Term Limits

by Vince Flynn

  “Who were the two ranking members of the Senate Intelligence Committee a year and a half ago?”

  “Erik Olson and Daniel Fitzgerald.”

  “Isn’t that a coincidence. They’re both dead.” McMahon stood and put on his jacket. “Let’s go talk to Brian and see if we can find out who this mystery politician is.”

  “I think I already know who it is,” Kennedy said with a glum look on her face.

  “Who?”

  “Fitzgerald.”

  “Why?”

  “He resigned from the Intelligence Committee about a year ago, claiming that he needed to focus more of his energy on the Finance Committee.”

  McMahon led the way down the hall and up the two flights of stairs. Skip greeted Roach’s assistant and told her that he needed to see the boss immediately. She buzzed Roach, and a minute later McMahon and Kennedy were let in. Roach was sitting at his conference table surrounded by the usual stacks of files and papers.

  He stood and greeted the visitors, professional as always. “How’s the investigation going?”

  “We may have come across a break.” McMahon looked over his shoulder to make sure the door was closed and then asked, “What do you know about a covert mission called Operation Snatch Back?”

  Roach looked more than a little surprised. “Where did you hear about Operation Snatch Back? That’s classified.” Roach turned to Kennedy. “Did you tell him?”

  “Not in the way you’re thinking. We stumbled across it in our investigation.”

  “How?”

  “Irene was looking into the file of a former Navy SEAL and the name came up.”

  “In what way did it come up?”

  Kennedy stepped forward. “About a month after the mission, one of the SEALs involved in the operation received an early discharge. We talked to his commanding officer and found out some interesting things.”

  “Go on,” commanded Roach.

  “Admiral DeVoe, the force commander for the SEALs, told us that the officer in question, Comdr. Scott Coleman, was in charge of the SEAL team that participated in Operation Snatch Back. After the mission, Coleman stated that he thought the Libyans had set a trap. He also blamed himself for the loss of his men because he ordered them in. A couple of weeks after the mission, Admiral DeVoe finds out that the FBI has identified who leaked the mission. The admiral passes the information on to Coleman, telling him that he doesn’t know who leaked the mission, only that it was a prominent politician. Shortly after that, Coleman demands an early discharge and gets it. So far none of this adds up to anything hard, but if the prominent politician who leaked that mission happened to be Sen. Daniel Fitzgerald, then we have a possible motive.”

  Roach looked more than a little surprised and asked, “What makes you think it was Fitzgerald?”

  “An educated guess,” said Kennedy.

  “Was it Fitzgerald?”

  “Yes. . . . Both of you take a seat. This is more complicated than it looks.” McMahon and Kennedy sat in the two chairs in front of Roach’s desk, and the director sat on the edge of his desk. “What I’m about to tell you does not leave this room. . . . Fitzgerald was the one who leaked the mission. He didn’t do it intentionally, and that is why he was never prosecuted. In fact, we stumbled across it in an unusual way. Our Counter Espionage Department regularly reviews the tax returns, asset portfolios, and credit history of certain people that, by the nature of their jobs, come in contact with government employees that have access to sensitive information—people like journalists, attorneys, secretaries, lobbyists, even waitresses and bartenders. Last year, one of our agents was reviewing the tax returns for all of the employees that worked at a local restaurant. She discovered that one of the bartenders had purchased a two-hundred-thousanddollar condo in Georgetown. The guy only makes about thirty thousand a year, so a red flag pops up. She calls the mortgage company and finds out the person in question put down sixty grand for the down payment on the condo. A little more investigating and she rules out that the money came from his parents. We think the guy is probably selling drugs, but there’s an outside chance he may be talking to people we don’t want him talking to. A lot of big hitters frequent the establishment where he works, and after a few drinks these politicians and their staffers have been known to discuss things they shouldn’t in public.

  “We decided there was enough to put this bartender under surveillance. We wired the bar, his condo, and tapped his phone.” Roach shook his head. “Two days before Operation Snatch Back was to commence, Fitzgerald gets done with work and stops by for a couple of drinks. The nightly news is on and they run a segment on the anniversary of the downing of the Pan Am flight over Lockerbie. The reporter ends the segment saying that the two men suspected of planting the bomb are believed to be hiding in Libya. Fitzgerald responds out loud, ‘Not for long,’ and the bartender asks what he means. Fitzgerald says, ‘Between you and me, kid, those two bastards are going to be sitting in a U.S. jail in about forty-eight hours.’ The kid asks how, if they’re in Libya, and Fitzgerald tells him he can’t go into it.

  “At the time this meant nothing to our people that were on the case, but after Snatch Back failed, the CIA gave our Counter Espionage people a heads-up warning that the mission may have been compromised. One of the names on the list of people that knew about the mission beforehand was Senator Fitzgerald. Our agents put two and two together and hauled the bartender in for a shakedown. They told him he was either going to spend the next twenty years in a federal pen or he could spill the beans. . . . He spilled the beans. The guy thought he was passing the information on to a reporter. It turns out the reporter is a former KGB agent who is now operating for himself and selling his secrets abroad. The rest of the story is highly classified, and I can’t go into what we found out. . . . It’s an ongoing operation.”

  “You’re using the kid to feed him misinformation, aren’t you?” Kennedy waited for an answer.

  Roach shrugged his shoulders and said, “Director Stansfield knows all about it. We’re working in cooperation with the Agency.” Roach walked around to the other side of his desk and sat.

  McMahon sat forward and said, “I’m going to have to talk to everyone who was involved in this.”

  “No, you’re not,” answered Roach.

  “Brian, if this Coleman is our guy, all of this information about Fitzgerald is going to have to come out in the indictment.”

  “We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it, but for now I don’t want Fitzgerald’s name and Operation Snatch Back mentioned in the same sentence. Do what you have to do to investigate Coleman, but keep Fitzgerald out of it. I assume I can get ahold of Admiral DeVoe at the Pentagon?”

  “No, he’s down in Norfolk.”

  “All right, I’ll talk to him personally, and you’d better put a list together of all the people that know Snatch Back was leaked. Madeline Nanny is going to want to talk to you about this.”

  Mike Nance took the short walk from his corner office to Stu Garret’s. Passing Garret’s secretary, he smiled and said hello. The door was open and Nance closed it behind him. Nance sat in one of the armchairs and crossed his legs. “How is the president today?”

  Garret finished what he was writing and pushed himself away from the desk. Taking his cigarette out of his mouth, he blew a cloud of smoke toward the ceiling and said, “He’s doing great. We just got the results back from the most recent Time/CNN poll, and almost seventy percent of the people surveyed are behind his decision to get the military involved.” Garret shoved the cigarette back in his mouth and took a deep drag. “He’s very happy. Much more relaxed.”

  “Good.” Nance looked down and flicked a speck of lint from his wool pants. “How are you doing?”

  “Fine. I could use a little more sleep, but otherwise I feel pretty good.”

  “Are you more at ease than you were yesterday?”

  “Yes.” Garret was slightly embarrassed by the question.

  “I had a meeting with
our friend last night.”

  “How is he doing?”

  “Not well. He’s very uneasy about your lack of emotional control.”

  Garret’s face went flush, and he stabbed his cigarette out in the ashtray. “Why?”

  “He heard about your demeanor in the meeting the other day.”

  “What meeting?”

  “The one where Special Agent McMahon played the tape of his conversation with the terrorist.”

  “Why did you have to tell him about that?”

  “I didn’t. Someone else did.”

  “Who?”

  “One never knows with Arthur, Stu. He has a lot of contacts.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He’s concerned that you won’t be able to keep your mouth shut.”

  “Who am I going to tell?”

  Nance turned his palms upward and raised his eyebrows.

  “Come on, Mike. I’m not that stupid. If I talk, I go down too.”

  “I agree, but he doesn’t.”

  “Why? I haven’t done a fucking thing to make him think I would say anything. Why in the hell would I say anything? I’d be cutting my own throat.”

  “I agree, but he seems to think that you might fold under pressure. He thinks if someone were to put the screws to you, you’d talk in order to save yourself.”

  “That’s ludicrous.” Garret grabbed his pack of Marlboros with a shaky hand and fished out a fresh cigarette.

  “He wants me to give you a message.” Nance rose from his chair and walked around the desk. Leaning into Garret’s ear, he whispered, “Arthur says if you breathe a word of this to anyone, he will have you killed.”

  Garret dropped his cigarette and stood. “Why?”

  Nance put a hand on his shoulder. “Just calm down, Stu, and you’ll have nothing to worry about.”

  34

  MICHAEL O’ROURKE AND SCOTT COLEMAN were running a couple of minutes late. They had met at the cabin earlier and finalized the plans for the mission. Because of the lack of preparation time, they had decided to keep things as simple as possible. If Arthur stepped out to smoke a cigar, they would grab him. If he didn’t, they would have to try again the next night. Storming the house was out of the question.

  The sun had set at about 5:40 P.M., and the rural Maryland roads were crowded with commuters going home after work. The black BMW cruised along with traffic and then turned off the busy county road and onto one of the narrow and quiet streets of the Curtis Point neighborhood. Coleman was driving and had his night-vision goggles perched on his forehead. He reached up and pulled the microphone from his headset down in front of his mouth. “Hermes and Cyclops, this is Zeus, come in, over.” He kept his eyes fixed on the road and waited for the response.

  “This is Hermes, over.”

  “Are you in position, over?”

  “That’s affirmative, we’re in position, over.”

  “We’re about three miles out. Have the gate ready to go, and I’ll give you the word right before we round the corner. Check the road for foot traffic, and let me know if there are any cars coming from the other direction, over.”

  “Roger, over.”

  Michael opened the glove box and pulled off the cover to the fuses. Holding a small penlight in his left hand, he located the fuse for the car’s exterior lights and got ready to pull it. They continued to wind down the curvy road, passing the large houses. When they were less than a mile from the old estate, Coleman spoke into his mike again.

  “Hermes, how does everything look, over?”

  “The coast is clear, over.”

  “Open the gate.” Coleman looked at O’Rourke and nodded.

  O’Rourke pulled the fuse, and the headlights and rear running lights were extinguished. The thick cloud cover overhead, combined with the lack of streetlights on the narrow, wooded road, cut the visibility to nothing. Coleman pulled down his nightvision goggles and quickly adjusted his eyes. He took his foot off the gas and coasted. They passed the main gate of the old estate, and Coleman put some pressure on the brakes. About 150 feet later, they reached the service drive, and Coleman turned hard. The black car slipped onto the overgrown drive and squeezed through the encroaching trees and bushes, disappearing from sight.

  Stroble quickly closed the gate and wrapped the chain around the post. He stood guard for a minute, looking up and down the road waiting to see if anyone else approached, and then went down the path to join the others. When he arrived at the small shed, Coleman had already turned the car around in the tall grass so it was pointing back toward the road. Coleman, O’Rourke, and Hackett were standing by the open trunk. Hackett handed them their MP-5s and Coleman and O’Rourke checked to make sure a round was chambered. When Stroble joined the group, Coleman checked his watch and brought everyone in.

  “What did you do with the Zodiac?”

  “We sank it about a mile offshore and swam in,” responded Stroble.

  “Good. Let’s go over this thing once and then get into position. We don’t want to miss him. Stop me if you have any questions. What’s the status on the boat next door?”

  “It has a full tank of gas, and the battery is fine,” said Hackett.

  “Are you going to have to hot-wire her?”

  “No, we found an extra set of keys under the seat cushions.”

  “Good. . . . Okay, once from the top.” Coleman pointed at Hackett and Stroble. “You two move into position on the north side of the house. Kevin, you’re in the same tree you were in last night. From there you can cover the entire backyard. Dan, you are in your spot by the front of the house, and Michael and I are just opposite the patio on this side of the fence. When we get into position, the first thing all of us do is make sure our ropes are secure. Then we sit tight, watch the guards, and wait. The surveillance reports that Michael got say he steps out for a cigar almost every night, unless it’s raining. Sometimes he stays out there for hours, sometimes for only a couple of minutes. The point being . . . if he shows, we move fast.” Coleman looked up at the dark sky. “The forecast calls for possible showers, so we’ll have to wait and see. If he comes out, we wait for him to move to the edge of the patio, as far away from the house as possible, and then depending on what the guards are doing, we make our move.”

  “What if he’s not alone?” asked Hackett.

  Coleman looked to Michael, who thought about it and answered, “I’ll make the call on the spot.”

  “Back to the guards,” said Coleman. “If they stick to their routines, one of them will stay by the front door, and the other one will patrol the sides and rear of the house with the dog. There’s another one at the front gate, but I don’t think he’ll leave the guardhouse. That leaves one more in the house, and after we take the cameras out, he’ll be blind.

  “Assuming everything goes right, and Arthur steps out, I will ask the two of you if you have a clear shot. Kevin, you’ve got the guard in back and Dan you’ve got the one by the front door. As soon as I get a positive answer from both of you, I’ll say ‘bingo.’ Shoot the guards first and then the dogs. At that point, Michael and I swing over the fence in the backyard, and Dan comes over in the front. The second we hit the ground, the security control board inside the house is going to light up. I don’t know for sure, but it’s my guess that the guard inside will hit those floodlights that we saw last night. Don’t worry about them right away. Take the cameras out first. There are two sets of cameras mounted on each of the four corners of the house. Dan, you take out the ones in front and then take out the floodlights closest to the house. While you’re running from one side of the house to the other, I want you to fire some shots at the windows. It’ll set off more alarms inside and keep that fourth guard busy.”

  Coleman turned to Hackett. “There are four floodlights in the backyard. I want you to pop them ASAP and then cover us.” Looking back at Stroble, he said, “Now for the tricky part. The surveillance report says that Arthur is outfitted with a homing device and alarm. He has a lo
t of secrets in his head, and the CIA doesn’t want someone getting ahold of them. I don’t know if this homing device is sewn into his clothes or in his shoe or in his watch, so Michael and I have decided not to take any chances. We’re going to strip him naked and put everything in a bag. Dan, when you reach the patio, we should have everything ready to go. Michael will give you the bag, and then I want you to get down to the boat as fast as possible and get the engines warmed up.” Coleman pointed at Hackett. “Kevin, you stay in the tree and cover Michael and me until we are over the wall with Arthur. The second we’re clear, get the hell out of the tree and down to the boat.”

  “What do I do if the owner of the house hears the engines start and comes out to see what’s going on?” asked Hackett.

  “Scare him away with a couple of warning shots.”