“Wyatt Brody! You show yourself right now, you bastard—you murdering dumb-ass son of a bitch. Get out here. Do you hear me? Where is Brody?”
From the top of the transport stairs, there was movement. Mantis marines who were congregated at the base parted like the biblical Red Sea. Wyatt Brody, his parka unzipped, hands on hips, emerged from the cabin of the plane and had paused like the pope on his balcony. His nose was swollen and discolored. A storm cloud had settled across his glowering face and darkened as he connected with Hogarth. “What’s the meaning of this?” he shouted. “What are you doing, Spencer?”
“What am I doing? I’m trying to do damage control because you went off plan.”
Lou watched, fascinated, as Brody charged down the staircase to confront his mentor. Once on the runway, he and Hogarth stood red face to red face, two snarling alpha male wolves asserting themselves to retain control of the pack.
“What are you talking about, Spencer? This is the plan. With all due respect, you need to get a grip on your reality.”
“If you didn’t kill Elias Colston, none of this would have happened.”
“I don’t know what in the hell you’re talking about. I never—”
“Enough! They know, Wyatt. They know all about Talon and Mantis. They know about the armories. We have to shut it down, and we have to go into damage control mode—effective immediately.”
“Spencer, you need to take a step back and think about what you’re saying. This mission can’t just be rescheduled. We have ten high-value targets that are going down. Operation Talon is a go.”
“Only with my blessing!” Hogarth bellowed. “I’m in charge of this mission, and I’m pulling the plug. Civilians, Brody. Civilians know about what we’re doing here. Do you understand what that means? Do you grasp the ramifications?”
“I grasp that you are not sounding rational at the moment. You’re threatening years of planning and hard work. My work, damn you! Now, I don’t know what this is all about, but I do know I’m not backing down.”
“It’s about you killing Elias Colston, you stupid ass!” Hogarth shouted, spraying the Mantis commander. “And because of that, we’ve got a massive security breach on our hands. Colston was not a threat, Wyatt. He wasn’t going to blow the whistle on Mantis. You misread him, and it’s cost us all. Now, you stand down this instant. Mantis is over. Operation Talon is over. Effective immediately.”
“You’re crazy!”
“That sort of insubordination will not be tolerated. This mission is over.”
“No! Nothing is over until I say it’s over. Nothing! Now, get ahold of yourself and back away, Spencer. I mean it.”
Lou and Sarah exchanged stunned looks.
Hogarth fell silent. But if anything, his eyes were even wilder, his expression more deranged. “That’s it. I’m done with you,” he said in a chillingly calm tone. “I’m relieving you of your command. Effective immediately.”
“Under whose authority?”
“Under whose authority?” Hogarth was incredulous. “How about mine? I’m the secretary of defense, for chrissakes, and Operation Talon is my operation to run—and to cancel.”
From his overcoat pocket, Hogarth drew a pistol and aimed it at Brody’s midsection.
“You have cost this country a great deal, Wyatt. A great deal, indeed. Now, tell your men this mission is over.”
“I’ll do no such thing,” Brody said.
“Tell them it’s over! Do it now!”
“No! Men, you get back on that plane this instant. Spencer, give me that fucking gun. You and I will discuss this matter after departure. This mission is a go! I will not be denied!”
Fumbling for a pistol in his belt, Brody charged the older man. A pair of flashes burst from Hogarth’s gun along with two whiplike cracks that became suspended in the December air.
Brody staggered several feet backwards, clutching at his abdomen. Blood soaked through his shirt and oozed between his fingers. He stared down in utter dismay at the source of his pain, then looked, eyes glazed, at Hogarth—a bewildered child surveying an abusive parent.
Why did you do this to me? Why?
Brody raised his pistol. Blood continued to drip briskly from his belly to the space between his feet. He tried to level his gun, but his hand began to shake violently.
“You brought this on yourself,” Hogarth said. He fired once more.
Brody crumpled lifeless to the asphalt, blood pooling around his inert body.
The secretary of defense lowered his weapon and turned to the Mantis marines staring at him. “He was going to kill me,” he said with no remorse. “You’re all witnesses. He was going to kill me.”
CHAPTER 50
Smoke from Spencer Hogarth’s gun vanished on the night breeze. Holding up his hands without holstering his weapon, Hogarth circled several times, pleading his case for justified homicide to dozens of witnesses.
“You all saw that,” he said. “Brody was going to kill me. I had no choice. Somebody call an ambulance. Now!”
His plea seemed to break the spell. Four Mantis marines rushed to Brody’s side; one of them had procured a field medic kit, as if lifesaving were still a possibility. Numbly, Hogarth continued turning, until his gaze fell on Lou and the two others—not actually seeing them, Lou sensed, so much as assessing them.
Who are these men?
Why are they handcuffed?
Why are they even here at a top secret mission?
Is that one in the fatigues Mantis?
“Unlock these men,” Hogarth ordered, as if testing whether or not his authority had survived.
For several moments, there was no response; then two marines moved forward and cut away the manacles. Lou rubbed at his wrists. Cap and Papa Steve seemed steadier.
“Who are you, and what are you doing here?” Hogarth asked Papa Steve, as if the man he had just shot to death wasn’t there at all.
“Sir, Captain Steve Papavassiliou, of Mantis Company, sir! These are my companions, Dr. Lou Welcome and Cap Duncan. Admiral Hogarth, sir, please put away the gun.”
Hogarth ignored the request. He seemed to be looking straight through Papa Steve. His attention soon turned to Lou. “So where is the murder weapon?” the secretary asked. “The one Brody used to kill Elias Colston.”
“It’s safe,” Lou said, not at all surprised that Hogarth had pieced together his involvement. “That’s all I can say.”
“I see.” Hogarth continued to dangle his pistol loosely at his side.
Lou felt Cap tense and knew he was readying himself to charge, as he had done with Brody. “No, Cap. Wait him out,” he said in a half whisper.
Lou was shaking. Not out of fear, but with rage. It was as if the man was standing in the center of a formal gathering without a stitch of clothing on, and acting as if it were situation normal. He wanted to leap on Hogarth himself, and beat him to within a breath of his disgraced and disgraceful life. This was the man who had blinded Edith and hired killers to remove those who stood against him. This was the man obsessed with power and control, who had orchestrated the combat deaths of any number of Marines. This was one half of the dual-headed beast known as Mantis.
The Mantis marines and Major Coon were on the radio, desperately calling for help.
“We seem to have a very serious problem, gentlemen,” Hogarth went on, keeping his gaze fixed on Lou, “a problem that requires a great deal of discretion from all of you.”
“No disrespect, pal,” Cap said, taking a half step forward, “but I think you’ve got bigger issues on your plate than what we say or don’t say.”
Looking utterly shocked, Hogarth glared at Cap. “You don’t have a clue what you’re talking about, you … vermin. What you’ve just heard, what you’ve seen here, what you know, cannot be made public. Not now, not ever. You have been exposed to highly classified information. This is a CIA, military black op. Top secret. You are this far from being charged with treason. Perhaps if you’re willing to coop
erate by keeping your silence, we—and by ‘we’ I mean the government of the United States of America—would be willing to negotiate.”
“I do appreciate the offer from such a fine, upstanding man as yourself,” Cap said, moving another inch forward. “Honest, I do. But when I said you’ve got bigger issues on your plate, I wasn’t talking about the guy you killed, lying over there by the staircase.”
Hogarth appeared confused.
“Turn around, Mr. Secretary,” Lou said, “and I think you’ll see what my friend, here, is getting at.”
Hogarth spun around. Sarah and Edith, propping a very wobbly Chris Bryzinski between them, stood in front of the Mercedes. Bryzinski’s hands were tied behind his back, and blood had soaked through a makeshift tourniquet wrapped tightly around his meaty leg. He was bearing most of his weight on the other.
Hogarth stared at the detective, then at Sarah. “We had a deal,” he said. “Goddamn it, we had a deal.”
Sarah mocked him with her eyes and spread her hands. “So sue me,” she said.
Hogarth whirled frantically, searching every person for a way out.
“It’s over,” Lou said. “You’ve taken this as far as it can go. It’s over.”
For the first time, Hogarth seemed to realize that he was still holding his gun. From ten feet away, hand shaking, he pointed the weapon at Lou. “Back away,” he said. “Let me out of here.”
“To go where?” Lou asked. “You’ve contracted men to kill innocent civilians, you’ve stolen from our country, sanctioned suicidal missions. Where are you going to run?”
Hogarth backed away, swinging his pistol from one person to the next. “You think I did this for glory? For power?” he shouted, turning as though he were onstage in a theater-in-the-round production. “I did this to win the war against terrorism. I did this to save lives! Our enemies do not fear death. They welcome it. They beg for it, for God’s sake. We’re at a disadvantage to them. Can’t you see it? We need to fight fire with fire. That is our mission here. And we are doing it, too. Mantis is making our country stronger. Damn you, Cooper, we had a deal!”
Hogarth raised his gun and pointed it toward Sarah. Lou and Cap had seen enough. The sparring partners charged shoulder to shoulder and lunged at the man. But at the instant they reached him, Hogarth took a quick, purposeful step back and jammed the gun barrel into his mouth, pulling the trigger in the same motion. The shot was surprisingly muffled, but no less deadly. Bone exploded outward like crimson snowflakes from the back of his skull. His arms went limp, and his knees folded almost balletically.
He crumpled to the ground, just a few feet from his protégé, his overcoat splayed open beneath him like the wings of a giant mantis ready to take flight.
CHAPTER 51
Blinking strobe lights on the wings of the Boeing C-40 Clipper painted the wintry night with a continual flash of color. To Lou, it looked like a last gasp, a final weak breath from a living behemoth that once could fly. A small cluster of grim men stood some distance from where Hogarth and Brody now lay. The MPs had arrived and had radioed for their superiors and for the medics.
The group included everybody connected with Operation Talon. Just before the MPs drove up, Lou had finished giving an impassioned speech and now looked to each man for confirmation. Will you go along with this plan?
Sarah stood by the Mercedes, along with Edith, Papa Steve, and Cap. Bryzinski was in the backseat. Lou could see the tension on each of their faces. At his request, none of them had heard what he said to the men. Had Lou won them over? Each passing second raised doubts before the answer finally came from the men.
“Whatever it takes!… Mantis, whatever it takes!”
Lou nodded. “Whatever it takes,” he echoed.
As the first wave of help arrived, the circle parted and Lou headed toward the others. He zippered his parka jacket to fight off a sudden burst of cold air.
“We started laying the groundwork for everything that’s going to follow. Listen, if it’s okay with the others, how about you and I take a walk?”
“Sure. Sure thing, Lou.”
Lou placed an arm around Papa Steve’s burly shoulders as he led him away. They walked until they reached a secluded area behind a stack of empty pallets. Their gaunt, haggard faces were eerily lit by the yellowish glow of a floodlight mounted to a large steel hangar.
“Coon will organize the response,” Lou said. “He’s the ranking officer on the scene. He’s going to get some military investigators over here, now that we’ve got our consensus.”
“And what consensus did we reach?” Papa Steve asked.
Something about his expression put a knot in Lou’s chest. “The mission will remain a secret,” Lou said. “Along with other things.”
“By other things, do you mean—?”
“Mantis. As of this moment, Operation Talon doesn’t exist. Neither does Manolo, the cartel, or the Mantis drink, for that matter. It’s all gone. Buried. Coon and the CIA will take care of Manolo. There can be no loose ends here.”
“I think that’s really for the best. You did a hell of a job today, my friend. A hell of a job. Cap, too. He’s an amazing piece of work.”
“That’s an understatement.”
“Thanks for speaking to the men. I watched their faces. I’m glad they took the advice of a civilian. No offense.”
“None taken. Even a broken clock is right twice a day.”
“What now?” Papa Steve asked.
“Now,” Lou said, “we talk.”
“About?”
“About your friends.”
“My friends?”
“Cap isn’t the only piece of work around here. You’re one of them yourself, and your friends are a testament to that. You have a lot of them. Very useful they are, too.”
“What are you getting at, Lou?”
“From the first time we met, I’ve been impressed that whenever you need help, one of your friends is there. The police officer that gave me a ticket, the guy who lent you a helicopter to meet me at the golf course, your buddy at the restaurant. That’s a terrific credit to the kind of person you are. But one of those friends was even more impressive than the others—the one who knew so much about guns and ballistics.”
“Well, I guess you might say I’m a very lucky guy.”
Lou watched the man closely, marveling at his ability to stay composed. “A couple of days ago,” Lou went on, “I flew out to Minnesota to see Dr. Sherwood, the director of the Pine Grove Clinic. Turns out, he and Elias were fraternity brothers at the University of Virginia. That’s why Elias went to see him. Initially, he was freaked about violating confidentiality, and wouldn’t tell me anything. But later, after he thought about what was at stake for McHugh, he had a slight change of heart and had his assistant call and tell me that Elias was in fact a patient of his. After I got back to D.C., he called me himself with some more information. Elias was dying from chronic myeloid leukemia. It’s a type with what’s called a Philadelphia chromosome—almost impossible to treat successfully. Six months, maybe a little more, with what would have been pretty painful therapy.”
“Go on.”
“Does the name James Styles mean anything to you?”
“Should it?”
“It’s the name Elias is known by at the clinic. Dr. Sherwood communicated with him through a post office box in Bowie, Maryland.”
“You’ve learned an amazing amount in a short time,” Papa Steve said. “No wonder I’m so impressed with you.”
“I don’t think anyone knew Elias was dying—maybe not even Jeannine. No one, that is, except you.”
“Lou, I don’t—”
Lou reached out and gently placed his hands on Papa Steve’s shoulders. “No more games, Steve,” he said without rancor. “I understand what you did, and I understand why.”
For a time there was only silence.
“I was hoping things would just pass,” Papa Steve said finally. “How long have you known?”
“I began having suspicions when you told me you couldn’t tail Brody, because of the Palace Guards. You just seemed too resourceful to be stopped by them. So I began to wonder why you wanted to protect the secret of where he was going. It was Mark Colston. You were protecting your godson. You never meant for me to find that CD, did you?”
“Of course not. The police were supposed to find it. I made it as easy as I could for them. It was the only picture in the whole damn office that was turned around. I did everything but hang an arrow from the ceiling pointing down to it. That buffoon Bryzinski and his cops should have found it, and after they listened to it, marched straight to Brody’s front door.”
“The investigation of a murdered congressman would have been intense, and the pressure on Brody massive—especially with your ballistics friend on the job.”
“Except that Elias didn’t know Jeannine was having an affair with your pal Gary,” Papa Steve said, finishing Lou’s thought. “The moment Bryzinski had a prime suspect, the investigation went south. The police did a half-baked job searching Elias’s office because they already had their man in custody.”
“Then I showed up,” Lou said.
“Enter Lou Welcome.”
“I became the police by proxy—the guy you fed just enough information to keep me on Brody’s trail.”
“That’s it. All I wanted you to do was to get the police away from Gary and back on Brody. And you did a lot more than I bargained for.”
“By that, you mean I followed Brody and found out about the drugs and the Mantis juice.”
“All I wanted you to do was get the murder weapon.”
“Because you didn’t want me to know the truth about Mantis.”
“The motive for Elias’s murder was supposed to be his knowledge of Reddy Creek,” Papa Steve said. “Brody was stealing weapons because of budget cuts, and Elias was on to him. That’s what the prosecutors would have said, anyway, if the police had found the CD, and had done their job by following the trail to its logical endpoint.”
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