JET II - Betrayal (JET #2)

by Russell Blake

  “I hate to bother you, but do you have a bathroom I can use? It’s kind of an emergency…”

  He looked her up and down with cynical eyes, and then his expression softened.

  “Emergency, huh? I would tell you to go down the road a quarter mile and use the gas station’s, but it’s pretty grim. Wouldn’t wish that on a pack of starving dogs.”

  “Please? I’ll only be a minute. I would really appreciate it…”

  He pointed a gnarled finger at a doorway leading to the rear of the store. “Second door on the left. Don’t take forever,” he growled, then resumed reading his paper.

  She stopped for a few moments at the bathroom, then continued to the rear exit, taking care to unlock the deadbolt as quietly as possible before easing it open and stepping into the night.

  A quick glance confirmed that there were several dozen homes nearby, and she was confident that she would be able to find a vehicle she could hotwire. Jim had served his purpose – she was now at least seven miles from the hospital, so the odds of them being able to mount a coherent search were dropping with each passing minute.

  A small residential street stretched fifty yards behind the shops; she darted for it, using the trees as cover. Her brief romance with Jim had come to an abrupt end. She wondered how long he’d sit out in front waiting, then switched mental gears. She needed wheels so she could put real distance between herself and the CIA goons.

  Jet prowled the street, eyeing the various cars parked along the curb, and then her ears detected a sound that wasn’t consistent with a rural Virginia town – the thumping of rotors in the distance. A helicopter.

  The search had begun.

  She moved from shadow to shadow, trying the door handles of the sorry procession of vehicles, and stopped when she came to a ten-year-old Nissan Maxima. The door opened with a squeak, and she slid behind the wheel, taking care to shut off the interior light so as not to alert anyone. She reached below the steering wheel and felt for the bundle of wires she knew would be there and then paused.

  The whump whump of the helicopter’s blades were definitely closer.

  Jet resumed her project and, within a few moments, had the wires separated and was pulling at the two she would need to start the car. She got them free and quickly stripped the insulating rubber from them using her teeth, and then crossed them, causing a spark. The engine turned over, but didn’t start. She was about to give it another try when some instinct caused her to look up through the windshield.

  A hundred and fifty yards away she could see the blinking lights of a helicopter, hovering a few stories above the tree line.

  How the hell had they found her?

  The car wouldn’t do her any good now if they’d narrowed her position down this closely. She threw the door open and bolted for the woods across the street, glad that her clothes were a muted color that wouldn’t stand out in the night.

  As she ran, she heard car engines approaching on the road she had just fled.

  This was impossible.

  She willed her legs to greater speed and tore through the brush, branches cracking beneath her feet as she distanced herself from her pursuers. There was no way they would be able to get her in the woods. Too dark and too much manpower required.

  Up ahead, she could make out some more buildings through the trees. Houses. Another subdivision.

  She altered her course and made for the closest home, and was just rounding a large tree when a car swung onto the cul-de-sac and pulled to the curb no more than thirty yards away.

  Arthur opened the door of the black Lincoln and stepped out, looking directly at her position behind the tree.

  “It’s over. Stop wasting my time. If you ever want to see your daughter again, step away from the tree, put down the gun and move slowly towards the car,” he said, his distinctively unpleasant voice straining to be heard.

  She debated her slim options and then did as he instructed, placing the gun on the grass and then moving to where he stood.

  A Chevrolet Suburban lurched to a halt behind the Lincoln, and two muscular men in suits emptied out of the back doors.

  She raised her hands over her head and stood still as they stepped to where she waited.

  Arthur watched as they forced her arms behind her, cuffed her, then walked her to the SUV. She glared at him with obvious hatred.

  “My dear, save your energy. You’ve caused me considerable trouble this evening. That was your one chance. If you ever want to see your daughter again, you’ll get with the program and knock this shit off. I’m not the enemy, or at least not yours. Now get in the truck, don’t try anything, and stop this now. Do I make myself clear?”

  “How did you find me?”

  “Chip in the gun. New technology. You never had a chance.”

  She nodded and allowed herself to be led to the back seat of the Suburban.

  “If I agree – how do I know that you’ll keep your word about Hannah?”

  “Because I have no reason not to. And because I’m quite sure you’ll kill me if I don’t.”

  She studied him.

  “We agree on something.”

  “Yes, I suspected as much. Look, this whole escape thing was pointless. All you accomplished was to injure three of my men and piss me off. You are no closer to getting your daughter back. The truth is that there is only one road to accomplishing that, and you’ve been told where it leads and what you need to do. Just get that through your skull, and we’ll get along better. In order to get her back, you need to pay me back for my assistance in bringing down Grigenko. Everything has a price. David knew that. I know it. Now you know it. Pay the price and go on to live happily ever after. Don’t invest any more energy in these childish theatrics. They are getting you nowhere,” Arthur suggested, spittle spraying occasionally from the effort of stringing so many words together.

  She got into the SUV, opting for silence. He moved to within a few feet of her, and the agents discreetly moved out of earshot, the driver taking the hint and joining them.

  “I need an answer now, I’m afraid. Do you help me help you, or no?”

  “What if I decline?”

  “Then hold onto your memory of your daughter because it’s all you’ll ever have of her. And then hope that you can survive in a terrorist detention camp for the next fifty years because that’s where you’ll be going. You’ll be categorized as such by the CIA, and there will be no trial or defense.”

  “So much for the land of the free.”

  “Last time I checked, you aren’t a citizen, so don’t complain. You were apprehended with two passports in different names. You were on American soil for nefarious purposes. It’s your word against the CIA’s, and you have nobody to tell your story to. You’ll be sequestered twenty-four hours a day with no access to anyone but your guards, who won’t talk to you. That will be your life. That is, if I don’t decide to just put a bullet in your head while you’re trying to escape. The idea crossed my mind, and I’m sure I could find three volunteers back at the asylum – one of whom might die from the trauma to his lungs and the internal bleeding you caused.”

  “Those are the hazards of this kind of duty. You should train them better.”

  “Perhaps. Now I am out of time. Your answer – a million dollars and your daughter back, or incarceration and possibly worse?”

  Jet sighed. There was really no choice. If she’d been able to escape, maybe…but not now.

  “You win.”

  “I’ll take that as a yes.”

  “It’s a yes. But a couple of conditions. I don’t want to go back to the basement with the rats. And I’ll need a complete dossier on the target, as well as a full history of the two botched operations. And I will be responsible for coming up with a plan, with no strings or conditions. Just get the diamonds back, and terminate the target. Other than that, I answer to no one.”

  Arthur nodded, raising a cloth handkerchief to his mouth to blot the saliva that had begun welling in the corner. �
�I would expect nothing less.”

  “And you’ll supply me with whatever resources I need to pull this off, without question.”

  “No. I reserve the right to question. I won’t just write you a blank check.”

  She closed her eyes for a moment. “No interference, though. I won’t be second-guessed by agendas that differ from my prime objective. I’ve seen that too many times, and it can get you killed.”

  “That’s reasonable. Terminate the target, and get the diamonds back. There is no additional agenda. That’s it,” Arthur stated flatly.

  “Then we have a deal. Once I am successful, I get my daughter back, the million dollars, and we’re even. No surprises or strings. Agreed?”

  “Agreed.”

  Chapter 8

  The big SUV took Jet to a safe house in Manassas, Virginia, where she found a simple but comfortable two bedroom residence with a fully-stocked fridge – a marked improvement over the damp cell she’d woken up to. A CIA physician was waiting for her when she arrived, and explained to her that she would need to get a tracking chip implanted under her skin near her shoulder as part of her arrangement with Arthur. She couldn’t think of any easy way to avoid it, so she sat in the offered chair and stoically allowed the doctor to insert the microchip.

  The procedure only took a few minutes, and then he and the two agents that had accompanied her left, one of them advising her on the way out that they would be in a parked car only a few yards away if she needed anything.

  Even though she was tired, she resolved to go through the files that sat on the dining room table, along with a laptop computer for her use. She assumed that everything she did was being watched or tracked – that would be standard procedure in a safe house. It wasn’t worth trying to spot the various hidden cameras that were sure to be in every room. She couldn’t do anything to disable them that wouldn’t result in immediate problems, so she would have to make the best of being a virtual prisoner, albeit one with clean sheets and freshly-squeezed orange juice in the refrigerator.

  Jet picked up the first folder and fell into an overstuffed reclining chair in the living room and then switched on a lamp next to it. A prominent Top Secret stamped across the top and bottom greeted her when she extracted the file.

  Flipping it open, she found five photos grouped together on a contact sheet, followed by six more head shots of a Caucasian man in his early forties. Blond in some of them, brown-haired in others, a chocolate brunette in still others. Neutral features that had likely been rendered even more so by cosmetic surgery – field agents were often made to look generic so as to better blend into any situation and draw no attention. Hairstyles changed across the photos, with side parts replaced with a longish shag that gave him a vaguely bohemian look.

  Most of the photos were taken from passport and official identification shots. His eyes varied in color as much as his hair, ranging from blue to green to brown.

  She appraised him and saw a decent-looking, completely generic white man with no distinguishing qualities – a chameleon. Designed to be the perfect operational asset, capable of convincingly being a businessman one week, a tourist the next, a professor the following one, a journalist or doctor or attorney at whim. She supposed, somewhere there was a file at the Mossad with similar photographs of her, although David had sworn that none of the team existed in the official records. Like so much of what he’d professed, she now doubted the veracity of his assurances.

  The target’s name was Matthew Hawker. Matt, to his ex-colleagues. His list of aliases ran two pages.

  Forty-four years old, born in Philadelphia, recruited from college after serving a stint with the American Army’s ultra-elite Delta Force commandoes, his service record while in the army classified, but with a short note that he was an expert in special operations, insertions, explosives, sniping, and every kind of weapon. Scuba certified. A pilot’s license dated three years after his honorable discharge. A bachelor in international business from Hampton University. Spoke fluent Vietnamese, Thai and Cantonese from having been raised abroad by parents who had been with the U.S. diplomatic corps. No further elaboration on what positions they’d held.

  Hawker’s first assignment in the field for the CIA had been in Cambodia, where he had been stationed undercover as a small time exporter, collecting data on strategic targets in the region and developing a network of informants. From there he moved around, to Vietnam, and then ultimately to Thailand, where he had been the most senior field agent in-country. The operations he was involved in were classified at a higher level than the file could reveal, but she could read between the lines with Myanmar right across the border. A senior field agent with these skills would have been involved in information gathering, insurgency sponsorship, and assassinations – whatever was required.

  He’d been offered promotions to desk positions in Langley three times over the last four years and had declined them all. Apparently, Hawker liked to play the field. She understood the type of personality – once you lived in the parallel reality that was covert ops it was hard to ever go back to living any kind of a normal life. It was addictive, even if hazardous to one’s health.

  She looked at the photos again and noted that his eyes had the same flat, expressionless gaze that her photos always had. A professional skill learned early. The eyes were indeed the windows to the soul, and one of the first lessons had been that it was best to shutter them at all times.

  Hawker’s personal relationships were limited to casual girlfriends that never got serious – the story she knew all too well from having lived the life. You avoided entanglements and compartmentalized everything – there was no way of knowing on any particular day whether you would be redeployed the next, or have to run. It was a difficult existence where an operative was an island unto himself, isolated from all the usual connections that humans naturally sought out. For that reason, her relationship with David had been forbidden and would have provoked immediate consequences, had it ever been discovered. You could never grow close to anyone. It was dangerous, and endangered your partner. Better to keep it limited to the superficial, never growing attached.

  Nothing in Hawker’s background suggested anything but a model agent. There could have been no warning that he would betray the master he’d served obediently for close to two decades.

  His last assignment wasn’t described in the file. Which was understandable. At some point, all documentation became vague as an agent became immersed in more sensitive areas – as Arthur had intimated, in affairs that required discretion and deniability.

  She pored over the information again, committing it to memory, and then stretched and yawned. It was two in the morning. The rest would have to wait till the following day.

  Jet locked the front door deadbolt, slid the security chain in place and peered through the window. The two agents were hardly visible in their government sedan. She padded to the bedroom, took a quick shower and brushed her teeth – making a mental note to go shopping soon and get some clothes. Hers were due for a change.

  The bed was blissfully comfortable, and she was asleep within a few minutes of her head hitting the pillow. The cameras and eavesdropping devices recorded her tossing and turning several hours later, along with a few muffled cries as her slumber was disturbed by visions of her daughter being torn from her bosom, and of a white-tufted monster covered with scar tissue tormenting her as she lost her grasp.

  Jet awoke at eight and, for a few seconds, didn’t know where she was. Then the prior day’s events came rushing back to her, and she forced herself to roll out of bed and start the day.

  She pulled open a drawer and found a pair of elastic waist running shorts that sort of fitted her and several extra-large T-shirts that didn’t. She pulled one on and studied her reflection in the dresser mirror – not the height of fashion, but it would do.

  The orange juice was a welcome breakfast complement to the energy bars she found in the pantry cupboard, and after consuming two, she was prepa
ring for a run when the telephone on the kitchen wall rang.

  “I trust you’re up,” Arthur said when she picked up the handset.

  “You know I am. The cameras would have told you I was.”

  “I’ll arrange for some clothes to be brought in while you are out on what I presume is your morning run.”

  “Good guess.”

  “Any special requests?”

  “Yes. Skip the clothes, and leave a thousand dollars in cash and keys to a car. I want to select my own clothes.”

  “Fine on the money, but no on the car. You don’t have any ID yet, including a driver’s license. I can’t afford for you to get into an accident and trigger any questions. I’ll arrange for a driver at whatever time you like.”

  She glanced at her watch.

  “One o’clock. I want to spend a few hours on the files before.”

  “That will work. Is there anything else you need?”

  “If there is, I’ll just announce it in a loud voice in any of the rooms. You can take it from there.”

  “This is only for a short while. I’m hoping you’ll want to get into the field and take care of this errand.”

  “Is there anything else?”

  “No. I’ll send someone by at one.”

  Just the sound of his voice enraged her while simultaneously giving her the creeps. She swallowed her anger with an effort, then moved to the door and swung it open. No point in locking it with the two agents parked outside. Two new ones, she noted as she stretched, before heading down the sidewalk towards a park at the far end of the block. A male jogger took up position a hundred yards behind her as she crossed the street to the park. The agency was wasting no effort.

  An hour later, she trotted back to the front door and did her cool down stretches before mounting the three steps and re-entering. A small pile of twenty and hundred dollar bills sat on the kitchen table along with a smaller T-shirt and a few hygiene items. Someone had been thinking, but it was hardly comprehensive, and she would need to stop at a pharmacy as well as a clothing store.