Threatcon Delta

by Andrew Britton

  Not unless their natural hunting grounds are disturbed by an influx of pilgrims, he thought, casting a cautious look around.

  Adjo wondered what his family, and his father in particular, would think if they knew he was working on the Mountain of God. They were not religious, but they would fear to tempt God by showing disrespect to one of his temples. Nor would they understand how a man could be paid to sit outside, on his bottom, and watch for people who might or might not show up. That would seem like stealing to them. And the fact that Adjo enjoyed it would have been doubly mystifying to his father in particular. To Youssef Adjo, playing checkers or watching action movies with friends was something for a man to enjoy.

  The stars were clear and Adjo could clearly see the Milky Way. If God had not actually summoned Moses to this spot, Adjo could see how a man would come here to be inspired, how it would help him to search his soul for a means of organizing a rabble into a law-abiding people.

  The young man closed his tired eyes. The shrieking wind and the cold prevented him from sleeping for very long, but he was comfortable enough otherwise. Only occasionally did he hear one of those muted, far-off murmurs, never close enough to concern him.

  When the inside of his eyelids went from black to brown, he opened them and watched the new dawn break. Feeling neither tired nor rested, he shifted to a crouch so he could see over the northern arm of his resting place. He moved slowly and purposefully on limbs that were stiff from sitting and sore from the climb. He had a headache from trying to see in the darkness; he was accustomed to having night-vision glasses. But he stretched his mouth and eye muscles to a semblance of alertness and poked his head above the rocks.

  The discomfort and fogginess were shoved aside when he saw an encampment at the base of the mountain. It must have been set up just after sunset, for he had not seen it when he began his climb.

  There were more than a thousand people below. They weren’t tourists, for there were no cars or buses. They were lying under blankets, their heads on bundles. Some were already going about their morning devotions. Others were still assembling at the far western section of the camp, at the fringes of the desert.

  They were pilgrims, and Adjo knew that his mission here had suddenly become irrelevant. The sniper had wanted to shut the mountain down for a day, make sure that no one got in the way of these people. He didn’t want tourists or shopkeepers to see them and report them. And with the MFO in the field here, 777 would have stood down for the evening.

  Brilliant.

  Adjo took out his phone and called Task Force headquarters. As much as these pilgrims worried him, he was far more concerned with something else: the likelihood that they were only the first wave.

  And something more dangerous that he couldn’t even begin to consider: what would happen when the prophet came down to engage his flock?

  Or, perhaps worse, Adjo thought. What if he does not?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA

  Kealey drove Phair to a small restaurant in Arlington where Kealey was known—at least to the hostess who seated them and to the waitress who took their order. Phair didn’t note the name of the place and didn’t remember what he ordered after he’d ordered it. His mind was scurrying about the puzzle of what was happening in the Middle East, interspersed with flashes of the dramatic events that had brought him from a firefight in Iraq to a restaurant in Virginia poised for a mission to Venezuela that might or might not involve a mobster. It was the antithesis of the first half of his life, which had been a testament to order.

  The future cleric had grown up in Germantown, Pennsylvania, outside Philadelphia, where his father had been a railroad conductor. His mother, with whom he spent the most time, was a volunteer at the local church, organizing everything from bake sales to prayer groups to disaster-relief drives. An only child, young James sought fellowship among other children at the church and found himself repeating to them the lessons he had learned in Sunday School and from his mother. He rarely got them to listen, but it made him feel good to take the side of the Lord. And when he was inside the church on Lincoln Drive, he felt as though he were at the side of the Lord.

  He was sixteen when his mother died from a heart attack. He had to be there for his father, who was lost and lonely. James never resented it, and there was no question then what he would do with his life.

  Talking to his priest, young Phair decided that he wanted to minister to people under stress, like his father had been. He enlisted in the military and found his calling.

  Be careful what you wish for, he told himself as a salad and a plate of fish and chips were placed before him. The fate of the Middle East could end up resting on your shoulders. That’s a lot of people who need help right away.

  “We won’t find a lot of affection in Venezuela,” Kealey said as he peppered his fish. “Regardless of Ramirez. The Venezuelans think Americans are bullies. Did you find that in Iraq?”

  “Not so much,” Phair said, rising from his disjointed reverie.

  “Really?”

  “Many of them, especially among the young, want what Americans have.”

  “You mean possessions or freedom?”

  “Possessions,” Phair replied. “A lot of them don’t seem to know what to do with freedom—at least, our notion of it. They don’t require gay marriage or the right to publish pictures of Mohammad. They don’t want cruel dictators, but they’ve belonged to groups, to tribes, for thousands of years. They like that sense of community and interdependency.”

  “What about free speech? Freedom of religion?”

  “They have always grumbled among themselves,” Phair said. “They don’t need others to hear it. A few firebrands do, but mostly those who are looking to subvert the system we’ve been trying to install. As for religion, they are free—within their own communities. Outside of that,” he shrugged helplessly. “That is something we will probably never change.”

  Kealey chewed thoughtfully on a fry.

  “There is something about the Venezuela trip that is worrying me,” Phair said.

  “Only one thing?”

  “I trust you will take the necessary precautions with the obvious obstacles.”

  “Thank you.”

  “But my worry occurred to me when we first discussed this course of action. The excitement of the chase pushed it aside—but not far enough, I guess.” Phair hesitated. He knew going in how it would be coming out. But he had to say it just the same. “Are you familiar with the debate over Josef Mengele’s research?”

  Kealey nodded gravely. “Submerging healthy men in tubs of ice water to study hypothermia or injecting them with malaria to find effective treatments.”

  “Among many other experiments,” Phair said. “And much worse. We had an ethics class in the seminary where the question was asked whether doctors should use findings obtained in such a fashion. I was against it. I listened to all the arguments about how the victims would have died in vain or how good can come of evil. But the odor of evil was still present for me in the process. I would have felt a part of it.”

  “I understand. That didn’t stop us from going to the moon using rocket science perfected when the Germans bombed England,” Kealey pointed out. “The facilities used to study and construct the missiles were built by slave labor. The Soviets readily embraced the research and the captured hardware. Had we not used what we obtained, Mr. Khrushchev may have nuked us from space.”

  “It feels like there’s a difference,” Phair said, searching to find it as he picked at a dish of coleslaw. “Perhaps it’s the fact that one was done while looking into a man’s eyes.”

  “It’s an old debate,” Kealey said as he crunched on a piece of fish. “The Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq—I’m sure you heard about that.”

  “Sadly.”

  “Over here, the uproar was less about the acts—which were mild compared to what Saddam had done—but the fact that America was doing them.”

  “The Iraqis
were used to torture,” Phair said. “It was the American angle that soured everyone over there.”

  “It’s unfortunate but I would argue that, faced with the insurgency, we were pretty temperate. One can certainly understand why Saddam ruled the country the way he did. It was the only way to hold all those mad, suicidal factions together.”

  “He was a sadistic despot, not a nationalist,” Phair said, a little surprised.

  “No argument, and Abu Ghraib is nothing I’m proud of. It’s also a result of war. People—kids—are gonna pop from that kind of pressure, lose perspective.”

  “Well, there’s a price to pay for that,” Phair said. “You asked if the Iraqis saw Americans as bullies and the answer is—not at first. They do now, most of them.”

  “It’s an imperfect, sick world,” Kealey said. “The good—or bad—thing is, at both Abu Ghraib and in the prison at Guantanamo Bay, we’ve obtained operational data about the insurgency that has saved American and Iraqi lives.”

  “From every man tortured?” Phair asked. He’d needed a second to digest the fact that Kealey seemed to be endorsing it.

  “Of course not,” Kealey acknowledged. “But you can’t know that going in. My point is, should we have discarded the information we did obtain? Right now, somewhere in the world, attacks are being planned in secret little meetings against good, innocent people. Not just in the Middle East but in Africa, Indonesia, Latin America. Is it wrong to pressure individuals who attend such meetings for information?”

  “I believe it is,” Phair said. “You can’t pre-punish.”

  “I can,” Kealey admitted. “I haven’t got whatever charity muscle it is that drives you. If we obtain information from this Nazi prick, I have no problem using it.”

  Phair let the subject drop. The other Kealey was back, the Mr. Hyde who wanted to stay on mission and would defend whatever that required. Perhaps he had misread Kealey earlier; perhaps he was only a teenager who would throw a tantrum when the world wouldn’t behave the way he wanted it to. The cleric took a sip of water; his mouth made it taste like metal. He picked at his salad. He was hungry, but felt guilty eating.

  “Maybe he won’t know anything,” Kealey said. “Or maybe he’ll be dead. Then we won’t have to worry about it.”

  There was sarcasm in his voice. Obviously, that wouldn’t help them or the situation. Maybe that was why Phair had been drawn to religion as a kid. The rules were very, very clear.

  “Life was simpler once,” he said, not having meant to say it aloud.

  “When?” Kealey asked. He warm and calm once more.

  “Among people whose only goal was to raise a family in safety and some comfort, to pray in accordance with their traditions,” Phair said. “There were no larger matters to consider. I was color-blind when I left my unit to minister to the wounded Iraqis.”

  “Humanism and patriotism are not always compatible,” Kealey replied. “I accept that, and it only underscores the point I was trying to make that few things are ever clear-cut. Certainly not in our present situation.”

  Phair still didn’t agree, and he felt nauseous. Maybe it was the oil in the salad dressing or maybe he was trying too hard to swallow a reality that didn’t want to go down.

  Kealey’s phone buzzed. He checked the caller’s name, then answered it. Phair watched the man’s hand holding his fork become perfectly still. He was listening so hard to his phone, he looked as if he were going to drill it through his ear. All he said was, “I’ll be there in twenty.” He tapped his phone off and shoved it into his pocket, dropped his fork with a bite still speared on it. Standing, he pulled out his wallet and dropped forty dollars on the table.

  “Was it something I said?” the chaplain tried joking.

  “You have no idea,” Kealey said, shaking his head. “You have no idea. I’ll send a car to pick you up and bring you back to my office.” With that, he was gone.

  Mr. Hyde has left the building, the major thought. Nervous though he was about being tied to this agent for a mission of such urgency, in his absence Phair felt his appetite returning. He was able to finish the salad and made a decent showing on the fish. It helped to recall all the times in Iraq when he was hungry, having given whatever food he had to children. Since returning, not a bite had passed his lips when he didn’t feel guilty for having eaten it. Instead of thanking the Lord for His bounty, he found himself asking why He didn’t provide to those who truly needed it. They were not Christians, most of them, but that was beside the point. They were His children. They were Phair’s brothers. Patriotism was only a part of it. Those poor Iraqi families, orphans, the elderly, the wounded; they had caused a crisis in faith that he was still struggling to reconcile.

  And soon you’ll be consorting with a Nazi, he thought.

  It was strange and disconcerting to think that repatriated, asked to help prevent a possible war, he felt as far from his core as he’d ever been.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  MCLEAN, VIRGINIA

  “It was a convenient time.” The phrase was repeating in Ryan Kealey’s head like an unanswered insult. It felt much like one, too. He knew it was the adrenaline pumping through his system that was making his brain catch on to the phrase and worry at it. He was willing to admit that his rage had something to do with it, too. If he admitted his anger he had a chance of cooling himself down before the conversation began.

  He was sitting in the Automat, which was nicknamed after the old vending machine as high and long as a restaurant wall that, in exchange for your coins, would open one of its glass pockets and present you with a sandwich or a beverage. At Headquarters, the Automat was one of the windowless rooms the size of a walk-in closet that was used for maximum-security conversations. There were no cameras. There was nothing on the white walls that could provide a surface for a bug. The walls had been treated with a substance similar to the paint-resistant veneer used on subway trains to prevent graffiti, but this version of it prevented any adhesion, not just paint. The floor was a single smooth sheet of white linoleum, also treated to present the same slick surface. There was one chair and one square desk the size of a night table. They were made of glass. The room did have Wi-Fi, so anything that transpired on a laptop could be monitored, recorded, and traced, but the system in place was designed with the same high level of security as the computer systems that hacked China’s networks. This was the one location that best guaranteed that only other CIA employees could access what was discussed here.

  Kealey knew there was no way this conversation should have merited the Automat. The call should have been witnessed by umpteen people, not least of which would be his boss, Jonathan Harper, so that someone would be there holding the reins on Kealey and guiding his side of the conversation if necessary. Placing him in the Automat was a gesture of faith that Kealey did not need supervision. He knew Jonathan was apologizing, in a way, by giving him this privilege. That did not stop him from giving Kealey a look as he held the door open for him that said clearly, Don’t blow this for the rest of us. Danny Hernandez could be a veritable Fountain of Youth for a number of federal agencies, but only if he kept talking. One ill-considered question or intimation from Kealey and Hernandez would run right off the grid again. He would never look back.

  “It was a convenient time.” That had been Hernandez’s explanation for why he contacted the DEA today, telling them he was interested in cooperation, and less than two hours later was going to sit in front of a computer and prove it. Kealey was going to be the proof. If Hernandez helped him out with his specific dilemma, Harper would then pick up the relay baton and discuss terms for an ongoing informant relationship. The implications were breathtaking. Inside information from the head of an international drug cartel would change the game entirely, even if half of what he delivered was calculated bullshit, as they all assumed it would be.

  The price of the deal was going to be amnesty for all past, present, and future crimes, including the death of Isobel Garcia.

  Keale
y sat with the blank blue screen of his laptop on the glass table, waiting for the secure video call like it was a phone date. His pulse was running so hard he could feel it throb in his neck. He pressed one thumb on the tabletop in a sequence of prints still greasy from the french fries. I am at his convenience, he thought. Everything in him revolted at the idea.

  The DEA agent had been a new face in San Jose, California, which explained why Hernandez had chosen him to approach. The agent hadn’t specified how Hernandez had done it in a secure way, only that it was secure, which probably meant the drug czar had caught him in the john. Hernandez had told him to lose himself in the city for two hours, then meet him—carrying whatever technology he preferred for contacting HQ—at a specific parking space in the underground parking garage of the Hilton Hotel on Almaden Boulevard. The agent had arrived to find a BMW with smoked windows and no driver. Hernandez was sitting in the backseat. “It was a convenient time.”

  Like he knew we would drop everything for him, which we did.

  Chaplain Major Phair had been so prescient it was almost scary. The CIA was about to enter a long-term relationship whereby they would collect the wages of sin and reinvest them for the greater good. It was information laundering, to put it plainly. And there were plenty of people who were going to continue suffering lives of misery, pain, and degradation because the agency was going to use Hernandez’s business instead of putting him out of it. Ryan Kealey, personally, was going to benefit. No, he corrected himself, my mission will benefit. Not me. Not even a mission I wanted. But a new front in a holy war led by a false messiah could become a global problem—so he was not allowing himself to think of San Antonio.