“What does the chief of staff do?”
“He basically runs the White House operations and staff. He’s the gatekeeper to the president. He controls her schedule and coordinates who has access to her in terms of meetings. Some chiefs of staff historically had a lot of clout and some had none. Scallow is one of the more powerful chiefs the White House has seen. Even the directors of the three-letter intel shops and the chairman of the joint chiefs has to get Scallow’s approval of their agenda to see President Mallory.”
Carl nodded. “Has the intern been questioned?”
“He’s missing too.”
“So the intern is likely dead and either Martine Scallow knew that information also and was killed, or he is the source.” Carl paused. “And El Patron was afraid of someone equally powerful in his government. The Triad has to be very powerful to scare a veteran general.”
Carl thought for a moment, then said, “Is Scallow powerful enough to manipulate the Secret Service?”
“Manipulate? No. He doesn’t have that kind of control. To manipulate the Secret Service would require him to enlist the director or assistant director. However, if someone like Scallow had a cooperative Secret Service agent providing him information, then yes, he could pull it off.”
“Sounds like this whole thing couldn’t be just one person. Sounds more like a conspiracy, but who would benefit from kidnapping the president’s daughter? Who in the government would take such a huge risk by providing this kind of intel to the Triad?”
Palmer said, “That’s your line of business, right? Investment 101. High risk must equal high reward or why make the investment, right?”
“High reward,” Carl pondered El Patron’s disclosure before he died about the Triad needing a monetary return on their investment. He recalled his own conclusion that this entire event must be about more than money.
He said, “So what if they know we’re coming?”
“Mmm-hmmm. What do you want to do?”
Carl looked out the window again, but he wasn’t seeing the landscape far below. He was instead formulating a plan.
“Let’s give ‘em a head-fake.”
Chapter 12
1130 hours MST Friday
Albuquerque, NM
Costas Drake and Vicente Orizaga again sat on opposite sides of the tiny hotel room dining table. Blackout curtains were in place and no lights lit the room. They had barely moved except to use the bathroom and to order out for food. The room smelled like a mixture of pepperoni pizza and Chinese takeout.
In the adjoining two motel rooms, the twenty-man Unit was similarly camped out. Everyone was under strict orders to remain sequestered in the rooms. Drake didn’t want to risk any of his team being seen in public. The other rooms were crowded and uncomfortable, but he knew all of his men had endured far worse during combat operations.
He and Orizaga hunched over the satellite cell phone and strained to hear Rainman’s electronic voice through the speaker. The volume was turned so low that both men had to concentrate hard.
“Your team at the Chihuahua airport has the terrorist in custody?”
“No, sir,” Drake said. “His plane went down in some mountainous ravines about eighty miles north of the airport.”
“Went down.”
There was no question mark in his voice when Rainman repeated the words with slow deliberation. Drake got the feeling his boss was deciding whether or not to believe the report. Or perhaps the man was revising his mission plan based on the news of Johnson’s demise. Fifteen seconds passed before Rainman spoke again.
“This could work to our favor. Proceed as planned with your operation against your local targets tonight, but disregard Mr. Garcia. With Johnson out of the picture, Garcia is irrelevant. Recover Johnson’s body from the wreckage and plant it onsite as planned. We can still blame our operations on the terrorist. The fact that he’s dead is icing on the cake. Questions?”
Drake looked across the table at Orizaga who shook his head.
“None.”
“Good,” Rainman said. “Mr. Orizaga. Thank you for personally supervising the delivery of the product and its formula, and for financing Mr. Drake and his Unit. Providing that layer of isolation between my planners and Mr. Drake’s operations has ensured there is no traceable financial connections to what we are about to do.”
A warning tingle sizzled up and down Drake’s spine. With such an audacious plan, operational security was paramount, and the possibility that Rainman would consider Orizaga and himself to be loose ends was a very real scenario.
Rainman continued. “Please proceed back to Mexico and arrange an in-person meeting for me with the Triad to formalize our partnership three days from now. At that point, you will be a very wealthy man. The Triad will control Mexico and all of Central America and they will share in the control of the rest of the western hemisphere.
“Just to be thorough, I think it’s appropriate to destroy all records pertaining to this transaction. Understood?”
“Si, señor. I understand. This will be done.”
Rainman disconnected the call on his end and Drake blew out a breath he’d been holding for some time.
Orizaga said, “Do you think it was wise to omit the fact that the search parties have not located the wreckage yet?”
“It has only been an hour since the crash. Besides, I thought he was going to bite our heads off because of this new snag in the plan.”
“He still may if we don’t find the body.”
Chapter 13
1135 hours MST Friday
Nuevo Casas Grandes, Mexico
Carl disembarked the plane in a closed hangar building at the municipal airport in Nuevo Casas Grandes. It was the same airport he and his mercs drove by yesterday morning on the way to Alfonso Reyes’s compound to rescue the president’s daughter. The airport superintendent stood at the foot of the starboard door stairway, smiling widely. Carl held his twenty-five pound duffel out, but didn’t let go when the airfield controller grabbed it greedily.
“This is one million dollars, US,” Carl said. “You have a family, right? A wife and some children?”
The superintendent had a confused look on his face and responded in heavily accented English. “What does that have to do with anything?”
Carl suddenly made his voice hard. “I just want to make sure you understand what will happen to them if you fail to make sure my plane stays safe. No police and no army. If I encounter any surprises I’ll take all of your family from you, including your in-laws and cousins. Even family you never knew you had. Everybody.”
Carl’s assumption was that in a country where drug lords like Alfonso Reyes and high-ranking generals like El Patron wielded substantial power and control, a small airport superintendent in the sparsely populated part of the country would be accustomed and susceptible to such threats.
“Am I clear?” Carl said.
“Si, señor. You are very clear. There will be no surprises.”
“Thank you.” He let go of the duffel. “Our rental car is ready?”
The man nodded toward the office a dozen paces away. “Through the office, there is an exit door. Your car waits there.”
Agent Palmer had come down the stairs behind him, so he followed her into the office at the near end of the big hangar. His legs were still a bit shaky after the pilot’s crazy maneuver. With Palmer’s approval, Carl had told the pilot he wanted to disappear from radar and land at the municipal airport instead of Chihuahua.
“Piece of cake,” Reichert had said.
In the time it took for Carl and Agent Palmer to get back to their seats and buckle in, the colonel had put in an emergency distress call. Something about failed electrical and hydraulic systems. Halfway through his transmission, he’d rolled the Gulfstream into a steep nosedive.
As Carl had watched the ground approach much too fast, he’d regretted his change of tactics. Before the pilot pulled out of the maneuver, they were so close to the ground that Carl co
uld see individual farmhouses, trucks, and even shrubs. Right before the plane plowed into the desert, the pilot pulled up in a maneuver that Carl had been certain would tear the wings right off the plane. The plane had leveled out thirty feet above the ground, still moving at tremendous speed.
Carl hollered up into the cockpit. “Damn, Colonel! Where’d you learn how to fly? In the Navy?” He’d swallowed his queasiness and glanced over at the agent seated beside him.
She smiled. “You okay?”
“You enjoyed that, didn’t you?”
Agent Palmer had shrugged. “Part of the business. But we can go back up and grab your stomach if you want.”
Carl had grunted and looked out the window as the near-barren landscape flashed by beneath the plane. “Very funny, Miss Bunny.”
Now the Gulfstream was stuffed into a hangar where it would be serviced, refueled, and kept hidden from prying eyes in orbit, if there were any satellites searching for them.
Carl wasn’t just being paranoid. He had ordered the change in the game plan to keep whoever might be tracking them off balance. He felt ten times more exposed in this mission than in the relatively uncomplicated operation to rescue the president’s daughter. This time, he felt like he was playing chess against an unknown adversary whose capabilities he could only guess at. Maybe the pilots and Agent Palmer felt secure in their technology, but Carl had no such feelings of comfort.
They departed the Nuevo Casas Grandes municipal airport a little after eleven. Carl let Palmer drive their rental car. The SUV was a small, modern crossover with all the bells and whistles, like navigation, an iPod dock, and even seat warmers. It tried to be a cool, young-person sporty car and a small-family, sleek minivan at the same time. The back seat lacked legroom, but co-pilot David Blick occupied the rear seat by himself and he was not a big man. Colonel Reichert had remained at the municipal airport to supervise the servicing of the plane.
Carl studied Agent Palmer while she drove, admiring the way her intense blue eyes kept scanning the land to her front and sides. He had noticed her constant eye movement when he first got on the plane and had tried to mimic her actions. Now, every fifteen seconds or so, she glanced in the mirrors—left mirror, center mirror, right mirror, then center again, then left again.
She seemed completely aware of her entire environment, always examining and noticing things, so Carl felt safe in her presence. He was driven by a need for justice or vengeance—he wasn’t sure which—but he knew without doubt that the mission would succeed or fail because of Palmer’s capabilities and not his own. Even though she was dressed in civilian clothes, he could tell by looking at her and by the way she moved, she was dangerous. In fact, she looked no less lethal in civvies than she’d looked in her black commando outfit two days ago.
As observant as she was, it shouldn’t have surprised him that she noticed him looking at her. When she glanced at him, he felt a curious mixture of anger, attraction, and intrigue. He wondered how such a woman had become a deadly government agent. He wondered what she was before.
A couple of hours into the drive, Palmer let Blick drive and told Carl to join her in the back seat. She pulled her black canvas carry-on from the tiny trunk space behind the bench seat. When she opened it, Carl saw that it contained a variety of weapons and high-tech gear. She pulled a padded box from the bag and gave him a comm device. It was the same kind of ear device he’d seen her wearing in Virginia.
Carl was amazed by how tiny the in-ear communicators were and how securely they fit into the ear. They had rubber barbs that held them in place in the ear canal, but were so comfortable he didn’t even feel its presence. Despite their small size, the devices were able to transmit and receive encrypted signals from a satellite that she said was dedicated to their mission. It was parked in a geostationary orbit a couple hundred miles above Mexico.
She tapped a couple of links on her tablet computer and young Mr. Garcia came online immediately, as did a man named Agent Peoples at Palmer’s TER op center, somewhere in Virginia.
Carl watched Agent Palmer work her tech magic as she coordinated the various support personnel. Her efficiency calmed his jitters that seemed to increase as they approached their destination.
He recalled her calming effect on him when he’d thought he was going to lose it after waking from the nightmare. Indeed, at that instant of waking on the plane, he didn’t know quite where he was. He thought he was back at the scene of Mark’s murder and instead of Agent Klipser choreographing the hit and Alfonso Reyes pulling the trigger, somehow, for an instant, it became Agent Palmer doing the deed. In that instant, he wanted nothing more than to kill her. But, he quickly realized she wasn’t the person to bear his wrath. She seemed to know what he was feeling and he could see an understanding in her eyes. The touch of her hand on his arm had calmed him. If not for that tender gesture, he would have tried to act on his impulse. That was how wired and out of control he was.
It wouldn’t have mattered, he knew, because he sensed she was more than capable of defending herself. A female Navy SEAL…damn!
He would have wrecked the tenuous truce allowing them to conduct the operation together. It would have compromised the mission, and the mission was all that mattered.
And, he would have gotten his ass kicked at thirty thousand feet... by a girl!
Carl removed the communicator from his ear. “Thank you, Nancy,” he whispered. “For stabilizing me on the plane. It helped, and I need that kind of help.”
She looked at him and nodded, but seemed to have trouble holding his gaze. In that moment, he understood the struggle she was facing. He’d seen that look before, never in battle, but in life, in relationships, in sports. It was the look of someone who doesn’t want to hurt your feelings, but knows their words or actions would do exactly that.
The woman had orders to kill him if he deviated from, or jeopardized, the TER’s mission objectives. Of that he had no doubt. In fact, he accepted the reality of her dilemma. She was conflicted because she liked him. He could tell. It may not be a romantic attraction, he thought, but it was a connection beyond what was required of the mission.
He gave her his Yoda voice. “Sense the conflict within you, I do.” She looked away and he said, “We’re both killers, you and I. But the difference between me and your kind is that I know who my enemies are. It’s clear and simple for me, and the bad guys don’t change on the whims of politics or mission objectives. I know who I have to kill and I don’t have a problem doing it. I don’t take orders regarding it, so I have no conflicts about it.”
“I know you’re not my enemy right now, Carl. But what about later? What about a year from now?” She let him consider the implications of her words. “There were half a dozen people involved in the op that killed Mark. The president and Aaron and I…we all made the decision. What happens next year, or next decade, when you decide we are the enemy?”
Carl felt suddenly sobered as she finally broached the subject. He’d wanted—needed—to talk about it, but he hadn’t been able to find the inner strength. In a way, it was a relief that she did it for him. He looked away and sucked in a deep breath and let it out slowly.
“Believe me, I’ve run those same questions through my mind hundreds of times. Thousands of times. I blame Aaron McGrath more than you or the president for what happened to my son, and I keep trying and failing to find some other outcome to the last thirty days. I keep looking for some other decision that he could have made, some other thing I could have done, where Mark doesn’t die, given what we knew at the time. But I just can’t see it.” He clasped his palms together and worked his fingers. “I’m just going to have to find a way to live with it.”
“But, can you live with working with me, with thinking every time you look at me that I’m partly to blame?”
He looked her in the eyes and said, “I guess I’ll have to, won’t I?” He lowered his gaze again and said, “You know, Nancy, what really hurts is knowing that the person who’s really to
blame is me.”
She looked confused and Carl nodded. “I baited Agent Klipser to get him to kill me because I knew the torture would never end. I’d never have been able to give him the information he needed, and he’d never have accepted that he had the wrong guy. And he almost did kill me. But if I hadn’t defied him, Mark would still be alive. If I had held out on that table for another day, maybe two, Klipser would have finally realized I wasn’t the guy. He’d have had to since that’s when the first ransom demand came in.” He went back to twiddling his fingers. “But I wasn’t strong enough.”
Palmer nodded. “Carl, a Navy SEAL couldn’t have survived what you went through. That’s why we developed the new interrogation regime…to break operators who might have been trained to resist harsh interrogations.”
He looked at her. “So why didn’t you stop the torture? Why didn’t you reach the only possible conclusion and decide I was innocent?”
She looked him dead in the eyes and said, “Because we thought you were Alfonso Reyes. Because the odds of two unrelated men looking exactly alike were too astronomical to believe. Because you both even had the same kind of dental surgery. The only real difference between you two is that he wore glasses and you’ve had laser eye surgery.” She looked out the window, but Carl knew she wasn’t seeing the passing landscape. When she looked back at him, her eyes had watered a bit, and that surprised him. “Carl, I’m truly sorry for what we did to you. To your son.”
“I know.” He sighed. “So how do you do it, Nancy? You’ve been through what I’m going through. I can see it in your eyes. How do you pretend it doesn’t hurt until after your mission is complete? How do you pack all that stuff away and ignore the pain and the anger?”
They talked about emotional compartmentalization until they reached the compound, but Carl got the feeling Palmer’s methods involved mental trickery rather than mental toughness. She talked about building vaults inside the mind and locking away contents until he was at a time and place where he could give the emotions due consideration. She talked about pretending the event—the pain—belonged to someone else or never happened. She talked about being on the outside of the event looking in, being clinical about the event, analyzing it from a spectator’s perspective.
American Terrorist Trilogy Page 40
