Act of Terror

by Marc Cameron

  They stared back with the maddeningly blank faces that only preteen boys can muster.

  She threw the rifle to her shoulder, aiming in.

  “We don’t know,” Gary stammered, hands folded across the crotch of his dingy shorts. “Kenny told the teachers he was starting to like you and they took him away.”

  “We haven’t seen him since,” Kenny said, through swollen lips.

  Hunt stood, aiming the rifle, chewing on her top lip. “These boys stood by and cheered while my friends were murdered. They’re screwed up for life. I should shoot them all right now... .”

  “Knock yourself out,” Quinn said. “But whatever you’re going to do, do it quickly. We gotta get out of here.”

  He was pretty sure she wouldn’t shoot unless the kids attacked. As a CIA para, she’d been extremely well trained. From his experience, well-trained people didn’t talk much about killing. When it needed to be done, they simply did it without wasting a lot of breath.

  Hunt kept the boys covered as she backed toward him, taking up a position beside the door. “I sure as hell hope they follow us.”

  They made it down the hall as far as the T intersection where the side shaft and the main corridor connected. To their left, a row of metal barrels lined the dark tunnel that led deeper into the mountain.

  “You think that’s fuel oil?” Hunt whispered, nodding toward the barrels.

  Quinn shrugged. “Could be. They’re getting power from somewhere. Probably generators venting to the outside to diffuse any heat signature.”

  He stopped to readjust Ronnie’s weight over his shoulder. She was facedown, buttocks in the air. His left arm wrapped around the crook of her knees. The posture pressed against her lungs and wasn’t optimal for her injuries, but it was the only way he could move with her quickly and shoot. He not only had to carry her, but he had to check her constantly to make sure she was still breathing.

  Another volley of gunfire rattled down the tunnel, zinging off the rock walls with yellow sparks.

  “They’re in the room on the left between us and the door,” he said.

  “I’m going deaf from all the racket,” Hunt said. “But I think I hear footsteps.”

  She did a low quick peek, stooping to thrust her head around the corner for a split second before pulling it back again.

  “I count three. They’re inching along the wall trying to work up the courage to rush us.

  “Think you can bounce a couple of rounds at them?”

  “On it.” Hunt set her jaw and nodded.

  She held the Kalashnikov parallel to her chest, with the barrel angled slightly toward her. Thrusting it quickly around the corner, she fired three controlled bursts.

  High-velocity bullets shot at such an angle tended to bounce away a few inches and travel in a relatively straight path down a flat surface. A muffled cry came from around the corner, along with the unmistakable clatter of a gun hitting the stone floor.

  Seizing the moment, Quinn and Hunt rounded the corner, each finishing off a downed guard. Hunt paused long enough to grab a hand grenade from the belt of one guard as they ran past.

  Heavy footfalls echoed up the corridor from the way they’d come. There were cries of protest from the boys, followed by a prolonged volley of gunfire.

  “Can’t say I’m sorry to hear that,” Hunt sighed. She looked over her shoulder at the last few pops.

  “Must have had orders to silence them if the place was compromised,” Quinn said. Garcia was still draped over his shoulder, her arms trailing down his back. He reached to feel her pulse, inside her pant leg and above her ankle. It was weak, but palpable.

  A screaming wind yanked the door from Quinn’s hand as he pushed it open. He turned to Hunt.

  “Ready?”

  She pulled the pin on the grenade and held it in her hand. “Ready.”

  Quinn felt Ronnie stir at the fresh slap of cold air. “Stay with me, kid.” He patted her tenderly on the butt, took a deep breath, and stepped into the darkness.

  “We have a saying here in the Stans.” Hunt tossed the grenade into the door behind them as they trotted away. “Caves are graves.”

  Quinn charged into the black storm, cutting left toward where he hoped the yurts and horses were waiting. Behind him, the mountain roared. Fire belched from the door. Tiny, slit-like windows glowed like rows of red eyes in the night.

  Men poured from the yurts nearest the mountain. They scanned the blackness with feeble beams of battery-powered lights.

  Quinn ran on, depending on surprise and night to help his escape.

  The horses were right where he’d left them. Rumps turned toward the storm, they munched contentedly on a pile of hay Quinn had dragged from the feed yurt. He lay Garcia on the ground long enough to bring the horses to the leeward side of the structure out of the direct blast of wind. As gently as he could, he lifted Garcia’s thigh over the larger animal’s back. Hunt held her in place while he climbed up behind and let her slump back against his chest. With no stirrups and only a single lead rope from a leather halter for control, the going would be tricky—but at least they were moving. The driving snow would cover their tracks.

  Hunt reined up beside him in the darkness on the other runty horse. “You’re going to have to lead,” she yelled above the wind. “I was under a tarp when I came in.”

  Two hours later Quinn’s horse slipped. Both knees slammed into the ice with a sickening crack. They were already headed downhill and both Quinn and Garcia tumbled over the animal’s head to land in a tangled heap on the snowy mountainside.

  The raging storm and palpable darkness made it impossible to see more than a few inches. Heavy with worry, Quinn reached under Garcia’s shirt to put a hand against her ribs. She winced at the sudden chill. That, at least, was a good sign. He checked the catheter. It was still in place. Her breathing was strained but steady. The biggest danger now was the cold. None of them was dressed for this sort of weather. Without movement to warm her, Garcia’s body temperature was falling fast.

  “Put her up here with me,” Hunt shouted. She coaxed her little horse down the side hill below Quinn to make loading Garcia easier. “I’ll try to warm her up while you lead the horse. Looks like yours is a goner.”

  The second horse collapsed a half an hour later. Past the point of exhaustion, Quinn stooped to muscle Garcia over his shoulder. He struggled back to his feet under the press of Garcia and the howling wind. Unsure if she was alive or dead, he’d resolved to get her out of these mountains or die along with her. Trudging forward, nearly blind on feet that felt like wooden stumps, he began to hear the sweet notes of his daughter’s violin.

  He remembered there was someone behind him, but who they were and why they were there escaped him. His world was one continuous stumbling movement, falling forward, catching himself, then repeating the process over and over again. He’d drawn his hands inside the sleeves of his wool coat, but his fingers were numb—likely frostbitten. He could only imagine what was happening to Ronnie.

  Mattie’s violin grew louder in his head. He saw her little face in the darkness, dark hair swirling in plumes of snow and ice. She shook her finger back and forth as if to scold him. Her little cheeks pooched into a disappointed frown. She looked so much like her mother when she did that. Heaven knew he’d done enough to disappoint them both.

  Quinn stopped in the trail to stare at his daughter. The sight of her made him warm and sleepy. Something bumped into his back, knocking him face-first into the driven snow and shattering his beautiful vision.

  “You smell that?” A voice rose up from the blizzard behind him.

  He remembered now. There was another woman with him. Hunt. That was her name. He grabbed for the fleeting thought as he fumbled with Garcia’s arms, trying to tug her limp body back up on his shoulder.

  “I don’t smell anything,” he groaned.

  “I’d know that stink anywhere... .” Hunt shouted. “It’s yak.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

>   Arlington, Virginia

  Thibodaux stood beside Palmer’s leather sofa at parade rest, eyes intent on an angry-looking radar image on a flat-screen monitor. “So,” the Cajun said, “we’ve found him then?”

  Win Palmer sat behind his desk fiddling with a computer keyboard to zoom in tighter on the image. He put the cursor over a map of western China and the Wakhan Corridor of Afghanistan, where a red and yellow blotch marched across the screen. Beside the blinking arrow were the letters: LKP.

  “His last known point was here.” Palmer used the mouse to wiggle the cursor slightly. “This is where he called in the Hellfire strike. I sent another agent over to talk to Dr. Deuben. She sent them somewhere over here ...” He moved the cursor three inches to the west. “... to talk to a Kyrgyz woman about the orphanage.

  “And what does this Kyrgyz woman say?” Thibodaux moved up next to the screen, as if closer scrutiny might reveal his friend’s location.

  “That’s the glitch.” Palmer frowned. “That red blob there is the storm that’s been dumping snow on the area since late yesterday. We sent a Blackhawk over Boroghil Pass from the Pakistani side. Those Kyrgyz migrate down from the high pastures every year about this time before the big snows hit. There was no sign of the camp Deuben sent them to. They could have already headed down to Sarhad to get ahead of the storm. The Blackhawk had to get back to base before it got caught in a whiteout—no time to do a thorough search. They can barely keep a bird in the air at those altitudes anyway.”

  “What about this spot here?” Thibodaux ran his finger along a band of light greens and blues on the map. “A break in the weather?”

  “Bingo,” Palmer said. “Not big enough to get an aircraft on the ground, but if we run it through time lapse on Damocles it does show us something interesting.”

  Palmer tapped that keyboard and brought up the same map with a time stamp of an hour before. The gap in the weather had passed over a mountain valley roughly ten miles from the spot the Kyrgyz camp was supposed to have been. Centered in the rocky scree along the mountain side was a small purple dot, nearly invisible to the naked eye.

  “What am I looking at?” Thibodaux rubbed his jaw.

  “Maybe nothing.” Palmer shrugged. “Maybe a fire.”

  Thibodaux sighed. “I’ve been to that part of Afghanistan, sir. There’s not much to burn in those mountains except yak shit.”

  “What we do know is that the dot wasn’t there five hours before. It’s some sort of anomaly and fire is the best guess.”

  “If it’s a fire big enough to see from a satellite, it’s likely Quinn’s handiwork. Let’s get someone in there to get him out.”

  Palmer leaned back in his chair, folding his hands across the flat of his stomach. “My thoughts exactly.” The muscles in his jaws and neck flexed like taut cables. “But we can’t. The next band of weather has moved in and stalled. All the technology in the world and we’re stymied by clouds. Until they move, we’re not getting anyone in or out.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

  Near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania

  “I need to talk to Bundy,” Fargo said, walking through the back door of the remote farmhouse set in the middle of a twenty-acre parcel, five miles from the Gettysburg Battlefield. His collar was unbuttoned and a frayed red power tie hung loose around his neck. He was at the end of his rope and he needed answers.

  Two young Echoes wearing black Doc Martens boots and sporting military buzz cuts sat at the kitchen table playing cards. Neither stood when he entered, though they knew he outranked them.

  Castelleti, a big-eared kid with the beginnings of a beard, looked up with a sneer.

  “I asked you a question, men,” Fargo snapped. “Is he here?”

  They grunted, nodding to the stairs leading to the basement.

  The one named Jimenez peered up over his cards. “We got a new client who didn’t show up for his hearings with the congressman.” He suddenly began to look around the room as if trying to locate something out of place. “You smell that, Colonel?”

  “Smell what?”

  “That stuff that smells like piss.” Jimenez sniffed. “You know what that is?”

  “I don’t know.” Fargo took a long whiff. “What?”

  “It’s piss!” Castelleti smirked, red in the face.

  Both men threw their cards on the table and broke into uncontrollable laughter, shaking their heads.

  Fargo swallowed.

  “Go on down, Colonel.” Jimenez hooked a thumb over his shoulder, stopping to catch his breath. “Maybe you could help the sarge on this one. This new guy’s givin’ us zip so far.”

  Fargo had no stomach for interrogation, but the last thing he wanted was for a couple of snot-nosed subordinates to see him sweat.

  “All right,” he blustered. “I’ll do that. It’s important that I see him.”

  Fargo grabbed the wooden banister to steady himself as he made his way down the dark concrete steps to the musty basement. The smell of urine did indeed waft up to assault his nose. The movies he’d seen, no matter how graphic, were tame compared to the real thing. Graphic images had the power to alarm for a moment, but the mind became inured after a short time. The sounds of screaming, pleading, or even whimpering—which Fargo felt was the worst—added shock value, but even they made one numb after a time. But when sight and sound were combined with the smell of actual human misery, the sensations burned into a special place at the back of his skull where they would stay forever.

  Fargo paused at the two-way mirror set in the wall of what had been a root cellar in the back corner of the basement. The farmhouse was surrounded by acres of vacant land so there was no need to soundproof the room. Bundy claimed the ability for one subject to hear another’s woes, if they happened to have two clients, had a tenderizing effect.

  The Echoes’ latest subject was Steve Luttrell, number thirty-seven on Congressman Drake’s list. Luttrell was a professional staffer for a powerful left-leaning lobbying firm in downtown D.C. He was in his late forties with a full head of snow-white hair that had once been red. He loved Mexican food to a fault and it showed in the prominent gut that folded over onto his lap. He was completely nude. Plastic flex cuffs secured pink shoulders, hands, knees to a gray metal chair in the center of the basement room. His back was to the door so as rob him of even the slightest notion of escape. Bright light glared in his face, causing him to squint through tearful red eyes. Strings of snot ran down the soapy white skin of his hairless chest.

  Bundy sat in another chair five feet away, inside the circle of light, staring at the man with cold pig eyes.

  Luttrell blinked against the assaultive light. “Why are you doing this?”

  “You tell me,” Bundy said, his voice a coarse whisper.

  Luttrell threw his head back, howling at the ceiling. “I can’t tell you anything if you don’t ask me any questions!”

  “What should I ask you, Steve?” Bundy said.

  “I ... don’t ... know,” he sobbed.

  “Why weren’t you at your congressional hearings, Steve?”

  “What?” He blinked. “I ... I ... what does that matter?”

  “Are you a spy, Steve? A mole?”

  Luttrell’s chest heaved. “Noooo! Why does everyone suddenly think I’m a spy?”

  “Okay. Let’s talk about your wife,” Bundy said. His voice sounded like the hiss of a snake. Pure evil. “Do you think you make her happy, Steve?” He leaned in close. “Because from where I’m sitting I don’t think you could possibly make her as happy as I could.”

  A malignant smile spread over Bundy’s face.

  “You know, Steve,” he said. “When we’re in training, they teach us the three Ds—debility, dependence, and dread... . But you know what, Steve?” Bundy sighed, leaning forward in his chair. “I came up with a little something that works so much faster in my experience. I call them the three Ts. Can you guess what they are?”

  “No ... no ... idea ...” Luttrell’s words came in b
reathless stops and starts.

  Bundy reached behind his back to take out a pair of pruning shears. “Toenails, teeth, and testicles, Steve,” he said. “Isn’t that just brilliant? I think it’s brilliant.”

  Luttrell began to blubber like a baby. “I ... you ... what ...”

  Fargo’s cell phone began to ring. Luttrell’s head snapped up, craning to see what was making the familiar noise outside the room.

  Bundy’s smile vanished.

  “Help me!” the naked man cried. He rocked in his chair until it tipped over, crashing against the concrete. “Somebody out there please help me!”

  Bundy left the man lying on the damp concrete floor screaming until his voice grew hoarse.

  “What the hell do you want ... sir?” Spit flew from Bundy’s lips as he slammed the door behind him. The scorpion tattoo flicked and danced as the veins in his thick neck throbbed purple.

  “I need to talk to you.” Fargo struggled to maintain even the illusion of control.

  “You just set me back half a day there.” Bundy glared as if about to strike. “This guy has got to believe the world is a vacant planet—no one else here but me and him. Hopelessness—that’s what we’re after. You just gave that son of a bitch a fresh dose of hope with your prancy little antelope cell phone tune.”

  “Would you shut up and listen to me for a minute?” Fargo tried to check the whine in his voice, but the words still came out more plea than order. He swallowed hard. “My source has found out there’s a full-scale search being mounted for someone missing over the Chinese border into Afghanistan. This has Jericho Quinn written all over it. I need you to get your men together.”

  Bundy breathed in quickly through his nose at the mention of Quinn’s name. “I wonder what he’s doing over there... .” He rubbed his bald head with the flat of his hand, thinking. “You know, LT, this guy sounds like the only one among all the names on our list who would be a challenge to interrogate.”