Threatcon Delta

by Andrew Britton

  Being here even for—what had it been, a half hour?—wasn’t about a life lived in response to some monstrous act that a demented soul had perpetrated. It had to do with being in the presence of something larger, as Ellie had said. It had to do with being nourished instead of drained.

  Could he stand that? Allison had told him—when they were shrink and patient instead of lovers—that he needed extreme challenges. He didn’t know if he needed them but he certainly thrived in that environment. He liked it more than dealing with the directors, deputy directors, assistant directors, secretaries, and undersecretaries in the nation’s capital, all of whom were grabbing people and glory as if national security were a game of jacks. It was about power first and the populace second. And then there was the lame-duck administration that had only a few months left of its spotty eight years. Everyone was busy networking for new jobs on a grand scale, looking for work instead of doing it. The district was politically calm but structurally chaotic, like a corpse full of maggots that would suddenly erupt—

  He focused on clouds that were changing the light and color on the trees below them. He wanted to think about that right now, not about the mausoleum to the south.

  He liked Allison a lot and enjoyed being with her. He liked the work he did because he had just enough ego to appreciate having the fate of a major metropolis or somebody’s loved one resting on his shoulders. But after a score of years on the job he was out of gas. And he didn’t know where a refill was coming from.

  “Would you like coffee?” Ellie asked.

  “Yes, thank you,” he said. “I also want to ask you something.”

  “Yes?”

  “Can I look at the hangar?”

  “Of course. Do you fly?”

  “Not a bit,” he said. “But I’m thinking this would be the time and place to learn.”

  They had coffee on the stone patio overlooking the Housatonic Valley and talked about her husband, Douglas, who had died in a fall from a bridge in Tennessee.

  “Going that way would have pleased him, if he hadn’t hit his head first and been unconscious all the way down,” she said without remorse. “We had fifty-two glorious years, partly because he was away so much. I don’t say that to be flip or derogatory. We never had a chance to get tired of each other. A few months together and then, bam! He was off somewhere else.”

  “No children?” Kealey asked.

  “We both didn’t think it was fair, with him being away so much,” she said. “And I didn’t mind. The animals in the forest were my babies, just like in a Disney cartoon. I can’t tell you how many generations of rabbits I fed in the warren behind the house. Left the dead ones for predators.” She shrugged. “They have to eat, too. That also left me free to go with Douglas when it was a place I wanted to visit. I loved taking pictures, scrapbooking—though it wasn’t called that, then. It was just putting photos in an album with other keepsakes and labeling them.”

  That kind of verbal bloat was true in his business, too, Kealey thought. When he came to the CIA, the words spy and spook, not intelligence agent and surveillance specialist, were still the common vernacular. He missed those days when people were tracked by eye and not by a GPS in their cell phone. It was also more efficient, then. People on the ground were trained to observe. They came back with more data, more detail, not just an individual’s location. The overwhelming reliance on ELINT, electronic intelligence, covered more ground and let fewer people watch more people—like the government did through e-mails and social networking sites. But it lost nuance. Only the Israelis did both in equal measure, ELINT and HUMINT, making sure the faces of trackers were seen so they could become trusted, even embraced by their targets. Terror cells could be broken that way, or by blasting them with a drone missile. The Israeli way made sure there was little or no collateral damage.

  Kealey was about to tell the woman he wanted to buy the place when his phone beeped.

  “Well, at least you’ve got reception,” Ellie grinned.

  “Not sure I want it,” Kealey said as he glanced at the name. It was Jonathan Harper, deputy director of the CIA. Kealey’s mood darkened and his brain mumbled something about leaving him the hell alone. But he stepped away from Ellie until she wouldn’t be able to hear him and pressed Answer just the same, with his bloody damn sense of responsibility.

  He suddenly, fervently wished that he was not about to hear the word situation used in a sentence. If Harper said that, it meant his call was about something grave, something he did not want to discuss over an unsecured line.

  “Hello, Jonathan.”

  “Morning, Ryan. How’re things?”

  “I’ve had a good few weeks,” he replied. “How’s Julie?”

  Juliette Harper, Jon’s wife, was seriously injured in the convention center explosion in Baltimore.

  “Recovering nicely,” Harper said. “She’s got a cane but she’s walking on her own.”

  “Glad for her,” Kealey said sincerely. “What can I do for you?”

  “I need to talk to you about a situation,” Harper said.

  Kealey inwardly cursed. Outwardly, he said, “I’m retired. For real, this time. I’m about to buy a house.”

  “Do you remember Victor Yerby?” Harper asked.

  “Yeah. He got reprimanded for frying a warlord’s opium field in Bawri, Afghanistan,” Kealey said with a proud half smile. The man had guts. “Please don’t tell me something’s happened—”

  “Let’s have a face-to-face,” Harper said.

  Crap. Kealey had been assigned to Yerby as an instructor for a week once, to hone his sharpshooting skills. He’d liked and admired the man so much, he took ten days of vacation to train Yerby in return, taking him through all the black-ops tactics a formal, advanced course would have provided, plus a number of secrets it wouldn’t. He knew Yerby was a lone-wolf kind of guy, like Kealey himself, and never expected to hear much news of him after that, but rejoiced when he did. The opium field story was one of his favorites.

  But Kealey knew lone wolves had limited futures. Ultimately they were always arrested, taken hostage, or killed. There was never any other kind of life. Since DHS wasn’t Harper’s bailiwick, Kealey was guessing it was either a hostage situation or the murder of Yerby, something that had international repercussions involving the intelligence community.

  “I’ll be in your office tomorrow morning,” Kealey said.

  “Not soon enough,” Harper replied. “Where’s the nearest airfield?”

  Kealey looked behind him. “About fifty yards from where I’m sitting. Small plane or chopper?”

  “Whichever you like.”

  He surveyed the weedy landing strip and surrounding trees. “I think a chopper will have a better time of it.”

  “I’ll arrange it.”

  “I’ll get the details and send them over,” Kealey told him.

  Kealey was frustrated as he clicked off. A crisis, he could probably ignore. But not the plight of a brother agent. Too many people had helped Kealey, saved his life over the years, for him to be callous.

  He walked back to Ellie. “I would like to buy this place.”

  She smiled.

  “But,” he continued, “it’s going to have to wait a few hours. And I need to borrow your airstrip. Can you give me the address here so I can Google Earth a map to my colleague? And can I leave my car?”

  Nonplussed but gracious about it, she told him his car would be welcome and gave him the information, which he sent over to Harper. The deputy director would send a small chopper out of New Haven, most likely. Something with a maximum range of four hundred miles could make both legs of the trip without stopping to refuel.

  Kealey told Ellie that he didn’t have a check to make a deposit but he noted the woman’s bank information and told her he would transfer funds before the day was out. He said he would trust her to get the paperwork in order while he was away. He didn’t think he would be gone very long.

  “Are you always this impulsive
?” she asked.

  “Not by choice,” he laughed. Kealey thought about the many times he had had to make a decision on the fly that meant life or death for anyone from one to one million people. Yes, he was impulsive. “In this case, I’d call it being certain of something,” he smiled. “I don’t get that a lot in my life.”

  “I see.”

  “Do you always trust strangers with your personal finance accounts?” he asked.

  “You just met my airstrip and you’re already trying it out. If that’s not a sign of loving this place, what is?”

  Kealey laughed at that. “I’m guessing you’ve damned a few torpedoes in your life, too,” he said.

  “Not as many as I wish I had,” she said. “But there’s still time left. Well, you’ve picked a good anchor for a new life.” She glanced behind her. “This home has been a rock for me.”

  They finished their coffee and watched the clouds. Within the hour they could hear a helicopter coming in low from the south. Kealey hugged Ellie good-bye as the Bell 429 set down among the tall, wheat-like grasses. He ran over, climbed aboard, and loved the house and grounds all over again as he lifted off.

  Like General MacArthur departing the Philippines, he found himself vowing that he would return . . . and soon.

  CHAPTER THREE

  BAGHDAD, IRAQ

  “He’s allowing me to sit in on one of his sessions?” Dina Westbrook asked incredulously as she walked down the hall with Lieutenant General Sutter.

  “Gave us permission in writing,” replied the compact, impeccably courteous officer. “After he made his decision, I think the psychologist felt she had no choice, so she agreed, too.”

  “Very helpful of him,” Dina mused. “Almost too helpful.”

  “As if he’s going out of his way to show he has nothing to hide?”

  “It would make sense if he’s been turned.”

  “I will say, over the past two weeks we confined him to barracks and the mess hall while we discussed what to do, and we did decide that he was a hero, not AWOL. The Pentagon notified me this morning.”

  “A hero and not AWOL, for sixteen years.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m not sure what I can add to that decision, sir.” She was subtly chiding him for wasting her time, and she intended for him to know it.

  He picked up on it. “It was a strategic decision, ma’am. If he has been turned, we’re more likely to discover that in a man who’s being treated like a hero instead of a deserter. That’s why he’s been in evaluation for two weeks, and we’ll be shipping him stateside soon, where he can be monitored by the Warrior Transition Brigade.”

  “And you want my opinion?”

  “Your reputation for reading people is legendary, and I don’t use that word lightly.”

  “All right,” Dina said with a smile. He was trying so hard, after all. “Give me the thumbnail sketch.”

  “In March of 1998 Chaplain Major James Phair left his forward post with the Twenty-Fourth Infantry Division in the midst of a massive assault against an Iraqi Republican Guard tank division. According to what he has told our psychologist, he slipped away to minister to the spiritual needs of wounded Iraqis being carried into an abandoned government office. A bomb exploded on the building. We listed him as missing in action and presumed dead. Apparently, all this time he has been ministering to Iraqis of every stripe. He’s been working with Sunnis, Shiites, Yazidis, various Christian sects like the Nestorians. He’s learned their customs, faiths, and their languages.”

  “So if he hasn’t been turned, he’s a remarkably valuable asset,” Dina confirmed.

  “Like money can’t buy,” the lieutenant general said, then smiled at his lapse in military enamel. “Two weeks ago, an Irish Guardsman discovered the chaplain in Basra, where he was helping South Korean Christian missionaries feed orphaned children. There was a suicide bombing, and afterward a metal detector registered the dog tags he was wearing around his waist. They brought him to us.”

  “And you made him a hero.”

  “Personally, ma’am, I think he is one.”

  He had finally fallen for her bait. That was exactly what she’d been trying to ascertain.

  “It’s just down this hall,” he said, and began to turn a corner. She put a hand on his arm to stop his stride, then faced him in the hall.

  “What does the psychologist think about it?”

  “She’s refused to summarize her assessment until after this last session.”

  “Any reason why she’d be swayed one way or another?”

  “Well,” Sutter thought. “I think she’s starting to feel guilty.”

  “For what?”

  “Ma’am, have you heard of the controversy about General George Patton’s treatment of a certain soldier in 1943?”

  “Doesn’t ring a bell.”

  “A battle-fatigued private in Sicily was refusing to go back to the front, so Patton slapped him across the face. Patton was relieved of combat command for a year for it. I’ve heard Major Dell, the chaplain’s psychologist, refer to our pharmaceuticals as a ‘slap.’ ”

  Dina nodded. “The Army Medical Corps doesn’t have the time or personnel to handle all the PTSD—”

  “Experienced by one in four soldiers in Iraq.”

  “So they medicate.”

  “One-third are back on the field in a week. One-half are back within a month.”

  “And it’s wearing on her. On you, too.”

  The lieutenant general looked shocked, vulnerable. Then he sealed the enamel back on. “Major Dell is part of a team that we all are hoping can find a better answer.”

  “Good, thank you for informing me of her perspective. What medications has she prescribed for the chaplain?”

  “None.”

  “None at all? Has anyone prescribed anything for him?”

  “He hasn’t appeared to need any.”

  “After sixteen years in Iraq?” Dina’s eyebrows rose.

  “In the worst of situations and through repeated traumatic crises, yes, ma’am.”

  Dina’s eyebrows remained raised as she walked with the lieutenant general down the corridor.

  “If there’s a crash coming for him . . .” she started.

  “It’ll be off the charts,” Sutter finished her thought.

  He stopped her at the psychologist’s door. She assembled a neutral face before he knocked.

  During the introductions, Dina casually but openly regarded Chaplain Major Phair. He was nearly six feet tall, with a slight slump in his shoulders. He was shaved and groomed, his salt-and-pepper hair cut close. He was a little thin, as one might expect after all he’d been through. There was caution in the slow but constant movement of his eyes, which was also to be expected. He had not been among fellow Americans, or military protocol, for a long time. His shake was gentle, also to be expected from a pastor. His hands were badly calloused and that was a surprise to Dina. The lieutenant general excused himself and the majors sat down opposite each other while the agent sat to one side.

  “We’re going to be talking at greater length in the States,” the psychologist said to Phair, “but I wanted to give us one more chance to meet here before we go back.”

  She likes him, Dina thought. But she also gave credit to Maj. Amanda Dell, a dark-haired woman with congenital shadows around her eyes, for being shrewd. A patient with the feel of a beloved place around him can remember more details, or drop his guard, however one preferred to view it.

  “How long have you been here?” Phair asked the psychologist.

  “Three years.”

  He considered her answer. “That’s a long time, if you don’t want to be in a place.”

  “Indeed it is,” she said. “I can’t wait to go home. What about you?”

  “I miss my friends,” he offered.

  “In America?”

  He smiled. “My friends are all here.”

  There was a strange, halting quality to his voice. He had mostly spoken j
ust Arabic and dialects for years.

  Major Dell made notes in a folder that lay open on her desk. Nothing was keyed into computers during sessions. The electricity was too unreliable.

  Dina wondered if she was writing about his expressions of belonging and longing. Those were two of the three qualities that suggested someone had been turned, in the lexicon of covert operations. Dina guessed Major Dell would not make explicit mention of that fact in her notes, however. Even a hint of brainwashing or Stockholm Syndrome could ruin a life and career.

  “Then you consider Iraq your home?” Major Dell asked.

  “It’s where I’ve lived for so long,” he replied.

  “Do you still regard yourself as American?”

  “Of course,” he said.

  The response, stated emphatically, carried a lot of weight in his favor. Dina watched Dell make another note.

  “When the soldiers found you, you asked to be reunited with that family before you left . . .” The psychologist flipped through her notes.

  “The Bulanis,” he said, smiling.

  She found her notes on the subject. “You didn’t seem to want to say much about them when we first met.”

  “I didn’t want to say much about anything,” he said. “I felt a little lost.”

  “Will you tell me more now?”

  “What would you like to know?”

  “Do you miss them so much?”

  “That, and I wish I could have helped them more,” he said sadly. “They were among the first people I met. I made”—he stopped and seemed to search for the word—“a crutch for their boy. His foot was gone. I made a strong one from two discarded table legs.” He smiled. “When he was sitting, he used it like a cricket bat, hitting rocks and shards of brick.”

  “How old was he?”

  “Four, then.”

  “You stayed in touch during the entire time you were there?”

  “We were together a great deal. Raheem is Sunni, originally from Algeria. His wife, Shada, is Shiite. They had to move frequently as militias came and went. We often traveled together.”