Pitts. He and Steele are two peas from the same damn pod. It’s like sending a dirty cop to bust his own drug dealer kid. And where are those D-Boys now?”
“Back at Fort Bragg, sir,” Turner said.
“Well thank Christ for that. I’m the one who talked the president into ordering them on that op, though I’ve got no idea why. Should have left Steele in freakin’ Siberia.”
“Goodhill will bring him back, sir,” Shane Wylie said softly from his corner. He still looked sallow and broken from the death of Collins Austin, but he’d insisted on staying at work and felt the need to protect his professional brothers and sisters.
“If he doesn’t, it’s all of our asses. Now get the hell out of here.”
They all nodded, shouldered their various laptops and satchels, and headed for the door as quickly and quietly as possible. Lansky started gathering his briefing files from his desk.
“You can all take some time off,” he growled. “Might be for the rest of your lives. I’m gonna go see the boss.”
And after they were gone and the door was closed, he mumbled to himself, “Maybe I can keep us all out of Leavenworth.”
Chapter 35
The Oval Office, White House, Washington, D.C.
President of the United States John Rockford was an unkempt man. Nobody outside his family and closest circle of friends knew that, because his fashion model wife had been managing his public appearances for years. She selected his suits, shirt-and-tie combos, shoes, and golfwear, and had everything tailored to perfection. She watched his weight, kept him away from greasy fast foods, and got him some sunshine whenever possible. She checked his fingernails and gel-combed his wavy blond hair before every press gaggle.
But it wasn’t neurotic or controlling behavior. Mrs. Rockford was stunning, charming, good-humored, and unflappable, and they laughed about her fussiness often and he never resisted. She simply didn’t want her husband coming off like British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who they both liked very much, but who always looked like he’d just stepped out of a NASA wind tunnel.
On this particular afternoon, Mrs. Rockford was away in Houston pursuing her efforts to raise child literacy and healthy interactive behavior—she despised smartphones and social media and thought they were the devil’s playground. The president had managed to spruce himself up for an Oval Office meeting with the PM of Poland, but now that Morawiecki and his minions had left—along with the press throng that Rockford called the “leeches”—the commander in chief had shrugged off his suit jacket, yanked his tie open, and finger-mussed his hair like a little boy whose mommy wasn’t there to scold him.
He was slouching back in the plush leather throne facing the Resolute desk once used by men so much greater than he was, men with revered names like Kennedy and Reagan, and while he tried to review a slew of proposed executive orders, once again he couldn’t help but think of himself as an impostor. Truth be told—or so he believed—he was nothing more than an old armored infantry officer who, in accordance with the purest example of the Peter Principle, had risen to a position he sure as hell didn’t deserve.
President Rockford’s secretary, Fanny Maeford, poked her gray head in from her side office.
“Mr. President, the chief of staff would like to see you.”
“Only if he brings us both coffee,” Rockford said. “And he’d better know how I take it.”
Fanny smiled and withdrew, and three minutes later, Ted Lansky walked in carrying two steaming mugs. One had the presidential seal embossed on it. The other said old age and cunning will always defeat youth and exuberance.
“Which one’s for me, Ted?” The president stretched out a hand.
“The seal, sir. If I give you the other one, some press flack’ll get a pic of you with it and claim you’re a fascist dictator.”
“They say that already. Have a seat.”
Lansky dropped onto the president’s couch, took a wincing sip of hot brew, then placed the cup on the coffee table and turned toward his boss. Rockford sipped some coffee but kept the steaming cup in his hands. It was always too cold for him in the White House. He still preferred the weather in Iraq, but unfortunately that part of his life was over. It felt strange missing the bombs and bullets, but it had been a much simpler existence.
“You’re here about the Program, aren’t you, Ted?” Rockford said. “I saw that close-hold flash from Nashville.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Okay. Give it to me straight, no chaser.”
So, Lansky told him all of it, and it was hard for him. He’d never quite gotten over leaving CIA, and to him the Program was like a miniature version of Langley without all the bureaucratic and political bullshit.
“Well, sir, it seems like it all started when Stalker Seven took out that missile quartet in—”
Lansky stopped himself and looked around. Inside the Oval you never knew when the recorders were running, and he didn’t want the president compromised later by anything they might say today. Rockford smiled like a Cheshire cat.
“Go ahead, Ted. On your recommendation, I had that old system ripped out last week ’cause there were too many fingers on the record button. Now it’s on fail-safe. Only works with my thumbprint.”
“Very good,
sir. . . . So, that thing in Syria. Not long after that, we lost our first Alpha in Paris. Then there was another failed attempt in France on Stalker Seven, and then we lost another in Italy. Now we’ve had a third Alpha killed in Nashville. This is over the line now. The killer’s penetrated our borders.”
Rockford rubbed his jaw and thought about that.
“So, we’ve got a stalker who’s stalking our stalkers,” he said.
Lansky blinked. “Yes. You got it on the first haiku.”
“Failed that in college English. Go on.”
“Well, if you recall, you and I decided that having the Program here in the White House wasn’t any longer a practical idea. It was fine before the digital age, when there’d be time to quash rumors, or get friends in the print media to pull back on leaks, but not anymore. We don’t have a lot of friends in the media. So we moved Cutlass Main over to a location on Q Street, but I think we were breached during that move.”
“How so?”
“It opened a vulnerability. There’s a window during such moves when you’re in technical transit. Main II was hacked, and I don’t mean Tweety Bird popping up on computers. A Russian cyber cell literally burned us down. They fried all the wires, hard drives, mechanicals, even set off the sprinkler systems and trashed the location. From freaking Moscow, sir.”
The president was in the middle of sipping his black brew, but he put the mug down and stared at Lansky.
“Holy shit, Ted.”
“Unholy shit, Mr. President. Our geek boys and girls executed a counterstrike, but the damage was done. Morale’s in the toilet, all assets recalled to CONUS.”
“And you think it’s all related to that quartet thing you mentioned before?”
“I don’t know for sure, nor do I think it matters. What we’ve got now is a female assassin out there targeting our Alphas. Steele was working that angle in France, got a partial ID on her in Paris, we followed up with Europol, and in turn they linked her to an apparently unrelated murder in Austria.” Lansky paused for the next bit so the boss wouldn’t miss it. “Sir, we think the woman is Lila Kalidi.”
Something went dark on Rockford’s face.
“You mean . . . that Kalidi?”
“Yes. Walid Kalidi’s daughter.”
The president pushed himself away from his grand desk and muttered, “When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions.”
“Sir?”
“Shakespeare, Ted. Hamlet.” Rockford got up, turned, thrust his meaty hands in his trouser pockets, and stared out his bulletproof picture window. “Ted, we might have to make this shutdown permanent. The Program had a great run, decades in fact, but there are too many eyes on us now. Leaking’s no longer an acceptable risk. It’s a culture. And it’s not about me personally. It’s about protecting the office of the president.”
“All right, sir. But what about the personnel? Will they be protected too?”
“I’ll cover their butts for anything that comes up, don’t worry. They’re national heroes, every one of them.” He turned back from the window. “Where’s Eric Steele now?”
“He’s on his way back from Helsinki, sir.”
“Well, I’m glad. I green-lit Delta for that mission because I knew that’s what Denton Cole would have done. But to be honest? Disobeying directives, strong-arming a flight crew, going off half-cocked like that for personal reasons? Steele’s one true patriot, but I think that young man’s burned out. Program or not, we might have to let him go. Can’t have that sort of thing.”
“Understood, sir.” Lansky picked up his coffee mug and slunk back on the couch, as if his next comment was going to be offhanded. “But, if I may remind the president . . . I seem to recall that once, long ago in Iraq, might have been Desert Storm, a young armor commander disobeyed orders to save the life of a brother he loved, and wound up getting the Distinguished Service Cross. . . . Just sayin’.”
Rockford actually flushed, but it was matched by his grin.
“Okay, Lansky, shut up.”
Lansky shrugged and returned an innocent smile. The president looked at his watch, a moderately priced Shinola.
“Speaker of the House is going to be here in fifteen minutes to flay off some more of my skin,” the president said. “So, last piece of business, which I hate to bring up. Denton Cole’s about to run out of road. Where are we on that, Ted?”
“You mean the state funeral, sir?”
“Ghoulish, but yes.”
“I’ve pulled in Protocol and they’re quietly working on it, though nothing about it’s a secret. All the papers have been tweaking Cole’s obit for a year. He’ll lie in state in the Capitol for two days, then we’ll have the National Cathedral service. State’s already making preliminary arrangements for foreign heads of state. It’s going to be huge, and a security nightmare, but it’s nobody’s first rodeo. We’ll get it done right. The only thing we can’t control is the timing.”
“That’s right, Ted.” The president sighed. “Only God or the devil can do that.”
Chapter 36
Interstate 395, Virginia
Mike Pitts drove south out of Washington, D.C., on 395, heading toward Springfield and pleased at least that he’d made his escape before rush hour. Over the past decade the capital’s population had bloated out of control and the web of highways that ringed the city was now known as the “circle of hell.” If you lived outside, as he did, in some decent place like Lincolnia, you had to get up at the ass crack of dawn to avoid a two-hour inbound crush. And leaving work, if you weren’t hitting the gas pedal before three-thirty, the chances of making it home for dinner were only fifty-fifty.
Pitts had a restored classic Ford Woody station wagon, circa 1969. He liked driving it because it reminded him of the simpler days his dad had always told him about, when the country’s worst internecine squabbles consisted of hippies protesting the Vietnam War and grizzly curmudgeons telling them all to get haircuts. He also liked the old brown beast because it was slow, and sometimes, like this afternoon, he didn’t really want to get where he was going.
The only comforting thought was that it looked like the Program was fading away, which meant he would soon be unemployed, but he’d also be released from a nightmare.
The past year had been nothing short of that. Katherine was pregnant again, the twins had turned eight and were rebelling against Mommy, just like most little girls, except that their mischief was doubled. His working hours had increased, along with the mortgage, while the federal employee cost-of-living raises had stalled because both parties in Congress were focused only on hurling bombs across the aisle.
The Program had had some major successes, mostly due to Alphas like Eric Steele, but then there were the losses of operators like Jonathan Raines, Collins Austin, and now Martin Farro, God rest their souls. The body count was piling up, and Cutlass Main had been turned into a Dumpster fire, and he shouldered the responsibility for all of that. He was a man between a rock and many hard places, had a raging ulcer that no one knew about—including his wife—and frequently vomited in the bathroom before heading off to work.
Pitts had joined the army fresh out of community college, more than two decades prior. He’d served in the U.S. Army’s 1st Infantry Division, the glorious “Big Red One,” and had led young men and women in combat on multiple deployments to Iraq. He’d lost his leg to an Iranian manufactured VBIED (Vehicle Borne Improvised Explosive Device) in the waning days of the Iraqi “strategic withdrawal,” and had still risen to the rank of major after refusing a medical discharge and fighting like a pit bull for a waiver.
He’d only left the army because the guy in the bed next to his at the military hospital in Landstuhl, Germany, turned out to be some shot-up spook who later recommended him for a deep black project called “the Program.” They were looking to fill a slot in ops leadership, but it had to be someone who wouldn’t always be itching to get back into action. They thought it might even be wise to tag some hard-charging
combat vet officer who had physical limitations.
That was Pitts. He was a natural leader, yet his action days were over. He was tough, but practical. He was disciplined, punctual, and precise. He was relentless when it came to accomplishing the mission. He was the perfect Program ops manager.
And now he was broken.
Traffic was flowing smoothly about twenty-five miles south of Washington as he passed the signs for Manassas, where the first major clash of the Civil War had been fought in July of 1861. At the Battle of Bull Run, more than thirty-five thousand blues and grays had soaked the rolling summer fields with their own blood, portending years of ugly things to come. Pitts was an avid student of that historical period, and fervently wished that every congressman and senator could be time-traveled back to that bloodfest whenever they called for each other’s demise.
He got off the exit at Potomac Mills, swung around onto Opitz Boulevard, and crossed back under the highway, heading for the Potomac Community Library. He’d never been there before, but these dead drops were always similar and were standard tradecraft in the intelligence game. Someone wanted to meet with you on the down-low. Maybe they had treasure, or maybe just dust, but you could never just say no. In the course of a decade with the Program, he’d gone to such clandestine meetings about once a year. You loaded your handgun, got in your car, made sure your life insurance was paid up, and prayed that it wasn’t a setup.
He’d gotten a cryptic text on his burner cell with a time, a place, one additional word, and nothing more. In the black ops business that wasn’t unusual procedure, nor would the incoming text raise any red flags for the Program’s monitors, who were always checking everyone’s comms. For today’s drop, the location was a library, and the additional word was the name of an author. It was someone the kids weren’t reading these days, when they read at all, so the volumes probably wouldn’t be checked out. Besides, Pitts guessed that the drop would be made less than ten minutes before he got there.
