Betrayal

by Tim Tigner

  Three minutes and five aborted attempts later sweat was rolling down his face despite the evening chill. After six he began to worry about running out of fuel. After seven he was weighing the risks of a frontal assault. On the eighth he managed to hold the bird in place just long enough. The instant he had the position right, he brought the bird straight down. Given the position of the camera on the belly of the craft, all Odi saw for the last couple of feet of descent was a quickly rising floor and then a close-up still shot of tile grout. Tactically, the landing was perfect. He hoped it had not made too much noise. That was another oversight, Odi realized with a groan—not installing sound. For all he knew, a guard could be studying the helicopter right now, asking his boss via radio what he should do. Live and learn.

  He pushed the silver button on the joystick’s base, causing the cargo clamps beneath the helicopter to disengage. The camera jiggled a bit and Odi let out a sigh of relief. He had successfully separated the cargo from the bird that had delivered it.

  Odi lifted his night vision binoculars, located the porch, and felt a wave of relief. No guard. No lights. Time for stage two.

  He fine-tuned the focus on the binoculars and then, still holding them in his left hand, squeezed the joystick trigger again with his right. He watched with satisfaction as the helicopter rose straight up into the air above the roof while the image transmitted to his computer screen remained unchanged.

  He continued to take the unburdened helicopter up to a height of fifty feet where, using the binoculars and joystick’s thumb toggle, he pointed its nose out to sea. He pushed forward fully on the stick, sending the helicopter racing out over the water. Without any cargo, it streaked like a missile across the sky. He let it fly until it was little more than a dot on the horizon. Then he released the trigger. The rotor stopped, and the helicopter dropped like a bagged duck into the waves. Speaking to no one but the sea, he said, “Stage two, complete.”

  Odi withdrew a second remote from his backpack and lay back down between the dunes. Once settled, he returned his attention to the computer screen. He had custom built the robot that now graced Rollins’ balcony using a remote-controlled toy jeep as a base. It rolled on four suction-cup covered wheels and had lots of sophisticated robotic equipment attached. He turned on the joystick and gave it a short forward nudge to confirm that it was operational, sighing with satisfaction when the camera image moved. So far, so good, Odi thought, knowing that the real tests of his engineering prowess still lay ahead.

  He used the run of the grout to position the robot so that it was perfectly perpendicular to the sliding door. Then he drove it forward. The image shook back and forth after a couple of feet and then the view jumped to show the weak reflection of moonlight off heavy glass. Odi felt the thrill of the hunt coursing through his veins. He was almost there.

  He propelled the robot up the sliding-glass door to a height of six feet and then released the joystick with a silent prayer. From his practice sessions on Charlotte’s door he knew that this was a tender moment, but the technology did not fail. The robot stuck.

  He toyed with the focus, trying to get a good look inside the bedroom. With the helicopter gone, there was not much he would be able to do if the robot was in the wrong place. Odi was sure that he had the master bedroom, but there was still the chance that Rollins had swapped rooms with a guard as a security measure. All Odi could do about that was hope that Rollins was too stubborn or the guards were not that good.

  He adjusted the focus, taking the image a couple of turns in the wrong direction before finally getting it right. Once the image crystallized he felt another satisfying surge. Mark Rollins was sleeping beneath a white duvet on a raised platform bed. Odi used the computer to zoom in on the face just to be sure. The meticulously-parted dark hair and long patrician nose of the master of the house greeted him. “Bingo.”

  He pressed a black button on the joystick, engaging the robot’s auxiliary suction cups. Now even with the activities to follow, the robot would not slip.

  Panning back out to a wider view, he saw something that made his heart skip a beat. There was a brassiere on the floor. Unless Rollins had a habit of cross-dressing, he was not alone in that big platform bed.

  Odi would not allow collateral casualties to taint what Ayden had facetiously dubbed Operation Just Revenge. He would not be able to live with himself after that. He also felt certain that his fallen comrades would not want their revenge at that price. If the woman buried beneath that king-sized duvet did not remain motionless during the next few minutes, Odi would have to abort. To minimize the chances of that happening, he decided to sacrifice caution for speed.

  He pushed a yellow button on the remote control, spraying concentrated hydrofluoric acid onto the glass a couple of inches below the anchoring suction cups. Hydrofluoric acid was especially potent on glass. It would dissolve a baseball-sized hole in less than a minute, even in Rollins’ hurricane glass. The hole would both help to direct the explosion and make the entire window weak.

  Odi watched the duvet while he worked. Nobody stirred. Full speed ahead. He pressed the orange button exactly sixty seconds after the yellow, holding it down. He smiled with satisfaction as the camera began to respond with a slight, rhythmic shake. The orange button controlled a pecking device, which was now double-tapping every other second against the glass. Tap-tap … tap-tap … tap-tap … After half a dozen pecks, the duvet began to stir.

  “Attaboy.”

  After a few more taps, Rollins rolled cautiously out of bed.

  Odi let off on the button and the pecking stopped.

  As Mark Rollins stood up and looked around, Odi’s eyes were drawn to the gun in his hand. “Excellent,” he mumbled. “With a nine-millimeter Beretta in your hand, you’re not feeling the need to call for help.”

  Odi glued his eyes to the screen as Mark surveyed his room. Each time Mark turned his head from the balcony, Odi gave the button another quick press. After the third salvo Mark raised his gun and walked directly toward the camera, tilting his head from one side to the other as though trying to focus. He was probably wondering if it was possible for a seagull to fly fast enough to imbed itself in hurricane-proof glass.

  Odi would have enjoyed watching the doomed man’s confused face, but he forced himself to keep his focus on the duvet. He prayed the owner of the brassiere would stay fully covered for another two seconds. She did.

  Pictures of Odi’s fallen friends flashed through his mind: Adam, Derek, Flint, Jeremy, Mitch, and Tony. Finally Rollins’ inquisitive face got so close that Odi could see nothing else. He said, “You should have confessed,” and then pressed the red button.

  Chapter 29

  FBI Headquarters, Washington, D.C.

  WILEY LOOKED OVER at Stuart, pleased to have his campaign manager’s company for once. Stuart seemed to sense Wiley’s gaze even with his back turned. When he looked over his shoulder, Wiley said, “I’ve finished with London Heathrow. A dozen were close, but none were close enough. I’ve got nothing.”

  With Drake and Rollins now dead, Abrams was the only defense CEO they had left. That made Wiley nervous. Though Stuart would not show it, Wiley was convinced that his campaign manager was feeling the butterflies. While the CEOs replacing Drake and Rollins would surely give Wiley’s campaign their financial support, agreeing to stage terrorist attacks was an entirely different matter. Abrams insisted that he would be able to bring the new CEOs on board with the plan, but he refused to make a move until Odi Carr was on a coroner’s slab. The man was adamant. “No toe tag, no dice.”

  Wiley silently cursed his partner in crime although he could hardly blame Abrams. The man’s ass was now squarely in a clever assassin’s sights. Of course Abrams wanted the Director of the FBI fully focused on catching the bastard. Who wouldn’t? As part of that focus, Wiley had broken with discretion and brought Stuart to the Hoover Building to help him scan immigration videos. Misery loves company, and Wiley could think of little that was more miserabl
e than spending midnight to dawn studying an endless stream of faces.

  Video of every passenger arriving to the US from Europe and the Middle East during the four weeks between the Iranian mission and Potchak’s death was queuing up to parade past their tired eyes. It was a monstrous task. Even with the aid of the FBI’s sophisticated software, which Wiley had programmed to fast forward the video past women and children and men too short or tall, they still had tens of thousands of faces to study. They were dredging in an ocean rife with weeds but containing only one fish. And the election clock was ticking.

  Given the time pressure presented by the election cycle, Wiley was thrilled to have devised a two-pronged approach to killing Odi. While he and Stuart chased Odi from behind, Cassi was out in front of him ready to intercept. Talk about a secret weapon. Whatever disguise Odi chose to use to try to get close to Abrams, there was little chance that Cassi would not recognize him—even though she did not know that it was Odi she was looking for. Yes, Wiley thought, they would get him. The question was, would they get him soon enough?

  “What country’s next?” Stuart asked.

  “I’m thinking Germany. How much Turkey do you have left?”

  “I’ve got sixteen more flights,” he replied, stretching his arms over his head.

  “Can you believe that there are people who do this all day, every day? You’d think they’d go nuts.”

  “Or blind.

  “What if we can’t find Odi before he gets to Abrams?” Wiley asked, noting that his use of we left a bitter taste in his mouth. “You helped plan the first series of attacks. Could you do it again without a CEO’s help?”

  Stuart shook his head. “I was able to set that up because I had cushy jobs to offer our coconspirators. Without the defense contractors backing us, I don’t have anything to offer besides cabinet posts, and that would be too risky.”

  “But we’re so close. You should have heard the president. It was as though Carver took the words right out of your mouth. He said, quote, ‘It would be good to have a prophet on my team, assuming terrorism still piques the voters’ interest come Election Day.’”

  “Well then let’s hope your ex comes through,” Stuart said, adding: “I’d love to be a fly on the wall at that reunion.”

  Wiley imagined that scene—Cassi learning that her twin was alive but a terrorist assassin. Talk about a double-edged sword. He wondered if it was possible to feel like even more of a shit.

  “I’ve got him!” Stuart said, shooting out of his chair.

  “Odi?”

  “Odi!”

  “What name did he use?”

  “Hold on. It will take a moment for me to query using the time and station code.”

  “He flew in from Turkey?”

  “Yep. And the name on the passport he used is ... Ayden Archer.”

  Chapter 30

  Annapolis, Maryland

  CASSI WAS BACK in the ASIS boardroom, bracing for another fight. As she sat there on eggshells she found herself feeling woozy. Her head had not seen a pillow since Wiley visited her apartment two days before, but she knew that a lack of sleep was only marginally responsible for her imbalance. Her incompetence was the real problem. She had lost yet another life entrusted to her care. Wiley and the FBI had given her a second chance, a shot at redemption—and now Rollins was dead. The fact that she was one person assigned to protect two people would be but a footnote beneath that glaring headline. All her excuses, legitimate though they might be, were not going to keep Rollins’ corpse off her performance record. Her only chance of salvation now would be to catch the assassin—while Abrams was still alive.

  As she struggled to force her latest failure from her mind, Wilbanks and Abrams entered the boardroom and took their seats without a word. She had spent every minute since their last meeting on plans to enhance Abrams’ security. It was time for her report.

  Wilbanks, ASIS’s chief of security, opened the dialogue. “So you’ve completed your appraisal?” He asked, leaning back with his arms folded defiantly across his chest. “I trust my men were helpful.”

  “I have and they were.” Cassi replied, understanding at once that there would be no mention of Rollins today. His death was still too fresh, their emotions too raw.

  Cassi studied her fencing partner. He had thick white hair which he wore cropped short like a general. Normally this made him look fierce, but today it just presented a strong contrast to the dark bags beneath his eyes. Cassi found herself feeling for the man despite finding him to be a self-promoting prick. Nobody liked an outsider poking around in his affairs, especially when that outsider’s job was to tell your boss everything you were doing wrong. She surely wouldn’t.

  Last night while weighing her options on how to proceed after what was probably the worst first-day on FBI record, Cassi realized that the potential longevity of her relationship with Wilbanks added constraint to complication. She was going to be working closely with him until she caught the assassin. That meant she had to avoid alienating him as she ripped his organization to shreds. She knew that in similar circumstance most people would say, “Screw it,” and then blast the guy. But the psychological nuances of daunting situations like these actually fired her up. They also played to her strengths. So she had formulated a teardown-buildup plan.

  “Tell me, Special Agent Carr,” Abrams said, joining the row, “what exactly did you find?”

  “Your complex is a fortress,” she said, watching from the corner of her eye for Wilbanks to give Abrams an I-told-you-so nod. He did not disappoint her.

  “Wonderful,” Abrams said.

  “No, it isn’t. Not really.”

  On cue, Wilbanks fired back a petulant, “What’s wrong with a fortress?”

  Cassi stood and leaned forward, bracing her palms on the gleaming table. “Fortresses are essentially walls meant to keep people out. They will intimidate some, but in fact they are useless once someone gets in.”

  Wilbanks waved a hand dismissively, though his body language showed that he was worried. “That’s like saying a safe is no good if someone opens the door.”

  “Perhaps, except that in your case tens of thousands of people have the combination.” Cassi held up her temporary identity card. Then she withdrew a stack of two-dozen duplicate cards and slid them onto the table where they scattered across the polished surface like a plague. “I made these while I was at lunch.”

  Wilbanks’ face dropped, but his response remained aggressive. “We can’t run a company if nobody can come to work.”

  Now for the build-up, she thought, retaking her seat. “No, you can’t. For that reason, security at ASIS is similar to what you find at most major corporations. In fact, you’ve done a better job than most.”

  Wilbanks’ posture relaxed a hair.

  “Tell me what needs to be done to make it better,” Abrams said.

  “To continue the analogy I started earlier, what you’ve got now with your electronic card-key system is the equivalent of a computerized wall. It’s good at fending off a straightforward frontal assault, but like a brick-and-mortar wall, a computerized wall is useless if the enemy can find a way to open the gate or walk around.”

  “Or tunnel under,” Abrams added. “Yes, I got your point. Tell me about our holes.”

  “Every card key is a hole, and there’s little you can do to make it difficult for an assassin to obtain one of those. All he has to do is snatch a purse or break into a house. If he’s clever about it, he’ll duplicate the card key and return it without the owner ever noticing that it was gone.”

  Abrams sighed. Cassi continued. “Then of course there’s hacking. Someone could break into your system and authorize his own card. Theft and hacking are just a couple of the many electronic means available. A less sophisticated assassin could simply apply for a job on your maintenance or security staff, or with of one of your subcontractors.”

  Cassi paused to study Abrams. “I can see by the look on your face that you’re beginnin
g to understand the problem.”

  “What am I going to do?” He asked. “I can’t raise the drawbridge.”

  “For starters, you need to put humans in place at all entrances to compare photos to faces.”

  Abrams looked at Wilbanks who nodded. “Done.”

  “Next, you need a redundant procedure at the entrance to the executive tower. That guard will also verify everyone’s business. Furthermore, you need to make the tower off-limits to all subcontractors and anyone with less than a year on your payroll, including maintenance. Don’t allow any service people into the tower, including deliverymen, exterminators, or gardeners. Bring those functions in-house. Even emergency-service personnel like police, firemen, and paramedics need to be held at bay until their identities can be verified. In essence, you’re only to allow known people through that door.”

  “HR will have a fit, but I can live with that. Anything else?”

  “Yes,” Cassi pressed. “I know you like to mingle with the troops, but that’s going to have to stop. Until we catch this guy, everyone comes to you, here on the twelfth floor. We’ll put a guard in each elevator and only allow people on your appointment schedule to access the twelfth floor.”

  As she finished she saw Abrams preparing to object when a shadow suddenly crossed his face and he gave a single nod. He had obviously remembered Rollins. Cassi continued. “Other than the two glass elevators, the service elevator, the stairway, and the helipad on the roof, is there any other way to access the twelfth floor?”

  Abrams and Wilbanks both shook their heads.

  “I’ll have the stairway and the service elevator locked,” Wilbanks added. “Fuck the fire inspector. And I’ll let my men know that we’re not expecting any window cleaners.”