“We’ll fill you in, I promise. There isn’t a lot of time, we should get moving.”
“Fill me in now.”
Cahill took a breath, let it out. “It was the Colonel’s idea. But he didn’t know the details of the operation. He wanted to be kept in the dark.”
“You paid her with your own money.”
“Yes. Her salary was transferred by wire every month out of a trust I’d set up through an attorney, so it was untraceable. She knew where you were, obviously, but she had no idea who you were. So the only people who knew the location of Tom Sexton and Stella Quirk were, in effect, me and Carrington.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“As far as I can be, yes.”
“Which means?”
“I can only be sure about my actions. Carrington, on the other hand, is an alcoholic. He’s the wild card here, Tom. One of the reasons why I got him the job at Taft was so that Sandy Montrose would be able to check his urine regularly.”
Tom had forgotten that Sandy didn’t just live on a farm less than a mile from the school—she was its resident physician.
“And?” Tom said.
“He was always clean.”
“But you’re still suggesting that he got drunk and shot his mouth off to Hammerton.”
“What does Hammerton have to do with this?”
“Carrington raised the possibility that Hammerton is the rogue agent you’ve been looking for.”
“Do you believe that?”
“I don’t know what to believe. That’s the only reason I’m still here.”
“What else did Carrington tell you?”
“That the Colonel has been manipulating me from the start.”
Cahill’s pause indicated that he had not been expecting that.
“Is it true, Charlie?” Tom said. “Has the Colonel been manipulating me?”
“You should talk to him about that.”
“He’s not here, you are.”
“I’m not at liberty to discuss that.”
“Don’t give me that.”
“Tom.”
“I need to know, Charlie. Please.”
It took a moment for Cahill to answer.
He was obviously searching for the right words. “Certain events in your life weren’t as innocent as you were led to believe.”
“Which means?”
Cahill hesitated again.
“What does that mean, Charlie?”
“It means that when Carrington found you all those years ago and recruited you to his recon engineer team, it wasn’t your then-commanding officer who had recommended you to him, like you’d been told. He wasn’t the reason why Carrington came looking for you at the range that day.”
“Then who was?”
“The Colonel, Tom. The Colonel was the reason Carrington was there. He sent Carrington to recruit you.”
“Why?”
“So someone could keep an eye on you. More than that, though, he wanted someone to begin the process of grooming you.”
“For what?”
Cahill gestured to the space in which they stood.
The dark basement of a hidden safe house.
“For this,” he said. “For the day in the future when he’d need you. Didn’t you ever wonder why Carrington retired right before your eight-year enlistment was up? He bowed out before he’d put in his twenty years. He forfeited his pension, Tom, with only a few years to go. He did that because the Colonel offered him the money he needed to start his own security firm, which of course was just a cover so Carrington would have the means to recruit you and others like you into the intelligence community. Everything Carrington did for you—transfer you to his recon team right out of boot camp, offer you work as a private contractor after your discharge, help set up you and Stella in your new life here—everything he did for you, he did on the Colonel’s orders. Every moment he was at your side, during and after Afghanistan, he was doing so as the Colonel’s man.” Cahill paused. “He was guiding you, Tom, without you even knowing it. He was making sure that when the day came and the Colonel needed you, you’d be right where he could find you. And you’d be ready.”
Tom uttered the only words he could. “Why me?”
Cahill didn’t answer.
“Why me, Charlie?”
Once again, Cahill made a point of choosing his words carefully.
But there really was no delicate way to put it.
“Because of your father.”
“My father was an engineer,” Tom said. “He helped governments around the world plan and rebuild infrastructure. He was a consultant.”
“He was that, yes. But that was just his cover. In reality, he worked for the Colonel. Raveis was his handler. For a time there, in fact, Raveis and your father were apparently close friends.”
This time Tom couldn’t find even a single word.
Cahill gave him a moment before continuing. “Your father was in the navy before you were born, correct? That’s why you enlisted after you dropped out of Yale, right? Your father entered the navy as an engineer, but by the time he left it, he was part of naval intelligence. The Colonel recruited him right away. This was back when the Colonel was still CIA, before he saw the way the world was going and left for the private sector, where he wouldn’t be constrained by laws and treaties and senate oversight committees. He knew things were going to get bad, and he wanted to be free to do what the CIA or NSA or DHS couldn’t do.”
Tom barely heard this, had on his mind only one question.
What he didn’t have was the will to ask it.
Or more accurately, he lacked the courage to hear the answer.
But he had no other choice; he’d come here for answers.
“My mother and sister weren’t killed in a home invasion, were they?” he said finally. “They were killed because of him.”
Cahill nodded. “The police settled on a home invasion as the explanation because that’s what the evidence bore out. The killers staged it to look that way. Of course they didn’t know what your father really was, and maybe it wouldn’t have changed their conclusion if they had known. Small-town cops tend to think small-time. But the Colonel and Raveis had no doubts that it was an attempt on your father’s life. The four men weren’t criminals who randomly targeted your house. They were a hit team sent to assassinate your father in his home. A last-minute business trip had kept him from being there.”
Tom had always wondered how differently things might have gone that terrible night had either he or his father been home.
Sometimes, in the years immediately after the murders, he’d catch himself fantasizing about a scenario in which he and his father had both been there. Tom a competitive wrestler, his father a combat veteran.
Could they have fought the men off?
Tom had never before felt what he was feeling now, though.
He was overwhelmed with resentment, angry that his father’s secret life was what had brought that terror into their home.
It was an impossible thing to comprehend—that this two-decades-old event was something other than what Tom had always believed it to be.
Just as impossible to process was the fact that his entire adult life had been directed, to a significant degree, by forces of which Tom had been largely ignorant.
But he knew that he had to clear away the emotions triggered by this seismic shift in those long-held perceptions.
Of the many things that Carrington had taught him, the words of Marcus Aurelius were what mattered now.
Perception, action, and will.
In that spirit, Tom needed to know one final detail. “Who sent them?” he said. “Who sent those men to kill my father?”
“The Colonel doesn’t know who carried out the hit. Or if he does, he hasn’t shared that with me. Considering the lifespan of men in that line of work, though, chances are they’re all dead by now. But the Colonel knows who ordered it.”
“Who?”
“Tom, I th
ink you should hear this from him—”
“Who? Who ordered it?”
Cahill remained calm, spoke in an even voice. “It was ordered by a man the Colonel has been hunting ever since.”
“The Benefactor,” Tom said.
Cahill nodded. “So you understand now, right? Why the Colonel has invested in you the way he has. Who better to send after a murderer than the son of one of his victims, right? That’s the mission he’s been grooming you for. And that’s why the Benefactor sent men to kill you last night. At some point he became aware that George Sexton’s son was one of the Colonel’s most-guarded assets. He had to kill you before you could be activated—before you even knew what it was the Colonel wanted you for. What we need to determine now is not just how he knew where to find you, but how he knew about you in the first place. We need to know who tipped him off to you and when, because as it stands now, it could have come from one of only two people. I’m standing here, unarmed, and the other has gone into hiding.”
“We’ve been here before,” Tom said. “You thought the same thing about Carrington two years ago. You were wrong, and men got killed. Carrington ended up risking his life to save mine.”
“So maybe it wasn’t him, Tom. Maybe there’s something we can’t see yet. He fits the profile of a double agent, though. Disgruntled, broke, alcoholic. I think we can all agree on that much. But if not him, then who? Hammerton, somehow? Would that scenario really be any better? And I’m not just talking the damage either one of them could do because of what they know. I’m talking about the cost to you because of what they mean to you. And let’s not forget, Hammerton didn’t know where you were. Or did he, Tom?”
“He didn’t.”
“I’m curious, how did you and Carrington communicate? What were your protocols this time?”
Tom explained the procedure.
“So anyone who knew that number, and knew when the phone was powered up, could have determined your location.”
“I never gave Hammerton that number.”
“Maybe he accessed Carrington’s phone. For that matter, anyone could have done that. So much for narrowing the suspects.”
Tom said, “I want to talk to the Colonel.”
“And he wants to talk to you. He’s waiting for us at a secure location. My orders are to take you there.”
“Stella and the others are coming with us.”
“They’ll be safe here.”
“You had to file a flight plan before you left. Anyone who knows where to look could be able to find out where you went.”
“I falsified my destination, Tom. And I flew below radar from your place to here.”
“I’m not taking any chances. The men who tried to kill me also tried to kill Stella. And there’s the girl to take into consideration. The Algerian came there to kill her, too. Anyway, there’s only one place they’ll all be safe, Charlie, and you know it. I’m guessing that’s where the Colonel is waiting for me right now.”
Cahill studied Tom for a moment. “Okay. They come with us.”
“Everyone. Grunn and Krista, too.”
Cahill nodded. “Everyone, Tom.” He was still studying him. “You look a little beat, man. Are you sure you’re up for this? Because you might have to make a tough decision before this is over.”
Tom ignored the question, though he couldn’t ignore the statement. “We should get going,” he said. “I need them safe as soon as possible.”
He walked past Cahill and headed toward the stone stairs.
Thirty-Seven
The helicopter was a Eurocopter EC155.
As Tom approached it, he looked for a pilot or crew standing by but quickly realized there was none and that Cahill had flown here solo.
Climbing into the pilot seat, Cahill began the preflight check.
Krista took the copilot seat and assisted him.
It was obvious that she, too, knew her way around a cockpit.
Tom and Stella helped Grunn into the passenger compartment.
As Stella buckled Grunn in, Tom turned and saw that Valena was still standing outside. She seemed hesitant to get onboard.
Cahill started the engine, the rotors beginning their slow spin. Still, Valena didn’t move.
Over the high-pitched engine whine, Tom shouted, “C’mon,” but Valena simply shook her head.
Moving in beside Tom, Stella extended her hand, and eventually the girl took it and was pulled onboard.
Tom buckled her in, then took a seat and secured himself as the helicopter lifted off.
The flight path was to the southeast, and Tom knew it was possible they’d pass over his hometown.
He waited, watching the landmarks pass below.
Twenty minutes after takeoff, he was looking down at a familiar place.
The house he’d grown up in was on the other side of town, so he was spared having to see that.
But the cemetery in which his mother and sister and father were buried was visible.
It was a small but old cemetery, historic, and it held the remains of a number of Tom’s ancestors. Men who had fought for their country, women who had borne their children, children who had then married and borne children of their own who had fought for their country, and so on.
Tom was the last of that line, a thought that he’d never considered much before now.
But this was not yet the end of his life, he knew that much.
Not done, not by a long shot.
It wasn’t a desire for revenge that instilled in him the strength to keep going.
It was the woman beside him.
And the other women around him.
He would fight for them, just as they would—and had—fought for him.
No one spoke for a long time, and lulled by the motion and sound of the helicopter, Tom fell into a deep sleep.
He woke with a vague sense that he had dreamed but with no memory of what, at least at first.
He decided maybe to call that an improvement.
But it didn’t take long before Tom remembered.
He’d dreamed not of the home of his youth under attack—the dream that had tormented him since settling down so close to his home—but rather of the event that had for a time replaced it.
That night in Afghanistan when he had led the rescue that saved Cahill and his recon marines.
He saw and heard what he always saw and heard—the chaos of a fighting retreat through a desert. Tom and Cahill had been covering the rear when the grenade landed. After that, Tom’s dream was just a series of snippets. He saw the night sky above him, Cahill torn up beside him, and then he saw the face of the man who had run back to get them.
Frank Ballentine was leaning over Tom, locking eyes with him, speaking words that Tom couldn’t hear.
Tom had never been so happy to see a face in his life.
Ballentine had taken Cahill first, leaving Tom to face that dark desert sky alone.
Leaving him to wait for either salvation or death.
Only one of those had seemed certain.
When Ballentine had reappeared, he’d made a point of locking eyes with Tom.
He’d done so in a way Tom would never forget and could never describe.
Then he’d hoisted Tom into a fireman’s carry and run with him toward the nearest Humvee.
At one point they had come under fire, because Ballentine had turned, drawn his sidearm, and emptied his weapon into the darkness behind them.
Looking over at Stella now, Tom saw that Valena’s head was resting on her shoulder. And Stella’s head was resting on top of Valena’s. They, too, had fallen asleep.
Grunn was looking out the window, lost in thought.
Tom knew that she was likely thinking about the men she’d lost, as well as her own brush with death.
The muzzle pressed to her head, the weapon in the hand of a professional killer.
A monster with no hint of remorse.
The line of people who wanted the Algerian dead—wanted to ki
ll him or at least wished him dead—was long.
Cahill, Valena, Grunn—they had all lost someone, either by the Algerian’s hand directly or by the actions of someone under the man’s command.
This lack of emotional investment would allow Tom to feel removed from this group.
He could think rationally when these souls might not, and this, he was determined, would be his role.
He would advise, then do just as Carrington had told him to.
He’d get Stella and leave.
It took Tom these moments to realize that he’d slept for close to an hour.
If they weren’t yet over Connecticut, it was only miles away.
Thirty minutes later, they were approaching the farmhouse known as the old tavern.
Tom had been there before, when a wounded Hammerton was in dire need of medical assistance.
This was back when Tom had been sent to find Cahill, when the Colonel and Raveis had made their first overt appearance in Tom’s life.
A simple search and rescue, he’d been told, that had turned out to be anything but.
Tom had been little more than a pawn, then.
He was much more than that now, though.
The EC155 landed, and they were greeted by Sandy Montrose and her husband, Kevin. The couple led the passengers into the farmhouse and brought them to two rooms upstairs.
Grunn and Krista in one, Stella and Valena in another.
Tom knew that fresh clothes and towels would be waiting, as well as medical attention for those who needed it.
Cahill and Tom, however, headed for the renovated barn at the end of the dirt driveway.
Tom had been there before, too.
The barn housed vehicles and equipment, as well as Kevin Montrose’s large animal veterinarian hospital.
Beneath the barn, though, was a fortified bunker that also served as Cahill’s command center. Underground, unreachable by any and all electronic signals, it was a safe place to talk.
The Mercedes and Range Rover SUVs parked just inside the barn door told Tom whom he’d be talking to.
Farther into the same bay as the vehicles was an old Hughes 500 helicopter.
A fast and maneuverable chopper, it was the basis of the US Army’s MH-6 Little Bird attack helicopter.
The Rogue Agent (The Agent Series) Page 23
