Blown Coverage

by Jason Elam

  “We’ll go in fast. We’ll go in discreet. But you better believe we are going in. I’ll call you back in an hour with details. In the meantime, you’ve got some people to talk to!”

  Hicks slammed down the phone, stared at it, then snatched it off the desk, yanked the cords out of the back, and threw it against the wall. Scott and Khadi knew Hicks well enough to wait him out.

  After five breaths in through the nose and out through the mouth, Hicks said, “Abdalayev broke al-’Aqran out of a black-site prison in Poland almost two months ago. The Langley boys know he crossed the border into Ukraine, but they don’t know what happened after that. They think he’s gone to sand country or to one of the ’Stans.”

  “Wow, they really went out on a limb with that prediction,” Scott observed. “What about Abdalayev?”

  “They knew Abdalayev had surfaced in the Czech Republic, but they said the CIA can’t do anything to him because the Czechs are giving him safe travel and we’ve got to honor that.”

  “Safe travel? Why are the Czechs protecting him?” Khadi asked angrily.

  Scott answered for Hicks. “Two reasons. First, because Abdalayev is from Chechnya. And as you know, the Chechens and the Russians are about equal on the who-hates-who-more scale with the Palestinians and the Israelis. Second, by helping out the Abkhazian government-in-exile, Abdalayev is going against the Russian-supported warlords who have control of the autonomous republic. In both cases, the Czechs see him sticking it to the Russians.”

  Khadi was nodding. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

  “Exactly. The Czechs haven’t come close to forgetting the 1968 Prague Spring when Soviet tanks went rolling into Old Town Square. And with Mr. I-Can’t-Be-President-Anymore-So-Make-Me-Prime Minister playing puppet-master in Russia, a lot of folks have concerns about the tanks coming back someday. The more effort the Russians have to expend in Chechnya and Abkhazia, the less they have available to put elsewhere.”

  Scott’s history lesson had allowed Hicks time to calm down. “That’s about the gist of it. Anderson tells me that Abdalayev is untouchable. I politely disagreed.

  “So, here’s what I want to see happen. Scott, you call our ops boys, catch them up, and tell them to be ready to fly out 0600 tomorrow—CIA’s got a strip where we can put the jet down. Khadi, call Tara and have her get the analysts digging up everything they can about Abdalayev—how he travels, who he’s meeting, where he’s staying, what firepower he carries, all that stuff.”

  “You got it, Jim,” Scott said, pulling his phone out of his pocket. “You going to get back to Anderson to work out the logistics with the CIA?”

  Hicks sighed. “Later. First, I’m going to get on with Director Porter and tell him about how my plans will most likely destroy my career and his as well.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  FRIDAY, MAY 22, 11:30 P.M. MDT SILVERTHORNE, COLORADO

  Covington Runs for the Hills

  by Whitney Walker

  FOX 31 SPORTS

  DENVER—For a man who is already a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma, the bizarre tale of Riley Covington just keeps getting, well, bizarrer. After suffering an Achilles injury—an incident which seems more likely to have originated in Roy Burton’s fertile imagination than from Covington “missing a stair” at home—anonymous sources tell us that our own homegrown superhero has fled town to go into hiding in the mountains. “If [the authorities] can’t even protect my family, how can they possibly protect me?” Covington allegedly said.

  Meanwhile, sympathy and sorrow continue to be the order of the day at makeshift memorials both at the home of Riley Covington’s parents and at the end of his own street in Parker. Cards and flowers cover the corner.

  “It’s just so, so wrong. Who does something like that?” one weeping fan said holding a candle.

  “It just shows that none of us are safe anymore,” said a mother who had driven from Pueblo so that her two children could leave homemade cards for Covington. “Riley has been such a role model for my boys that we felt we had to support him in his time of need.”

  Supporting our hero in his time of need—that was a common theme heard throughout the Denver metro area. Wherever you’ve gone, Riley Covington, this town wishes you well.

  “Thanks, Whitney, I owe you one,” Riley said to himself. The reporter had certainly done her job—maybe a little too well. As Riley scanned the comments posted by readers after the online article, he knew she had dug herself a pretty deep hole. Fans were calling for her head because she had done exactly what Riley had asked her to do—get the word out that he was heading for the mountains. Gonna have to make sure I make that right.

  Hearing about the memorials put a slight crack in Riley’s defenses. For the past twelve hours, he had been working hard at locking all his emotions behind a strong wall. A couple times he’d even gone a full half hour without thinking of his dad. Feelings were simply not something he had the luxury of dealing with at the present moment. People’s sympathy—while he appreciated it for what it was—did not help the matter at all.

  Focus, buddy. Before shutting down the computer, he quickly checked the Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News Web sites. Both had their own versions of the story, which they had either ripped off from Whitney or gathered from their own Mustangs sources.

  Riley got up from the desk in the bedroom and felt his way through the pitch-black room to the front door, where Skeeter had situated himself. Skeeter had shunned the deep leather armchairs that sat just behind him in the small den in favor of a wooden chair from the dining room. Simmons’s “cabin” was less an actual cabin than it was a mini mansion placed in a woodsy setting. A steep path led from the driveway to an elegant wood and glass front door. The structure itself was two stories with a finished basement. It was beautifully decorated in mountain chic—lots of logs, leather, and antlers. Why couldn’t this be an old, run-down, one-room log cabin? Then I wouldn’t feel so bad if the place gets blasted into tiny pieces.

  Skeeter turned as Riley placed his hand on Skeeter’s shoulder. “You doing okay?”

  “Mmmm,” Skeeter grunted with a nod, turning back to the outside. As his eyes began to adjust, Riley could see the night-vision goggles that the big man was wearing.

  The goggles were just one part of a “care package” that Scott had asked the ops guys at FRRT to put together for them. Although Riley and Skeeter had been halfway to the Eisenhower Tunnel when they got Scott’s call, they’d gladly turned around to pick up their little box of goodies. Thanks to Scott, they now had two pairs of night-vision goggles and a series of ten trip flares that surrounded the perimeter of the property. As far as weaponry, Scott had equipped them with both fragmentation and stun grenades, neither of which Riley hoped they’d have to use. If they did, it would mean that things had deteriorated far beyond what he had hoped.

  “You feeling good about the defenses?”

  “Best we could do with what we’ve got,” Skeeter replied.

  Riley stood next to his friend and listened to the stillness of the night. All was quiet except for the incessant barking of a neighbor’s dog. The dumb thing had been barking when they arrived. It had barked while they set up the trip flares. It barked now that they were back in the cabin. Earlier, Skeeter had hiked over to see the dog. He reported back that it was a large Rottweiler that just seemed mad at the world.

  “Whitney got the article out saying we’re in the mountains. You thinking it’ll be enough?”

  “We’ll see.”

  Riley nodded. “Yeah, I guess we will.”

  Silence again. Riley’s eyes continued to allow him more details of the man next to him.

  “Skeet, can I ask you a question?”

  “Mmmm.”

  “Don’t take this the wrong way, but why’re you here? You are good enough to have any gig you want. Jim even offered for you to head up his whole ops team, didn’t he? That’d be a perfect situation for you. Or you could be bodyguarding for the
rich and famous—pretty little starlets who don’t have people trying to kill them. Instead, here you are hiding out in the mountains with hajji-enemy number one.”

  Silence descended back into the room. Skeeter shifted, the dog barked, Riley waited. In the midst of the quiet, Skeeter spoke. “My mama was a great woman. Never was a person alive who loved with more sacrifice and devotion. My daddy ran off when I was three. From that time on, Mama worked to make me something. She never took another man; she never even dated. I was her life.

  “We never had much, and Mama felt that by her going to the doctor she would be taking food out of my mouth. So by the time she finally had to go, the cancer had spread through most of her body. I guess the blessing was that there was no long, drawn-out death.

  “I was thirteen when she passed.” Skeeter paused. “I can still remember one of the last things she said to me. She said, ‘Skeeter, you want to know how to make your life mean something? You find one thing you believe in, and then you give yourself to it—I’m talking everything you got.’ Then she took my hand and said, ‘You’re my one thing, boy. And it’s because of you that my life has meant something.’

  “I struggled for a lot of years after her passing. But then I met you in Afghanistan. I saw your principles. I saw your commitment. I realized you reminded me a lot of my mama. Before I knew it, I realized that I had found my one thing I believe in.”

  Riley stood silently, waiting to see if there was more. But Skeeter was done. A wave of melancholy swept through Riley—an emotion that had its genesis in the personal knowledge that he was not near the man Skeeter and others had built him up to be. In fact, if they knew what I was really like, way down deep, they’d be out of my life in a heartbeat.

  “Why don’t you get some shut-eye? I’ll take first watch,” Riley said as he picked up his night-vision goggles from a side table. “I’ll wake you at three.”

  “You won’t need to wake me,” Skeeter replied, making his way only as far as the couch in the family room, avoiding the comfort of the bedrooms.

  Riley knew it was true. No matter how soundly Skeeter slept, he would be awake and relieving Riley by 2:45 a.m. at the latest.

  “Don’t want to see you before three, Skeet. I’ll send you back to bed.”

  “Mmmm.”

  Riley exhaled deeply as he adjusted his goggles. He shook his arms out, then leaned his head first left then right until he heard the pops. Time to empty the mind and focus. Picking up his Micro Tavor, he checked his clip, flipped off the safety, and sat down to begin what he prayed would be three hours of absolute nothingness.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  SATURDAY, MAY 23, 4:00 P.M. GMT OVER THE ATLANTIC OCEAN

  Where does all that hate come from? Scott asked himself as he set his copy of Vikram Chandra’s Sacred Games on the seat next to him. He stared out the window at the seemingly endless blanket of clouds far below him. The story was a fictional account of religious riots in Bombay, India, long before the city went through its name and culture transformation to become modernistic Mumbai. Hindus were killing Muslims, and Muslims were killing Hindus.

  And it’s not just there. In the Balkans, you have Orthodox Christians and Muslims killing each other; in the Middle East, it’s Jews and Muslims; in Nigeria, it’s Muslims and Christians; in Sri Lanka, it’s Hindus and Buddhists.

  Growing up in a pluralistic, religious melting pot like America, we don’t understand that kind of deep-seated hatred. And that’s to our disadvantage, because we end up giving too much benefit of the doubt to those who just want to kill us because we are us.

  Scott leaned his head back and closed his eyes.

  Lecha Abdalayev kills for money—that’s a concept we can at least sort of grasp in our capitalistic culture. So what are the ramifications of his motivation? First, his men are not zealots. One who is not a zealot is more easily broken. Second, it is possible that even Abdalayev may have his price—although judging by his dossier, that’s a much longer shot.

  A shout and a cheer broke Scott’s concentration. He popped his head over the back of his seat to a poker game that had been going on for two hours now. A huge pot had just been taken, and everyone was either congratulating Kim Li or razzing Ted Hummel.

  As he scanned the laughing faces, a good feeling spread through Scott’s body. Most of the team from the operations following the Platte River Stadium bombing had accepted Jim Hicks’s invitation to relocate to Denver to become part of the Front Range Response Team. Only Kyle Arsdale had declined the offer in favor of becoming a cop in his hometown of Albuquerque. Over the past few months, Matt Logan, Kim “Tommy” Li, Jay Kruse, Carlos Guitiérrez, Ted Hummel, Steve Kasay, Chris Johnson, and Gilly Posada had become like family to him—the brothers an only child like him had always longed for.

  “Hey, Scott, you want in?” asked Guitiérrez as he shuffled the cards.

  “Nah, I’ll just watch. I don’t have the jing to play with you high rollers.”

  The group laughed as six hands were dealt out. Scott was bored, but he wasn’t in the mood for a game. He was looking for someone to gab with.

  He looked past the game and saw Posada in the back row of the C-37A Gulfstream V, reading through Abdalayev’s file. Next to him sat a stack of at least six more thick files.

  Across the row from Posada was Chris Johnson. Since coming to Denver, Johnson had begun taking courses at the University of Denver’s Graduate School of International Studies in hopes of getting his masters in international security. As a result, he rarely was without a book in front of his face—today’s fare was Globalization and War.

  Across the aisle from Scott was Hicks. He had his MacBook out and was examining a map of Prague. Perfect, Scott thought with a smile. He leaned across and pointed to an area by the Vltava River. “Hey, I heard there’s a place down here by the Charles Bridge that serves a mean stroganoff—you know, the kind with a real sour cream and wine sauce.”

  “I’ll see if I can work it into our agenda,” Hicks said without looking up.

  “Really?”

  “No.”

  “Come on, what’s the fun of going to a country to shoot people if you don’t take time to experience the culture? I was thinking we’d go into town, snatch Abdalayev, throw him in the trunk of the car, and then stop by someplace for a big dish of stroganoff or some roast pork and dumplings. We could even grab a box of kolache for the trip back.”

  Hicks shook his head and closed his computer. “Okay, Scott. I know you well enough to realize that you aren’t going to let me get any work done. What’s up?”

  “Nothing really. Just thinking of the motivations behind Abdalayev and people like him. You think you’ll be able to turn him?”

  “I doubt it. Abdalayev may not be a fanatic, but he’s got a lot of hard history behind him. He’ll take his silence as a point of honor.”

  “So what’s your plan?”

  Hicks put his computer in the seat next to him and stowed his tray into the armrest to give himself room to stretch out. “I’m hoping we can get some of his team. If so, we’ve got a better shot of getting some information about al-’Aqran. The problem is, we’re not even sure whether anyone’s with him.”

  “I’m just hoping that my Russian is good enough for me to talk with these guys. I know my Arabic’s not, and I never saw the need to study Chechen. Woulda been nice to have Khadi along.” As he talked, Scott stood up to stretch his legs. It had been five hours since they had taken off, and it would be another five before they landed.

  “I know it. But we had room for ten, so it was either you or her.”

  Scott leaned forward into Hicks’s row and said quietly, “Tell me the truth, Jim; did you bring me for my skills or for my looks? If it was for my skills, I’ll respect your decision. If it was for my looks, then I’ll just feel used.”

  Hicks gave Scott his “shut up, you sick freak” look, then reached to the other seat for his computer. But before he could open it up, Scott began talking again.
Hicks set the computer back down.

  “Only reason I’d want to still be back there is for Riley and Skeeter. I can’t remember the last time I felt so helpless in a situation.”

  Hicks heaved a sigh. “I’ve been thinking about them too. I have to tell you, Scott, I still don’t know if I agree with you about letting them go rogue. We could have them in a nice, secure building right now.”

  “Yeah, but like Riley said, other people might be dying instead to draw him out. Besides, could you imagine dealing with them? They’d be a nightmare. And you know they’d find a way out.”

  Jim chuckled. “They probably would. And then we wouldn’t know anything about where they were. No, I guess I don’t know what else we could have done differently. Hopefully, if they get in enough trouble, they’ll be smart enough to call FRRT so Khadi can send in some backup.”

  “It’s funny. When I told her she was going to be staying behind, reminding her about Riley was the only way I could keep her from running up to your office and chucking a chair through your door.”

  Hicks rolled his eyes. “Believe me, she was still ticked—and she let me know it.”

  “Don’t sweat it. She’s had plenty of time to think it through. I’m sure she’s over it by now.”

  SATURDAY, MAY 23, 10:15 A.M. MDT

  DENVER, COLORADO

  Let’s see, we have a female who has lived in Europe and has excellent language skills and extensive urban ops experience. Then we have a male whose greatest asset seems to be his ability to belch the entire chorus to Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean.” So, whom do they choose? Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, Belchy the Clown is best buddies with the boss.