by Dale Brown
“I see.”
“He was in Libya. He’s gone. Where, we’re not sure yet.”
“Were the attacks launched against him?”
“Multiple targets. The administration—” Johansen paused. “Politics is a complicated thing.”
“I’m glad to hear that someone’s trying to get him.”
“Yes.” The word sounded odd, as if it came from a synthetic voice box, rather than a human being.
Johansen looked back out the window. “I’m putting together an operation.”
“You or the CIA?”
“It depends whether we’re caught,” said Johansen. His voice was too serious for Massina to take it as a joke, though perhaps it was meant as a dark one. “You were of great help in Ukraine. I could use some of those devices. And others.”
“What do you need?”
“Surveillance drones. An autonomous information-gathering system—we’d plant the bugs around an area and let the system do the heavy work. I won’t have enough people to watch everything and can’t risk them in certain areas. Your devices solve both problems.”
“I see.”
“We haven’t pinned down for sure where this guy is,” added Johansen. “But assuming it’s Syria, which is most likely, the political situation there complicates things. The Russians work closely with the Syrians, and in theory we’d have to work with them if we wanted to do something there.”
“But you don’t want to.”
“Not in a million years. Even if their hearts were in the right place,” added Johansen. “Talking to the Russians is in effect talking to the Syrians, and word inevitably gets back to Daesh. This has to be completely off the books.”
“Daesh?”
“ISIL, ISIS, scumbags—Daesh. Technically it stands for the phrase al-Dawla al-Islamiya al-Iraq al-Sham—the same as ISIL. But in Arabic, it sounds like slang for a traitor against Islam. That’s why people in the administration use ISIL—it’s translated as Daesh. It’s a silly game,” added the CIA agent. “But I guess you get your knives in where you can. They don’t like it, which to me is the best reason to use it.”
“I see.”
“Will you help us?”
Massina wanted to grab him and say of course. But he knew this was more like a business decision—or should be. He struggled to be systematic, to think, to divorce himself from the elation he suddenly felt.
A chance to strike back! You bet I’m in!
“Who operates the systems?” he asked Johansen.
“You train my guys.”
“When are you attacking?”
“As soon as we have a definitive target.”
“Training your people isn’t going to work. It’ll take months, and frankly, you’re unlikely to have the expertise.”
Johansen was silent for a few moments.
“I could take two people,” he said. Clearly he’d already considered this a possibility. “They stay behind the lines with me in Turkey.”
“Two may not be enough.”
“It will have to be. And I have to train them. For survival,” added Johansen. “Otherwise they don’t come. And volunteers. They have to volunteer.”
“Fair enough,” said Massina. “We’ll work it out.”
22
Boston–two days later
After the accident that had cost him his legs, Johnny Givens had undergone a series of operations and rehabilitation that not only rebuilt his body, but made it measurably better. His prosthetic legs, whose jumping strength alone was three times beyond his “natural” strength, were only the most obvious improvement. (The figure came from comparing his ability in the broad jump with his measurements in high school track events.) The medicine that had helped him recover had bulked up the rest of his body; the drugs that got his nerves ready for the grafts to his legs’ controls had accentuated not only the rest of his nerves but his brain’s processing as well. He literally thought faster and learned quicker as a byproduct of his recovery.
But these improvements had had an odd effect on his emotional state. Confident in his abilities before, he now wondered how much of him was real.
Assigned a counselor as part of his rehab—post-traumatic stress was among several fears—he found it impossible to describe precisely how he felt. The counselor, a man in his fifties with a beard that made Johnny think of Sigmund Freud, told him what he was going through was perfectly natural.
“What does that mean exactly?” Johnny asked. “What am I going through?”
“Adjustment.”
“Adjusting . . . ?”
“Are you sad?” asked the counselor, stroking his beard.
“I wouldn’t say I’m sad. Meh, maybe.”
“Meh?”
Johnny shrugged. “Meh.”
“Describe it.”
But Johnny couldn’t. He dropped counseling in favor of more workouts; those seemed far more productive. He ran five miles a day, every morning, and used the Smart Metal gym as well. The facility was outfitted along the lines of a Gold’s Gym; what it lacked in muscle-conscious gym rats it more than made up in stat-obsessed health nuts. Computers—yours or a central unit—could track and critique every aspect of a workout, from breathing to posture to sweat content. There were four different personal trainer programs, each customizable for body type and goals.
Johnny eschewed that electronic assistance, but otherwise was one of the gym’s most frequent “guests,” as the system called them. Mornings from eight to ten tended to be rather busy, but otherwise the gym was big enough that it was easy to work through even the longest sequences without interruption. Johnny was often alone when he started, which could be as early as 4:30 in the morning on nights he couldn’t sleep.
So he was surprised when, pushing in at 4:42 a.m., he found Chelsea running on one of the treadmills. He waved, but she had her earphones on and her head down as he passed. He got on a treadmill, did a bit of cardio to warm up before hitting the weight machines. He’d just finished some easy hammer presses, still in warm-up mode, when Chelsea walked over.
“I’m sorry to bother you,” she said, “but I have a question about one of the machines.”
“No problem,” he told her, getting up. “What’s up?”
“I want to use the Gravitron, but I don’t know the settings.”
“Gravitron?”
“I’m following this workout.” She showed him her phone.
“OK.” Johnny took a look at the routine. “The Gravitron’s over here.”
He showed her how the machine worked—it was like a pull-up machine, with a counterweight—and then spotted her through a set.
She was pretty. A shorter, stronger Ilana Glazer.
No glasses. A heart tattoo on her shoulder, barely visible beneath her T-shirt and wide bra strap, a lightning bolt on her right thigh.
Well-shaped thigh.
“How do your arms feel?” he asked as she dropped down.
“Good. A little burn in the shoulders.”
“Two more sets and see how it feels,” he told her. “It should be a bit of burn but you should be able to use your arms.”
“I hope so.” She laughed.
“Have you worked out before?”
“Not here. I haven’t done weight training since college, really. I played field hockey in high school,” she added. “But since then, I just run, mostly.”
“You like hitting people with sticks?”
“It has its advantages.”
Johnny spotted her on the next two machines. She was small, but wiry, stronger than he would have expected.
“Is it always this empty?” she asked.
“This early, yeah.”
“You always work out now?”
“It varies, but yeah, a lot. I don’t—I haven’t needed so much sleep since the recovery period, you know, for my legs. I think it’s like a side effect of the drugs.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Nothing to be sorry about.”
&
nbsp; Chelsea had been there when his legs were crushed, and though she had nothing to do with it, he knew she had some sort of odd guilt about it. It was stupid and irrational, but he could see it in her face.
She stepped forward and wrapped her arms around him in a tight hug.
“It’s OK,” he told her gently. “It’s really all right.”
“I’m so sorry,” she said, still holding him.
“Are you all right? The attack on the hotel—”
“I’m fine.”
She let go. He stared at her for a moment, not sure what to say, if he should assure her he was fine or probe about her reaction to the attack.
Her oversize, shapeless T-shirt and shorts made her look far more vulnerable than she really was.
“I, uh, I gotta get upstairs,” he said, glancing at the clock. “I, uh, am picking up Mr. Massina early, for Beef.”
“And I gotta finish,” she said, turning back to the triceps dip. “See ya later.”
Halfway to the door, he stopped short.
“Maybe we can get a drink sometime,” he said, his voice more tentative than he wanted.
Her frown threw him off; he braced himself.
“I’d like that,” she said. “Really.”
23
Boston—two hours later
Tolevi swung the car to the curb and looked over at his daughter.
“Have a good day,” he told Borya. “Good luck on the test. Be sure to text Mary when you’re on your way home.”
If Borya heard any of that, she gave no hint. The car door slammed behind her as she ran to see one of her friends near the school steps.
“I thought girls liked to talk,” he grumbled to his steering wheel as he pulled back into traffic.
He had a full agenda today. First stop was the Port of Boston, where he had to meet with the man who was going to drive some of his imports to a distribution center down in New York State. Then he was meeting a food broker to see about buying coffee—a lot of it. Tolevi’s recent visit to the Ukraine had convinced him that coffee would sell well on both sides of the border—occupied and “free.”
Tolevi tightened his grip on the steering wheel as he passed the restaurant that had been shot up and then burned by the ISIS terrorists. Like many people, he wasn’t particularly impressed by the administration’s “measured action” in Libya. The news sites were all claiming that three or four hundred “ISIS-affiliated fighters” had been killed or rejected from the country.
Somehow that didn’t seem like a proper response. The Libyan government, with help from the Americans and Europeans, had launched a comprehensive offensive to retake the western half of the country from the rebels. All very well and good, thought Tolevi, but in the meantime, cut the balls off the bastards who’d attacked. It was the only way to make a point.
Behead them on Boston Common—that was what he wanted to see. And that was the only sort of thing these pricks would really understand. How dare they kill innocent people? What kind of savages were they?
Sociopaths.
Gut them, feed them their balls, then behead them. That was the way to deal with the fucks.
Tolevi’s contact worked at a small cargo operation in the shadow of Conley Terminal, Massport’s massive container operation on the harbor. Its smaller size meant it had to scramble; more important, its operators were very understanding, even flexible.
Not that Tolevi intended to break the law in this deal. Just bend it a bit, where necessary.
A truck cab without a container cut in front of Tolevi as he entered the yard.
“Asshole,” yelled Tolevi, and he laid on the horn.
If the trucker heard it, he gave no sign. Tolevi continued to the small shack where his contact, Andrew Bastos, worked. Inside, he found Bastos in deep discussion with two crane operators.
It was more monologue than discussion, Bastos chewing them out for some unspecified infraction. The men listened with blank expressions—not frowning, not smiling, not showing emotion of any kind.
“Get out, get out, I call the union,” said Bastos finally. He had a thick Portuguese accent; he came from Gloucester up the coast, from a fishing family that had members on both sides of the ocean.
“What do you want, Tolevi?” Bastos demanded, dismissing the others. “I don’t have all day.”
“Your brother-in-law,” said Tolevi. “I need him to take a container down. It should be here tomorrow.”
“Humph.” The man tapped a button on his computer’s touchscreen. “Gonna be here late. Maybe that container doesn’t get off until morning.”
“It’d be better that night.”
“There are costs involved.”
This was all purely bullshit—Tolevi had checked earlier in the morning; the ship was due to dock no later than 8:00 a.m., and if anything was running ahead of schedule. But the shakedown was part of the arrangement—Tolevi wasn’t so much paying to make sure the cargo came off on time as he was paying for silence if anything went wrong.
“You’re moving what?”
“Olive oil,” said Tolevi.
“From Argentina?”
“They have a surplus.”
They did, in fact, have a surplus. And a good portion of the oil in the container was in fact Argentinian.
Another portion had come from Syria, but that fact needn’t be specified. The documents certainly didn’t.
“And you need my brother-in-law?”
“If you know someone else dependable, I’m all ears.”
“He’ll do. Usual arrangements.”
“Absolutely,” said Tolevi.
As he left the building, he found a burly man blocking his way. Tolevi was by no means short, but the man in front of him loomed over him. His T-shirt strained with his arm and chest muscles; he looked twice the size of a professional wrestler.
Three other men, all as big, stood behind him.
“You were in that car,” said the man.
“You’re the jerk that cut me off?” snapped Tolevi. It wasn’t exactly the most politic answer, but if he was going to get beaten up, he might as well go down with dignity.
“I wanted to apologize,” said the man. “I’m sorry, Mr. Tolevi.”
Tolevi was sure this was some sort of trick. One of the men nudged the trucker, and he stuck out his hand to shake.
Doubtful but seeing no other choice, Tolevi extended his own. To his great surprise, the man gripped it gently and they shook.
“I really am sorry, sir,” said the trucker.
“It’s not a problem,” said Tolevi, flabbergasted. “Don’t worry about it. It’s forgotten. I don’t even remember hearing anything, except ‘good morning.’”
“Anything we can do for you, Mr. Tolevi,” said the man who’d nudged the trucker, “just let us know.”
Tolevi nodded, then walked quickly to his car.
24
Boston—later that day
The clerk frowned. “Let’s see the paper.”
Chelsea took it from her pocket and slid it onto the counter. The clerk picked it up and examined it closely.
“All right, so you have a gun license,” he said. “What do you want?”
“Show me the SIG.”
“You’d really probably be more comfortable with something smaller,” he said.
“I want stopping power,” she told him.
The man’s moustache twitched. He was older, midsixties, she guessed. Though that wasn’t an excuse for his chauvinism.
“Look, I’m an ex-trooper and gun instructor,” he told her. “I’ve seen a lot of girls—”
“I’m not a girl. Are you not going to even show me the gun?”
“A small automatic—”
“If I wanted that, I’d ask for it.”
“Old-fashioned shotguns are the best weapon for home defense. There’s nothing like that sound in the middle of the night.”
“I have one. I need something to carry.”
The clerk removed the gun f
rom the display. He made sure it wasn’t chambered, then handed it to her. Chelsea inspected it carefully, knowing he was watching her.
“A lot of people are worried because of the ISIS attacks,” he said gently. “I get it. Believe me. And I’m not trying to give you a hard time—”
“You are giving me a hard time.”
“I just want to make sure you’re getting the right weapon,” he said. “Believe me, I know what I’m talking about.”
“You think I’m a woman and can’t handle a gun.”
“What do you weigh? A hundred pounds?”
“I’ve used 1911s without a problem. I know it’s not a toy. You want to come down the street to the police range and see?”
“I’m just trying to help.”
The SIG 226 felt heavy in her hand. Chambered in .40 S&W, it was the same gun used by many police officers and even some special-operations soldiers. It could hold fifteen bullets in its magazine.
“You know, if you like SIGs,” suggested the clerk, “you might think about a 229 or even a 224. The 224 is really compact. It would fit easier in your purse.”
“I don’t carry a purse,” said Chelsea.
“There’s no manual safety,” he said.
“No shit.”
Chelsea put the gun down on the counter.
“You want a case?” asked the clerk.
“Absolutely,” she said, taking out her credit card. “And three boxes of ammo.”
25
Boston—around the same time
Ordinarily, Massina would have blown off the fund-raising reception for the New Millennium Advancement Project. He had no connection to the foundation or its board and plenty of other things to do. But in the aftermath of the attacks, he felt almost obligated to attend. The cocktail party was being held at the Windhaven Hotel, across the street from the Patriot, where so many people had been murdered. Windhaven had opened its doors to its erstwhile rival, providing rooms at no charge to some of the displaced guests following the assaults and even lending its own employees. Attending the reception was a small gesture of thanks—and an opportunity to reclaim some of the area soiled by savages.
