Man of War

by Sean Parnell

  “I was just thinking the same thing,” Steele replied.

  Rockford leaned closer to the computer. “I need a no-bullshit assessment,” he began. A blind man could have seen the hope ignite like a match head in Steele’s eyes. “This is a defining moment for both of us. You are the man on the ground, and waiting isn’t an option. Before I decide, I want to know, just how good is he?”

  “West?”

  “Yes.”

  Steele didn’t hesitate. “He’s the best there is.”

  Jesus. It was not what he wanted to hear, but Rockford kept a tight hold on his disappointment. He knew that whatever rapport he had built up with Steele could come crashing down if the Alpha saw him falter. “What would it take to stop him?”

  “If we had everyone—and I’m not just talking about our guys, I mean Interpol, MI6, French DGSE, CIA, NSA, the whole ball of wax—working round the clock with every asset at their fingertips, I’d say fifty/fifty.”

  “Well, we don’t have those assets or the time. You know Nate West better than anyone else alive.”

  “What are you saying, sir?”

  “I’m saying that there is an untraceable nuclear weapon in the hands of one of the best-trained operatives in the world. I don’t know about you, Eric, but I don’t think a bunch of rules are going to stop that threat right now.”

  Steele’s mouth fell open on the screen. “Are you leaving me in play?”

  Rockford nodded.

  “The only caveat is the girl. She goes too. I can’t afford to tip Styles off.”

  “Roger that, sir. What are your orders?”

  “We need to locate Bassar and then I want you find Nathaniel West as fast as you can and then I want you to kill him.”

  Chapter 37

  Robin Styles stood at the window, looking over D.C. It was her ritual anytime she stayed at the penthouse. She found the Capitol building with its white dome gleaming in the early morning light and then let her eyes drift west.

  The apartment was high enough to get a good look, but she knew it was there, the one thing she desired above all else.

  “You do that every morning and I always wonder what you are looking at,” Claire said, bringing her coffee into the living room.

  “The White House,” Styles mumbled.

  Claire came up beside her, squinting against the sun.

  “Where is it?”

  “You see where the treetops open up right there?” She pointed.

  “Uh-huh,” Claire replied.

  “Right there.”

  Claire didn’t seem to be paying attention, and Styles could tell there was something bothering her.

  “What’s on your mind, darlin’?”

  “I couldn’t get his records, but I looked inside.”

  “And?” Styles turned, giving the girl her full attention.

  “I could get in trouble for this, Robin. Don’t you care?”

  “Oh, darlin’, I would never ask you to do anything that would hurt you.”

  Claire lowered her eyes for a moment and Styles resisted the urge to say anything else. You can’t appear desperate.

  “He is sick. His doctors are keeping it real quiet, but I saw his lab tests . . .”

  “And?”

  “He’s dying.”

  Styles had never been religious, but at that moment she almost dropped to her knees and offered up a prayer.

  “He came down to the hospital unit for a blood draw. His usual nurse wasn’t there, so I did it, and when the results came back they accidentally sent them to me.”

  That’s why Cole wasn’t at the briefing.

  “Do they know what’s wrong with him?” Styles asked.

  “He has cancer, and it’s terminal.”

  This is it. This is your opportunity.

  “Can you get a copy for me?”

  “I think the Secret Service took all of his files and lab results. The only thing we have is his medication list.”

  “Remember when I said I needed you to do something for me?” Styles asked, turning on all of her charm.

  “Yes, anything, you know that.”

  “I need you to get me a copy of the medication list.”

  “But I could lose my license.”

  “Darlin’, I would never let that happen. Remember, I work for the CIA, which means that if you are helping me, I can protect you.”

  Claire nodded her head like she understood. Styles couldn’t believe how easy it was to manipulate her. She might have felt sorry for Claire, except that Robin was walking on a razor’s edge and did not plan on getting cut.

  “Don’t you worry, little lamb, I promise that nothing is going to happen to you.”

  It was a lie and Styles knew it.

  Chapter 38

  Smoking a cigarette, West looked at the black nylon backpack. He realized that he had just made history. When he was an Alpha, the Program’s code name for a man-portable nuclear weapon was “Sasquatch.” It was a fitting name, because while everyone claimed they existed, no one had ever seen one.

  There were rumors that a few had gone missing from East Germany after the fall of the Berlin Wall, but no proof. West was tempted to take a picture and send it to Robin Styles, and he would have except that it would spoil the surprise.

  The bag was exactly like the one his son had carried back and forth to school, except instead of books this one had a nuclear weapon inside. Holding the cigarette between his lips, West bent over and lifted it into the air.

  It was lighter than he had imagined. According to one Soviet defector he had tracked from Berlin to Libya, the Russian variant was supposed to weigh fifty pounds, and only had a six-kiloton yield.

  The first bomb dropped on Japan had been almost three times as powerful, but that wasn’t really the point. The key to the Iranian bomb was that not only was it untraceable, but it was built inside a vacuum compartment that kept sniffers from being able to detect it.

  But there was a problem. West had assumed that Ali Breul would be able to arm the weapon. He learned during the interrogation that he was wrong. Breul’s job was to build the bomb, a job he could do. To make it go boom, Iran had to bring in outside help.

  “So you built the damn thing, but don’t know how to blow it up? Are you fucking serious?” West had demanded.

  “The Pakistani built the trigger,” Breul blubbered, thinking he could still save his own life. “The chain reaction needed to make the bomb detonate has to be exact. One break in the chain and . . .”

  “And what, it won’t explode?”

  “Yes . . . yes, it will still explode, just not at its full potential,” Breul stammered.

  It was not what West wanted to hear. He wanted maximum effects and the message only a towering mushroom cloud could convey.

  The computer on the desk came to life, showing the outside of the cabin. West had installed a motion camera above his door, and the picture showed one of the crewmen. West knew he was safe, but he had learned what happened when you trusted someone other than yourself. Grabbing a pistol from his waistband, he took up a position next to the door, waiting for the knock.

  “Yes?”

  “The captain, sir,” the crewman began in French, “he would like a word if you have the time.”

  “Tell him I am on my way,” West replied.

  “Yes, sir.”

  West watched the computer until he was sure that the man had gone, then slipped the pistol back into his pants. The road that led him here had not been easy, and he wasn’t taking anything for granted.

  West had a vast network of spies and informants, and the most important of them was a man named Henri Baudin.

  Baudin was born in Paris. His father was a German engineer and his mother a teacher. After a stint in the military, Baudin began a career with DGSE, the French version of the CIA, but had gotten the boot for arming fighters loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. While the French government was quick to publicly denounce the Syrian dictator, behind closed doors th
ey were making a fortune off of him. It was an old game, but what got Baudin into trouble wasn’t what he was doing, it was who the Frenchman wasn’t paying off.

  So Henri took his skills to the private sector and became a serious player in the illegal gun trade. He was the man who could get you what you wanted, no matter the price. But his good fortune came to an end when a rival hired West to liquidate him.

  Instead of a bullet, Nate made him a deal. He let Baudin know that a very valuable commodity was about to come on the market. The buyer would foot the bill for whatever West needed and he and Baudin would split the proceeds.

  Baudin found a buyer in twelve hours, which didn’t surprise West in the least. An untraceable nuclear weapon was a hot commodity, but now the Frenchman was eager to collect his end of the deal and disappear.

  On cue the computer chirped. West brought it to life by hitting the space bar. The desktop wallpaper was a picture of an old barn covered in kudzu. He had seen the picture in a bookstore in Prague and later downloaded it off the Internet. The photo reminded him of his wife. She had taken a similar picture years ago of a place he’d never see again.

  The message was from Baudin.

  Is the package ready?

  Yes, West typed back.

  Big mess in Algiers. You said to expect a CLEAN operation.

  “Fucking French,” West snorted. He had just pulled off the impossible and his employer was bitching about the damage.

  Got to break the egg to make an omelet. You just do your part. Send papers through Interpol and stay out of the way.

  Anything else?

  Have you found Bassar?

  Yes.

  An address popped on the screen and West exited the messenger and clicked on Google Earth. He typed in the address and found himself looking down on an isolated house in the middle of the country.

  He had carefully choreographed what would happen next. Baudin’s contact at Interpol would send an official request for information to the CIA. The request would be the match and Director Styles was the fuse.

  As much as the Program wanted to believe that its existence was a closely guarded secret, West knew for a fact that the Director of the CIA had been nosing around for years. The request from Interpol would appear to be manna from heaven: a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to catch an Alpha totally unaware and in the midst of an op.

  West knew that Styles would be unable to pass it up. In fact, she would move heaven and earth to grab Steele.

  And that was exactly what West wanted.

  West calculated the distance from his current location to Bassar and knew he had the time. He had to move fast, and if he pulled it off, by the time the nuke was armed, the Director of the CIA would have shifted every asset at her disposal to Europe in pursuit of Steele.

  This really is too easy.

  He typed another address into the search bar and waited for the map to come up. This was his endgame—the place where he would take the bomb once it was armed.

  The map came up pixelated, and slowly cleared until Washington, D.C., covered the monitor.

  “Daddy’s coming home.”

  Chapter 39

  Meg stood on the deck looking out over the ocean. She hadn’t slept well the night before, kept awake by nightmares from the Gatehouse. The images that plagued her sleep were unrelenting snapshots of horror and abject terror. Daniels’s mangled body balled up in the wall locker. The firefight in the street. West yanking her from the van by her hair, the helpless feeling of her boot heels bumping off the pavement. Colt Weller’s faceless body. The beating before they forced her eyes open in front of the retinal scanner.

  And then Steele showed up.

  Meg had known the moment she saw him appear through the smoke that she wasn’t going to die.

  Steele and Demo had spent the previous hours refining the plan and now were waiting for Rockford to tell them where to find Bassar. Meg had gotten restless waiting inside, and the salt air helped clear her head.

  Once they had the location, Demo would file two separate flight plans, using unencrypted channels. Steele had told her that the CIA would be tracking all of the flights coming out of Algiers and that Demo knew a local who acted as a CIA snitch. Once they had their destination, Demo would leak the tail numbers to the local. He would add that the people on the plane were involved in what had happened in Algiers.

  The snitch would send a priority cable to Langley and the game would be on.

  “We are going to Spain.” Steele’s voice cut through the darkness.

  Meg jumped; she hadn’t heard him come outside.

  “You scared me,” she admitted.

  Steele walked over, leaned against the rail, and took a moment before he spoke.

  “Demo is sending the flight details now. One plane will go to Paris and the other to Cyprus. The CIA will use every available asset to lock down the two areas. It’s an old trick I learned from West.”

  What if I screw this up? Meg asked herself.

  “I know what you are thinking,” Steele said, “and you don’t need to worry about it.”

  “Worry about what?”

  “If you can hack it. We will be traveling under a cover I have used a hundred times. His name is Max Sands and the legend is solid.”

  “I’ve run ops before,” she said, wincing at the way her voice sounded. “I can do this.”

  “I wouldn’t be bringing you along if I didn’t know that.”

  “Are you always so damn confident?”

  Steele grinned. “My mom raised me after my dad left. She worked as a data processor during the day and at this shitty diner at night. Sometimes I’d hear her crying late at night when money was tight, but in the morning you’d never know. She taught me that you have to be strong even when things aren’t going your way.”

  Meg was surprised by the admission, but it made sense. If Steele was raised by a woman, it explained his big heart and protective nature.

  “I bet that was tough.”

  He shrugged. “You do what you have to. Changing subjects, Rockford told me that Styles was the one who pushed for Bassar to get religious asylum. Said he was being persecuted in Pakistan, whatever the hell that means. She even signed off on the deal when Iran offered him refuge.”

  “Why would she do that?”

  “Let’s go ask Bassar.”

  Chapter 40

  Styles was in her office reading an official cable recounting what the CIA knew so far in regard to the situation in Algiers. All night long, CIA assets, State Department officials, and various other intelligence assets controlled by Langley had been firing cable after cable to the States. Some were short, others long, but each represented a fragment of the chaos.

  Styles was trying to make sense of the mess. She had two plastic boxes, one for the cables that contained something useful, and one for the trash.

  Garbage, she thought, tossing the cable into the trash pile, which she noticed was almost full. This is ridiculous.

  She hadn’t gone home last night and Claire had been blowing up her phone. She decided she was at a stopping point and was about to return her call when her aide said:

  “I’ve got something.”

  The Director looked up at the man who had just barged into her office.

  Fucking Jamie.

  Styles speared the intercom button on her phone and heard the line ring outside her door on Jamie’s desk. There was no answer.

  What part of do not fucking disturb is she not getting?

  It was the second time this morning. The first came when Jamie walked in to let Styles know that Rockford had asked for a briefing.

  “She wasn’t at her desk a second ago, boss.”

  Styles sighed. “What is it, Dan?”

  “I wouldn’t bother you if I didn’t think it was important,” the aide said, holding up a brown folder with secret stamped across the front. Styles held out her hand and Dan dutifully placed the folder in her fingers. She opened the file and rolled her eyes.<
br />
  “Dan, what is this?”

  “A Blue Notice, ma’am,” he replied, padding to the table in front of the couch and tidying up the empty coffee cups and detritus left over from his boss’s dinner.

  “I see that,” Styles said, taking her reading glasses from the desk and placing them on her nose. The readers were new. A year ago her eyesight was 20/20, but the late hours spent reading emails or the damn cables had wreaked havoc on her vision. Yet another unwelcome reminder that Robin Styles was not as young as she once had been.

  Interpol was the largest law enforcement agency in the world, but unlike the FBI and its European counterparts, its agents didn’t have authority to make arrests. In essence, they were an administrative liaison, watchdogs for the 190 member countries that made up the agency. The lifeblood of any good bureaucracy was paperwork, and Interpol shed it by the quart. A Blue Notice was an official request for additional information. The CIA got hundreds of these memos a day. Very few ever made it up to Styles’s office.

  The Director scanned the origin line and saw that it was from an agent in France requesting information regarding two aircraft that had flown out of Algeria. One was heading to Paris, the other to Cyprus. Both tail numbers were highlighted.

  “Tell me about the planes.”

  “Both flights originated in Chlef, an hour’s drive from Algiers. The source intel came from an asset we have on payroll. According to him the people on the planes had something to do with the attack on our SOG teams.”

  Finally a stroke of luck. “Tell me you are tracking them?”

  “Yes, ma’am. The flight to Cyprus landed thirty minutes ago. A man got off and we have an agent following him. His name, we think, is Roberto Cortez.” Styles flipped the page and found a Department of Defense “DA photo” showing a man wearing Class A’s, the Army’s dress uniform.

  “Stocky son of a bitch,” Styles murmured.

  Her eyes went to the stack of medals on his chest, topped by the Combat Infantryman Badge, or CIB. The award told her that Cortez had been to combat. The Army used the DA photos to quickly determine a soldier’s professionalism and military bearing. It was a career in a snapshot.