Left for Dead

by Sean Parnell

  “Then you know a lot indeed, Mr. Casino. What else?”

  Rockford covered the mouthpiece of the red phone and mouthed to Katie Garland, Are you recording this? She smiled and held up a small “clicker” that looked like a Bluetooth camera trigger. It was a remote-control device for recording everything that happened in the room, as well as all telephone transmissions, hardwired or not. Rockford rarely used the system, as he was convinced that such things always caused the downfalls of kings. But today he was grateful they had it.

  “What else, Mr. President?” The man’s voice now sounded almost smug, as if Rockford were the only one on earth who couldn’t see what was going on. “The chairman sees no other avenue now but to draw the United States into total war. He is fully prepared for millions of casualties, while he believes you are not. It will happen soon. It will happen in ways you cannot imagine.”

  Rockford’s jaw went a little bit slack, then tightened into ripples under his temples as his anger grew. His ire wasn’t a result of being threatened; rather it was a reaction to truth. Indeed, the Chinese would accept millions of deaths in order to dominate the world, while the United States had grown so soft that even with a war still going on in Afghanistan, a single American casualty caused hands to wring as if the Twin Towers in New York had fallen again.

  “Do you have details of these plans, Mr. Casino?”

  “I do, Mr. President, and I will turn them over to you when I am convinced that in turn, you can save my life. As they say in your cinema, don’t call us, we’ll call you.”

  And the line went dead.

  Rockford sat there for a moment, rotating the red phone receiver in his hand, as if wondering if it still had JFK’s handprints on it. Then he looked over at Garland and Lansky, who’d hung theirs back up on the wall.

  “Kate, call over to CIA and get the director over here for a chat. Whoever gave Casino his code name is probably his handler, and I’ll bet that handler’s got a cubicle at Langley. Just a hunch.”

  “Yes, Mr. President.” She wasn’t going to argue that speculation. Rockford had run that shop long enough himself and knew all their tactics, techniques, and procedures.

  “Ted, see if NSA’s got anything on the source,” Rockford said to Lansky. The National Security Agency at Fort Meade monitored all traffic coming in and out of NSF Thurmont. “I doubt they’ll be able to track it down, ’cause it was probably some sort of computer call strained through Tor, but it can’t hurt to ask.” The president meant the Onion Router, a method of disguising computer transmissions and IP addresses. Just the fact that he knew such things always impressed his subordinates.

  “Yes, sir, will do,” Lansky said.

  Rockford got up from the couch and wandered over to the big picture window that looked out over the lower-level terrace and the kidney-shaped swimming pool. Lisa was sitting out there in the sun at one of the small tea tables, twirling her hair with a finger and reading her book. He shoved his big hands in the pockets of his shooting trousers, a baggy pair of 511s, and found two full shotgun shells, which he pulled out and rolled in his fingers like worry beads.

  Maybe this guy Casino was full of crap, or maybe he was real, but one thing Rockford knew for certain. A war with China would be the sort of nightmare that JFK had always feared with the old Soviet Union. Kennedy had managed to avoid it and had saved the country, and probably the entire Earth, from utter devastation. But Rockford had always suspected that what Kennedy did might have been the very thing that had cost the young president his life.

  It didn’t matter. He looked at his beautiful wife and imagined her disappearing in a white-hot cloud of nuclear ash. He’d have to do the very same thing as Kennedy too.

  “And, Lansky, when you’re done with that call,” Rockford said over his shoulder, “you’re fired.”

  Lansky snapped his head up from his cell phone. Katie Garland spun around from where she was just ringing off with the CIA, looked bug-eyed at Lansky, and then at the president’s back.

  “I want you to revive the Program, Ted. And I want you to go over to Q Street and run it. I need eyes and ears I can trust, of which there are few. Get me Alphas back out on the streets overseas, and find me someone to replace you over at 1600. Tell whoever you select that it’s temporary, maybe a year.”

  “Yes, sir,” Lanksy said in something of a hoarse whisper. He’d suffered a heart-pounding shot of adrenaline and needed a moment to recover.

  “And, Ted,” Rockford said, “one more thing.”

  “Mr. President?”

  “Find me Eric Steele.”

  Chapter 5

  Washington, D.C., Dulles International Airport

  In the best-case scenario, Eric Steele expected to be arrested. In the worst case, it wasn’t going to surprise him if he disappeared.

  Everything that he and Goodhill had done overseas had been extralegal, a lawyerly term that, despite its sound, meant way outside the law. They’d used private funds donated by a former government intelligence officer to purloin targeting information and reconnaissance via the computer hacking talents of yet a third former covert employee. Then, they’d acquired lethal gear and munitions and had crossed multiple international lines to assault and terminate multinational individuals, including Russian intelligence assets, without sanction by any sort of official U.S. government body.

  Never mind that the targets were murderous bastards who’d relished slaughtering both innocents and enemies. Steele knew that he and Goodhill were probably screwed.

  From the sprawling lake called Lacul Vidraru in Romania, the two former Program operators had flown to Croatia, but not aboard any sort of commercial aircraft. Five kilometers north of where Steele had plunged into the icy water and swum to the boat, Goodhill had throttled back the racing Riva Rivale to five knots as a helicopter appeared from the midnight sky. It was a silver Russian Mi-8 cargo helicopter, emblazoned just below the cockpit with a large cartoon of the Looney Tunes Road Runner cracking a whip, and it was being piloted by Allie “Whirly” (no known last name), a hotshot blond helo master who’d flown contract jobs for the Program, but was now back to shuttling for oil rigs and timber firms all over the world.

  With his body aching bones to toes, Steele had climbed up into the hovering helo via a slim rope ladder deployed by Allie, and then Goodhill had grabbed the rungs himself, just after killing the speedboat’s engines—after all, a renegade fast boat like that could hurt somebody. From there they’d flown to Split, a lovely little palm-lined airport on the shores of the Black Sea in Croatia where, just before deplaning on the tarmac, Goodhill had shaved off his beard with an electric razor and Allie had grabbed the back of Steele’s head with her pilot-gloved hand and tongue kissed him long and deeply. That was just to remind him about their brief but very steamy affair some years back at Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan, and that a return to that romance was always on the table.

  Steele had gotten the message with a sloppy grin. Goodhill had rolled his eyes.

  They were standing just inside the modest airport terminal hall, dressed once again in civvies supplied by Allie, when Steele turned to Goodhill.

  “Okay, boss man, what’s the plan?”

  Goodhill raised a finger toward the ceiling.

  “Look up, kid.”

  The airport sign, split, was hanging from a pair of chains.

  “Okay, I get it. We’re breaking up here.”

  “Correct,” Goodhill said. “Not that it’s gonna make a difference.”

  “Right,” Steele agreed. “Probably won’t even make it through Customs.”

  “Customs? Probably won’t make it down the jetway at Dulles.”

  Neither of them thought they’d arrive back to the States without serious consequences. In fact, the schedule manager at the Austrian Airlines counter just a few meters behind them was a CIA asset who’d already been informed, by way of NSA intercepts relayed through Langley, that the FSB satcom link between Moscow and Transylvania was going crazy, and
to be on the lookout for freelancing operators of a certain type.

  Well, Steele and Goodhill were definitely those types. One looked like John Krasinski, that actor on the Jack Ryan TV series, but harder and without the beard. The other looked like Robert Duvall and Ed Harris had birthed an angry muscular child, with a telltale parachute riser scar running down from behind his right ear. The desk manager texted Paris station on an encrypted iPhone. Paris called Virginia, and it took all of fifty-two seconds for the CIA’s Directorate of Analysis to call Ted Lansky at the White House and ask, very politely, “Um, sir? Aren’t these guys your former Program boys?”

  So Steele and Goodhill grabbed different flights back to Dulles. But they knew it wouldn’t matter. The jig was most likely up.

  By the time Steele got to Dulles it was high noon, six hours behind Europe, and he’d been traveling nonstop for twenty hours and was pretty raw. He had no luggage, just a backpack so he wouldn’t look completely suspect, plus his civilian passport, a slim wallet with some phony pocket litter, the Amex card supplied by Thorn McHugh, and a couple of hundred euros. The sun was shining through the Boeing’s windows and painting the tarmac’s shimmering fumes, and he took his time deplaning and strolling down the long jetway, and had a short-lived fantasy that nothing at all might happen here.

  He didn’t even make it to passport control. Two very large men were waiting for him at the gate, dressed in identical black suits and matching Oakley sunglasses, though slightly different Macy’s ties. They didn’t say a word to him. He didn’t speak to them either. One of them took the lead, Steele fell in behind him, and the second muscle picked up the rear. But Steele had no illusions there were only two of them. He had a reputation. There were probably six more security on the flanks, dressed in Hawaiian shirts or college football jerseys, packing Tasers in touristy butt packs. They wouldn’t draw firearms here inside Dulles, but if they had to, they’d give him enough voltage to lower his IQ.

  The point man nodded at two cops flanking a restricted exit door to the tarmac. The cops nodded back and he pushed the emergency bar, but the alarm had already been disabled by arrangement. They all trotted down a gangway into the blazing light, and Steele thought about how it was barely spring but that season always rushed by.

  I just love Washington summers . . . not. Well, maybe I’ll spend this one someplace balmy, like Devil’s Island . . . and the next one . . . and the one after that.

  Two large black Suburbans were waiting on the sticky tarmac, with heat waves rising up and blurring their wheel wells. Steele’s leading goon opened the rear door of the first one, Steele slipped inside into the air-conditioned gloom, and the door slammed hard and the locks banged home. There was an inch-thick Plexiglas divider between him and the driver, and he squinted at the profile of the driver’s passenger. It was Miles Turner, an African American former Special Forces officer the size of a linebacker, with five combat tours and two bronze stars in his 201 file. Turner was the former chief of security for the Program, and Steele hadn’t seen him in nearly nine months.

  “Hey, Miles,” Steele said. “Glad to see you got yourself another gig.”

  “Shut up, Eric,” Turner said without turning his head.

  That didn’t bode well for a jolly afternoon, but Steele just raised an eyebrow, slunk back in the seat, and took the opportunity to doze. He figured if they were heading somewhere like the Central Detention Facility in Southeast Washington, D.C., it would take at least an hour in midday traffic. But after a while, a large pothole bounced him awake, and he saw they weren’t headed toward D Street at all. They were cruising along Q Street Northwest, past Hank’s Oyster Bar, a place where he and Meg Harden had mooned over one another on multiple occasions before he’d screwed that up, and heading toward . . . No, that can’t be.

  Sure enough, they took a left between Sixteenth and Seventeenth Streets, and descended into an underground garage, right past a very obvious sign that said closed until further notice. It was the garage that had serviced the Program’s new headquarters, before the whole thing had been forced to shut down. Charles, the Bermuda-born, English-accented, and well-armed parking attendant, wasn’t there anymore, nor was there another vehicle anywhere.

  The Suburbans parked in the dusty darkness. Steele’s door opened and he got out. The rear door of the second Suburban opened and Goodhill exited, stretching as if he’d enjoyed a gourmet meal and a delicious nap.

  “What time’d you get in?” Steele asked him.

  “’Bout three hours before you. Spent it in that tank playing Tetris.”

  “Very productive.”

  “I pinged you on Instagram with something,” Goodhill said. “Didn’t see it?”

  “Nope. What was it?”

  “Recipe for New Orleans Creole gumbo.”

  “Nah, I’m a northern boy.”

  “Yankee trash.”

  “All right, wiseasses,” Miles Turner snarled. “Let’s move.”

  Turner headed up the ramp to the street, with Steele and Goodhill trailing behind, followed by the muscle who’d greeted both men at the airport. The Surburban drivers, who were just as large, joined in to further discourage the fresh arrivals from bolting. Outside on the street the troop turned left, and Turner pulled a key from his belt and opened a set of large glass doors beneath a sign that still said graceland import exports.

  “Is this like Law and Order?” Steele said as he went inside. “Where they take the perps back to the scene of the crime?”

  Goodhill shot a finger eastward.

  “The scene of the crime’s that way, kid, about six thousand klicks.”

  “You two really think you’re funny, don’t ya?” Turner sneered.

  “We wanted to be comedians,” Steele said, “but our humor died from Covid-19.”

  “Stand in front of the camera.”

  Merry, the comely young blond Program receptionist who’d once sat there behind the substantial desk beneath a Robert Salmon maritime painting, had been replaced by an electronic eyeball on a tripod. Steele and Goodhill took up side-by-side positions in front of the lens. After a moment the large steel elevator behind them hissed open, and they all squeezed inside like seven beefy men in a meat locker. When the door opened onto the second floor, the submarine chamber meant for security, with all its bells and whistles and electronic locks, was no longer there. The Program was dead and there was nothing there to defend.

  Both Steele’s and Goodhill’s tendency to confront stress with flippant banter dissipated quickly when they saw the mess that had once been the Program’s tactical operations center. When the organization had first been forced to move from its secret location at the White House—after having been ensconced there since just after World War II—no one had thought those accommodations would ever be matched by real estate anywhere else. Yet Mike Pitts, then the Program’s director of operations, had wheeled and dealed and nagged for a substantial slice of the black budget. The TOC had been turned into something out of a Hollywood set designer’s imagination: slate floors with tunneled power lines, lush carpets, workstations with pneumatic VariDesks, a monster eight-paneled digital display, four compartmentalized “tanks” off the main floor for ultrasecret analysis work, a gourmet kitchen, a security armory, perfect climate control, and a fully secure compartmented information facility, or SCIF.

  But now Pitts was dead, and Steele thought that the vision before him was serving as a metaphor for his former commander’s tragic demise. Almost a year had passed since “Snipe” and Millennial Crude had hacked into the Program’s control systems and trashed the whole place, and it looked like the government had just surrendered, walked out and locked the doors. All the servers were burned out, but the computers still sat there, gathering dust. The big multisectional flat screen on the northern wall had spider cracks down the glass display, because when the Russians had hijacked the feed, one of Ralphy Persko’s geeks had gotten so fed up she’d hurled a coffee tumbler at it. Everything was musty and damp, b
ecause Snipe’s finale had included turning the overhead sprinklers on full force. The faux mahogany walls were stained, and so was the expensive carpet. It was sad to look at, and it stank.

  “Get the hell in here.”

  Steele and Goodhill turned to see Ted Lansky, the president’s chief of staff, standing inside the ruined SCIF at the head of the once perfectly polished conference table. But he wasn’t just standing, he was pacing, with his suit jacket off, white shirtsleeves rolled up, tie loose and flipped over one shoulder, and that ever-present pipe jammed in his teeth.

  The two men walked in, Miles Turner yanked the door closed behind them, and Lansky glared at them and opened fire.

  “Fucking Title 18 U.S. Code 922!” He pulled his pipe from his mouth and jabbed it across the room like a German Luger. “‘It shall be unlawful for any person, except a licensed manufacturer or dealer, to ship or transport any firearm or ammunition in interstate or foreign commerce.’” He was holding a sheaf of papers, obviously compiled by some sort of prosecuting attorney, and he tossed the first one up in the air and went on. “Title 18 U.S. Code 1952, interstate and foreign travel in aid of racketeering enterprises! ‘Whoever travels in foreign commerce with intent to commit any crime of violence, and if death results, shall be imprisoned for any term of years, or for life.’”

  He flung that document up in the air as well, where it spun to the floor like one of those helicopter seeds from a fir tree, and then he dropped the papers and slammed both palms on the table.

  “Are you two out of your freaking minds? Do you have any goddamn idea what’s been going on since you pulled off your little payback play in Romania? Did you even, for one seminormal minute in your very minuscule minds, consider how this might affect the president, and national security?”