Day of Reckoning (Shadow Warriors)

by Stephen England

Altmann shot him a glare. “Isn’t that a comforting thought, Russ?”

  “Never said it was supposed to be. Simply a possibility we must consider.” He paused. “Are you sure you’re ready for this?”

  “Why?” The question didn’t come out the way she’d meant it to, an icy chill to her voice.

  The negotiator never seemed to notice. “You lost your partner, Marika. There’s been no time for you to grieve.”

  “There’s never time, Russ. Vic wasn’t the first agent I’ve lost through the years—nothing to do but keep moving, keep fighting. No time for grief.”

  There was a long pause as he held her gaze, seeming to stare into her very soul. “And that…that is the most dangerous thing of all.”

  4:02 A.M. Pacific Time

  The safehouse

  San Francisco, California

  The sound of running water brought her awake slowly, the aftereffects of the anesthesia still dulling her senses.

  Carol opened her eyes, blinking back sleep. A narrow shaft of light pierced the darkness, streaming from the half-open door of the adjoining bathroom.

  It took a moment for her to place where she was, what had happened. Then it all came flooding back.

  Her vision cleared and her eyes focused in on the light. She could see Harry standing in front of the sink, stripped to the waist, running water over his hands.

  She’d seen pictures of torture. They’d been part of her training at Camp Peary. But nothing had prepared her for this.

  His back and shoulders were a mass of old scars, purplish and discolored in the pale light—crisscrossing and overlapping each other as if he had been beaten to within an inch of his life.

  He had. She could remember reading the after-action report in his dossier, the story of his capture by the Taliban in 2008. They’d nearly killed him. That he had ever been able to go back out into the field at all was testament to a sheer force of will.

  Carol pushed back the blankets, reaching for the robe folded neatly on the nightstand. She didn’t remember undressing the previous night and a flush spread across her face as she realized that she hadn’t.

  Water dripped down Harry’s face, droplets catching in the rough black stubble of his beard as he ran the steaming cloth over his shoulders, feeling the warmth seep into his skin. Scars.

  There was no pain, not anymore, but the scars were never going away.

  The cloth moved lower, pausing briefly near a scar on his upper right chest, a pockmarked, discolored indentation in his flesh. The relic of a dark night in Basra, 2005.

  They’d been meeting with an informant—been ambushed by Shiite militants loyal to Muqtada al-Sadr. He’d been shot with an AK-47, the jacketed 7.62mm round passing straight through, missing his lung by inches. It would have been enough to qualify him for the Purple Heart if he’d been military—but he wasn’t and it didn’t.

  He didn’t exist.

  Harry felt her standing there before he saw her, half-hidden by shadows. “Hideous, isn’t it?” he asked, a wry smile crossing his face as he looked back to catch her eye.

  He’d grown accustomed to the stares—but the look on her face was something different.

  Pain—his pain—was reflected in those blue eyes, pain not unmixed with sympathy. It was the first time he had ever seen her with her defenses down, stripped of that look of determination that reminded him so much of her father.

  “It was Afghanistan, wasn’t it?” she asked, her voice low and tender.

  Harry nodded, feeling suddenly vulnerable. It wasn’t something he was used to. He laid down the washcloth and reached for his shirt, drawing it on over his arms. “Ancient history.”

  He started to leave the bathroom, moving past her, but she put out a hand, catching him by the arm. “Thank you,” she whispered.

  “For what?” he asked, pausing there in the doorway. She was so beautiful, standing there in the half-light, hair still askew from a night’s sleep. Close enough to take her into his arms, but something held him back.

  There were so many things he could have said, but he’d said them all before, to others through the years. Lies.

  And he couldn’t say the words now, even though he meant them with all his heart. Even though they were true.

  Carol didn’t look at him. “You’ve risked your life to protect me. Sacrificed your career. Why?”

  He hadn’t been expecting that question.

  What is truth? That he cared for her? That she had roused feelings he’d long thought dead?

  “Your father was my friend, but the why doesn’t matter—not in the end,” he said finally, his fingers smoothing back a lock of golden hair, touching her cheek lightly. “Just know that I’m here for you—we’ve come this far together. Not going to leave you now.”

  She nodded, glancing up into his eyes. “I know.”

  So beautiful, he thought, the voice within whispering, Don’t get involved.

  “Han got in around three,” he announced, more for his benefit than hers, his hand falling away from her shoulder. Reminding himself that they weren’t alone, strength to his resolve. “He was able to find a van.”

  The moment passed and he left her standing there in the doorway as he moved into the bedroom, buttoning his shirt. “When all this is over—what will you do?”

  Something he hadn’t given much thought. “Don’t really know,” he replied, reaching for his 1911.

  He flashed her a grim smile. “Sufficient to the day is the evil thereof.”

  7:46 A.M. Eastern Time

  CIA Headquarters

  Langley, Virginia

  The call log had confirmed his worst fears. Lasker rubbed the bridge of his nose, his eyes scanning the op-center. What Kranemeyer had asked him to do…well, “illegal” didn’t even begin to cover it.

  Rumor had it that Carter had overstepped the boundaries of the Agency’s charter, and now he was under house arrest, in joint CIA/FBI custody. He had no desire to follow him down.

  An uneaten bagel still sat in its box beside Lasker’s keyboard. His appetite was long gone.

  Six calls over the course of three weeks, none of them lasting longer than four minutes. All of them made within CONUS, likely by an American citizen. Illegal territory without a FISA warrant, and he was operating without any written authorization at all. Quicksand.

  The SIM card didn’t belong to your average Joe Sixpack. The owner was a player—all six calls had been made to the same number. No one did that.

  The target number was…another prepaid cellphone, purchased in Manassas around the same time and activated by an A. Smith.

  Lasker sniffed. Why people couldn’t show some imagination with their aliases…

  A shadow loomed over his workstation and he nearly came out of his skin, tapping his mouse to minimize the open window. He looked up into the coal-black eyes of Bernard Kranemeyer.

  “Any results, Danny?”

  5:30 A.M. Pacific Time

  The safehouse

  San Francisco, California

  When all this is over—what will you do? Carol’s words came streaming back through his mind, the one question he didn’t want to face.

  Harry pushed his chair back from the table, walking over to the refrigerator. Barring a miracle, there was no going back to the Agency. He’d been burned.

  The reality hadn’t really sunk in yet, he hadn’t permitted himself to consider it. Out of a job, out in the cold.

  He’d spent every last year of his adult life hunting men. Hunting them down and killing them. As cold as it sounded, those were his skillsets.

  As he buttered a piece of toast he glanced into the safehouse’s living room to where Han sat, poring over the laptop. Perhaps it was time to hang it up, while he still had a life, a future. Before he was broken.

  A future. It was something he had never really considered before. Before what…Carol?

  As if on cue, she appeared in the doorway of the kitchen. “Toast will be ready in a few minutes,” he announc
ed as she came up behind him. “Alexei will be here by nine to go over his plan.”

  “He has a plan?”

  “Yeah.” Harry nodded, turning to face her. “And I doubt you’re going to like it.”

  8:57 A.M. Central Time

  Dearborn Police Station

  Dearborn, Michigan

  “The call came in four hours ago—and you have yet to send anyone to the scene?” Marika Altmann leaned back against the door, folding her arms across her chest.

  The police chief got up from his chair and came around the front of his desk. He was just tall enough to look her in the eye, white hair swept back from a receding hairline. His face spoke of a man who had seen it all.

  In five years as Dearborn’s chief of police, he probably had.

  He shook his head, gesturing out the window toward Michigan Avenue. “We can’t do what we once did, Special Agent Altmann. I’ve got three bureaus: Detective, Traffic, and Juvenile. Less than thirty officers in each one. Just over eighty police in a city of ninety-nine thousand.”

  Taking in her look of surprise, he continued. “Budget cuts. We’ve all seen our salaries slashed—can’t even keep the streetlights on at night. This city’s in bad shape. I’ve had seven homicides in the last twenty-four hours. The fire department didn’t find any bodies in the ruins of the apartment building, so it’s been low on the priorities list. If we’d known that an FBI confidential informant was living in the building…”

  No way that would have happened, Marika thought, her mind already moving on to the next question. Too much risk of a leak when you brought in the local LEOs. “So, when did the fire department receive the call about abu Rashid’s apartment being ablaze?”

  The chief let out a weary sigh. “Five-thirty this morning. Well over an hour after they believe it started. A cleaning crew working at Parklane Towers spotted the blaze on the horizon and called it in. By the time the fire department was able to mobilize, the building had burned to the ground.”

  Nothing he said was making sense. She shot a look over at Russell, who was nodding—as if he understood. “So you’re telling me that, what…fifty or more people evacuated a burning building and no one thought to dial 911?”

  He shook his head. “Oh, they thought it, ma’am. They thought it. But no one acted on the thought.”

  “Why?”

  “The estimates vary, but I’d say 45-50% of them are illegals. Many of them don’t even speak English. You go into their communities, and it’s like visiting a foreign country. It is, really. They only come out for work, if that, and we don’t go in.”

  “What you’re saying is that you don’t patrol?”

  “That’s exactly what I’m saying. These people have no loyalty except to themselves. If a crime happens, they mention it to their imam and it’s handled in-house. Should we happen to find out about it, everyone develops a sudden case of ‘see no evil’.”

  “Then—our CI…what are you telling me?”

  His eyes narrowed as he stared across the room at her. “The only way you’re ever going to find him is if he wants to make contact. If he can make contact. As for any investigation of your own, he might as well be on the far side of the moon.”

  9:14 A.M.

  The mosque

  Dearborn, Michigan

  The silence was unnerving. Nasir blew gently across the surface of his tea, feeling the black man’s eyes on his back. His brother had been gone for the better part of two hours.

  He willed his fingers not to tremble as the negro paced back and forth, like a huge African cat.

  The last time he’d been this frightened…he’d been hiding under a fire-gutted Hyundai in Beirut, Jewish bombs raining down. Each one closer than the one before it. The bombs that had killed his father.

  His mortality had been inescapable in that moment. The helplessness. It was the same feeling now.

  Though we know death is certain, we have not prepared ourselves for it.

  Words of truth. He was in the hands of Allah now.

  The door to the small basement room opened, admitting Jamal and another man, so tall that he had to duck to enter the room.

  “Salaam alaikum, Nasir,” the tall man began, a holy light shining from his blue eyes. He went on without waiting for the greeting to be returned. “Your brother informs me that you took up arms alongside our brethren in Lebanon against the Zionist aggressor. And yet, since you have come to America…you have ceased to pursue the holy jihad. Why?”

  “Astagfirullah,” Nasir whispered, his eyes downcast in reverence. I ask forgiveness of Allah. “I have lacked opportunity.”

  The tall man smiled, apparently satisfied by the answer. “Then may you have no more lack, my brother. Insh’allah.”

  8:32 A.M. Pacific Time

  Andropov’s residence

  Beverly Hills, California

  “There has been a…complication,” Viktor announced, taking his seat across from Korsakov at the kitchen table. His face was distorted with the anguish of being a bearer of bad news.

  “What is it?” the assassin asked gently, reaching across to touch the boy’s fingertips. His breakfast was forgotten for the moment.

  “This—from Yuri.” Viktor pushed the phone across the table, stroking his beard nervously. A text message was displayed on the touchscreen. FLIGHT GROUNDED IN CHICAGO. SNOWSTORM. ETA UNKNOWN.

  Korsakov stifled an angry curse. Andropov was waiting on them. A snowstorm…it was what an insurance company might have called an “act of God,” but he didn’t believe in such superstition.

  Neither did Andropov.

  He looked up to see that Viktor was no longer paying attention to him. His face drained of color, he was looking off to the right, over Korsakov’s shoulder into the kitchen.

  Danger.

  The assassin’s head whipped around, but the only thing he saw was the slender form of Andropov’s young mistress maybe fifteen feet away, standing near the kitchen’s massive island. She was peeling an apple.

  “I heard them,” Viktor murmured insistently, speaking Russian. “Heard him strike her, heard his voice raised—angry. Just like before.”

  And then he saw it. Her left eye was swollen shut, a puffy, purplish bruise adorning her cheekbone.

  Brutality had been part of Korsakov’s work for so long that he had ceased to even take note of it. When the girl had made her appearance moments before, his eyes had never made it as far north as her face.

  Violence was quite simply a fact of life. As natural an act as the breaking of the eggs that formed his breakfast. But not for his young companion.

  Just like before. “What did you say?” he demanded, turning back to face Viktor.

  But the boy was gone. Gone…

  9:07 A.M.

  The safehouse

  San Francisco, California

  Orange marmalade. On a generous slab of lightly toasted white bread.

  Harry watched as Vasiliev shoved one end of the bread in his mouth, chewing with infuriating slowness. It was a tactic for the Russian, just one of his bag of tricks to keep his opponent off-balance. Opponent? Alexei viewed everyone as an opponent.

  He shot a glance over at Han before addressing his question to Vasiliev. “I believe you said you had a plan?”

  “Indeed.” Clenching the toast between his teeth, Vasiliev reached into his leather messenger bag and extracted a thin folder, tossing it across the table to Harry.

  From the letterhead, the Cyrillic script across the top—it looked like an official FSB dossier. But all it contained was a single 8x10 surveillance photo, blown up and digitally enhanced. The face of an arrogantly handsome young man stared back from the print, no more than twenty, twenty-one at the most, his features undeniably Slavic.

  “Nineteen,” the Russian announced, supplying the answer to Harry’s unasked question.

  “His name is Pyotr, but he reportedly prefers the anglicized Peter.” Vasiliev sniffed audibly. “This generation, they have no appreciation for th
eir heritage.”

  “The point, Alexei?”

  The older man reached for a napkin, wiping a smudge of marmalade from his lip. “You’re right—his first name is unimportant. His last name…is Andropov. Valentin’s son.”

  And in that moment, Vasiliev’s “plan” became painfully clear, in all of its brutal simplicity. Characteristic of the Russian.

  “No,” Carol interjected, her head coming up sharply. “No way.”

  Vasiliev threw up his hands. “Americans—they always want results, but they rarely wish to dirty their hands in obtaining them. You want an omelet? You have to break some eggs. You want to find the man behind your father’s murder? This is the most linear path.”

  Anger flashed from her blue eyes. “He’s also nineteen! He’s guilty of nothing.”

  “Guilty?” He gave her an indulgent smile. “What do I look like—a judge? There are none innocent in this world. All due respect, Miss Chambers, but this is not your operation. Harry knows the truth of what I say.”

  No. She looked over at Harry, silently begging him to deny it, to bring a stop to this.

  One glimpse of his face and that hope died within her. He was nodding, the life—the love—she had seen earlier gone from his eyes. Replaced by…nothing.

  “Alexei’s right.”

  9:12 A.M.

  Beverly Hills, California

  Darkness. Heat. Flesh against flesh, sweaty hands against his body. The whip coming down against his naked back.

  Pain.

  He was too exposed—had to find a place to hide. Couldn’t keep running. Had to keep running. The breeze fanned Viktor’s hair as he ran, his feet pounding against the the concrete of the sidewalk.

  Darkness.

  He reached into the pocket of his windbreaker, pulling out his cellphone. He ripped off the back panel and tore out both the battery and the SIM card, shoving them into the pocket of his jeans.

  They would never find him now. They could never find him. His breath was coming fast, panic consuming him.

  That voice. The harsh laugh.

  He choked back a sob, all the memories flooding back. The dank smell of the basement, the harsh glare of the lights. Her screams. The crack of a bullwhip, blood spraying into the air.

  He could still remember the wounded, pleading look in her eyes, laying there bleeding to death against the cold concrete.