by Brad Taylor
“Yep. Tall and lanky. Dressed like a couple of vagabonds and sticking out like burnt wood.”
Seamus thanked him, then picked up his beer and began fighting the crowd, pushing and twisting to get beyond the bottleneck of live music. He entered the door to the beer garden, really just another room, and the music faded to the back. He glanced around and immediately spotted the Somalis. Both huddled over a small table, drinking what appeared to be tea, they were exactly as advertised. Tall and lanky. Even their skulls were long, almost as if someone had taken them as a child and drawn them out until their features were distorted, the mass of their muscles lost in the stretching.
He threaded his way through the tables until he was next to theirs. Not wanting to alarm them, he stood until they looked up. He said, “Ali Hassan?”
They glanced at each other, then back at him. One had a small harelip, his teeth white against the cleft. He said, “I am Ali Hassan. And you are?”
“You may call me Clover. I’d prefer not to give you my name, but Frog is the one who introduced us.”
Ali squinted and said, “So you know my name, but I cannot learn yours.”
Seamus said, “May I sit?”
Ali nodded.
He did so and said, “Look, I mean no offense, but what you are proposing is pretty significant. I don’t want to be tied to a failure, but I’ll be more than willing to claim success. I never wanted to meet you here, in Ireland. Too many people know me. I’m sure you understand.”
Ali looked at the other Somali, saying nothing.
Seamus said, “Who is your friend?”
Teeth bared, the friend said, “You may call me Ismail. Nothing more.”
Seamus nodded and said, “I understand. We’re on the same page. I wish Frog had not given me Ali’s name, but he did. A necessary risk of doing business. So, you are prepared to conduct the strike? And it will be significant?”
Ali said, “Yes, it will be greater than anything seen on this continent, but we won’t do it unless you can deliver. We understood from Frog that you have someone of importance. Someone who will cause the United States to cease their activities in Somalia. I need to know if that’s true.”
Seamus pulled out his smartphone and flipped to the camera roll. He pulled up one picture and said, “See this? It’s the vice president’s son. Next to him is his fiancée. The guy in the back is the husband of a governor of the United States. Yes. They’re important. I pass them to you, and you get a coup of unimaginable proportions.”
Ali took the phone and said, “How do I know this is true? How do I know you didn’t manipulate it with Adobe Photoshop?”
A little taken aback, expecting the goat-herder facade to extend to the man’s mentality, Seamus said, “You see the faces? See the bruises? You won’t find any pictures like this on Facebook. Go ahead and search. I have them, trust me.”
“For how long?”
“For as long as it takes. You want them, you need to pay.”
Ali looked at Ismail again, and Seamus wondered who was really in charge.
Ismail nodded and Ali said, “We are ready. Right now. Frog said you would provide the explosive material.”
“Yes. I can do that, but I need some assurances you can penetrate the target. The RDX is traceable. It was stolen, and if it’s found before detonation, it could lead back to my organization. Afterward, I don’t care.”
Ismail said, “Don’t worry about that. We have two people who are working as a cleaning crew at the target. They’ve been there for two years. We can penetrate. Can you deliver the necessary amount of RDX? It isn’t small.”
Seamus ignored the question, saying, “A janitor isn’t going to get you inside. Tell me you haven’t planned everything on that. The security at that place is very high.”
Ali said, “No. We are fishermen. We live in the water. We’ll swim to it. There is little protection from that side. All we need is someone to unlock a door once we are up.”
Seamus considered his words, then said, “Okay. Yes, I can get you the explosives. Are you looking to separate one car or what?”
Ali smiled. “No. The entire thing. I told you it was significant.”
Seamus smelled a bluff. He leaned back and said, “Bullshit. No way can you do that. I don’t even know if you can rig the explosives, but you sure as shit can’t do it in a manner to cause catastrophic failure. I’m not trading for a puff of smoke and thirty minutes on the news. If I’m going to claim the attack, I need thirty days of news.”
Ali pointed at Ismail and said, “He is a structural engineer. Trained in Egypt. He has studied everything available on the target. He says he can do it. If you give us the proper explosives.”
Seamus went from one to the other, then said, “Okay. It’s a trade, then. You get the crown jewels of the United States, and I get your attack. You do understand, though, that if you fail, if you get captured, you’re on your own.”
“Of course. But we won’t fail. I promise you that.”
41
Grant Breedlove stared at his computer, the thoughts coalescing in his head but not reaching his fingertips. His editor had given him a leash, but it was running out, and he still didn’t have a story. Although he knew one was here. A big one.
He’d worked his way through a multitude of emails and had received responses from most but had nothing for a glaring few. Unfortunately, he had no way of knowing if the service members had simply ignored the email. Given military members’ normal hatred of the press, he couldn’t dismiss the possibility that their lack of response meant they were telling him to stuff it. And there was no way he could print a story on an absence of email contact alone.
But there was something here. He had contacts all over DC, in the highest echelons of government, and whenever he probed on this story he got two responses: One, a blank stare as if he were crazy. Or two, like the secretary of Homeland Security, a spooked expression and a complete retreat.
He needed time. A bit of news to get his editor on board, no matter how small. A nugget to continue the hunt.
He felt the presence of someone and turned to find Kincaid Butler staring over his shoulder. He blanked the laptop and said, “What do you want?”
“Nothing. Just checking out what you’re working on. Word on the street is you’re onto a Lewinsky/Watergate type thing.”
Disgusted, Grant said, “Get out of my cubicle. Find your own damn story.”
Kincaid said, “Hey, even Woodward needed a Bernstein. I’m just offering to help.”
“I don’t need the help. And I don’t have a story. If I do, maybe I’ll ask.”
Kincaid repulsed him. A young up-and-comer, he’d achieved the appropriate check marks—degree from Georgetown, internship at the White House, a battlefield press tour in Afghanistan—but he’d never once done anything on his own. Always snatching the last bit of fabric from the coattail ahead of him.
His report on the crisis of Afghan interpreters—men who’d given all to help the US effort and were now abandoned to the Taliban—had garnered worldwide attention, but Grant knew the truth. The person who’d written it had been killed by a suicide bomber in a Kabul restaurant before it was published, and Kincaid, as the “man on the ground,” had snaked it as his own. Ostensibly as a tribute to the fallen reporter.
Having braved hostile fire in Libya for a story, Grant had little time for an asshole who sat in the rear collating reports and then received the accolades over another’s dead body.
Kincaid said, “Hey, everyone knows you’re working on something. And that Brittle is done with letting you run amok. No time for that in the Internet day. You let me help, and we could cut your leads in half. Get somewhere.”
Grant said, “Get the hell out of here. I have nothing, and if I needed help, it wouldn’t be from some remora.”
Stung, Kincaid wandered a
way. Grant rubbed his eyes, thinking of what else he could do to drag out the timeline. He stood, pulling his sport coat off the chair. One cubicle over, he heard his friend Dwight say, “Fuck that guy. And screw Brittle too. I’m sick of this instant news shit. You got a story, you follow it.”
Dwight was old-school. A man who believed in the fifth estate, with all the due diligence that entailed. Saddened to see it crushed by bloggers and the Internet, he was Grant’s biggest cheerleader. He wanted the world to return to normal, but that time had passed long ago.
Grant said, “I hear you, man. But this story is about to—”
His phone rang. He looked at his watch, seeing it was nine at night. He snatched it up.
“Grant Breedlove.”
“The reporter?”
Grant heard an accent but couldn’t place it. “Yes.”
“I have the information you’re looking for.”
Irish. Why on earth would an Irishman be calling him?
Feeling circumspect, Grant said, “Okay. What, exactly, do you have? What story do you think I’m working?”
The next words slammed into him like a freight train. The break he’d been waiting for.
“Nicholas Seacrest. Aka Hannister. The vice president’s son. Now missing, although nobody knows it. I know what’s happened to him. And I’ve said enough on your recording devices. Good-bye.”
“Wait, wait, we don’t record things here. That’s the NSA.”
“Bullshit. Give me a cell number, or always wonder.”
Rattled, Grant gave him his personal cell, then said, “When will I hear from you?”
“When I’m ready.”
The line went dead, and Grant looked at Dwight.
He said, “A break?”
“Yeah. I think so. Hard to tell.”
He rushed out of the office, Kincaid following his every move with his eyes.
Grant reached his car before the cell rang. There was no preamble. “You know the C-and-O Canal run?”
“Yes. I’ve been on it.”
“Meet me at Fletcher’s Cove in twenty minutes. Park your car and wait. I’ll find you.”
“How?”
“I know what you drive.”
The phone went dead, Grant staring at it as if it could give him a secret he dearly wanted. He entered his car and began to drive.
Winding through the DC streets, he tried to collate the various questions he should ask. The story was the vice president’s son in the hands of terrorists or someone else, but the devil was in the details. A true story wasn’t just the meat. It was fleshed out all around with sinew and bone. He needed to know the why, when, and how, and he began rehearsing his questions. Trembling at the anticipation of his success.
He eventually reached Georgetown, the streets filled with college kids debating the worth of the world over a beer. He saw the women, bundled up in coats, yoga pants underneath, showing their wares to the leering college boys, and wondered if he’d ever been so vain. He knew he had been, of course, but he’d grown beyond that. At least that’s what he told himself.
The truth was he would like to shout at them, tell them what he was doing. Eradicate his college memories of debate with males only and join the fraternity of men who courted such women. It would never happen, and he would have to be content with his life now. Superior in what he was doing, a cut different from the men walking arm in arm with women above their worth. Even if they didn’t know it.
He exited on Canal Road, the traffic much sparser, a two-lane affair that led to Fletcher’s Cove. He passed two cars, continuing the rest of the drive in the dark, his headlights spearing the night. He slowed, now peering out the windshield for the turnoff. It sprang up before he was ready, and he whipped the wheel, swerving into the lane that led down to the canal. He entered the parking lot, seeing two cars but little else. He pulled to the far side and parked, turning off the lights.
He sat for ten minutes, waiting, for the first time realizing that he was out here on his own and dealing with dangerous forces. He considered going back and forcing the man to call him again, but the story was too great. He couldn’t afford to lose this lead.
He waited another five minutes and then considered leaving out of boredom. He reached for the keys in the ignition and heard a knock on his window. The interruption was so stark he literally jumped. He stared for a minute, seeing a shadowy figure in a Washington Nationals hoodie. He cracked the window.
“Open the passenger door.”
He did so, and the man circled the car, taking a seat.
He waited. The man said, “You’re working on a story, but you don’t know the true implications.”
The Irish accent came out again, a lyrical hymn that gave comfort to what was being said.
Wanting to build trust, Grant said, “I am, and I’m here. I can promise you complete anonymity. Nobody will know what you tell me.”
The man chuckled and said, “Trust me, I understand that.”
The words were sinister, but Grant had heard worse. He said, “What do you have?”
“You are on the right trail. There are people missing, but it’s much more than you think.”
Grant said, “How many more? What do you mean?”
The hood turned toward him. “First, who else knows about this? Who else is in the hunt for the story?”
Seeing competition, worried about losing the source to someone else, Grant said, “Nobody. If you mean you want credit, it’s just me. Nobody believes this story for a minute. They all think I’m crazy.”
And his words sealed his fate.
The man raised a pistol, the suppressor looking as large as a drainage pipe. He said, “Then I guess they’ll all wonder why you’re dead.”
Grant raised his hands and got out a single scream, cut short by the bullet splitting his head open.
42
Jennifer sat on the bed, toweling her wet hair, and said, “I hate this part. The waiting. All I ever do is start thinking of what can go wrong.”
“That’s a good thing. As long as it doesn’t start to paralyze you.”
“You think Dunkin’s information is correct? We’re basing a lot on it.”
“Well, not that much. We did the recce, and it matched his information.”
It was closing in on midnight, and I’d just kicked out Clifford Delmonty, aka Dunkin, the one bit of Taskforce help Kurt managed to break free to help us.
A five-foot-eight-inch computer geek, at his hiring board for the Taskforce he’d made an impossible claim that he could dunk a basketball. He thought we were looking for some superhuman physical specimen and figured nobody would test him on his claim. Since we were looking for a guy who could work miracles with electronic devices, not play point guard, we hired him. Then made him put his money where his mouth was.
He’d failed miserably and figured he was fired on his first day. We kept him, but he now wore the callsign Dunkin as a reminder that it doesn’t pay to exaggerate. The Taskforce needed the ground truth. No spin. Like Robert Rogers’s famous dictum from the original Ranger unit in the French and Indian War, “You can lie all you please when you tell other folks about the Rangers, but don’t never lie to a Ranger.”
I’d expected a whole team to meet me in Brussels after finding the pendant, but the only thing that had shown up was Dunkin, with a RFID reader and other electronic gadgets. We’d done a Google search on the keycards Jennifer had taken off the Serb bodies in London, and they were for an extended-stay hotel in Brussels. Since that’s where one of the hostages had been taken, and where the body parts of the SECDEF’s son had been delivered, I’d called Kurt, convinced it would lead to Knuckles and a team meeting up with us. I was sorely mistaken. Knuckles had apparently turned up something hot and was headed to Paris, leaving me on my own.
It had been a heated conversat
ion, and I felt bad for putting the pressure on Kurt, but I knew Kylie was with the vice president’s son, and I had proof positive that I had not only found where they’d been kept, but also a follow-on lead. He’d told me it wasn’t his call, and that the Oversight Council was frothing at the mouth for Knuckles to get to France. That’s when I’d dropped the pendant and the blood smear on him. Which, given how his hands were tied, I now wished I hadn’t. I knew he was imagining the worst about Kylie, and it hadn’t done any good to tell him. He couldn’t break a team free to help me, not with the scrutiny, which I should have recognized before I started dropping Freddy Krueger nightmares about blood splatter and stained floors.
In the end, nobody but him believed I was onto something, and he did only because of Kylie. Like a parent agonizing over a picture on a milk carton, he was willing to believe anything I told him, sucking in the leads as if any movement of mine was forward progress and not just motion.
The only good news was that the president was now read onto what I was doing. He knew I was freelancing, and while he wasn’t throwing his weight behind my efforts, it gave Kurt a little bit of cover to help out where he could.
Kurt had an entire support package on the ground in Paris, ostensibly to facilitate Knuckles’s operations, but he managed to break Dunkin free for the short train ride to Brussels.
Jennifer said, “You think we can do this clean?”
“I suppose that’ll be up to you.”
“Great. Just what I wanted to hear.”
She was lying on the bed, pillows propped up behind her. I lay down beside her, our hips touching. We both looked at the TV, the sound off because we couldn’t understand the language. I said, “You don’t want to do it, and we won’t. I’ll find another way in.”
Each dead Serb had two keycards to a hotel near the Grote Markt—or Grand Place—in the heart of Brussels. All four were embedded with an RFID chip, which meant they’d been programmed and held information. Sometimes that information was extreme, including the name, credit card information, dates of stay, and home addresses. Sometimes, it was just the room number. It all depended on the hotel, but that was where Dunkin and his electronic magic came in.
