by James Abel
BERKLEY TITLES BY JAMES ABEL
WHITE PLAGUE
PROTOCOL ZERO
COLD SILENCE
VECTOR
BERKLEY
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Copyright © 2017 by Bob Reiss
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Abel, James, author.
Title: Vector / James Abel.
Description: First Edition. | New York : Berkley, 2017.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017000351 (print) | LCCN 2017005628 (ebook) | ISBN
9780399583667 (hardback) | ISBN 9780399583681 (eBook)
Subjects: | BISAC: FICTION / Technological. | GSAFD: Suspense fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3568.E517 V43 2017 (print) | LCC PS3568.E517 (ebook) |
DDC 813/.54—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017000351
First Edition: July 2017
Cover art: Large military helicopter in flight © by RobHowarth/Getty Images; Background jungle texture by elwynn/Shutterstock
Interior art: Banyan tree © by Tony F/Shutterstock
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Version_1
FOR JAMES GRADY
DR. NOIR
CONTENTS
Berkley Titles by James Abel
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Acknowledgments
ONE
Kyle Utley received the first threat outside the new Post Pub, in Washington, a dark, cool bar on L Street near 15th, popular with National Geographic editors and local softball teams. Inside, on July 10, the White House National Security Team was celebrating a victory over the Senate Committee on Intelligence when the stranger appeared. The “Protectors” had overcome a 4–1 deficit to win the division championship. Twelve sweaty men and women sat drinking cold draft beer and eating the pub’s famed Diplomat Burgers, reliving the game. Their come-from-behind victory had been so satisfying that for once no one talked shop.
Nothing about this morning’s raid by FBI agents in Miami, where a gun battle and explosion had destroyed a small home. Three “foreign males,” as neighbors described them, had rented the house, barricaded themselves inside, and blown themselves up rather than surrender. “All evidence was obliterated,” the FBI report said.
Nothing about jihadist branches popping up in South America. Or the U.S./China face-off in the South China Sea. Just softball and gossip, until the cute Thai waitress bent over and told Deputy Assistant National Secretary Advisor Kyle Utley that a man needed to speak to him, outside.
“Tell him to come in.”
“He says it is too noisy in here.”
“Who is he?” Kyle asked, only half paying attention.
“He says he has big news,” the waitress said.
Kyle left his cell phone on the table—mistake—and walked out of the bar. On humid L Street waited a trim, white, neatly bearded stranger wearing a wide-brimmed red Nats cap, blue tennis shirt, and Adidas. Utley, a former Army Ranger, noted the lower end of a Special Forces tattoo on the right bicep: a coiled snake on a knife hilt. Above that, but hidden beneath the sleeve, would be the skull, beret, and snake head on the muscled arm.
“Sorry to interrupt the party,” the stranger said, not looking that way at all. “Nice home run in the seventh, by the way.”
“What do you want?” Kyle was irritated at the coy, I-know-things-you-don’t attitude, and the fact that the guy had been watching him. He noted the southwestern twang, alert posture, and smile that did not reach the mud-colored eyes. The man’s slim frame rose to wide shoulders. He radiated fitness.
“Kyle, you have instant access to the President’s Security Advisor. You’re not important enough to have a bodyguard. Pass along a message, will you?”
“What message?” Utley asked, chilled despite the heat and understanding that a threat was coming. All threats—he knew—were to be taken seriously.
“That slush fund you guys run out of Ankara, Turkey? To pay off friendly warlords across the border? We’re going to kill several hundred Americans in seventy-two hours if your bosses don’t divert that money. On this paper is a list of charities. Three hundred million dollars is not a lot. Imagine if a few hundred million would have averted the World Trade Center attack. That cost trillions and the bill keeps rising. Pay and everyone stays safe. Plus”—he winked—“it all stays secret, with the convention coming up. Hey, the money’s there already! Easy access!”
Utley stared into the eyes and saw intelligence and calm. His pulse had risen. His combat time in Afghanistan had destroyed any illusions about the depths of human violence. The stranger seemed rational, if that word could be applied to threats. Kyle eyed the paper and thin rubber gloves on the stranger, meaning no fingerprints.
“You sound American,” Utley said.
“Then my language lessons were good.”
“If you have a gripe about something, let’s talk.”
“We are.”
“What’s the money for?” Kyle asked, trying to delay, thinking, five foot ten, mid to late twenties, no visible scars, gap in the front teeth, three freckles on the right lower lip. He felt sweat on the back of his neck.
The man said, “Consider the payments reparations for Tol-e-Khomri.”
“What was that name again?”
Darkness had fallen. Kyle had never heard of Tol-e-Khomri. A lone Volkswagen Jetta cruised past.
Two wilted-looking National Geographic writers—the only other people on the block—brushed past, into the bar. Air-conditioning blasted out into the ninety-degree night.
Kyle held out the paper. “These organizations are not charities. They’re fronts for terrorists.”
The man smiled. “That can’t possibly be right.”
“You’ll stop making demands if you get the money?” Utley said, not negotiating, just trying to keep the man there while he took mental notes, figured out what to do.
“Give us what we want and we go somewhere else.”
“What exactly will happen if we don’t pay?”
“Something terrible and unprecedented. Bombs, but not bombs. Panic, but no one will understand at first. It will occur in three cities. It will turn your world upside down. When America learns this warning was ignored, there will be consequences for your bosses. The third coming of wrath.”
“You’re not being clear.”
“I think I am.”
“I don’t believe you.”
The man shrugged. “Then wait seventy-two hours.”
“How about if I call someone more senior than me.” Kyle gathered himself to attack. He’d been trained in close combat, but that was years ago. These days he didn’t even have time to work out in a gym. He said, changing stance so he could move fast, “This is not my area and I’m sure . . .”
“Stop!” the man hissed.
He’d stepped back. “I’m faster than you, Kyle. You’ve been out of the service awhile. Just call your boss. That’s all you have to do. Then your part is over.”
The man smiled. What could be easier? he seemed to suggest. Left-winger? Right? Veteran who had suffered some injury and blamed the government? Kyle had been schooled in what to say if a threat ever came, although the lessons had always assumed a phone call, not a personal confrontation. Try to control the situation. What a laugh. He might as well try to fly.
The man said, “On 9/11 you had no warning. This time you have a choice.” He turned and limped briskly up the block toward 15th. Utley began to follow. The man spun and raised an index finger. Kyle halted.
Kyle watched the man disappear around the corner. Kyle went to the corner. Somehow, the man was gone. That he could disappear so fast made his threat seem more real.
Kyle went back into the pub, where his teammates realized from his expression that something bad had happened. He retrieved his phone, walked back outside, and punched in the emergency number for the President’s National Security Advisor, who picked up immediately. He was at a barbecue in Potomac. Kyle heard men and women laughing in the background. Someone had made a joke.
“A nut,” the National Security Advisor said, after hearing the story, but they both knew this was hope, not analysis.
After a beat, the NSA asked, “He actually said Tol-e-Khomri? Those exact words?”
“What’s Tol-e-Khomri?”
“Never mind. Special Forces, you say? An American?”
“He had the tattoo. But anyone could have that.”
“He knew about the special fund, eh?”
“Sir, everyone over there knows. It’s the worst-kept secret in the Mideast.”
“There’s never been a situation where someone just walked up and made a threat outside a bar. And bombastic rhetoric is par for the course. They talk big. They bluff.”
An hour later Kyle was at the barbecue, too, at the home of the White House Chief of Staff, on the patio, where a strategy session—how to handle soft-on-terror charges before the national political convention—had just been interrupted. He recounted the story, ice cubes melting in the tumbler of Maker’s Mark in his hand.
By midnight, the heads of all major security agencies were on a conference call with the President, answering questions about ongoing alerts. There were no specific threats being investigated at this time. The three terrorists in Miami were dead. Nothing alarming intercepted over the past few days on monitored phones or e-mails. No particularly important national events scheduled within the next seventy-two hours. They tried to figure out what “bombs, but not bombs” meant.
“Like I said, someone wants to rattle us. If they really had something, they wouldn’t give us a heads-up,” said the head of the CIA.
“The third coming of wrath? Churchill called the nuclear bomb the second. What’s the third?” That from the FBI.
“Pretty damn confident, bragging that they’re here already. Usually they claim credit after,” Kyle fretted.
“The Tol-e-Khomri reference bothers me the most,” the National Security Advisor said.
The decision was not to pay, of course, or announce a potential threat days before the national political convention, but relevant agencies would try to track all spending by the “charities” overseas, even though the guess was that money trails would be dead ends, a traceless series of transfers, cash disappearing into black holes.
The national terrorism threat level was raised to red that night, but Homeland Security announced it was a drill. Police around the country increased patrols around public facilities. Army Reserve copters flew over major harbors. Homeland Security added staff at airports. The cost drained hundreds of millions of dollars, as usual.
Another drill.
“We don’t bow to threats,” the National Security Advisor told Kyle boldly, after the meeting.
We just did, he thought, at home on Calvert Street, unable to sleep. The seventy-two-hour deadline had shrunk to sixty-six. He had not told his wife what happened. On TV, sound off to let her sleep, he watched a firefight between U.S. Rangers and ISIS troops. Then came a segment about veterans being mistreated in VA hospitals. Is it about this? Utley wondered, each time the announcer detailed another gripe.
• • •
At that moment Amtrak’s regularly scheduled Patriot Express pulled into Pennsylvania Station in New York City, and the fourth man who exited the quiet car no longer looked as he had at the New Post Pub. The blond wig was gone. The hair was short, thick, black, and curly. The limp was absent, the tattoo and freckles washed off. The man stood just on the tall side of average. The face, without beard or cheek plugs, seemed rounder, and the eyes, contact lenses out, were almost azure blue, with a slight bulge that made him look less intelligent. The look was deceptive.
Tom Fargo transferred to the New York City subway Two train, heading south, downtown. Even at this hour people were moving around the great city. College boys coming back from having sex with girlfriends. Pissed-off Yankees fans who had closed a Chelsea bar after the fiasco with the Red Sox tonight. A homeless man who snored and stank of urine. A Japanese tourist, too shy to ask directions. Any of them, Tom speculated, might be dead by next week, and the subway filled with panic-stricken people trying to flee the metropolis any way they could.
Tom Fargo looked around the car and hated these people with a vast, steady drumbeat that pulsed through his veins. You are of them but not one of them, Dr. Cardozo had said. He had fought them overseas, in dry wadis and wet melon fields. He’d assassinated an American diplomat in a Rio shopping mall. Now he was back home.
The subway rocked, and he smelled cologne and garlicky sweat, French fries and cleaned-away vomit. These people lived in filth. They were so fat that they actually paid others to help them become thin, the natural hungry state of millions elsewhere. Their armies slaughtered while they occupied themselves with subway advertisements to cure toenail fungus. These people were as oblivious as the old fool who had taught him what to do tonight.
When you make a threat, Hobart Haines had told him, long ago, you need to back it up with action. Hook them with easy cooperation. Then nail them to the wall.
Tom Fargo was not afraid. Running over what was to happen next, he recalled that before boarding Amtrak he’d made a phone call from outside Union Station, used an encrypted cell, punched in a twenty-digit number, and the si
gnal had joined a hundred thousand other calls shot gunning into space at that moment, to bounce off a commercial satellite in a flood of talk that overwhelmed monitoring. Even if listeners broke the encryption, which was virtually impossible, he spoke in code. He and Dr. Cardozo traded comments about soccer. Hundreds of miles above earth, words lived, money moved, plans coalesced. Their coded words had meant:
“Think they’ll go for it?”
“Makes no difference. We do the same either way.”
“Your suggestions were smart, Tom. You suggested sending two separate groups to America. You said to make the demands first, not after. You know how to talk to them.”
“I had a good teacher.”
At Borough Hall, Tom Fargo exited the train and walked up top and into an area housing century-old municipal buildings. He headed toward Brooklyn Heights. The night was sultry, the air so saturated with moisture that a light mist coated cars, the hulking courthouse, a neon-smeared falafel shop window. The city smelled of baking tar, coal-oven pizza, hundred-year-old brick, diesel fuel. At 3:45 A.M. even the muggers were asleep. The neighborhood was a high-income area filled with young professionals. His rented co-op was in a converted potato chip factory, across from the Brooklyn Bridge, down the cobblestone street from the popular River Café.
Tom Fargo pushed through a polished glass revolving door to enter the sparkling lobby, where the night doorman sat behind a large post, eyeing a portable TV on which a White House spokesman was telling a news announcer, “The President has kept us safe for four years.”
“Good morning, sir,” the doorman said.
“Call me Tom.”
“Been clubbing again in Manhattan?”
Tom Fargo grinned and rubbed his thick hair as if happily woozy from drink. “The shop doesn’t open until noon. Might as well have some fun before that.”
The doorman sat beneath a framed black-and-white 1950s photo of Christmas shoppers on 5th Avenue: sleekly dressed executives, upscale tourists, wealthy leisure seekers. The shot caught the casual power and confidence at the heart of a great empire. People who knew they were safe. But Tom knew that within days the looks on those faces would change. It was too late to stop his first attack. He’d set it in motion before going to Washington. There was no way the Americans would capitulate to demands at this stage without proof.
