by Bob Mayer
“Yeah,” Gant said. “So tell me what happened so we can get the other two.”
Roberts lowered his head, putting his hands on either side, rubbing his scalp. When he spoke it was so hard to hear him that both Gant and Golden had to lean forward in their chairs.
“It was relatively straightforward. Columbia. Drug trafficking. The DEA got the village elders in a major transport hub for the Cartel to turn. Promised them lots of cash, lots of aid. And protection from the local warlord. That was the key. So the team was sent in as protection. They were to take out the local warlord who was moving the drugs. We had a tip when he would be showing up to punish the villagers.”
“And?” Gant pushed, earning a hard glance from Golden.
“It was a stupid and naïve plan,” Roberts said.
“Of course it was,” Gant agreed. “Taking out the warlord would only delay the inevitable. But you didn’t care about that. What did you care about?”
“We had a deep cover agent,” Roberts said. “It’s like—“ he paused as he tried to think—“like a damn wedding cake.” He used his hands as he described. “Layers. Big on the bottom, lots of bottom feeders. Getting narrower as you go up. The warlord was like layer three up. But the agent, he was getting close to the, you know, the little statue of the couple on top. The key players. There are two people who run it all down there and we’d been after both of them for a very long time. And our agent was close to one of them.
“Took him three years. Three years deep under cover. Working from Miami down south, through the food chain of traffickers. Selling his fucking soul to go up the bad guy feeding chain. Selling his God-damn soul.”
Roberts was breathing hard and Gant looked over once more at Golden. She was perfectly still, watching. He turned back as Roberts continued.
“He was my older brother. Served in the Marines. We went through the Agency course together. I got promoted faster than him. He didn’t care. He wanted to be in the field. I wanted to be in charge.
“He left everything behind. His life. His wife divorced him after a year of only seeing him once and took the kid. He stayed on the job. He went under deeper than anyone we ever had. He was like one of those fucking people in a National Geographic show breathing God-damn special liquid mixture in their lungs so they could go deeper into the ocean depths than anyone else ever went before.
“There were times he was out of contact for so long, we figured he’d been discovered and killed. He went three months once without making contact. He couldn’t take the chance, he told me when he finally made a meet. And he had to do things, bad things, to prove his cover.”
“Like go to a village in the company of a warlord?” Gant asked, confused about why an undercover agent would be carrying a badge.
Roberts shook his head. “No.” He sighed. “That was me.”
* * *
Emily lifted her head, cocking it to one side to try to listen better. There was a distant sound, one she couldn’t quite make out yet. It was late afternoon to judge by the shadow that had climbed up the eastern side of the wood.
Distant thunder? But it was steady and getting closer.
Emily got to her feet and went toward the side of the enclosure that seemed to be closest to the approaching rumble. The entire wood structure began to vibrate.
Earthquake? Emily had never experienced one. But it seemed to steady and non-stop. And it was moving, coming closer, getting louder. There was another sound now, underlying the rumble, almost like metal on metal. Getting hearer at a rapid pace. It was indeed metal on metal she suddenly realized.
The blast of the train’s whistle caused her to jump, it was so close and unexpected.
“Help!” Emily screamed. “Help me!”
Utter frustration blanketed her as the train rumbled by, very close by the sound, yet she knew her yells were drowned out by the roar of the train’s engine and the rattle of its wheels on the metal tracks.
Emily pounded her fists on the wooden panel as the train went by. People were so close, yet they might as well have been a hundred miles away. The train must have been a long one because it sounded like it was right next to her for over five minutes, then finally the sound began to recede. Emily listened, ears straining, until finally silence ruled once more.
Emily shook her head as she walked back to the center and sat down. She couldn’t let it get to her. She had a feeling the bad man had specifically picked this location so that she could hear the train come by so close — suddenly she realized what she was enclosed in. A water tower from the old days, when trains needed water for their steam engines.
Emily took several deep breaths. If she could get out of this, she could be rescued. She was close to people. At least there were people when a train passed. She looked at the bolt, the chain, the shackle and the lock. As before, the weakest part was the lock. And she still had one under-wire left. Emily stretched her hands out, feeling the pain from the still un-healed cuts she’d inflicted on herself with her last attempt.
She didn’t care. She had to do something.
There was another bright side to her current location, she realized as she pulled the remains of her bra off and began working the other wire free. She wasn’t being watched.
* * *
“What happened?” Gant asked.
Roberts ran a hand across his forehead, the fingers shaking ever so slightly. “Mike — my brother — had a line on one of the two top Cartel leaders in Colombia. He’d been going after him for three years, like I told you. I mean, these guys are like ghosts. They let others stand out in front and take the public heat and the hits. These guys are the real power and to get to meet one of them, well, it’s damn near impossible if you hadn’t been in their inner circle for decades. And Mike had a meeting scheduled with one of them. You have no idea what he had to do in order to get that meeting set up.”
“Actually, I probably do,” Gant said. “He had to prove himself and the only way to do that is with blood.”
Roberts looked startled, then nodded. His eyes shifted back and forth and Gant knew what he was about to hear would haunt Roberts until the day he died, but Gant didn’t care. Whatever had been done had most likely gone wrong and now a lot of other people were paying the price.
“We knew going in it was going to get dirty. We had to weigh things. It was already nasty on the street level with the drugs and the money getting channeled to terrorists. Most people don’t know it, but there is a definite link between drug money and terrorists.”
Gant noted the tone of justification that was creeping into Roberts’ voice. The man was going to spend many sleepless nights trying to convince himself of what he was trying to convince them of right now. Gant also knew that there had been definite links between the US government and drug money when it had been expedient. Money was money was the feeling at times.
“For the greater good,” Gant said. He kept his tone level. In reality, he didn’t condemn Roberts. He knew Nero had often made very hard decisions, always for the greater good of the country. And Gant had been on some missions where the price paid had been very high, beyond what was acceptable in the ‘normal’ world. He had long ago left the normal world behind. For the first time, Gant realized with a degree of surprise, he was almost happy that the targets had kidnapped Emily Cranston. It made the ethics of the current Sanction very cut and dry.
“Yes,” Roberts said, anxious for any sign of empathy. “We actually held a meeting. Myself, the Director of Operations and the Chief of Direct Action. To decide how much we were willing to give up to get Mike in place.”
“So how many lives did you decide it was worth?” Gant asked. He could see Golden taking this in, her eyes wide. Time for her to grow up, Gant thought.
“We knew it would take at least one,” Roberts said. “We were willing to go as high as three.”
Golden couldn’t remain silent. “What is wrong with you people?”
“It’s the way the real world works,” Robert
s said. “You want another nine-eleven?” He didn’t wait for an answer. Now that it was out on the table, he seemed anxious to be done with talking about it. “It wasn’t going to be random and we agreed that whoever we gave up was going to be dirty. Someone who was already betraying us. So Mike gave up a dirty DEA agent to the Cartel.”
“The one who had brokered the deal with the village,” Gant said, starting to see the pieces falling into place.
“Yes. Except we didn’t know about that deal. We just knew this guy was working an op against the Cartel, mid-level, but he was also taking bribe money. He was giving up who the Cartel told him to give up. Essentially getting rid of their competitors.
“We were working very high-level. So we were taken by surprise when we finally got wind of what was planned. Mike had already tipped off the Cartel about the agent. Mike and a couple of Cartel guys picked him up. Besides, it was a stupid plan, as you pointed out.”
Roberts licked his lips and his eyes were downcast. “They took him to a place — a place where the Cartel extracted information from people. And punished those who got in their way. They tortured him. That’s when they found out about the deal. But even the agent didn’t know that the team had been scheduled to go in and take out the warlord. That was being generated by the higher-ups in the DEA in Panama City. Who, of course, didn’t know about our op.”
Roberts voice went up slightly. “We couldn’t tell them. It was too dangerous. So the left hand didn’t know what the right hand was doing. The Cartel decided to punish the village. And they wanted it to be known that the DEA could not be trusted. So they wanted someone to go in there with a badge, standing with the warlord. Mike said he could take care of that. And he sent a message to me. Along with the kidnapped DEA agent’s badge. So I went.”
“What happened to the agent?” Golden asked.
Stupid question, Gant thought but didn’t voice.
“He disappeared and we assume they killed him. Which would have actually been merciful after the damage they probably had done to him during torture. I’ve seen what they do to people. Same as they sent a message by what they did in that village.”
“Which was?” Golden pushed.
Roberts eyes got distant as he remembered. “They killed pretty much everyone. Let a couple of old women go free so they could spread the story that the DEA was not to be trusted.”
“How many people killed?” Golden demanded.
“Fifty. Sixty. I didn’t count.”
Golden sat back as if she had been punched in the sternum. Gant ignored her.
“And the Special Forces team?” Gant asked.
“When they spotted me they called it in to Task Force Six which bounced the query to the Embassy. The duty officer knew I was down there. He didn’t know why or what for, but he called me on my satellite phone. I ordered the mission to be aborted. If those God-damn guys had just followed orders, everything would have been all right.”
“Except for the dead DEA agent and villagers,” Golden said.
“It’s a war,” Roberts said. “Sometimes there are casualties.”
“So Caleigh was a casualty of war?” Golden asked.
Gant could see the question strike home as Roberts flinched.
“Why are they going after family members and not the people directly responsible?” Gant asked.
Roberts shook his head. “I don’t know.”
“To cause emotional pain,” Golden said. She was staring hard at Roberts. “It’s working, right?”
“It’s working,” Roberts admitted.
Gant tried working through all the pieces. “Did your brother get the Cartel leader?”
Roberts let out a deep breath. “No.”
“So it was all a waste,” Golden said.
“Is your brother still under cover?” Gant asked.
“No. The whole thing fell apart. He got pulled out and is working here at Langley now.”
“And the warlord?” Gant asked.
Roberts looked startled. “What about him?”
“What happened to him?”
Roberts hesitated and Gant felt a surge of anger. “Just God-damn tell me,” he snapped, surprising Golden with his anger.
“I tried to use him as another angle of attack on the Cartel leader,” Roberts said. “It didn’t work so we pulled him out into protective custody.”
Gant rubbed a hand against his temple. What a cluster-fuck. “So he’s safe. Where?”
“We have a secure compound where we keep people like him.”
Gant slapped the top of the desk. “Where?”
“Maine.” Roberts frowned. “Why?”
“Our targets are Special Forces. Don’t you think they’re going to finish their original mission?”
CHAPTER TWENTY
It was her fourth night of captivity. It took Emily several minutes to figure out the exact number. One night in the van being taken to the forest. Two nights in the forest. And her first night here. She no longer felt hungry. There were no more rumbles of protest from her stomach. She didn’t understand why that was and did not take it as a positive development. Even her mental gymnastics to view her growing weight loss in a positive light had faded to nothing. Skinny and dead wasn’t a good combination.
Thirst was another matter, a constant that was steadily growing worse. Her mouth was beyond parched. Her skin felt dry and tight. Her hands and feet were swollen. But the largest tell on her level of dehydration was the lack of tears. She realized she had not produced tears when she cried in many hours. The crying jags would come on her unexpectedly and were becoming more and more frequent.
Another train had come by just after the sunset and she had been able to see the glow of the train’s lights over the lip of the cistern. She couldn’t help the surge of frustration as she futilely screamed for help as the train rattled by.
The silence that descended after the train passed was absolute, once more making her miss the noise of the forest although not the animals. She realized from both the lack of sound and the lack of humidity that she had to be in an almost desert environment, which meant she had most likely been moved west from her previous location.
Emily lay on her back, staring up at the stars. She had made no progress on the lock using the wire from her bra. Remembering her earlier failure she had been loath to put much pressure on the wire, but she also knew that to turn the tumbler would take a strong effort, a Catch-22 gamble that she was not ready to take. She had the wire in her left hand, a piece of security and there was a part of her that felt if it broke, she would break.
The wire was to be a last resort now, when she reached a critical point. People had to be looking for her. Perhaps a helicopter or plane would fly overhead and someone would spot her. Perhaps she was being held for ransom, although she knew her father was not a rich man, and it would be paid and then she would be rescued.
There was a constellation almost directly overhead but Emily had never studied the stars so she had no idea which one it was. She imagined her father would know and then be able to pinpoint where she was on the ground from the alignment of the stars but that skill, along with others he had possessed, she had never had much of a desire to learn.
She realized she had not thought of her father or mother much at all since she’d been kidnapped. Their divorce had created a chasm between all three of them that had not begun to heal. She knew they would be frantic about her being missing. A small, selfish part of her relished the thought that they would finally be focused on her and not their own situation.
Not that it did her any good.
Something fluttered by overhead, startling her out of her emotional musings. She cocked her head, trying to hear the beat of wings again. And it came, closer and then something landed on the lip of the cistern.
A large bird. A black figure against the dark sky. Emily wearily got to her feet to see it more clearly. If she could catch it, then she could drink its blood. Eat whatever meat was on its bones. It could�
�
Emily froze as she realized it was a buzzard.
And it was waiting for her meat.
* * *
Gant was glad to be on his own. On the way to the airfield Golden had suggested she do more research on the two surviving targets while Gant went to Maine to try to figure out exactly what they were up to. It was a plan, albeit a half-ass one in Gant’s opinion. As the jet carrying her raced west, Gant was on board an Air Force Combat Talon that he had specifically requested be put on standby for his use after the debacle in Virginia. Gant was dressed in black combat fatigues and the rear half of the aircraft was full of gear on several pallets that he had put in as a standing packing list for the aircraft, allowing him to be prepared for numerous contingencies. The front quarter of the aircraft cargo bay was separated from the rest by a thick black curtain and was lined with computer and imaging consoles, manned by Air Force specialists.
The Talon was the Special Operations version of the venerable C-130 Hercules cargo plane. It was equipped with terrain-following, and more importantly, terrain-avoidance radars, which allowed it to fly at operational speeds as low as two hundred and fifty feet above ground level in adverse weather conditions.
Sitting in the back of the specially equipped cargo plane, he used one of the secure satellite communications consoles and dialed Nero’s special satellite secure number. Even though it was nine in the evening, he felt reasonably confident he would get the old man.
He was surprised when a woman answered on the second ring. “This is Ms. Masterson. What can I do for you, Mister Gant?”
“Is Mister Nero there?” Gant asked, realizing his mistake right away.
“Mister Nero is indisposed at the moment,” Masterson said.
A silence played out, then her voice came back, sharper. “I assume you called for a reason. I received your situation report an hour ago. You’re on a flight to Maine and Doctor Golden is on her way to interview Sergeant Forten’s adoptive mother. One of his adoptive mothers that is, the one she felt was critical in the formation of what he is now. At least according to her predictive behavior model. Is there something else I need to know? Or that you need to know?”
