Stares were their only response.
“Don’t you get tired of the crappy food around here? I could really go for a big bowl of brisket Pho with stir-fried rice right about now, know what I’m saying?”
The stares grew into glares.
Bantering isn’t working. Maybe they don’t understand. “Oh, I’m sorry, does anyone speak English?”
“Yes, most of us speak English,” said one man near the side. “Some of us were born in this miserable country, and we understand every boorish word that falls from your mouth.”
“Oh,” said Larry, dropping into a mocking, urban-thug mode of speech, complete with hip-hop hand gestures. “So y’all jus’ bein’ rude. I thought Asians were like supposed to be all super-polite ’n’ shit.”
“Go away,” said another of the men.
“No,” answered a third, stepping forward. “He is right. There is no excuse for discourtesy. He is obviously here for the same reason we are. My name is Tran.” The man bowed.
Larry dropped the act. “Tran? Vietnamese? I thought you might be.”
The man evinced mild surprise. “Very good. How did you know?”
“I have a Vietnamese friend named Tran. Tran Pham Nguyen. You look like him, too.”
Several of the people eyed Larry with interest. The speaker said, “That’s a little like saying you know a white American named John Smith.”
“He told me that himself at least once. I think he liked the anonymity of it. We called him Spooky, though.”
“How do you know that name?” said another man, coming forward. This one carried a distinct gravitas, and his accent was strong. The rest deferred to him.
“We were in the Army together. In fact, we were friends. Still are, I guess.”
The man stared at Larry for a long moment. “My name is Phuong Nguyen. Tran Linh here is named for his uncle Tran Pham. Tran Pham Nguyen is my sister’s grandson.”
“Well I’ll be damned,” said Larry. “Small world. How’d you end up here?”
“Uncle Tran Pham was getting us out of the United States,” Tran Linh explained. “The plan had been in the works for months, but we were betrayed, I believe.”
“Do they know of your connection to Spooky?”
Phuong shook his head. “I doubt it. They never asked anything specific, only questions about the Eden Railroad.”
“I suggest you keep it that way,” said Larry. “You think they treat you bad now. It could be worse.”
“They do not know and will not, unless someone tells them.”
Larry knew what the man was implying. Some prisoners traded information for favors with the guards. “I won’t tell them.” Larry smiled and looked down at Shadow. “See, I told you it was a good idea to talk to some people. Get to know our neighbors.” He turned back to Phuong, his face serious. “Besides, it’s not good to die alone. When the end comes, it’s best to be among friends.”
Phuong’s eyebrows lifted in mock surprise. “Oh, we’re not going to die here. Tran Pham will come for us.”
“How do you know?”
Phuong looked out at the hills surrounding the camp. “Blood calls to blood. Spooky is very close. I can feel him.”
“And they call him spooky. I hope you’re right. People are dying here every day.”
“But not you.”
Larry shrugged uncomfortably. “They want knowledge I have. I’m feeding it to them slowly, mixed with disinformation.”
“We all do what we must to live.”
Larry glanced at Shadow. “And that others may live. That’s the only way I sleep at night.” He saw the guard coming for him and knew his yard time was up.
As he ambled toward the doorway, he noticed Shadow was no longer beside him.
He turned to find the boy staring up into the hills.
Chapter 28
Reaper had arrayed her team in a horseshoe of hides a quarter-mile long. They looked through binoculars and sniper scopes down upon Camp Pleasant, from beneath thermal blankets and camouflaged netting. Enemy recon drones buzzed up and down the valley. High overhead, an armed MQ-9 circled.
She shared a hide site with Livewire, who was busy monitoring several screens. Each showed a video from overhead. The drone brain had provided a pathway for the computer-comms expert to hack into their intelligence network.
“Can you hijack them?” Reaper asked. “Take control?”
“Sure, but not without the controller at the other end knowing about it. Soon as I do, we lose the element of surprise.”
“If we haven’t lost it already.”
“I wasn’t going to say it.”
Reaper studied the drone feeds. All showed her the same thing the team could see with their own optics: a hastily erected compound set inside an old national park campground, long closed to the public. Three parallel lines of chain link fencing topped with razor wire encircled the camp. The perimeter formed an octagon, with towers at each of its eight corners. There were entrances and exits at the four cardinal points of the compass. Several armored Humvees parked in strategic spots, manned by SS drivers and machine gunners.
Long wooden shacks stood in the middle of the camp. Guards rousted thin prisoners out of these structures at regular intervals, for roll call or to form work details. A more permanent two-story cinderblock structure in the center provided facilities for those in charge. Reaper suspected basements beneath it held special cell blocks and laboratories.
Reaching for her radio headset, she chose a channel for the headquarters at the caves. “Spooky, this is Reaper. You seeing this?”
“Derrick here. We’re seeing this. Tell your man good job, this is amazing.”
“Where’s Spooky?”
“He stepped out. Can I help you with something?”
“Yeah,” Reaper answered. “How about a plan? This info doesn’t make things much easier. In fact, it only confirms how hard this is going to be.”
“It looks challenging,” said Derrick, “but we need to find a way.”
“Have you been watching the video feed? There’s no way to infiltrate and neutralize them from inside. The best we can do is hit them hard and fast, hope to overwhelm them, but we have, what, two dozen troops? They have at least a short company down there, almost a hundred guards. And oh, by the way, the prisoners are in bad shape. I’m not sure they’ll make the hike to your secret cave lair. Even then it will be damn hard to hide their traces, so the reaction force will just follow them right to us.”
“Sounds like you’re still trying to talk us out of it, but it’s going to happen.”
“It might happen without my team, then. I’m still not seeing a way to win here.”
She heard background voices on the other end of the line, and then, “Reaper, this is Spooky. Derrick tells me you still have some concerns.”
“No, I don’t have concerns. I have show-stoppers. I have deal-breakers. As soon as we kick this thing off we have maybe a half-hour before the reaction force and attack aircraft get here. Even if we can drive off four times our number and liberate your family, what the hell are we going to do with the rest of these half-dead Edens? Tell them to scatter? The cave is more than an hour on foot, even for fighters in good physical shape. We’ll be hard-pressed to make it there ourselves without being tracked.”
“So you’re admitting it can be done,” said Spooky.
“Dammit, Spooky, why don’t you want to face facts?”
“The facts are that this is more risky than normal, but it’s doable. Are you refusing?”
Reaper took a deep breath. “As it stands now…yes. If you or Derrick can come up with more troops or some other advantage, I’ll reconsider.”
“It’s not that cut and dried.”
“It is for me. Best-case scenario, we get in there and free some Edens, then we abandon them because helping them exposes us and the extraction network. Worse case scenario, we all get killed or captured.”
“Reaper, if you back out, I can’t guarante
e extraction.”
“Is that a threat?”
“Just a fact. I’m going to try, with or without your team. Better that you help me succeed than end up all alone in the middle of enemy territory with the entire Security Service looking for you.”
“You don’t have a chance without us.”
“Likewise.”
“Better come up with something extra, Spooky, or I swear to God we’re walking all the way to Mexico if we have to. I did it once and I can do it again.” Cassandra suspected Spooky of pursuing his own agenda over the FC’s. Well, Reaper didn’t have to go along with it like a blind fool.
The radio stayed silent for a long moment. “I’ll see what I can do. When you’re done with your recon, return to base and we’ll discuss the way ahead. Spooky out.”
Reaper punched the dirt in disgust.
“That sounded like it went well,” said Livewire, still looking at his screens.
Reaper switched to the team freq, and then paused, thinking. Her team might be able to get out on their own. They could drift away tonight and Spooky would be none the wiser. They’d have a long head start. Would he betray them to the SS? Probably not, since his neck was in the noose too. He’d eventually come after them, but her people would be alive, and she felt fully justified in pulling out.
Legally justified, anyway. It was her call. That didn’t make it feel right. Absent hard evidence that Spooky was some kind of traitor, she couldn’t abandon the mission…at least not without giving him and Derrick a chance to pull a rabbit out of the hat.
She took her hand off the radio and went back to staring at the video feeds, searching for inspiration.
Chapter 29
Cassandra sat back in her chair. Then she leaned forward and read the message from Skull again, still puzzled. Where the hell did this come from?
She realized it could mean only one thing. Shawna Nightingale had admitted to contacting her, which Skull would interpret as spymistress-style manipulation…and he hated to be manipulated.
Damned amateurs.
Cassandra pulled Shawna’s contact info from the five dozen emails she’d sent in the last few days, and brought up the videoconferencing app. It chimed seven or eight times, trying to connect, before it activated.
Shawna wore a robe and rubbed her eyes as she appeared in front of the camera, the room behind her still shrouded in darkness.
“Finally, Cassie! Tell me you found something out!”
“Not yet,” said Cassandra. “This is about something else.”
“Something else?”
“Yeah, I just got a really strange email from Alan. You didn’t tell him anything you shouldn’t have, did you?”
Before Cassandra’s eyes, Shawna’s face transformed from confused to disappointed to angry to furious in quick succession. “Are you shitting me?”
“So that’s a yes?”
“You don’t return any of my calls. Your emails just say not to worry. You tell me to do it your way, but you aren’t any closer to helping my husband. When you finally do contact me you give me crap about talking to Alan about you?”
“We’re working hard to find Larry, but throwing my name into the mix only muddies the waters. I need to know how much he knows.”
“He knows everything I know!” Shawna nearly screamed. “At least he returns my calls. He said Larry’s been sent to one of those death camps in eastern Tennessee. Bet you didn’t even know that.”
Cassandra ignored the jibe. “Yes, Camp Pleasant. What else did he say?”
“That he’s Larry’s best chance of returning home.”
“Shawna, you shouldn’t have done that. I trusted you to let the professionals handle this.”
“Yeah, right. I’m sitting here not knowing anything and you’re playing your reindeer games, not getting shit done!”
“That’s not true.”
“Then why won’t you tell me anything?”
For a split second Cassandra let her professional detachment slip and put herself in the other woman’s shoes; to imagine the sanity-threatening worry, the children’s questions, the loneliness and pain.
Then she shut that down. Getting emotional never helped anything, especially with out-of-control friends.
Or with Skull. She pushed thoughts of him away as well, hoping this wouldn’t be the one that killed him.
She did care, after all.
“Do you have a way to contact Alan other than his secure email drop?”
Cassandra saw Shawna hesitate.
“Please, it’s important. I need to talk to him. If he’s already involved, I might as well help him any way I can.”
“Fine,” Shawna finally answered. “He gave me a cell phone number. It’s not secure, but it’s a burner.” She recited the number.
“I’ll get back to you soon,” said Cassandra.
“I’ve heard that before.” Before Cassandra could respond, Shawna ended the call.
Cassandra reached into her desk drawer and pulled out a satellite phone handset. The number Shawna had given her rang several times before Skull’s unmistakable voice answered. “I’m driving south now. Don’t know anything more yet, but hopefully I will soon.”
“It’s me,” Cassandra said, avoiding any keywords for the NSA computers to pluck from the air. “She gave me this number.”
“What do you want?”
“I want you kept out of this.”
“Not going to happen.”
“There’s no need for you to go. I have friends already vacationing in the area. They’re taking a pleasant camping trip.”
“I understand.”
“They can let the songbird loose without your help.” Get it, Skull, she willed silently. Songbird, Nightingale…
“I’m already on the way. I might as well crash the party. Do a few shots, spike the punch.”
“You might just get them busted. I’d rather you sit this one out.”
“Why, that almost sounds like you care.”
“I do care. About you, about them…too many cooks will spoil this soup.”
“I like soup. I’m not going away. How about you accept that and help me to help them?”
“You won’t like one of the vacationers. I’d rather you and he stayed out of each others’ way.”
Silence. “Our Asian friend?”
“That’s the one.”
“I won’t…do any shots with him, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“Or vice versa.”
“Let me handle it. Now give me the info. The longer we talk, the more likely someone notices.”
Cassandra sighed. “Last I heard, they’re taking down the campsite tomorrow night, but they don’t know about the songbird. You sure you won’t walk away? I can get you whatever money you need.”
“This isn’t about money. I made a promise, and the songbird is a friend of mine. Now how about you email me their contact info? It will make things a lot easier.”
***
Skull ended the call and pulled over into a rest stop, parking far from anyone else. He removed the battery and SIM card from the burner phone. Opening his door, he dropped the phone and card on the pavement to crush them underfoot, never leaving his seat. He drove over the mess as he accelerated back onto the road, and then tossed the battery out onto the grassy verge.
Was that all on the level? Is Cassandra manipulating me again? Hell, did she somehow put Shawna up to getting me involved, knowing full well I wouldn’t do it for mere money, especially with Spooky in the mix? Reverse psychology, maybe? “Oh, please, Alan, don’t fling yourself into that briar patch!”
Well, it hardly matters now. I’m a man with a mission. A bullet in the gun.
Forcing himself to remain calm, Skull rode in silence, thinking.
Chapter 30
Director of National Intelligence Sturgeon tried to schedule himself a seat in the Presidential Daily Brief at least once a week. The senior analysts who worked for him were more than capable o
f presenting the material and answering questions, but he believed in the importance of face time with those in power. Especially now, when the President appeared to be consolidating his grip on that power with the forced resignation of Prudence Layfield.
Brenner had thrown Layfield a bone by appointing her as a Special Assistant to the President and parking her in a very public glass cube, in full view of the staff.
Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer, Sturgeon thought. He approved.
When the briefing was over, Brenner surprised Sturgeon by asking him to stay behind. The Chief of Staff gave the President a knowing look and pulled the door shut, leaving the two alone.
“Take a seat, Sturgeon.” Brenner sat on the table next to him, a position of psychological dominance.
“Mister President, are you going to ask for my resignation as well?”
“Not yet,” Brenner said with a tight smile. “How do you think Layfield was able to contact the Russians regarding Alaska? My staff hasn’t found any evidence of a call on the hotline, or of secure messages.”
Sturgeon thought quickly. It wouldn’t do to flat-out lie. Besides, the President wasn’t just fishing, Sturgeon realized. The man knew something.
“She asked me to help her. Told me it was extremely sensitive, so I used our intelligence backchannels to pass along the message.”
“Without my approval?”
“I was not aware you were not fully informed.”
“What about this sudden discord in Canada and Mexico? Are you and Layfield behind any of it?”
“The CIA’s days of overthrowing governments are long past. Our neighbors’ troubles are of their own making.”
“Entirely?”
“I have no knowledge of anything the intelligence community has done to exacerbate their problems, but…”
“Go on.”
“Maybe others in the Party did her a few clandestine favors too.”
The President put a hand on Sturgeon’s shoulder. “That’s what I’m afraid of. Layfield is unstable, obsessed with the Eden question rather than the good of the Party and the nation, and she’s carving out her own power base. That’s why I asked for her resignation. But even without a position of power, I’m concerned about the influence she has with some of the more extreme elements within the Party.”
Nearest Night Page 18
