by David Wood
Tam was no pushover. In her former role as a special agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, an undercover assignment working for a ruthless bio-engineering firm had culminated in a deadly confrontation in the Amazon rainforest. That had led to her current assignment, heading a special division of the Central Intelligence Agency, tasked with hunting down and destroying an international conspiracy known as the Dominion. Tam believed in leading from the front, so she trained hard and fought harder. Krav Maga, Jiu-Jitsu, Tae Kwon Do, and old-fashioned street brawling were only a few bullet points on her resumé, not to mention the many scrapes she had gotten into in the field. She probably had more combat experience than Sievers, but he was bigger and stronger. She hoped it wouldn’t come to a fight, but if it did, he wouldn’t be the first man to discover, to his chagrin, that she wasn’t defenseless.
Sievers stared at her for a moment, then adopted a more professional demeanor, albeit with more than a hint of underlying aggression. “I’ll need verification.”
Tam bit back a scathing retort. Funny how he was only now remembering to ask about that. The truth of the matter was that the mere fact of her presence was all the verification he needed, but strictly speaking, this was the procedure. She reached into the pocket of her parka and brought out a small square of pasteboard upon which the recognition code—a code that changed every twelve hours—was printed. She passed it over to Sievers, who inspected it with meticulous care, then took a similar card from his own pocket and compared the two.
He finally lowered the cards and with an almost disappointed sigh, gestured to the row of shipping containers behind him. “This way.”
The containers were arranged side by side with no gaps between them. At a glance, the only unusual thing about them was the mere fact that they were lined up in an alpine valley on the Transylvanian Plateau, hundreds of miles from the nearest port facility, but when Sievers guided her through a metal door set in the end of the nearest one, she saw that the exterior façade was just that—a façade. The shipping containers were actually modular suites, equipped with electricity and running water. Originally designed for use by the military, the temporary modules could be easily secured and transported almost anywhere in the world—either by truck or heavy-lift helicopter—making them ideal for forward operating bases, temporary housing for roughnecks working remote oil fields, or as was the case here, for operating an ultra-secret “black site.” This site was just one of nearly a hundred off-the-books, CIA-sanctioned, privately-operated detention facilities for “ghosts”—a catch-all term for suspected terrorists, enemy combatants, or anyone else deemed too dangerous to be allowed the due process of law.
The existence of black site facilities was one of the worst kept secrets in the intelligence community, but as was often the case, the leaked rumors were part of a disinformation campaign designed to mask the full extent of the program. In her role as a CIA staff operations officer, Tam was a member of that select group of people who did know the truth, and while she had serious reservations about the legality, not to mention morality, of the program, this was one instance where the system would work to her advantage.
Sievers led her into what looked like a police station interview room. The décor was strictly utilitarian—a table, a few flimsy looking folding chairs. Tam did not fail to notice a large dark stain on the plywood floor in one corner of the room.
Water damage, and not from a leaky roof.
“Wait here.” Sievers turned back through the door, leaving her alone in the room.
She drew back her hood and did a slow turn, noting the location of the surveillance cameras, then took a seat at the table. Sievers returned a few minutes later, accompanied by two other men. One of them appeared to have been cast from the same mold as Sievers: shaved head, muscle bound, with a holstered pistol on his belt. His bleary-eyed and slightly irritated expression led Tam to believe that Sievers had woken him up to provide additional security for the prisoner escort.
The other man was the prisoner himself, tall and thin almost to the point of gauntness, with an unruly mop of brown hair and an equally wild beard. His coveralls, which might once have been bright orange but were so grimy and threadbare that it was difficult to say what color they were, seemed to hang off his spare frame. Yet, despite the appearance of frailty, the man moved with a languid self-assurance that belied his frail state. When he saw Tam, he hesitated for a fraction of a second, eyebrows raised in a look of recognition. Sievers steered the prisoner into a chair on the opposite side of the table, and then stood directly behind him, poised to spring into action at the first sign of trouble.
Tam raised her eyes to meet the big man’s stare. “Can you give us some space?”
Sievers returned a perturbed frown but moved out from behind the table, taking a station near the door with the other mercenary. Although she knew there were probably microphones hidden in the room, she nevertheless waited until Sievers was out of earshot to address the prisoner.
“Been a while.”
Gavin Stone returned a wry smile. “Imagine my surprise at seeing you here.”
“I wish I could say the same thing.” She leaned forward and held up a pack of cigarettes. “You still smoke? I thought you might want these.”
“I never…” Stone’s look of confusion passed quickly, and he took an eager breath. “I never thought a pack of coffin nails would look so good.”
He reached out with both hands—Tam realized only now that his wrists were bound together with a plastic zip-tie—but Sievers rushed forward and snatched the pack from Tam’s grasp. He opened it, shook some of the cigarettes into his hand and then peered into the half-empty packet. When he found nothing amiss, he deposited everything on the tabletop in front of Stone, who had drawn his hands back, calmly folding them in his lap, and was regarding his captor with a bemused expression. As Sievers shuffled away, Stone turned his attention back to Tam.
“You didn’t come all this way to facilitate my bad habits.” He narrowed his eyes, as if by doing so, he might read her thoughts. “Last I heard, you were FBI.”
“I made a lateral career move. I’m with the Company now.”
Stone seemed genuinely surprised by this news and a little disappointed. “And given our prior relationship, they thought you might be able to convince me to cooperate.”
Tam shook her head. “Actually, I’m here about something else. I’d like to offer you a job.”
“A job? With the CIA?” Stone settled back in his chair. “This should be good.”
“I’m heading up a special operational task force called the Myrmidons.”
“That sounds impressive,” he replied, his tone indicating that he thought it was anything but.
She recalled now that, despite his extraordinary intelligence, Stone’s body of knowledge was surprisingly limited. “You always were terrible at Trivial Pursuit. The Myrmidons were legendary warriors who fought under Achilles during the Trojan War.”
“I suppose that makes you Achilles.” He smirked.
“Something like that, but my heels are stilettos. Feel free to take that as a double-entendre.” Her steely gaze told him she was not joking.
“And who are your Myrmidons at war with?”
“The Dominion.”
Stone’s manner became serious and just a little somber. “Ah, the white whale.”
“They’re real, Stone. No one doubts that anymore. You heard about what happened at Key West? Norfolk? That was the Dominion’s doing.”
He pondered this for a moment. “And what is it you think that I could do for you?”
Tam fixed him with a stern look. “Are we seriously going to have this conversation? I’m offering you a chance to do something meaningful with that brilliant mind God saw fit to give you. And a ticket out of this place. Unless you’re afraid you’ll get homesick if you leave.”
“Norfolk was… what, over a year ago? It’s so hard to keep track of time in here. I’m guessing this task force of your
s has been around for a little while. Obviously I wasn’t your first round draft pick. What’s changed?”
Tam couldn’t help but smile. This was Stone’s gift, the ability to look beneath the surface. “There were some personnel issues. I had to let some people go.”
Stone nodded as if he understood, and Tam was grateful that he didn’t ask her to elaborate. “Good help is hard to find. But you didn’t answer my question. What’s changed?”
“Yesterday, a bus full of university students was hijacked in Juarez, Mexico. They were taken out into the boonies and killed…executed. Except for one student who escaped. He managed to make it across the Rio Grande where he was picked up by Border Patrol. Once they realized that, A—he wasn’t a run-of-the-mill illegal, and B—he was bleeding out, they were able to put together what had happened.”
“Drug cartels?”
“That’s what the survivor thought at first, but there was a discrepancy.”
“A discrepancy?”
“The survivor overheard one of the killers making a phone call. In English. He only remembered a few words, but it was enough for the NSA to isolate the call.” She gave Stone a sidelong glance. “You understand the intricacies of electronic eavesdropping, right?”
A faint smile. “I’m vaguely familiar.”
“The call was sent from a cloned cell phone, so there’s no way to know who was directly responsible for the killings, but the recipient was a suspected Dominion intermediary. That’s when I was called in.”
“The Dominion is working with Mexican drug cartels? Strange bedfellows.”
“There may not be a direct relationship. The Dominion may only be interested in causing instability. The fallout has already started. Mexico has been a powder keg for years. There are widespread protests and a lot of comms traffic among revolutionary groups. President Mendoza’s reaction has been....” She groped for a word.
“Half-assed?”
She frowned. “I’m trying to cut back on the vulgar language, but I suppose it’s as good a word as any.”
Stone considered this for a moment. “You don’t think this has anything to do with drug cartels.”
Tam nodded, once again impressed by his swift insight. “The call we intercepted included a message. ‘The time for destiny has come.’”
“Destiny?”
“The caller was very specific about that. Our best guess is that it’s the code name for a new Dominion operation, but that’s all we have to go on right now. That and one other thing. The caller said it was imperative to retrieve ‘the Patton item from Vienna.’”
“And do you know what that is?”
“My chief researcher, Avery Halsey, has an idea about that, but…” She rolled her eyes in the direction of the mercenaries. “I’ll give you the full briefing later. If you’re in, that is.”
Stone grinned. “Well, it’s an offer I can’t very well refuse.” He turned his gaze to the pair at the door. “Did you hear that, gents? I’ve got my walking papers.”
Sievers looked at his partner. “You know anything about that?”
The other man shrugged. “First I’ve heard of it.”
Sievers addressed Tam. “I guess you don’t know how this works, ma’am. We’ve got a contract. We don’t get paid until he gives up…information. Which means he’s not going anywhere until we get it. Period.”
Tam affected an indignant expression, although this wrinkle was not entirely unexpected. In order to maintain the illusion of deniability, the CIA had very little actual involvement with the black sites. In strictly legal terms, extraordinary rendition—the practice of arresting a suspect without cause, denying them their day in court, and spiriting them away to a secret prison on foreign soil—was not much different than kidnapping. Since the actual management of the black sites, from housing the ghost prisoners to conducting “enhanced interrogations”—another euphemism which turned Tam’s stomach—was controlled by EmergInt, any CIA officials called to testify before congressional committees could claim, without perjuring themselves, that the Agency had no knowledge of secret detention facilities or what went on in them. Unfortunately, that also meant that she had no real authority to effect Stone’s release. Even though her boss, the Deputy Director of the National Clandestine Service—for all intents and purposes, the number two guy at the Company—had given the go ahead to recruit Stone, that would mean little to these mercenaries.
There was only one way Stone was going to leave his prison.
She turned back to Stone. “Are you going to tell the nice men what they want to know?”
Stone raised his bound hands in a helpless gesture. “Sorry, Tam. It’s the principle of the thing. But I do appreciate you thinking of me. And the cancer sticks, too.”
He retrieved the pack from the tabletop and began sliding the loose cigarettes back inside, one at a time as if it was some kind of three-dimensional puzzle he was intent on solving. “Don’t suppose you brought matches?”
Tam took a disposable lighter from the pocket of her parka. She held it up for Sievers to inspect, but the mercenary merely waved indifferently, so she slid it across the table to him. He picked it up, brought one of the cigarettes to his mouth, and then holding the lighter awkwardly in both hands, lit up and blew out a large cloud of smoke. “Stop in again if you’re ever in the neighborhood.”
Tam studied his face for some hint of compromise. It wasn’t there. She shook her head sadly. “You and your principles. Fine. You’re on your own.”
He gave a rueful smile. “I always have been.”
She pushed away from the table, turned, and headed for the door without another word. Sievers opened it for her and followed her out into the darkness.
“Ex-boyfriend?”
“Just an old family friend,” Tam replied. It was more than she wanted to reveal to the mercenary, but now that the plan was in motion, she had to be very careful about what she did and did not say. “I thought I could convince him to talk, but…” She shrugged.
“You should stick around,” Sievers said. “Maybe he’ll come to his senses.”
“You’d love that,” she muttered, then in a more conversational tone, added, “That’s not likely to happen. He can be very stubborn, as I’m sure you’ve discovered. And I have other places I need to be.”
CHAPTER 3
Stone remained seated as Tam exited the interview room. He pretended to relish the cigarette though he was careful not to inhale, lest a coughing fit betray him. He had never actually smoked a cigarette before and had no idea what effect the tobacco would have on him. Just gathering the smoke into his mouth and blowing it out in a cloud around his head was making him a little woozy. He would need his wits about him to survive what was coming.
Sievers followed Tam out the door, leaving Stone alone with the hulking John Bowers. Many of his captors possessed a penchant for cruelty—it was probably a prerequisite for the job—but among the team that had kept and tormented him for the last ten months, Bowers was by far the cruelest. Without the outlet of his work, the man probably would have been a serial killer.
The click of the door latch was Bowers’ cue to move. Stone had no doubt that Bowers intended to make him pay dearly for the visit with Tam. The carrot of freedom which Tam had dangled before him would seem even more desirable—and his apparent decision to refuse it, all the more foolhardy—once Bowers brought down the stick, both figuratively and literally. Stone kept looking forward but followed the man’s approach in his peripheral vision.
Doing his best to appear oblivious, Stone lifted the cigarette to his lips and feigned another drag. Bowers raised his right hand, cocking it across his body to deliver a backhand blow, not hard enough to hurt, but just enough to knock the cigarette away and demonstrate his contempt for the helpless prisoner.
Not quite helpless.
As Bowers hand came down, Stone calmly ducked under the swing, and in the same motion lashed out with his foot, jamming it into the side of Bowers’ leg, jus
t below the knee.
There was a sickening crack as cartilage snapped, and the leg folded at an unnatural angle. Bowers howled and groped reflexively for the injured limb, but quickly recovered his wits and reached instead for the gun holstered at his hip.
Stone was faster.
He knew that he could not defeat Bowers in a sustained struggle. After nearly a year of living on subsistence rations, subjected to constant physical and psychological abuse, he felt as weak as a toddler. Even under the best of circumstances, he could not hope to best someone with Bowers’ size and ability, but he had one advantage over the mercenary. For ten months, he had watched the man, studied his movements, his behaviors, his personality. He knew about the old knee injury, which caused Bowers to limp ever so slightly, from time to time. He knew how Bowers would react to a surprise attack, and how long it would take for him to remember to go for his gun.
Bowers was an open book to him. All his captors were. He knew what they would do in any given circumstance even before they did. That knowledge had made it possible for him to endure the worst of their torments, to keep both his psyche and his secret intact. He could have used the knowledge to escape, but given the remoteness of the location, he knew he wouldn’t get far. Not without help.
The sort of help that Tam Broderick was offering.
Under the pretense of lighting the cigarette, Stone had used the flame to soften the plastic zip-tie binding his wrists, and now only a sharp twist was required to break free. He threw himself onto Bowers, pinning the mercenary’s gun arm to the floor with one hand, and delivering a savage punch to Bowers’ exposed throat with the other.
