by Ed Kovacs
He quietly closed the door, tucked the pistol into his waistband, and bent down. GANZ was the name emblazoned over the breast pocket of her pixelated digital camouflage BDU blouse.
“Lieutenant Ganz, I’ll ease up on the wristlock if you promise not to make any noise. I just want to talk with you quietly, okay? Do we have a deal?”
“No deal. If I talk to you, it will make trouble for me.”
“Tell them I pointed a gun to your head. I’m not going to do that, but you can tell them that.”
“Sorry, no,” said Ganz through gritted teeth. She looked to be about thirty, with blue eyes and fair skin. It occurred to Bennings that she was too pretty to be in the army, meaning she probably suffered a lot of sexual harassment.
Since she wasn’t struggling or making noise, he eased up on the wristlock. “Okay, we don’t have a deal, but I need you to stay quiet.”
She didn’t say anything. Good. “Have you served overseas?” he asked. Better to start her off with some easy questions.
“Afghanistan.”
“As an MP?”
“Civil Affairs.”
“All right, so you’re halfway smart. Tell me why I’m here.”
He could see in her eyes that she was gauging an answer, so he pressed harder on the wristlock. “Don’t scam me, just speak the truth as you know it,” said Bennings as he drilled her with his most intimidating stare.
“Agents are coming to take you into custody.”
“CID?”
“CIA.”
Bennings’s eyes narrowed. “I thought I was being given amnesty.”
“I don’t know anything about that. My MP unit is here for two weeks of desert training. We were supposed to train overseas, but because of budget cuts, they sent us here. Urgent orders came in tonight to do a prisoner transfer of you and Miss Petkova from Las Vegas PD and detain you both here.”
“How long before the agents get here?”
“Any time.”
“Where’s Miss Petkova?”
“The next room. To the right.”
“My belongings?”
“Front desk.”
“How many of you on duty?”
“Five. So why don’t you just give me back my pistol and we’ll forget this happened? You can’t get away. You’re on an army post, and we have orders to shoot both of you if you try to escape.”
Kit registered surprise. “Orders to shoot us? That’s interesting, since we haven’t been charged with a crime.”
“They said you’re spies, that you’re a traitor. And a murderer.”
“The CIA lied, Lieutenant.” Bennings’s eyes darted around the room, his mind racing. Then a sobering thought rocked him. It ran all the way to Padilla and the power politics played by the president’s closest advisers and cabinet members. A radical decision had been made; Padilla was clearly no longer able to protect him.
Bennings hadn’t been applying pressure to the wristlock, but now he released his grip entirely.
“They want me dead,” he said, with quiet certainty.
Ganz looked at him quizzically.
“How many members of your MP unit are here training?”
“About fifty,” she said.
“So if I’m so dangerous, why are there only five of you watching the two of us?”
She hesitated, then: “Those were the orders.”
“And why would I be held in an office and not in the brig? There’s a brig on this post, right?”
Ganz nodded reluctantly. “They specifically told us to put you in an office. I’m not much on questioning orders from my commander.”
He looked at her for a long beat, as if deciding how to play the lieutenant. “Want to know why it was so easy for me to get out of the handcuffs? It’s because they want me and Miss Petkova to escape. So they can kill us. They must already have snipers in place.”
He took a step toward the windows and took a quick, careful peek behind the blinds. “These windows actually open,” he said as he leveled a penetrating gaze at Ganz. She seemed more unnerved now than ever. “Calm down and think about it. Vegas PD had us in jail. Why couldn’t the CIA just pick up two spies, two dangerous murderers, there? Wouldn’t that have been safer? Why did your unit bring us all the way out here and stick us in unsecured offices, offices with windows, with no armed guards in the room watching us?”
She looked like she didn’t know what to say.
Bennings paced the room, not bothering to watch her closely. It was almost unbelievable, but his execution had been ordered due to the turf wars Padilla had been fighting. Padilla had told him the agency and other outfits were furious that the president had allowed her to secretly run the mole counterintelligence op in Moscow; face and power had been lost, and influence had shifted. And his going rogue and stealing the Sandia bomb with a Russian national hadn’t exactly helped his position. No doubt the political-appointee dolts at Langley truly thought he’d gone bad and was teamed up with a Russian agent on some kind of mission to wreak havoc and possibly imperil national security.
And no doubt they’d concluded that if he were killed “escaping,” his guilt would be sealed, Padilla would be severely damaged, and the president would be unlikely to authorize any more secret operations that encroached on agency turf. Bennings understood it wasn’t personal on their part, but being on the receiving end of a bullet fired by your own government made it a bit personal for him.
“If what you say is true, why wouldn’t the CIA take you into custody and just shoot you on a desert road and say you had tried to escape?” she asked.
“Because they want to make it look like army MPs did it. Keep the blame away from themselves.”
She thought about that, then shook her head slowly. “You might be telling the truth. I don’t know. But I know what my orders are.”
Bennings quickly rolled up his right sleeve and showed her a series of tattoos. “Recognize these?”
She squinted to see better, as she moved her eyes up his arm. “Seventy-fifth Ranger Regiment, Special Forces Command … Is that ISA? You were with the Activity?”
He tilted his head and looked at her a bit strangely. “Not many people recognize that one. Good on you.” Bennings looked at her sharply, as if he’d made a decision. He removed the Beretta from his waist, spun it so the grip faced her, and held out the gun for Ganz to take. She looked shocked to see the prisoner, who had just turned the tables on her, offer her weapon back. “So whose side are you on, Lieutenant? The army’s, or the CIA’s?”
She paused, then: “I’m a soldier.” She reached out, took her sidearm back, and stuck it in her ballistic nylon holster.
“That makes two of us.” He extended a hand and helped her to her feet. He took a step as if to cross behind her, then lashed out with his left arm, wrenched her into a bar-arm choke hold, and applied symmetrical pressure using a V configuration of his forearm and upper arm on the sides of her neck. After fifteen seconds, she went still, and he let her drop to the floor.
CHAPTER 44
Recovery from a carotid restraint hold is generally quick; in Ganz’s case, about thirty seconds. Time enough for Bennings to handcuff her arms behind her back and put duct tape around her legs and over her mouth.
“I need a couple of minutes to think this out,” Bennings said loudly, as he unbuttoned her camouflage BDU blouse. He checked the inside of the garment, then looked at her bra; something didn’t look right. “So just be quiet for a minute, okay? Don’t talk.” He was speaking for someone’s benefit, but it wasn’t Ganz.
As Ganz came to, her eyes went wide and she began to squirm as she realized her predicament. Kit quickly straddled her to keep her from rolling away. Careful not to touch her breasts, he used scissors to cut the front of her bra in half. Her breasts were now exposed, but he paid no attention to them. It was the “wire,” the transmitter and microphone attached inside the bra, he was interested in. And the .380 subcompact semiauto Velcroed inside one of her breast cups.
Ganz’s eyes were like saucers.
“Let me guess: your Beretta has a broken firing pin. I was supposed to take it from you, thinking it was actually a functioning gun. It’s why I gave it back to you, and it’s why you holstered it. You couldn’t use it on me if you wanted to. Right?”
No doubt about it now, Ganz was scared. She looked like a lady who knew she was in a world of trouble.
“You’re good, and you’re probably former military, but there were a couple of different things that gave you away. You said ‘Special Forces Command,’ but it’s Special Operations Command. And you recognized the old ISA logo. Chances of a female first lieutenant knowing that logo are slim—ninety-nine point nine-nine percent of the army doesn’t know that logo—but a CIA assassin who had read my dossier would know it.”
He performed a quick search of her cargo pockets and found a Gerber folder with a nasty serrated edge—a gutting knife, which he opened.
“Now we’re going to have a quiet, honest chat.” He slowly moved the tip of the knife under her right eye and pressed slightly. “The first time you lie, you lose your eye. Another lie, another eye. You also have ears and a nose, so think carefully before you speak.”
Ganz swallowed hard, and Bennings tore off the tape from over her mouth. “Who do you work for?”
“I’m a contract player.”
“For…?”
“Name a three-letter agency. American or foreign. You know how it works.”
Bennings indeed knew how it worked. Thousands, maybe tens of thousands of such “contract players” rented themselves out as freelance operators around the world. Allegiances were murky at best, but Bennings knew all too well it wasn’t just in the arena of contract players where allegiances were murky.
“When I said ‘for’? I meant who are you working for tonight?”
“Langley.”
“How many of you?”
“Seven.”
“So all five of the ‘MPs’ who picked us up from Vegas PD, plus two others?”
“Yes.”
“And Petkova and I are both to be killed while escaping?”
“Yes. Preferably shot by real army MPs. Two platoons of MPs have set up choke points all around the post. If we radio them that you’ve escaped, their orders are shoot to kill.”
Bennings nodded. Crap, it was one thing to have police detectives and CID agents trying to track him down, but when killers are dispatched by the intelligence service of the nation you serve, well … He let out a big exhale.
“Listen carefully,” he said with a ruthless intensity. “If you want to see tomorrow, you will get me and Petkova out of here. Alive. In one piece. Right now.”
“I can do it. I know exactly how to do it.” She swallowed again. He could see in her eyes that she really wanted him to believe her. The question was, would she lead him into a trap. “Bennings, I don’t know the truth about what you did to piss off the Company, but this was nothing personal.”
“Oh, it’s all personal, girl,” said Kit, as he used the knife to cut the duct tape that had bound her legs. “Everything I’m doing these days is personal.”
* * *
Using the .380, Bennings subdued the fake MP who was in the room with Yulana. He got duct taped to a chair. A few minutes later, Bennings and Yulana, wearing MP uniforms, overcame the fake MP at the front desk. Yulana retrieved their belongings while Kit cuffed and gagged the contract killer and liberated the man’s Generation 4 Glock 21 and some other goodies.
“What about the other four CIA killers?” asked Yulana.
Kit looked at Ganz. She hesitated, then said, “Might be better to make a break for it now.”
Kit nodded. “They have to know something’s going down. Your wire’s been silent for too long. Any idea where they are?”
“Two of them will be in a green SUV somewhere outside, for Command and Control. But the other two…?” Ganz didn’t finish the question.
“So we run for it. But just to be clear,” he said with a raw edge to his voice, “if we don’t make it, you don’t make it.” His look told her that he meant it.
Ganz nodded, then led them down a different hallway, where they broke into a run. They rounded a few corners and ended up in a custodial room, then through a utility door out into the open air. They ran balls-out across a patch of grass to the corner of another building.
After leapfrogging from building to building in the darkness, Ganz stopped at the door of a small motor pool. “There are quads inside. I saw them earlier.” Kit quickly jimmied the padlock, and the group filed in. A dozen tricked-out 4x4 ATVs used as patrol vehicles on the post sat gassed and ready to go. Steered with handlebars like a motorcycle, the small, four-wheeled “quads” had fat off-road tires and could drive just about anywhere. They were designed for one person plus cargo but could seat two in a pinch.
“I always wanted to ride one of these,” said Yulana, looking them over.
“Careful what you wish for,” said Kit.
“You’ll have to stay off road to avoid the choke points manned by the MPs,” said Ganz, trying to sound helpful.
“Someone from your team will have called in our escape by now,” said Kit with sharp certainty.
“Probably. So the MPs will shoot if they see you. But they’re only set up on real roads, since we assumed you’d steal a vehicle and drive off post. We parked Humvees all around the building where you were being held.”
“So as long as we stay dark and off road, we might make it,” said Kit. He glanced at Ganz, who looked scared to death that he was going to kill her right there.
“Since I’ve never driven one of these, I’ll follow you,” said Yulana. She then looked with contempt at Ganz. “But what about her?”
“Her? She’s my lucky hood ornament.”
Ganz was still cuffed, but Bennings once again duct taped her mouth and then lifted her in a sitting position onto the cast-aluminum front cargo rack, where he lashed her down tight with rope and bungee cords like she was a piece of luggage.
He then moved off to a tool cabinet and began searching for something. The waiting made Yulana nervous.
“Kit, you’re taking too long.”
“You’re right, but we’ll need one of these.”
He pocketed a tool, then crossed to the garage door. The creaky door made a lot of noise as Kit pulled it open. He then ran to his quad, and they started the engines, which ran surprisingly quietly, since they had special mufflers installed to make them somewhat “stealthy.”
Kit drove out, followed by Yulana, and crossed the road under the yellowish glow of a streetlight. They headed north. After traveling less than one hundred yards, gunfire erupted from the darkness to their right.
Kit saw the muzzle flashes and heard a man yell, “They’re over here!” He didn’t bother to return fire, he just bent lower, and as he gunned the throttle, the ATV shot off into the dry desert night, its stillness now punctuated by staccato bursts of innocuous-sounding pops, which were anything but innocuous. Whoever was shooting was employing an ineffective technique called “spray and pray,” firing blindly at a target in the hope of making a one-in-a-million shot.
Bennings glanced back to make sure Yulana was on his tail, as the lights of the post and the gunfire quickly faded behind them.
The northerly escape was a feint, and Kit soon led them due west. The going was slower since they couldn’t use their lights, but the brilliantly starry sky provided enough soft light so they could negotiate the dry washes and arroyos as they avoided any roads.
Now Kit’s main worry became helicopters that could launch
from Nellis. Or drones. Had the CIA contractors brought their own mini drones? His neck craned toward the sky whenever he could risk taking his eyes away from the terrain in front of them.
Twelve minutes elapsed before they came upon the eight-foot-high chain-link fence that separated the army post from Nellis proper. He and Yulana stopped their quads right up against the fence.
Kit silently dismounted and went to work with the tool he found in the motor pool—a pair of snips—to cut an opening in the chain link. He worked feverishly, and in less than two minutes, he’d cut an opening large enough to drive through.
He heard Yulana get off her quad and then say, “Oh, my God!”
Bennings spun around to see her gawking at Ganz, who sat perfectly upright, lashed to the cargo rack.
Perfectly upright, and perfectly dead.
“Aww, crap.” Kit stood up and moved in close. Ganz had taken a round to the side of her head. A one-in-a-million shot that found an unintended target. “All right, we leave this quad here,” said Kit quickly. “You sit behind me on your quad.”
“But…”
“But what? Believe me, they’ll find her body soon enough. And the bullet that killed her was meant for you or me. They’re probably launching helicopters right now to track us down and make us as dead as her.”
“I’ll tell you ‘but what’?” exclaimed Yulana, getting emotional. “I expect Popov and his men to try and kill us. But I don’t expect American soldiers or the CIA to try. How can we continue, how can we even dream of living through this, of saving my child, your sister?”
As he looked at her, he realized she was on the verge of falling apart. He crossed to her and gently held her.
“Only we can kill the dream, Yulana. As long as we’re alive, as long as we’re free, if we can take one more step, then the dream can live within us. I refuse to quit living the dream of freeing my sister and your daughter and stopping Popov. I simply refuse.” He took her hands and placed them against his chest. “Look how far we’ve come in the last few days. Think of what we’ve done! When you got off that plane at LAX, would you have thought any of it possible?”
