Brad Thor Collectors' Edition #3

by Brad Thor

  When Elise tried to reply, Holland interrupted her. “If you hate the guy so much, why don’t you just resign like the others did? Why do this?”

  “I don’t hate the president. I voted for him. But that doesn’t mean we should look the other way if a crime has been committed. We’re law enforcement officers.”

  “Whose job it is to protect the president,” replied Holland, “not to solve crimes. We’re in protection, not detection.”

  “Max, listen—” she began.

  “No, Elise, you listen. Nikki Hale got drunk, she got behind the wheel, and she caused a horrible accident. She took four other people along with her. It was tragic, but it’s over. Don’t pick at the scab.”

  “Max, I can help head this thing off and save us all a lot of trouble and embarrassment, but I can’t do that if you won’t cooperate.”

  “Hale’s dead, Elise. She’s the one responsible for what happened. Case closed.”

  “You’re wrong about that.”

  “How do you know?” Holland asked. “How do you know there are going to be subpoenas? Who’s behind all this?”

  “Are you going to help me or not?”

  “That depends. You’ve got to give me something first.”

  Elise reached for the remnants of her Diet Coke and weighed what to tell him. “The family Hale plowed into and killed—”

  “The Colemans.”

  She nodded. “Their only living relatives were Charlie Coleman’s parents. They started a lawsuit, but eventually agreed to an out of court settlement, supposedly paid for by Stephanie Gallo.”

  “Big deal. Gallo’s free to do what she wants with her money. And why wouldn’t she want to make the lawsuit disappear? She had a lot invested in Alden’s campaign, and the drinking that night happened at her fund raiser, on her property. With a bank account like hers, I would have done the same. Plus, with Nikki Hale dead, there’s no one to charge with a crime. And when the elder Colemans folded their tents and went home, that was the end of any civil suits too.”

  “Not necessarily. There’s someone else who can bring a suit for what happened that night.”

  “Who?”

  “Sheryl Coleman’s business partner.”

  “I don’t understand how you know all of this,” said Holland.

  “I was invited to talk to her.”

  “Invited by whom?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “The hell it doesn’t. This smells like a political hatchet job. Who’s putting you up to this?”

  Elise resented the insinuation. “Nobody’s putting me up to this.”

  “Then why are you doing it?”

  “Because it’s my job.”

  “No it isn’t. Let it go, Elise.”

  “What are you so worried about?”

  Holland drained the last of his beer and then held the empty glass up to get the bartender’s attention again. “What I’m worried about,” he said as he set it back onto the bar, “is how the Secret Service could be made to look in all of this.”

  “Why should that matter? Has the Secret Service done something wrong?”

  Holland waited until the bartender had set down his new Bud Light and walked away before responding. “You said you could do the Secret Service a favor. How?”

  “I might be able to convince Sheryl Coleman’s business partner not to pursue the lawsuit.”

  “So might Stephanie Gallo and her mighty checkbook.”

  “Not this woman,” said Elise. “I’ve met her. This isn’t about money.”

  “You know,” he said as he raised his glass, but stopped just before it reached his mouth, “it’s funny how you just happened to overhear something between the president and Gallo and now all of a sudden this woman wants to bring a lawsuit. I’d think long and hard about what you’re doing, Elise.”

  “I have, Max. Believe me. So about that night?”

  Holland took another long sip of beer and set the glass back on the bar. “Are you sure about this?”

  Elise nodded.

  “Yes, after the dinner that night, the president was with Nikki Hale.”

  “What were they doing?”

  “I wouldn’t know. Unlike some agents, I don’t eavesdrop on the president.”

  Elise let the remark slide. “What do you think was going on?”

  “I’m not going to speculate.”

  “There was a lot of talk that they might have been having an affair.”

  “Is that a question?” asked Holland.

  “Yes, it’s a question.”

  “You worked his detail. What do you think?”

  “I was an advance person for most of the campaign. If there was anything between them, I didn’t notice it.”

  “Like I said,” replied Holland. “I’m not going to speculate.”

  “Fine. How long were they together after the party that night?”

  “About forty-five minutes.”

  “Were they drinking? Do you think Alden could be held liable for her condition that night?”

  “First of all,” said Holland as he raised his beer to take another swig, “I’m not an attorney. And second, I think Nikki Hale bears the ultimate responsibility for her condition. You remember what her reputation was.”

  Elise looked at him. “I do, and I also know what people have said about Alden. I need to know you’re not covering for him, that this isn’t some wink-wink, boys-will-be-boys sort of thing.”

  “The man’s personal life is his business. You can say what you want about Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe, but we all know how Clinton’s affair blew up in his face. We also know how the Service came away from that with black eyes. Morale is at an all-time low. We don’t need a scandal and we don’t need agents having to testify about what they saw or didn’t see.

  “I’ll tell you this, though. I don’t care how many Americans love this new president, his administration has gotten off to a very rocky start. A mistress would be bad for his image, but a dead one would be fatal.”

  Elise thought about that remark for a moment before asking, “Did you see Nikki Hale leave that night?”

  “I saw her and the president part company. I didn’t see her leave the estate.”

  “Had they been in his bedroom?”

  “No, Gallo’s library study.”

  “Were they alone?”

  Holland nodded.

  “What about the drinking?”

  “You already asked me that,” he replied.

  “And you didn’t answer. Had they been drinking?”

  “Maybe.”

  Elise studied him. “Maybe?”

  “I wasn’t in the room.”

  “Max, her blood alcohol content was off the charts. You’re telling me she wasn’t bombed when she left?”

  “Maybe she had been drinking with him and it just hadn’t hit her yet. All I know is that she didn’t look pie-eyed to me when she left.”

  Elise was confused. “Then what happened?”

  “She made another stop before leaving the estate that evening.”

  “She did? Where?” asked Elise.

  “That, you’re going to have to figure out for yourself,” replied Holland as he stood up from the bar and polished off the rest of his beer.

  “Hold on a second, Max. You can’t just leave it like that. If I’ve got to go around asking every agent who was on duty that night what they saw or might have seen, word’s going to get out.”

  Holland hadn’t thought of that. Reluctantly, he threw her a bone. “Talk to Hutch.”

  “Hutchinson? But he was on Mrs. Alden’s detail that night.”

  Reaching over, Holland collected his forty dollars off the bar. “Thanks for dinner. If you want to chat about this some more, I’ll expect to see a process server on my doorstep.”

  As he disappeared into the crowd and exited the Town Tavern, Elise thought about what he had said. A mistress would be very bad for the president’s image, and a dead mistress would be fatal.
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  CHAPTER 33

  SPINGHAR MOUNTAINS, AFGHANISTAN

  SUNDAY

  The cluster of mud brick buildings abutted a summer grazing pasture not far from the Tora Bora cave complex. Even when the roads were clear it was an extremely rough ride. Now, with snow and ice still on the ground at this altitude, it took Mullah Massoud an extra hour to get there, which didn’t do much to improve his mood.

  Yelling for his men to get out of the room, he slammed his AK-47 down on the table and let loose on his Russian counterpart, who was sitting on the floor having tea. “I told you to make it look like an accident, you idiot!”

  “Calm down,” said Simonov.

  “How dare you tell me to calm down!” roared the Taliban commander.

  The Russian lifted the kettle and poured another cup. “We’ll have tea and we will talk.”

  Massoud took two steps onto the rug and kicked the teacups across the floor. His face was flushed and his eyes were bulging. Simonov had never seen him like this before.

  “My village will have to go to war now because of you!”

  Quietly, Simonov stood, retrieved the cups, and brought them back to the rug.

  The Taliban commander was furious.

  “You and I have seen too many battles together to have our friendship end this way, Massoud,” said the Russian. “I am inviting you one more time to sit and have tea with me.”

  Removing his boots, Massoud sat down on the rug. As the Russian refilled the cups, he spoke. “Your brother is not wearing the shoes I gave him. Why not?”

  “Because I took them from him,” snapped the Taliban commander. “It was to be his contribution to the debt paid for breaking Asadoulah Badar’s jaw.”

  “Well, you can give them back to him.”

  Massoud snorted. “I might as well. Shoes will no longer cover the debt.”

  “No. That’s not the reason,” said Simonov. “Your brother caught Asadoulah fondling the American woman. Zwak warned him repeatedly but he wouldn’t stop. He was protecting her.”

  “How do you know this?” demanded Massoud.

  “The woman told me herself.”

  “Why? What were you doing even speaking to her?”

  “I received an email from the mother. Four questions asking for proof of life. I needed the answers to prove that we still had her alive.”

  “Elam Badar’s son lied,” said the Taliban commander as it all sank in.

  “It would appear so.”

  “And we killed him.”

  “Correction,” said the Russian. “I killed him, but as far as his village is concerned it is the same thing.”

  “You also killed two other men. Tell me what happened.”

  Simonov explained how he had carried out Elam Badar’s killing exactly as they had planned, but that he had been seen by two other men from his village and had been forced to kill them as well.

  “How did you kill them?” asked Massoud.

  “One round each to the head.”

  “That was very rash.”

  “I had no choice,” said the Russian. “I had to act quickly.”

  The Taliban commander shook his head. “And the bodies?” he asked.

  “They won’t stay hidden forever.”

  Massoud signaled for Simonov to continue. The Russian explained how he had returned to Massoud’s village as quickly as possible, but when he discovered that the Taliban commander was not there, he decided to act.

  Gathering several of Massoud’s best men, he loaded gear and equipment into three trucks, collected Zwak and the American woman, whom he disguised in burkas to make it look as if they were traveling with two women instead of just one, and then headed for their fallback location. If Elam Badar’s family or anyone in his village tried to retaliate by alerting the American military or Afghan forces, it would do little good at this point.

  It was a small consolation, and the Taliban commander massaged his temples with the heels of his hands. “Now that two other men from his village have been killed, Elam Badar’s death will no longer be viewed as an accident.”

  “I agree.”

  “And all you want to do is to sit here and have tea?” demanded Massoud, his anger rising again.

  “Have tea and discuss my plan,” said Simonov.

  “Will your plan prevent my village from going to war?”

  The Russian smiled. “No. But it will prevent Elam Badar’s.”

  CHAPTER 34

  BUTKHAK, AFGHANISTAN

  Twenty kilometers east of Kabul on the Jalalabad Road was the village of Butkhak. Of the several small NGOs working in this village, only a handful could afford security. One such group was Clean Water International. Though they weren’t one of Gallagher’s richest clients, they were one of the steadiest, and that meant a lot to ISS’s bottom line.

  Baba G liked to joke that instead of referring to themselves as CWI, a more appropriate acronym for their organization would have been PSH, short for pot-smoking hippies.

  Afghanistan was awash in vacant real estate, and Gallagher had seen an opportunity for ISS in being able to provide not only physical security for NGOs in the form of armed manpower, but also safe places for them to be housed.

  Most Afghans didn’t know the first thing about marketing to the Westerners who were flooding into their country. All they knew was that if they could land even the smallest of fishes, they could make big money.

  Through one of Gallagher’s many Afghan contacts, he’d been offered a sizable, walled property in Butkhak. The area was booming with reconstruction projects, and he knew it was only a matter of time before he found a tenant. The main house also had something he’d never seen before in Afghanistan—a Jacuzzi. Gallagher had agreed to represent it on the spot.

  What had sold him on the compound had also sold the pot-smoking hippies. From the moment they had seen the Jacuzzi, they were hooked. It was only later that he realized that the property also included a dilapidated greenhouse, which the hippies gladly repaired out of funds from their own pockets. Though the rent and security package Gallagher had sold them was likely a tad more than their office somewhere in Europe had budgeted, the money always arrived on time in Gallagher’s account every month.

  There were several structures on the property, one of which Baba G had excluded from the hippies’ lease. It was here, inside a long, stone, garagelike structure, that he and Hoyt kept their most important investment.

  Gallagher referred to it as the “Golden Conex,” and as he unlocked the twenty-foot-long shipping container he quoted a line from Willie Wonka, “A small step for mankind, but a giant step for us.”

  Harvath let out a whistle. The ISS team had put together quite an impressive collection of small arms. In addition to crates of fragmentation grenades and RPGs, there were neatly stacked rows of battle rifles, submachine guns, and shotguns. Along one wall a pegboard had been mounted and from it hung a myriad of pistols. There were belt-fed weapons along the back, crates of ammunition, boxes of spare magazines, as well as an armorer’s bench. It was like stumbling into Santa’s workshop.

  Leaning right up front was a pink M-16 covered in Hello Kitty stickers. “Who does this belong to?” he asked.

  “Oh, that?” replied Gallagher. “That’s Hoyt’s.”

  “Come on.”

  “It’s a surprise for Mei’s birthday.”

  “He better hope she loves it,” said Harvath with a shake of his head as he picked up a considerably more manly LaRue Tactical Stealth OSR—Optimized Sniper Rifle. It had a SureFire suppressor, Magpul Precision Rifle Stock, Harris bipod, and a Leuopold Scope.

  “I’m running a special on that one today,” said Gallagher.

  “Oh, yeah?” replied Harvath as he got comfortable with the weapon in his hands. “How much?”

  “For you, mister, yak dollar.”

  “Sold,” said Harvath, setting it aside. “How about these?” he asked, pointing to several Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine guns.

  “Tho
se are particularly fun. They scare the shit out of the Afghans, especially when you attach the suppressors.”

  “Why?”

  “Most of them haven’t seen that kind of weapon before. Plus, I don’t have to tell you how good they are for CQB work.”

  No, he didn’t. Harvath had done a lot of close quarters battle with the MP5 and knew it was an exceptional weapon. “I’ll take it,” he said.

  “Take two,” joked Baba G with a wave of his hand. “They’re small.”

  “I think one will be fine.”

  As they decided on the rest of the gear they would need, there was the sound of tires crunching on gravel outside. Harvath looked at his watch. Daniel Fontaine was right on time.

  He stepped outside and greeted the former Canadian counterterrorism operative as he climbed out of his truck. “Did you get everything?” he asked.

  “You owe me two hundred dollars,” said Fontaine as he shook Harvath’s hand.

  Harvath looked at him. “On top of the stack of cash I gave you in Kabul?”

  “I got stopped at a checkpoint on the way out of town,” said the Canadian with a shrug. “It was either one hundred bucks and they take half of the stuff, or two hundred and we call it even. I decided to call it even.”

  “Good choice,” replied Harvath as he followed him around to the back of his SUV.

  Fontaine lifted the tailgate and threw back the blanket covering the cargo area. Underneath were several cases of beer and hard liquor.

  “And Hoyt said all your late nights in Kabul would never amount to anything,” stated Harvath.

  “Obviously, he was wrong,” replied Fontaine.

  “Obviously.”

  “But wait,” said the Canadian as he stepped away from the tailgate and over to the rear passenger-side door, “there’s more.”

  Harvath joined him as he opened the door and flung back another blanket, revealing a case of sugar-free Red Bull on the backseat. Looking at it, Harvath said, “There’s one missing.”

  “Fine,” replied Fontaine. “Take five bucks off what you owe me.” But after thinking about it for a second, stated, “Better yet. Fuck you. That’s what you get for waking me up at three in the morning.”