by Evans, Misty
He shifted his arm slightly and drew in a steadying breath. Looking through the PSO 1x4 scope attached to the top of the rifle, he slowly followed the perimeter of the large property two hundred yards downhill from his post. There was a gated entrance but no fence in the rear, only the double set of infrared laser tripwires that enclosed the half acre lot in the back where it sloped downhill. Raissi had found the tripwires on a previous scouting trip as well as the location of every motion detector and security camera posted around the house.
To the average criminal looking for a place to rob, the house’s security was a deterrent. To a trained terrorist who had been observing the place and gathering intelligence, the simplistic security was almost insulting in its lack of challenge.
Raissi was no average criminal.
The house was dark, no one up yet. The terrorist scoped the woodsy area beyond the flowerbeds and the perimeter of the yard and mentally scoffed at Americans. Even with their heightened paranoia about terrorism in their homeland, they were still amateurs in comparison to security standards of officials in the Middle East. Their lack of security measures was not surprising, even for a CIA director. Americans were still arrogant in their belief they were safe on their home turf, especially because no attacks had taken place since 9/11. This arrogance made them easy targets. Stupidly, they were more concerned about their personal freedoms than their very lives. America’s throat was fat and soft and that made Raissi and his comrades’ job so much easier.
God is great.
Of course, this part of his job was made easier by his current benefactor. She was the reason he had made it to America and now stood on the threshold of destroying key leaders of the CIA. It galled him to think he was taking orders from a woman, but the means to the end was sanctioned by more than his own personal glory. His people would attain respect, and maybe, Raissi thought, some peace from his act of global revenge.
Raising his eye from the scope, he swung the rifle underneath his shoulder and onto his back. Rising to his feet, he glided smoothly from tree to tree and made his way down the side of the hill on the vacant lot adjacent to the target’s property. As he neared a hedge that ran between the property lines, he dropped to his stomach and crawled the last few yards, never leaving the shadows.
Raissi squinted at the house but there was still no change in its dark façade. Rising up on one knee, he pulled a night-vision scope from his cargo pants and traced the infrared beams again. They wouldn’t be a problem.
God is great.
After replacing the night-vision scope, he climbed snake-like back up the hill, stopping now and then to watch the sun continue to push the edges of night back. He also wanted to keep the woman at the top waiting. He knew her patience with him was measured out in small, controlled chunks. Making her wait gave him a minute or two of control, a reminder to her of his importance in her plan.
The number of sunrises he would witness was dwindling swiftly. If he stopped to notice this last one, so be it. At forty years of age, Raissi had seen more than his share of life and figured he’d already used up his allotment of days on the earth. He was battle-hardened from watching the land and the people he loved beaten again and again. The dreams of his youth had been beaten along with them. Now he was simply a messenger. One more messenger bringing war to the West.
Raissi scratched at the thick stubble on his jaw and ran a finger across the scar on his cheekbone. He had one more day. When the call from his benefactor came, Raissi and his comrades would be ready to move. They would deliver their message and strike another blow into the soft throat of America for their beloved Islam.
Allah’s will be done.
In the shadows of the tree line, Raissi gave Susan Richmond a nod of commitment as he passed her by.
“Ace’s Body Snatchers. Rack ’em, pack ’em and stack ’em. What can I do for you?”
“You’ve been made,” Conrad said into the phone. “Did it ever occur to you to not drive the freakin’ hearse?”
There was a short silence on the other end. “The Jeep had a flat, Connie. It’s gettin’ fixed today. And, come on, who’d suspect my body wagon?”
Conrad rubbed his forehead. “Stone also made you. No more surveillance for you, Ace.”
“Aw, don’t pull me yet. I needed a little practice, that’s all. C’mon, bro. I’m down with this. I can do it.”
“I’ll get back to you.” Conrad hung up and then paced the living room floor for the hundredth time.
“You look like a tiger in a cage, Con,” Smitty said. “You’re wearing a hole in the carpet.”
“Go to hell.”
Smitty toyed with a zip drive. “Why don’t you do something constructive? Take your mind off her?”
The tiger’s pace slowed but he didn’t stop. “I don’t need to take my mind off her. I’m fine.”
“Really? Since when is ‘fine’ defined as aggressive, hostile and confrontational?”
Conrad stopped and blew a sharp breath out between his lips. “Stone has already informed Security about the bugs, so we can’t remove them without throwing suspicion on Julia. When they do their sweep and find those bugs, they won’t stop with her apartment. They’ll sweep and search the whole building and then we’re screwed.”
“They can’t search the other apartments without a warrant or permission from the renters.”
“Hello. We’re talking CIA here, Smith. They’ll do whatever they want. Once they uncover the bugs in Julia’s apartment, they won’t have trouble getting permission from a judge or the other renters to search for more.”
Smitty scratched his head. “So what do you want to do?”
“Do you still have the extra keys you lifted from the super’s office in the basement?”
“I made copies and returned the originals.”
“Good. Get them out. We’re going to spread a few more listening devices around and plant a receiver in the basement.”
“What about this stuff?” Smitty swept his hand across the computer hub. “You said we couldn’t risk moving all of this in the middle of the day.”
“Changed my mind. We need to break camp and get out of here.”
Smitty let out a sigh and swiveled in the office chair toward the computer screen, shaking his head. “Okay, suggestions for a new home base of operation?” He moved the mouse and began shutting down the system.
“We’re going mobile.”
“How do we let Julia know where we’re going to be? You can’t exactly call her at Stone’s.”
Flynn actually toyed with the idea for a minute before discarding it. “I’ll think of something,” he said and headed out the door.
Conrad found the iPod he was looking for on Julia’s nightstand beside the clock radio. It was surprising she hadn’t taken it with her, but then again, she’d been distracted by their fight when she left.
Slipping it out of the leather case, he flattened the paper with his cell phone and pager numbers on top of the menu pad and slid the whole works back into the case. His fingers played with the cord from the ear buds, rolling it between his fingers as he wondered what Julia was doing. Was she at Stone’s now, sitting out on the balcony? Reading a book in his study? Working out in his private gym in the basement?
Jesus, Flynn. You’re losing it. Big time.
Not his mind or his insatiable drive. It as in his edge.
Yes, he was definitely losing his edge.
He figured he could blame his age. Chronologically, he was only thirty-two, but physically he was too old to deal with this crap. Mentally too. After years of living undercover, running agents and messing around with the worst of the worst, he was burning out. He’d done his damnedest, but the dictators, the religious zealots and the drug czars were still out there.
Terrorists were still terrorizing the innocent.
Special interest groups were still running the government.
Now on top of everything else, traitors were running the CIA.
It was
getting harder and harder to convince himself he’d made any difference in the world at all. When it all came down to it, the changes he had brought about were unnoticeable in the Big Picture. He was feeling more like George Bailey these days than Conrad Flynn. Before he knew it, he’d be contemplating jumping off a bridge and find himself talking to his guardian angel.
He was giving serious consideration to walking away. If he’d really lost his edge, his guardian angel was a moot point. He was destined to meet with a bullet.
It wouldn’t be difficult for him to disappear for good. He already had two separate identities established for himself that no one, not even Langley, knew about, and he had plenty of money, courtesy of the government and Smitty’s investment proficiency, securely stashed in a bank in the Caymans.
All he had to do was walk.
He tossed the cord back on the nightstand and ran his hand over Julia’s pillow.
But not yet.
Because there was Smitty, who was counting on him to finish this sting. Smitty, who had put his career aspirations aside and gone bad to help Conrad eradicate the shadow CIA. Smitty, who had worked side-by-side with him to protect Julia.
Ah yes, then there was Julia.
Conrad stared at her white camisole lying on the crumpled bedspread. Could he really walk away from her again? He played with the idea for a moment, remembering her outburst at him the night before…
You have no right to me anymore.
He’d never had any right to her, period. None. No one, not even the Great Conrad Flynn as she liked to call him in bed, could ever own a piece of Julia Torrison. She was too independent to let them.
The best thing he could do for her, as well as himself, was to walk away. Disappear for good when this was all over.
Don’t kid yourself, Flynn. Walking away from the CIA is child’s play. Walking away from Julia Torrison is suicide.
Chapter Seventeen
Calculated risk. That’s what it all came down to. Daniel King finished his sandwich and lit a cigar as he sat on the patio just outside his home office. The estate was awash in bright green. Six massive oak trees, three on each side, lined the property, their spring leaves a perfect match to the normally well-manicured lawn.
However, today was not normal. An ugly line of rich black dirt bisected the once beautiful carpet of grass, and at the end of the trail, a small skid loader and a smattering of tools, hoses and pipes littered the ground. The part-time groundskeeper was working diligently to install a water fountain in the center of the property. Wife number two had insisted it was exactly what the place needed.
King blew smoke out of his mouth as he continued to watch. What he needed was to find the weak link in the proposal Susan Richmond had spelled out for him in detail yesterday to deal with the CIA’s problems.
He had to admit, the way she had it laid out, it was damn near flawless. She had evidence showing a conspiracy in the CIA spearheaded by the Deputy Director of Operations, Michael Stone.
His motive? Revenge. Stone’s father, William, had left the Marine Corps after ten years of service and was recruited as an intelligence officer for the United States. He took his family to Germany while under cover as a security consultant to a German diplomat. After two years, the elder Stone had extracted a good deal of compromising information from his foreign employer, all of which he had routinely fed back to the United States. However, the diplomat’s wife had figured it out and turned William Stone over to the local authorities. Because his nonofficial cover did not afford him diplomatic immunity, William was arrested and imprisoned for spying.
While the American and German governments were negotiating his release, William Stone was beaten to death by a group of fellow prisoners. Michael was ten when his father died. His mother returned to the United States, disgraced and devastated, with her family of six children.
While Michael had grown up to follow in his father’s footsteps, he was not suspected of harboring any ill will toward the CIA or the U.S. government. His psych evals and polygraphs were negative. His commitment to his country had been demonstrated in the field as a U.S. Marine, Force Recon, and later in the CIA’s counterintelligence and counterterrorism departments before he became the Operations director. He was currently in line for the Director of Central Intelligence’s spot.
But according to Susan, whether Stone showed it or not, somewhere along the line he had cracked.
The web Stone had weaved was intricate and Susan claimed she had detailed it down to the last strand. Stone of course had connections spanning all of the directorates of the CIA, but he also had a highly placed source within the National Intelligence Council.
To top it off, Stone’s current girlfriend, an analyst and former spy in Susan’s department, sat at the heart of the conspiracy. King knew the details of Julia Torrison’s CIA career. Her former partner had not been killed in the line of duty, as everyone believed. According to Susan, he was actively working with Torrison and another defunct operator, Ryan Smith, to assist Stone. Disgruntled employees all four, they were systematically wreaking havoc with the CIA.
The senator took a long drag on his cigar. Susan, after watching them all for years, clearly knew the modus operandi of each of the four players like the back of her hand. She believed if any one of the rogue employees suspected they had been found out, the whole operation would shut down and the participants would disappear. If the plug was pulled on their operation, she was positive they would resist apprehension and therefore cause a unique situation, one that might call for lethal force. Lethal force would lead to a formidable and exhaustive investigation.
In an effort to avoid that, King and Richmond had agreed the best way to handle the group was to neutralize them in a calculated manner. Torrison was the group’s weak link. Susan would use her to draw the others out. Conrad Flynn was the most dangerous of the group. His SEAL training had been honed to a steely efficiency for the CIA and his field skills used to quietly cripple countless terrorist organizations.
While Susan had left King in the dark about many of the specifics, he knew she had planned every step down to the smallest detail. The CTC chief had assured him she had analyzed every possible contingency and devised a strategy to handle each one. All she wanted now was a little help from him.
Because in the end, Susan Richmond still needed a safety net. Director Allen was at best an ineffectual leader who could not be trusted and therefore had to remain out of the loop. Nor did Susan know exactly how high the NIC source was in the food chain. If she delivered her information to the wrong person, Torrison and the others would not only disappear, the CTC chief herself would no doubt meet with a convenient death. She needed someone functioning outside the tainted halls of the CIA and the NIC to sign off on her operation and give her authorization to clean house. And because of the sensitive nature of the operation, national security issues had to be weighed against Congressional Notification.
In return for her allegiance, Susan Richmond wanted the DCI position when King became president. It was not an uncomplicated request nor was it an unreasonable one. He was sure there would be little blowback on him. She would have to be confirmed by the Senate, but with Michael Stone out of the picture and the fact she was more than qualified, she was assured serious consideration. He could make it happen.
For Senator King it all came down to calculated risk. Would Susan’s plan work in his favor so he gained the bipartisan and constituent support that he needed? He would definitely have to stand up to intense scrutiny, but fulfilling his end of the bargain would be easy enough. If indeed he were elected President of the United States, he would offer Susan up as a good DCI candidate and let the congressional wolves tear her apart as they saw fit. She would have to survive the confirmation hearings on her own two feet.
If, however, King refused to help her, he knew she would take her proposal to someone even higher in the government, possibly President Jeffries himself. The shit would definitely hit the fan, but the presid
ent would come out smelling like a rose. Jeffries would take full credit for cleaning up the CIA and, with his Homeland Security Director, would rebuild it from the top down to reassure the American people his administration had national security well under control. The voting public would sign him up for another four years without batting an eye.
King stubbed out the cigar and entered his office. Picking up his secure phone, he dialed Susan Richmond’s home number.
Julia picked up Michael’s briefcase off the bedroom floor and studied the digital keypad secured on it. “Piece of cake,” she muttered to herself. Michael and Pongo, along with Michael’s security detail, were out for a run. The only day Michael didn’t run was Sundays. She had approximately forty minutes to open the case and copy the contents to a memory stick Smitty had supplied. The previous night, before her midnight foray outside, she’d managed to copy the files from Michael’s laptop in his home office, including some encrypted files that had caused her problems. They were set up with special recognition software that wouldn’t allow them to be copied. Running diagnostics on them, however, she’d found a way to hack into the software, disable it and make her copy.
Now computer number two. Julia set the timer on her watch for thirty minutes and snapped a pair of latex gloves on her hands. A little more time-consuming because of the lock, but probably no more complicated.
Michael was organized and had an excellent memory, but he also dealt with layers of passwords and secret codes with multifarious letter and number combinations. Julia had already found several of these hidden in different spots in his office—inside his favorite Tom Clancy novel, underneath the encased American flag given to his mother at his father’s burial, a couple taped on the back of a framed shot of him and Tom onboard Tom’s boat, cigars and beers raised in salute. One of them had been for his home laptop. She pulled a piece of paper from her jean pocket and stared at the three combinations she had left. One happened to be a set of numbers.
