Rules of Betrayal

by Christopher Reich

  “That’d be me,” said the sergeant.

  “What do you think, cap?” asked Hamid.

  The captain extended an arm into the passage. There was no fire. “They’re waiting for us to show our faces. Doesn’t look like they have night vision, so we’ve got that in our favor. We’ll cover and roll, make ’em keep their heads down until we can chuck a grenade their way. We need to force them outside the cave and into the open where the chopper can hit them.”

  “If the chopper’s even here.” Suddenly Jonathan wanted a machine gun very badly.

  “Have faith, doc,” said Hamid. “When you get out, keep your head down and your legs moving.”

  “Let’s do this.” The captain tapped his sergeant on the shoulder. The sergeant nodded, then ducked into the passage and opened fire. The Rangers ran out first, then Hamid, and last Jonathan. He’d made it five steps when there was an explosion in the main entry chamber. He glimpsed a body launched into the air and heard a scream. A grenade. Keeping a hand on Hamid’s back, he kept moving. The corridor grew light. The Rangers kneeled at the mouth of the passage, firing. Jonathan heard a smack, and one of the soldiers collapsed.

  “Man down!” shouted the captain.

  A second grenade exploded near the doorway and the Taliban fighters escaped outside. Jonathan rushed to the wounded Ranger. He could see blood spreading from a chest wound. He felt for a pulse. Nothing. Then, a faint tremor.

  “How is he?” asked the captain.

  “Unconscious. He needs attention fast.”

  “Can you carry him?” asked the captain.

  Jonathan nodded. Bending double, he hoisted the soldier onto his shoulders in a fireman’s carry. “Let’s get out of here.”

  The officer ran toward the doorway, followed by Hamid and the sergeant. Jonathan took a breath and staggered into the large chamber. Exhaustion, adrenaline, and the din of combat blurred events. He saw the captain firing in disciplined bursts. He saw Hamid cross the chamber, throw open the exterior door, and lob a grenade. He saw the sergeant bolt upright, with half his head shorn away, then stumble backward and fall to the ground.

  And then Jonathan was at the door leading to the clearing, the captain and Hamid next to him. From high in the sky came the dull, rhythmic chop of a helicopter. A moment later, an earsplitting roar louder than anything Jonathan had ever heard filled the air. The ground shook. Men screamed.

  “Gatling gun,” said the captain. “Let’s move!”

  “What about the sergeant?” asked Jonathan.

  The soldier lay a meter away, his brains spilled on the ground beside him.

  “He’s gone.”

  Hamid opened the door and tossed the last grenade. There was a flash of light, and a stream of white smoke curled into the air. The captain ran ahead, turning every few feet and spraying the area with machine-gun fire. Hamid pushed Jonathan out the door.

  “Run to the far side of the plateau. Don’t stop for anything.”

  “You don’t have to tell me that twice.” Jonathan jogged unevenly behind him, head down, his only thought that he must deliver the wounded Ranger to safety. He sensed rather than saw the helicopter hovering overhead. Geysers of dirt and crushed stone erupted from the Gatling gun’s rounds, spraying his face. Dead Taliban lay everywhere. To his right, the pickup trucks burned magnificently. Afghan fighters dashed across the clearing, seeking shelter from the withering cannon fire.

  The helicopter touched down at the far end of the clearing. SEALs jumped to the ground and ran toward them. Jonathan transferred the wounded Ranger to their care, then pulled himself into the open compartment. The captain hauled himself in next to him. “You did good, doc,” he shouted, barely audible above the rifle fire and rotor wash. “We could use you on our team anytime.”

  Jonathan looked at the Ranger, seeing him clearly for the first time. The captain had shorn blond hair and wide, knowing blue eyes that were too hardened for a young man. The name Brewster was stenciled on his uniform.

  “No thanks,” said Jonathan. “Never again.”

  Gunfire raked the helicopter. Jonathan saw an Afghan fighter nearly enveloped in flames manning the .30 caliber machine gun. Another burst of fire struck the helicopter. Something hit close to Jonathan. Captain Brewster was flung onto his back. A string of bullet wounds laced his chest, and Jonathan knew immediately that he was dead.

  A moment later, an explosion rocked the pickup truck and the machine gunner vanished.

  “We’re outta here,” called the pilot over his shoulder. “Strap in.”

  The aircraft lifted off.

  Jonathan spotted Hamid trapped behind a rock outcropping twenty meters away. “Don’t go. We’ve got a man pinned down back there,” he shouted. “Put down.”

  “No can do,” said the pilot. “It’s too late.”

  Jonathan waved his arms, motioning for his assistant to join them. “Come on! Run!”

  Hamid broke from the rocks and sprinted toward the chopper.

  Jonathan grabbed the captain’s rifle and began shooting at the figures scurrying across the clearing. A man went down. Then another. “Hurry!” he shouted.

  With a leap, Hamid grasped the skid. The chopper climbed higher. Jonathan threw aside the rifle and reached out for Hamid’s hand. “I’ve got you.”

  “Don’t let go!”

  A flurry of bullets struck the engine mount. The helicopter lurched to the side. Jonathan slid halfway out of the open bay, managing to grasp a safety strap at the last moment. Another bullet ricocheted near his head.

  “Get your feet onto the skid,” he yelled.

  “I’m trying!” Hamid flailed as the helicopter gained height, working time and again to kick his legs over the landing skid.

  “Hold tight,” said Jonathan.

  At last Hamid managed to hook a foot around the skid. With Jonathan’s help, he pulled himself up and placed the other foot on the metal rail. “Thanks, man. I didn’t think we were—” Suddenly Hamid’s eyes rolled back in his head. The report of a high-powered rifle cracked the air like a bullwhip and his grip weakened. His feet fell off the skid and he slipped from Jonathan’s grasp, plummeting to the ground. It was over in a second.

  Jonathan fell back against the bulkhead wall. As clouds closed around the helicopter, his eyes remained glued to the clearing below, where Sultan Haq stood with a dead Marine’s hunting rifle at his shoulder. Haq was looking at Jonathan and Jonathan was looking right back. The warrior raised his arm and pointed a finger and its long curling nail at him. Then he put his head back and cried out for revenge.

  White enveloped the chopper and Jonathan could see no more. But the warrior’s eyes stayed with him.

  One day, he swore to himself. One day …

  10

  Frank Connor was still in shock.

  “What the hell happened?” he demanded, spreading his arms wide.

  Barely two hours earlier, he had watched his best operative being taken away to be murdered. The satellite link to Emma’s com unit had faded in and out, because of either a technical glitch or, more probably, a jamming unit at the airport. The last image he’d received of Emma showed her handcuffed and being forced into Rashid’s car.

  Connor, director of Division, turned from the dark video screen and stared out the window. Seven thousand miles from the desert emirate of Sharjah, in Falls Church, Virginia, the afternoon was gray, damp, and bleak. The forested countryside had surrendered its last leaves a week ago. A vista of barren, spindly trees beckoned in every direction. Winter lurked at the door.

  “Let’s go over this again,” said Peter Erskine, his deputy and the sole other occupant of the office. “All we can assume is that she’s in Rashid’s custody.”

  “Really? I think we can assume quite a bit more than that.” Connor shook his head, dizzy with frustration. He knew full well that they could assume that Emma Ransom, in the guise of Lara Antonova, major in the Russian FSB, had been defrocked as a double agent in the pay of the United States o
f America, and his meticulously planned operation to assassinate Prince Rashid had quite literally blown up in his, or rather Emma’s, face.

  “He knew, Peter. Someone tipped him off about our little gift.”

  “We can’t be certain. He did take a shot with the rifle.”

  “He had no other choice. He had to save face in front of his men.”

  “How many people knew about the rifle?” said Erskine. “You, me, Emma, a couple of our transport guys, and the gunsmiths at Quantico. Rashid is rightfully paranoid. That’s all. Who wouldn’t be, after the close calls he’s had?”

  Connor eyed Erskine skeptically. “You telling me it wasn’t you who gave him the heads-up?”

  Erskine took the jibe in stride. “He’s on my speed-dial, didn’t you know?”

  Connor thought about what he was suggesting. “I hope you’re right and it’s just that Rashid’s got a case of nerves.” He rubbed a meaty hand over his face. “Contact the CIA station chief in Dubai. See if he has any men in place that know the area. I want my girl back.”

  “Sir, if I may be so bold,” said Erskine, “any action we take to find Emma will constitute an acknowledgment on our behalf that she’s one of ours. We might as well call up Rashid and tell him that the United States government tried to assassinate him.”

  Erskine was tall, urbane, and handsome in the way that only third-generation Grotonians could be. He wore his father’s tortoiseshell eyeglasses and his grandfather’s navy blazer and spoke with his great-grandfather’s Beacon Hill lilt. At thirty-five, he was a young fogey in the prime of his life.

  “I think the prince knows that by now,” said Connor.

  “Even so, there’s a difference between knowing and knowing. Our two governments still have to do business. Then, of course, there’s the Russian angle. I don’t think Igor Ivanov will be pleased.”

  “Screw Ivanov,” said Connor, referring to the chief of the Russian security service. “It’s my job to turn his agents and his job to do the same to mine. Five will get you ten that Rashid is on the phone to Ivanov right now, giving him the news. All I care about is finding Emma.”

  “Rashid wouldn’t kill an American agent,” said Erskine. “He doesn’t have the guts.”

  “Doesn’t he? He’s a ruthless bastard. I’ll give him that. Besides, technically Emma isn’t an American agent. She’s Russian born and bred, and an honor graduate of the FSB academy at Yasenevo. She might be married to an American, but otherwise she doesn’t have a single official tie to our country.”

  Erskine nodded, pushing up his eyeglasses on his patrician nose. “And her years at Division?”

  “I don’t think her time with us is on the record books, do you?”

  Erskine offered a look of sheepish resignation. “That puts her rather on her own.”

  Connor looked away, despising his assistant’s easy cynicism. The fact was, he owed Emma. He’d handpicked her from the open market in the days when Russia was in the tank and a bankrupt FSB had been forced to let nearly all of its agents go. Division was in its infancy then, a brand-spanking-new outfit set up in the deepest corridors of the Pentagon to do the things the White House wanted done but didn’t have the intestinal fortitude to carry out.

  The first jobs were in-and-out affairs: assassinations, kidnappings, thefts of classified information. Muscle jobs that emphasized brawn over brain. Operatives were drawn from Delta Force, the Green Berets, and the SEALs as well as the CIA’s Special Operations Group. But as the successes mounted, Division grew more ambitious. “Proactive” was the watchword. More complex plans were drawn up. Even the most heavily protected targets were deemed game. Operatives were called on to assume false identities and spend long periods in foreign locales. To bolster language capabilities, Division began looking for talent outside the fold. Freelance personnel from Britain, France, and Italy were recruited. And from Russia.

  Division was the president’s secret weapon and operated at his sole command. Covert foreign policy conducted at the barrel of a gun, with no congressional oversight allowed.

  But times changed. The outrage that followed 9/11 faded. There had been no further attacks on American soil, though Connor knew firsthand that plenty had been thwarted. If Americans had a short memory, he liked it that way. It meant that his country was safe.

  Connor looked at Erskine and made a decision.

  “You’re right,” he said. “I was being hasty. We can’t go out there running around like a chicken with its head cut off.”

  “I’m pleased you see it that way,” said Erskine. “The last thing this agency needs is to get into hot water again. As far as everyone outside this office is concerned, Emma Ransom is Lara Antonova, a card-carrying FSB spook.”

  “You’re right, Pete. This is no time to get emotional.”

  Erskine evinced a grimace, as if to say he shared Connor’s concern for her welfare. “Look at it this way. If anyone can take care of herself, it’s Emma Ransom. She’s one tough cookie.”

  “That she is.”

  “We have to tie this operation off at the source. There’s no other way. Don’t take it hard, Frank. The woman knew what she was getting herself into.”

  “Did she, Pete? You really think so?” Connor shook his head ruefully. “And did your wife? Did she know she was going to be an intel widow, or did you wait till after the marriage to tell her?”

  Erskine was a newlywed, six months in, and married to a gal who worked reasonable hours as an attorney over at the Justice Department. He was at the part where he had to call his wife every evening to explain why he wouldn’t be home at seven.

  “Sometimes, kid,” Connor went on, “I wonder if any of us really know what we’re getting into.”

  At fifty-nine years of age, standing five feet nine inches tall and weighing 260 pounds, Frank Connor was the poster boy for heart disease, diabetes, stroke, and all the perils to personal health that accumulated after a life spent eating, drinking, and working to excess. His chin drooped over his collar. His thatch of ginger hair had thinned to a wisp, and his cheeks were decorated with enough broken capillaries to map the United States interstate system. His blue eyes, though, were still vital and stood ready for a challenge.

  During his thirty years in Washington, he’d worked at Treasury, in the Pentagon, and for the past ten years at Division. Everyone knew that Frank Connor was going to die with his boots on. Connor knew it, too, and he wouldn’t have it any other way.

  “All right, then,” he said. “What’s that they say about lemons and lemonade? Let’s see what we can make out of this fiasco.”

  “Do let’s,” said Erskine, with exaggerated brio.

  “Take a look at Rashid’s pal. Recognize him?”

  Connor sat at his government-issue desk staring at the image of Prince Rashid’s associate filling his computer screen.

  “Never seen him,” said Erskine. “What do you think? Distant cousin? A warlord over from Afghanistan?”

  “Too spiffed up. This one’s got some class.”

  “One of his Wahabi pals from Riyadh?”

  “Why would he need Rashid to do his shopping for him? Plenty of fundamentalist nut jobs can do the job right there. Besides, if he were a Saudi, our assets would’ve pinpointed him by now. With all the eyes and ears we have on payroll in the royal palace, we’d know his name, blood type, and favorite scotch.”

  “A friend of Balfour’s?” suggested Erskine.

  Connor dismissed the suggestion with a snort. “He’s with Rashid all the way. Did you see the way the prince kowtowed to the guy? He respected him. Whoever our new friend is, he’s a mover and a shaker. He’s either done something to impress Rashid, in which case we should have a trace of him on our books, or he’s going to, in which case we may be in deep shit. Get a still blown up and send it over to tech services for cleaning up. When it’s finished, pass it over to Langley, MI6, and our friends in Jerusalem. Maybe they can put a name to a face.”

  “Right away.” Erskine
jotted the notes on a digital assistant, then slipped the device into his jacket. He walked to the door, but instead of leaving, he checked that it was properly closed, then crossed the office and perched himself on the corner of Connor’s desk. “You know what really concerns me, Frank?”

  Connor leaned back in his chair. “What’s that?”

  “The weapon Balfour mentioned finding.”

  “That? Probably a five-hundred-pounder we were sending to the mujahideen way back when.”

  Erskine narrowed his eyes and shook his head, having none of it. “I don’t think he’d ask Emma if she had a direct line to Igor Ivanov if it were a conventional munition. Mind taking another look at the feed?”

  Connor restarted the digital recording, watching closely as Balfour handed Emma the picture of the bomb. The images were so crisp that Connor wanted to reach out and kiss her for framing the photograph so perfectly. Erskine rose from his chair and approached the fifty-inch screen. “What if it isn’t just a five-hundred-pounder?”

  Connor put his elbows on the desk and leaned forward. “What are you trying to say?”

  “What if it’s something bigger?”

  “Like what? A bunker buster?”

  “I don’t mean bigger in size,” said Erskine menacingly.

  Connor leaned back in his chair, hands behind his head. “You’re out of your mind,” he said. “We’d have known.”

  Erskine crossed his arms and looked at Connor over the top of his tortoiseshell glasses. “Would we?”

  11

  It was past midnight when Frank Connor returned to his town house on Prospect Street in Georgetown. Mounting the stairs, he paused at the front door long enough to punch in the alarm code and watch the pinlight turn from red to green. Despite the alarm and the two-man security team parked somewhere up the street to keep watch on him, he had few illusions about his safety. He’d been in the business long enough to forget more enemies than he could remember. If someone wanted him dead, he would die without seeing his assailant.

  Safety was one thing. Security another.