Jet

by Russell Blake

  Chapter 16

  The next morning, Jet blended breakfast for them both – a combination of bananas, milk and yogurt – and brought the concoction into David’s room. He was still out of it, although his eyes seemed a bit clearer. They sipped their sustenance in silence, and then Jet took the empty glasses back to the kitchen and rejoined him.

  “Rani said he would come by again today to take a look at you.”

  “I remember.”

  “Do you remember where you said you would tell me what the hell is going on?”

  “Sort of. That part is a little fuzzier.”

  “See if this helps. Someone attacked me on the island where I was living, which nobody knew about except for you. I killed nine of them, but they kept on coming. I figured out pretty quickly that you were the only one who could have told them where I was, so I went to Yemen to find Rain – the only member of the team I thought I had a decent chance of locating. I had just gotten there when he was killed in front of me, but not before leaving the return to base signal. So then I snuck into Israel, only to discover you’d been attacked as well. Does that jog your memory at all?”

  David looked at her and nodded.

  “I originally thought that it was the terrorist cell Rain had infiltrated that killed him, but now I’m not so sure.”

  “Why?”

  “Because someone killed the other members of the team within a day of his execution.”

  Jet’s eyes widened. “They’re all dead? Everyone?”

  “Correct. Someone eliminated a group that doesn’t officially exist, and that only a handful of top brass knew about. I found out about the others as information was coming in about Rain. It looks like it was a coordinated strike carried out by professionals.” David paused, frowning. “I have no idea how they tracked them down. Their locations and identities were secret.”

  “Good Lord…”

  “Then they came for me. To a safe house that nobody knew about. Loaded for bear. It’s only because I got lucky I was able to escape. The plan was for me to be dead, too. I took a bunch of them out, but two survived. So they know I’m still alive.”

  “And you have no idea who these people are?”

  “Like I said, the only thing I know for sure is that one of the group that tried to kill me was Russian. Probably all of them because he was speaking it into his radio. Did you get a good look at the men who attacked you?”

  “They could have been Russian. All Caucasian.”

  “So that fits. But it doesn’t mean that the Russian government is trying to terminate us. A lot of ex-Spetsnaz signed on for mercenary work once the wall came down, and that’s still one of the largest sources of mercenaries in the world.”

  “Where does that leave us?”

  “I’ve got to get healthy enough to be able to put out feelers to some of my non-Mossad contacts. But I can’t rule out that the team was terminated by someone in the Mossad, either.”

  “Why would the agency we all worked for want to terminate everyone?”

  “I don’t know. But the cleanest way of ensuring there are no loose ends to embarrass you is to end the project permanently, including all personnel.”

  “Did you get a foreshadowing of anything like that?”

  “No. But there’s always been an elephant in the room when it comes to the team. Operating hit squads on foreign soil, sometimes of friendly nations…to say that it would be embarrassing is an understatement. It would be disastrous for the current administration as well as the nation. I could think of a lot of people who would sleep better if it all just went away. Do I think Mossad is behind this? No. Is it possible? Anything is in this business. You should know that.” He was tiring again, eyes beginning to droop closed. He forced himself back to consciousness with an effort.

  “There’s still the question of how they knew I was alive. How they knew where to find me,” she said softly.

  “A month ago my condo was robbed. I hadn’t been there for about a week – I was running an op. Nobody knew about it – nobody – I’d only had it for six months, and I used a cutout ID to rent it. Anyway, my neighbor called the police, and by the time I made it into town, a lot of people had been through it: the crime scene techs, the police, the robbers. I’m thinking that they got the information on you when it was robbed. On the rest of the team, I suspect a mole within the agency…but no information existed anywhere about you being alive, nor about your location, so the robbery is the only answer I can come up with.”

  “Why didn’t you try to warn me?”

  “It never occurred to me. A few items were stolen – the stereo, some cash, a laptop computer, but there wasn’t anything else missing. The problem is that I wasn’t thinking about you when I was burgled.”

  She moved around the bed to stare directly into his eyes.

  “What did they find?”

  “The postcard you sent. I kept it. It was stupid. Sentimental, I suppose. It was on my refrigerator. My guess is that they took photos of everything – you know how that works – and then somehow cracked the encryption on the laptop. It was military grade, supposedly unbreakable, but who knows?”

  “You kept the postcard? But it was blank.”

  “I know. And I didn’t have anything operational on the computer. But I think there might have been a few files related to my planning for your untimely demise. That’s the only thing that makes any sense. I’m the only one who knew about you, and I haven’t said a word, so it all leads back to someone staging a robbery and devoting insane levels of resources to finding a dead woman.”

  She stared at a point on the wall, a thousand miles away.

  “So they can kill her.”

  David closed his eyes, exhausted.

  “I can only think of one group, one man, who is Russian and would want you dead that badly. But then why eliminate everyone on the team? That’s the puzzle.”

  “Who, David? Who are you thinking?”

  “Mikhail Grigenko. He’s a Russian oligarch. Worth billions. He’s basically synonymous with the Russian oil industry, as well as the Russian mob. But he’d have no way of knowing about the team, much less want to have them executed. I could see how he would want you and me, but not everyone…”

  “I don’t understand. Why would this Grigenko want to have me executed? What did I ever do to him? I’ve never operated in Russia except for that extraction – the diplomat we rescued from the extremists. What would the mob or some oil billionaire want with me, and why go to these lengths to find me once I was dead? None of it makes any sense.”

  “You never know everything about the operations, of course. In this case, one mission in particular is germane and explains everything. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you earlier, but you had no need to know.”

  She took his hand. His palm was sweating – he needed to rest if he was going to heal. She held her fingers against his brow. At least he wasn’t feverish.

  “Tell me what?” she asked.

  “The Chechnya sanction. The man you executed at the villa outside of Grozny.”

  “The file said he was involved in securing weapons of mass destruction for Al Qaeda. Suitcase nukes and bio weapons, if I recall.”

  “That was true. He was. The sanction was approved at the highest levels of the government. There was no mistake…”

  David wasn’t telling her everything. He probably never did, knowing him. It was part of the way he was. Compartmentalize. Segregate. Need to know.

  She prodded him for the unsaid portion of the story. “And?”

  “He was also Grigenko’s twin brother.”