Simple Genius

by David Baldacci

  86

  THE RIB HIT THE WAVE, rode it straight up and went airborne, its twin props screaming as the water around them disappeared. Then the boat hit the surface of the inlet two feet farther down.

  “Look out!” Valerie Messaline screamed from the chase boat. She had obviously realized what Whitfield had just done.

  Michelle glanced back in time to see her dive off the boat along with a slew of others. The driver attempted to swerve around the place that Whitfield had managed to jump over, but it was too late. The boat hit the mine and exploded.

  Whitfield immediately threw the RIB into a tight turn and shot back out of the inlet, passing Messaline and company as they struggled to get out of their body armor before it dragged them under.

  “How the hell did you do that?” Sean asked in a stunned voice.

  Whitfield tapped the screen in front of him. “It’s easy, when you know where the mines are laid. I had them change the position of one yesterday. I try to be prepared.”

  The RIB roared back out on the York. None of them saw the missile launch from one of the patrol boats. It missed them but not by much. The RIB almost flipped over from the force of the explosion as the rocket hit the water ten yards away from them before Whitfield managed to get the boat back under control. The rain was coming down slantwise now, stinging their faces as Sean and Michelle slowly stood on trembling legs.

  Michelle glanced around. “Viggie! Horatio!”

  They looked behind them. In her life jacket Viggie was bobbing in the water already fifty yards away. To the left of her Horatio was sputtering and going under.

  Michelle didn’t hesitate. She grabbed a preserver, dove off the boat and swam for Horatio. She didn’t see Sean dive off the other side of the boat and head to Viggie. Michelle reached Horatio and pushed the life preserver in his hands. “You’re okay, Horatio, just don’t panic. Can you make it to the boat while I go get Viggie?”

  He nodded and Michelle headed off for Viggie. What she saw as she approached where Viggie had been struck her cold. The girl was being hauled into a boat driven by some of the men from Camp Peary. As Michelle strained to see through the rain and darkness, she saw another chilling spectacle. Two men on the boat were taking aim at Sean, who was still desperately trying to reach Viggie

  “No!” Michelle screamed, but she had nothing to hurt them with.

  An instant later she heard the sound behind her. She swung back around and saw Whitfield’s boat coming at her fast. Horatio was already on board so Whitfield must have come back around and picked him up. As the boat drew nearer, Michelle saw Whitfield hand off the wheel to Horatio. Then the Camp Peary chief leaned over the side of the RIB and looped his leg through a bungee strap on the boat’s gunwale. He extended his hand. Michelle instantly knew what he was doing. She’d practiced this particular maneuver in a joint training session with the FBI while at the Secret Service. As the boat zoomed alongside her she reached up and grabbed Whitfield’s hand. The man placed an iron grip on her arm with his other hand and his strength and the speed of the boat yanked her right out of the water and onto the boat’s deck. She didn’t even bother thanking him. She rolled to her feet, grabbed a gun and pointed it at the other boat as they drew close.

  Michelle knew Viggie was on board so she couldn’t fire directly at them, but she did manage to place five shots in such a compact manner that the gunmen ducked down and gave Sean a chance to escape.

  “Get close and we’ll grab him,” Michelle yelled.

  “I don’t think I can do this,” Horatio called out from the helm.

  Michelle slid over to the wheel while Whitfield lay across the gunwale again. As the RIB swooped by Sean was whisked into the boat.

  “Hit it!” Whitfield screamed.

  “What about Viggie!” Michelle screamed back.

  “Hit it or we all die!”

  Michelle slammed the throttle forward and the RIB shot ahead so fast Horatio and Sean almost fell overboard.

  Michelle yelled over the howls of the storm, “We’re going to round up an army and then we’re going back across that fucking river and we’re getting Viggie back.”

  She ran the RIB up on the shore on the other side of the York. They jumped off the boat and raced toward the entrance to Babbage Town. On the way, Sean stopped and retrieved his bag that he’d hidden behind a bush.

  The caravan of Suburbans was parked at the entrance and Michelle led the way single file toward them. As soon as they showed themselves they were surrounded by agents. Merkle Hayes stepped forward. He wasn’t wearing a police uniform. He had on a blue windbreaker with the letters “DEA” stenciled on it. Agent Ventris was right next to him.

  Sean stared at him. “DEA?”

  “It’s a long story,” Hayes said.

  “Have you rounded them up?” Michelle asked.

  “Who?” Ventris said angrily. “There’s nobody here except a few guards.”

  “The place was swarming with CIA guys in body armor,” Sean said.

  “Well, they’re not here now.”

  “We just had a gun battle on the river. They fired a rocket at us. Are you telling me you guys heard none of it?” Michelle asked incredulously.

  Hayes said, “A siren’s been going off just about the whole time we’ve been here. We just got the damn thing turned off. So with that and the storm we haven’t heard anything.”

  “Did you at least find the plane at the private strip filled with drugs?” Michelle asked.

  Hayes shook his head. “There was no plane and no Champ Pollion when my men got there.”

  “So—what drugs?” Ventris asked.

  In answer Michelle reached in her pocket and pulled out the wet Baggie. “These. There was at least a ton of it on Champ’s plane. Heroin.”

  Hayes took the bag and looked at it. “And where’d it come from?”

  Sean pointed across the river. “From over there. At Camp Peary.”

  At that instant a fireball raced into the sky. It was clearly coming from the other side of the York.

  Everyone turned their attention to the sight.

  “What the hell is that?” Ventris yelled.

  “Oh, shit!” Michelle exclaimed. “That plane I heard going over earlier. I bet that was Champ’s plane. He must’ve escaped and flew it to Camp Peary with the drugs. They just blew it up to get rid of the evidence.”

  “So you’re saying those drugs really came from Camp Peary?” Hayes said while nervously eying Ventris.

  “Tell them, Whitfield,” Sean said.

  Only Whitfield wasn’t there.

  “Where the hell did he go?” Sean said.

  Michelle said, “Sean, I don’t think he followed us out of the woods.”

  “Ian Whitfield was with us. He saved my life.”

  “It’s true,” Michelle said and Horatio nodded in agreement.

  “Dammit, you have to believe us,” Sean said.

  “We want to,” Hayes said quietly.

  “Hold on!” Sean shouted, pulling the video camera out of his backpack. “Look at this.” He ran the tape for them, pointing out the plane, the Arabs, Valerie Messaline, and the bales being off-loaded.

  Ventris said, “This footage is of Camp Peary. How the hell did you get it?”

  “We’re going to have to have some amnesty on that,” Sean said uneasily.

  Michelle pushed past Sean so she was directly in front of Ventris. “Listen to me,” Michelle snapped. “They have kidnapped Viggie Turing. They took her in one of the boats and they’re probably on their way back to Camp Peary.”

  “You saw this?” Hayes said quickly.

  “Yes!” Michelle screamed. She grabbed Ventris’s jacket. “Kidnapped. Remember the FBI’s specialty? So let’s get going.”

  Hayes said, “We can’t just storm into Camp Peary for God’s sake. We at least need a warrant.”

  “Then dammit get one. You’re the local sheriff, Hayes!”

  He sighed and said, “No, I’m not, I am with DEA
. For the last two years Mike’s been working a joint task force with us. I was just planted here as the local sheriff.”

  Michelle said, “Why here?”

  “Because there have been a lot of drugs pouring into the East Coast. We narrowed it down to this area,” Ventris interjected. “We thought the source was Babbage Town, but we didn’t know how they were getting them into the country. We thought they were coming in by boat.”

  “You must have known Champ had a plane,” Sean pointed out.

  “We did. But that Cessna didn’t have the range to bring in shipments from out of the country. We wanted the source of the stuff,” Hayes said.

  “We never suspected the CIA flights. They’re a government agency,” Ventris added, looking nervous.

  Michelle snatched the tape from Sean and stuffed it into Ventris’s hands. “Here’s your damn proof. Now stop jawing about shit that doesn’t matter, file for a warrant and take a frigging battalion of cops across the river before something happens to Viggie. Because I swear to God if they hurt her while you’re standing here pissing around, I will hunt you down and kick the living shit out of you.”

  Without hesitation Ventris said curtly, “Let’s go.”

  Hayes said, “Mike, it’s the damn CIA.”

  “All we can do is try.”

  CHAPTER

  87

  IT TOOK SOME TIME to get a warrant at that hour, and the judge who granted it didn’t seem at all pleased about having authorized a search of Camp Peary. Yet the videotape and the testimony of Sean, Michelle and Horatio carried the day. Still, dawn was breaking as the line of Suburbans pulled to a stop in front of the entrance to the CIA’s facility and Ventris and Hayes led two dozen federal lawmen and Sean and Michelle toward the guardhouses.

  At Sean’s insistence Horatio Barnes had been escorted back to northern Virginia by a pair of DEA agents to nurse his strained back, saturated lungs and a severely stressed nervous system. Sean had given him the copy of the video stick showing the plane, Arabs and drugs from Camp Peary with instructions for Horatio to make additional copies of it and to put them in separate safety-deposit boxes.

  Ventris held up the warrant and his creds as three armed guards from the front gate approached him.

  “You’d better get one of your superiors out here, gents,” Hayes said, flashing his badge as well.

  The guard said in a crisp professional tone, “Actually, sir, your superiors are here.”

  Two other men came out from the guard building. One wore a suit; the other was dressed in khakis with a blue DEA windbreaker.

  Sean’s heart sank as he saw Ventris and Hayes stiffen. The man in the suit said, “Agent Ventris, give me the warrant.”

  Ventris said, “But sir, I—”

  “Now!”

  Ventris handed it over. The man looked at it and then tore the paper up.

  The man in the DEA jacket said to Hayes, “Now give me the video that was shot.”

  “How’d you know about that?” Hayes asked.

  “You showed it to the judge to get the warrant. Now give it to me.”

  Hayes pulled the video from his pocket and gave it to his boss, who in turn gave it to one of the Camp Peary guards.

  “Now get your men back in the vehicles and get out of here.”

  Hayes immediately started to protest but the man cut him off.

  “National security interests are at stake here, Hayes. I’m not saying I like it, but that’s just the way it is. Go!”

  Ventris’s boss nodded curtly at him as well. “You too.”

  The men turned back toward the Suburbans. Michelle and Sean started to follow, but the Camp Peary guards stopped them.

  “You two are being detained,” one of them said.

  “What!” Sean exclaimed.

  Ventris and Hayes started to intercede but their two superiors stepped in.

  “Get in your damn vehicles and get the hell out of here. We have no jurisdiction at this place,” Ventris’s boss said.

  “We had a warrant,” Ventris said bitterly.

  “Do you want to go to prison for obstruction, Mike?” The man glared at Sean and Michelle. “Or for harboring and aiding and abetting felons? Now get your ass in the truck and pretend this was all a nightmare. That’s an order.”

  Ventris and Hayes looked helplessly at Michelle and Sean. Sean nodded. “Go on, guys, we’ll work it out.” He didn’t sound too confident because he wasn’t.

  As the motorcade drove off, footsteps made Sean and Michelle turn around.

  Valerie Messaline was standing there dressed in beige fatigues, her CIA ID on a lanyard around her neck.

  “Welcome to Camp Peary,” she said. “I understand you’ve been dying to visit.”

  CHAPTER

  88

  THE CELL WAS SIX-BY-SIX CONCRETE, cold, damp and windowless. Sean’s clothes were stripped off and he was ordered to stand at attention in the corner. After six hours, exhausted, he squatted on the floor. The door to his cell immediately banged open and hands lifted him back up. An hour later, his legs growing numb, he squatted again. The same thing happened over and over. Twenty-two hours later he was allowed to fall back on his hard cot. A minute later the cold water hit him in the face. Then he was forced to sit on the edge of a metal stool that was bolted to the floor. If he moved even a millimeter the door immediately clanged open and he was forced back to his original position. An hour later he was forced to sit so close to the edge he could barely stay on the stool. Thirty minutes later, he was forced even closer to the edge. Every time they moved him, part of the skin from his butt cheeks remained on the cold metal stool. His muscles knotted up after five hours. After ten hours he threw up everything in his belly. Sixteen hours later he was allowed to collapse on his bed covered in his retch. He was given a cup of water but no food.

  As soon as he was drifting off to sleep the door banged open again and he was lightly smacked in the sides with wooden batons and ordered to remain awake. As soon as he started falling asleep again the same thing happened. For two days this occurred until he finally fell to the floor, his body twitching uncontrollably.

  After three days of this treatment he found the strength to scream, “I’m a United States citizen, dammit, you can’t do this. You can’t do this.”

  He jumped up and charged the door, but strong hands shoved him back. He fell onto the concrete, ripping skin off his knees and hands.

  “You can’t do this,” he said again. He tried to rise, to fight them, but he was too weak. “You can’t do this. You have no right.”

  “We have every right,” a voice said. Sean looked up to see Valerie standing there.

  “You broke into a United States intelligence facility. You stole things.”

  “You’re crazy.”

  “You are a traitor to your country. We have evidence that you came down here on the pretense of investigating a murder but with the real purpose of spying on the CIA.”

  “That’s bullshit and you know it! I want a lawyer, right now!”

  She went on calmly, “Based on our investigation we have classified you and Michelle Maxwell as persons who are materially aiding enemies of this country by spying on the CIA. Therefore you are not entitled to legal representation or to habeas corpus until we decide to charge you with a crime and bring you to trial.”

  He exploded, “You can’t fucking keep me here just because you want to.”

  “The law allows us quite a bit of latitude.”

  “What do you want from me?” he shouted.

  “Things you saw, things you heard. Even what you’re imagining. But I’ll talk about that once you’re softened up a bit more. You gave us quite a rough time out on the river; it’s payback now.”