Brady Hawk 19 - Divide and Conquer

by R. J. Patterson

  “Come on, Randy. See if you can talk to him. He won’t listen to me on this issue since he knows I’m biased.”

  “I’ve already broached the subject with the president, and he was very clear about what he wanted. There’s a ton of risk involved here for him. And after the attack on the White House, I don’t think he’s willing to go there again.”

  “Any other suggestions?”

  “At this point, your best bet is probably an extraction team.”

  Blunt huffed through his nose. “You think I have the resources for that? Are you going to help me?”

  “My hands are tied. Your people knew the consequences for getting caught.”

  “They didn’t get caught,” Blunt said. “Something happened to their plane.”

  “If they’re in Russian custody, they got caught. Now, I wish there was more I could help you with, but I’m afraid there isn’t. I’ll be in touch.”

  Blunt grunted and ended the call. Wood had always been an advocate for Blunt when he couldn’t speak up for himself. But Wood’s chilly response to Blunt’s suggestion regarding the prisoner exchange made him wonder if his long-time ally had been compromised in some manner as well. Not that Blunt could hold any moral superiority over Wood, much less blame him.

  A few minutes later, Blunt’s phone buzzed with a call from the president’s office.

  “Senator Blunt?” a woman asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Please hold for the President of the United States.”

  If Blunt wasn’t awake yet, he was now, bracing for the full brunt of Young’s wrath.

  “J.D., I wish we were speaking under different terms,” Young began.

  “Believe me, Mr. President, so do I,” Blunt said.

  Young sighed. “Look, is there any explanation you can give me for why two of your agents were over Russia last night? I could’ve sworn I told you to go get Evana Bahar.”

  “That’s what the plan was, but something happened. I’m as shocked as you are. I’m still trying to get to the bottom of it.”

  “What do you know so far?” Young asked.

  “Probably the same amount of information as you do since I just got a call from the CIA about it.”

  “I’m leaving later this afternoon as part of a top-secret envoy overseas,” Young said. “And when I return in four days, I want Bahar in U.S. custody or I’m shutting your little operation down so I can find someone who can get me the necessary results.”

  “But, sir, I’ve got two agents being held by the Russians now. How can you expect me to do that on such a short notice?”

  “You’ve got other agents, don’t you?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Well, use them,” Young said.

  “I need all my agents to pull off an operation of that magnitude. And to do that, I’m going to need to make a prisoner exchange with Andrei Orlovsky.”

  “Out of the question. I need some scalps to wave before the American people. Have you seen the polls lately? Everybody is running around in fear for their lives here. And I can’t let our citizens exist in this state for long. You’re the so-called expert on this issue, so do your job and fix this.”

  Young hung up, and Blunt exhaled slowly. He rubbed his face and contemplated his next move.

  “Screw this coffee,” Blunt said as he slid his mug aside. He fished a bottle of whisky and a glass out of his drawer. Shaking his head at what he’d just heard out of the president’s mouth, Blunt poured a drink and then leaned back in his chair. He knew what he needed to do, but he wasn’t sure he could pull it off.

  Blunt dialed Randy Wood’s number and waited for the CIA’s deputy director to answer.

  “What’s wrong now, J.D.?” Wood asked.

  “Where’s Orlovsky?” Blunt asked.

  “He’s in our Vir—” Wood cut himself off before blurting out the entire name of the secret site. “Did you talk to the president about this?”

  “I did,” Blunt said.

  “And what did he say?”

  “He told me that I’ve got four days to capture Evana Bahar or he’s going to shut down The Phoenix Foundation.”

  Wood sucked a breath through his teeth. “That’s rough. He can’t be serious.”

  “Young is dead serious, trust me,” Blunt said. “I’ve heard him give lip service about certain things, but judging from his tone, he wasn’t joking. He’s feeling the pressure, just like we all are.”

  “Well, you can’t get Alex and Hawk out of there that quickly, especially without Orlovsky.”

  “I’m well aware of that. It’s why I asked where he was.”

  “Look, I’m sorry you’re in this situation, but there’s nothing I can do for you. Orlovsky is staying put under the president’s orders. And I can’t lend you any of my guys as part of an extraction or op in either Russia or Afghanistan per treaty rules.”

  “Forget those rules,” Blunt bellowed. “We’ve got people’s lives on the line, not to mention plenty of people’s livelihoods.”

  “I wish I could help you, J.D. I really do. But the truth is I can’t lend you much support right now other than anything stateside. I know that’s not what you want to hear, but we’re all feeling the squeeze as we keep our ear to the ground about forthcoming threats both at home and abroad.”

  “I understand, but if you’re willing to bend the rules a little to help me, you know where to find me,” Blunt said.

  “Of course. I will, J.D. We all need you to succeed.”

  Blunt ended the call and pocketed his phone. He got what he needed. All he had to do was put his plan into motion and hope for the best.

  CHAPTER 15

  Undisclosed location in Russia

  HAWK WANTED TO see Alex. He needed to see her, but he could barely see anything other than the shadowy figures huddling in the corner. With his hands bound together and attached to a pole a couple feet over his head, he swayed as he strained to hear the Russian officers’ conversation.

  Hawk’s interrogation had reached three hours. No water. No food. No break. Nothing but a relentless barrage of questions and psychological torture techniques that left him aching for a break. He could only imagine what Alex had endured, wherever she was. The moment they arrived at the military compound, the guards separated Hawk and Alex.

  Over the years, he’d suffered through more than his fair share of hostile interviews from enemy combatants. Some of those “talks” required intense physical stamina just to stay conscious, much less stay mentally sharp to avoid giving up critical information. Alex had gone through the same training Hawk had, but riding out the harsh words from a man you knew and would smile and shake your hand once the exercise ended was different than being detained in a Russian prison.

  A Russian officer strode in front of Hawk and glared at him. “What are you doing in Russia?”

  Hawk shook his head and stuck to the script. “I’m a businessman. Our plane must have had a navigational malfunction. We were supposed to be headed to Morocco. I can show you the flight plan.”

  The man held up a sheet of paper. “Is this what you’re referring to?”

  Hawk leaned forward to read the words on the page. For instances just like this one, he always carried a fake flight plan.

  “I think that’s it,” Hawk said as he squinted.

  “This,” the man said, holding up the document, “was what we retrieved from the cockpit after we put out the fire. It is a flight plan for Perm from Washington, D.C. Now, would you mind answering my question truthfully this time: What are you doing in Russia?”

  “I’m not a pilot, sir,” Hawk said. “I got on a plane that I thought was headed to Morocco but apparently took a turn. I don’t know if there were navigational problems or what. All I can tell you is that I went to sleep and when I woke up, the plane door was open and we were in a free fall. I grabbed a parachute and my partner, and we dove out the door, hoping for the best.”

  The Russian officer broke into laughter. He looked around
at the other men while pointing at Hawk.

  “Did you all hear this?” the man said in Russian. “He expects me to believe that he’s Tom Cruise starring in a Mission Impossible movie.”

  All the men chuckled, some of them shaking their heads at Hawk’s claim.

  “You better hope I’m not like Tom Cruise,” Hawk said.

  The man stopped and cocked his head to one side. “And why’s that?”

  “Because in the end, I’ll escape and you’ll be dead.”

  The officer shrugged. “Hopefully we’ve made more progress with your partner. But either way, it’s nice to see an attractive woman around here. My men hardly know what to do with themselves when we get one.”

  Hawk lunged at the man but was restrained by the ropes around his wrists.

  “That’s right, Mr. Hawk. Get angry. Try however you wish, but understand that I’m in control here and you are powerless to do anything about it.”

  “You lay a finger on her and I’ll gut you myself,” Hawk said with a growl.

  “Yet you’re not in a position to do anything. What kind of relationship do you have with her anyway?”

  “You’re the one who seems to know so much about me, including where I was flying to. Why don’t you tell me?”

  The man turned on his heels and strode toward the door. “Goodbye, Mr. Hawk. I hope you enjoy our lovely accommodations here tonight. You need to get used to them because you’re going to be here a while.”

  “Don’t you touch her,” Hawk said again, leaning forward in a failed attempt to run after the Russian officer. Instead, Hawk crashed headlong onto the floor, skidding to a stop.

  The guards standing around him laughed as they stared. After a moment, two of them helped Hawk get upright again before ushering him into a prison cell. The sound of metal clanking together echoed down the hallway. Hawk stumbled toward his bed, his entire body weakened from the lack of sleep and sustenance.

  Hawk stared at the ceiling, his mind consumed with how Alex was doing. All was quiet for a few minutes, giving him the kind of peaceful moment that he didn’t desire. He wanted to know everything that was going on. If he could at least hear her, he would know if she was still alive and how they were treating her. The silence was deafening.

  When the sun beamed through the slits from the small rectangular window near the ceiling, Hawk awoke. He wasn’t sure how long he’d slept. Despite his concern for Alex, he’d passed out from exhaustion, unable to keep his eyes open.

  He sat up and rubbed his face, his head pounding from a headache.

  A guard strolled by his cell and dragged a stick across the bars. “Time to get up, American scum. We have a lot planned for you today. And what you do will determine if it’s your last day with us.”

  “You might release me?” Hawk asked.

  The man chuckled and shook his head. “No, I will put a bullet in your head if I’m given permission. And I’ll enjoy it.”

  Another guard hustled over to the door and opened it. He gestured for Hawk to leave the cell.

  “What’s happening to me?” Hawk asked. “I need to know. And I need to know about my partner.”

  “Don’t you worry about her,” the first guard said. “You’ll see her soon enough.”

  Hawk shuddered at the reply. All he wanted was a gun in his hand and enough munitions to take out every one of the smug Russians stalking about the military compound, foreign relations be damned. Their innuendos regarding Alex made him sick—and furious.

  Less than a minute later, the guards led Hawk into a common area, directing him to walk against the wall. Across the room, he saw Alex trudging forward, her feet in shackles, her hands bound by chains in front of her.

  “Alex,” Hawk shouted. “Are you okay?”

  She slowly turned her head in the direction of his voice, but before he could see her face, the same officer who interrogated him the night before stepped in front of Hawk’s line of sight.

  “Mr. Hawk, it’s a pleasure to see you this morning,” the man said. “Did you have a chance to mull over what we talked about yesterday?”

  Hawk narrowed his eyes but didn’t say a thing.

  “I’ll take that as a yes,” the officer said. “Would you like to change your story about where you were headed and what you were doing?”

  “I stand by my original statement,” Hawk said.

  “I’m not sure that’s a wise decision.”

  “It’s the truth. I have nothing else to add.”

  The officer stroked his beard and eyed Hawk closely. “In that case, we have no more need for you or your partner. We contacted the American government yesterday, and they weren’t willing to negotiate for either of you. Apparently, you’re both expendable, not even worth a prisoner trade. So, you’ll be executed tonight.”

  “Now, wait,” Hawk said. “There might be something of value I could give you, but I need a deal in writing—and I need to see someone from the American embassy to ensure the terms of any agreement.”

  The officer chuckled and shook his head. “The only worth you had to us was to get back someone the U.S. recently abducted. And I doubt there’s anything you could tell us that we don’t already know. We have agents everywhere, Mr. Hawk.”

  He gestured for the guards to take Hawk away. They seized his arms and forced him in the opposite direction.

  “I’m sure we could work something out,” Hawk said as he struggled against their grip.

  One of the guards edged up to Hawk’s ear. “The only question now is who goes first: You or your wife?”

  Hawk spun toward the man, jabbing him with an elbow and knocking him off balance a few feet. Once he regained his footing, he pulled out a cropping stick and whacked Hawk in the back of his legs. He crumpled, falling onto his knees.

  “Get up,” the man growled as he yanked Hawk by the back of his collar. “I’m going to enjoy putting you out of your misery.”

  For the rest of the day, Hawk oscillated between lying on his cot and pacing around his cell. All he could think about was Alex and what her situation was like. He also lamented the fact that all the intel he’d accumulated on Falcon Sinclair and Obsidian was going to go to waste. Dying by a firing squad in a Russian military facility certainly wasn’t the way he expected to go out, but death was a risk he was all too aware of and something he’d flirted with many times before. He imagined if he was going to die, it’d be doing something heroic or noble, throwing himself on a bomb or sacrificing himself to save some political dignitary. But leaping out of an aircraft into the Russian’s waiting arms carried quite a bit of ignominy for any spy, especially an American one.

  What I’d give to be on a couch somewhere cuddled up with Alex and watching a Bollywood movie.

  Hawk’s druthers stood in stark contrast. He was curled up in a fetal position on a lumpy cot beneath the watchful eyes of Russian soldiers excited about filling him full of lead later that day. Even worse was the time Hawk spent waiting, though he wasn’t sure if it was some psychological torture technique. If it was the latter, Hawk deemed the tactic a success.

  Just after dark, a guard entered Hawk’s cell with a tray of food, accompanied by an Orthodox priest.

  “Would you like your last rites?” the priest asked.

  Hawk nodded.

  Anything to buy me more time.

  The obstacle Hawk faced was that even if he had more time, he wasn’t sure what he’d do with it. To escape the compound, he’d have to overcome a number of seemingly insurmountable odds, chief among them being the fact that he didn’t know where Alex was. And he wasn’t about to leave without her.

  When the priest finished praying, Hawk looked the man in the eyes.

  “Thank you,” Hawk said. “At least there’s one decent soul in this country.”

  The priest nodded. “God be with you, son.”

  Hawk took stock of the situation, his mind whirring with possibilities for escape. With his hands tethered in front of him, he figured he could utilize them
as a weapon if he could get behind a guard and wrap them around his neck. But there were too many of them. He didn’t want to go down without a fight, but there wouldn’t be much of one. A bullet lodged in one of the men’s guns would be lodged in Hawk’s head one way or another.

  Maybe dying in front of a firing squad would have some dignity to it. At least it’s a noble way to go.

  In an instant, his world went dark as a guard secured a blind around Hawk’s head.

  Moments later, he heard Alex’s voice. She shrieked and called for him.

  “Hawk, don’t let them do it,” she cried. “Keep fighting. Keep—”

  All he heard was a whack followed by a thud.

  “Drag her over to the post with him,” a guard said. “I wanted her to watch him die, but it’s better that they do it together. And let them see one another as we shoot them.”

  Hawk’s blindfold was removed in time for him to see Alex’s limp body being dragged across the courtyard next to a wooden post positioned about six feet in front of a concrete wall. A bank of lights illuminated the outdoor space. Bullet holes served as scars from previous executions and an ominous reminder of what was merely minutes away for him and Alex.

  “Talk to me, Alex,” Hawk said. “Wake up.”

  She didn’t say a word.

  Hawk couldn’t hold back the tears as they gushed down his face. The guards secured him to the post with her, laughing at him and mocking the American agents while doing it.

  “Any famous last words?” the Russian officer in charge asked Hawk.

  “This is the price of liberty and freedom,” Hawk said, shouting so all the soldiers could hear him. “May you be so fortunate one day to experience it for yourselves.”

  The man slapped Hawk and then spit in his face. “No one will ever find your body.”

  Hawk took a deep breath and stood up straight. “My life speaks for itself.”

  “But you’re about to speak no more,” the officer said.