Strike Force Charlie s-3

by Mack Maloney

  The Navy had been heaped in glory for its defense of the Lincoln, but there was more to the story than that. A last-minute piece of intelligence, delivered to them in a very unconventional way, allowed the Navy to know exactly where the hijacked airliners were coming from, what their flight paths were, and their estimated time of arrival over the carrier. The advance warning came from a deeply secret special ops team that had been skulking around the Persian Gulf for weeks — or at least that was the rumor. At first, the U.S. intelligence community scoffed at the idea that a bunch of “ghosts” had prevented another 9/11. Yet the Navy was hard-pressed to deny it. In any case, the American public knew very little about the details of the secret assistance. Rumors and whisperings mostly. Few people in the U.S. government or the military knew much about it, either.

  The Singapore Incident was even murkier. The city’s Tonka Tower was the tallest building in the world. Six weeks before, Al Qaeda-led terrorists managed to take over its top-floor function room, trapping several hundred American women and children inside. The terrorists wired the building’s glass-enclosed summit with nearly 60 pounds of plastic explosive, knowing the blast would likely topple the entire building and kill another two thousand people caught in the floors below.

  The terrorists had alerted the world’s media to what was going on, and indeed the whole drama played out live on America’s nightly news. Just as the terrorists were about to detonate their explosives, though, one of the dozen TV news helicopters circling the building suddenly landed on its top-floor balcony. Someone inside the chopper shot four of the terrorists dead. Other men from the copter and leaping in from the roof killed the three others and defused the bombs with seconds to spare. As soon as the crisis was over, the rescuers, who were dressed in U.S. military special ops uniforms, briefly displayed an American flag, then got back on their TV news helicopter and promptly disappeared.

  The Pentagon spin on the matter was both deceitful and marvelous: The rescuers were part of an elite special ops group, so secret, neither their names nor anything about them could be revealed. Truth was, no one with any power inside the Pentagon, the White House, or anywhere else in the U.S. government had the slightest idea who these mysterious soldiers were, only that they were probably the same group who had saved the day at Hormuz.

  So the ghosts were not ghosts after all. The problem was, they were not under anyone’s control. They were a rogue team operating on their own, without oversight from higher authority. This type of thing sent shivers down the spines of the top brass. Heroes or not, whoever they were, the rogues had to be reeled in, and quick.

  Li had seen reports indicating the group was at one time thought to be hiding out in the extreme southern portion of Vietnam, using a camouflaged containership as cover. There were also whispers that a SEAL team had been dispatched by the NSC to the Mekong to disarm and return the rogue unit. But the SEALs never came back. And, as it was later rumored, when a team of crack State Department security men was sent after the SEALs they vanished, too.

  The whole Hormuz-Singapore thing hit particularly close to home for Li. She’d always suspected that her colleagues Fox and Ozzi had gone off to look for the mysterious unit as well, either with the SEALs or in separate, parallel operations. She even had some evidence of this. Li had been receiving strange e-mail for Fox and Ozzi for weeks, the same two attachments sent over and over again. She couldn’t open them, at least not all the way. But she’d been able to get a few lines to print out from the first one, which was titled “Fast Ball.” Though it was mostly blurred and blacked out, she was able to make out a few words like “Hormuz,” “Singapore,” “Vietnam,” “Philippines,” and “SEALs,” along with mentions of the Abu Sayeef terrorist group and some missing U.S. weapons. Oddly, the format of the attachment did not seem to be a text document but rather a transcript, possibly of an interrogation. As for the second document, labeled “Slow Curve,” she couldn’t open it at all. But she was able to discern part of its origin title. It read: “Notes. G. Mann, LA Weekly Sun.”

  The weird thing was that these same files kept getting sent to them and, just lately, to her as well. At least once a day and sometimes as many as a dozen times they would show up in her computer. It was almost as if someone wanted her to open them fully, to somehow read them, yet wasn’t telling her how.

  So when Nash asked about Hormuz and Singapore, she replied, “I know what happened at both places, more or less ….”

  “OK — well, now there’s a third side to the triangle,” Nash said. “Something that ties in Hormuz and Singapore, and here it is: There’s been a jail break at the detainee compound at Guantanamo. It occurred while a prisoner exchange was taking place with, of all people, the Iranians. We were releasing seven of their citizens, Taliban types we’d caught in Afghanistan, while they were giving us seven Al Qaeda capos they’d grabbed up recently. The Iranians flew an unmarked cargo plane into Gitmo to pick up their people, and these seven characters were put aboard, still in hoods and shackles. The plane took off, but about ten minutes later the seven Iranians who were supposed to be on the plane were actually found back in their detainee hut — with their throats cut. They were all laying on the floor, lined up in a row.”

  Li almost burst out laughing. “This is a joke,” she told him. “And a really pathetic way to get out of our dante ….”

  “It’s no joke,” Nash replied harshly. “And I could get shot telling you all this. So just listen. This is where Hormuz and Singapore come in. Besides the Al Qaeda and Taliban types at Gitmo, there’s also a number of so-called ‘special prisoners’ being held down there — and that’s also highly classified, by the way. These ‘special prisoners’ are all Americans. There’s a bunch of them. They’ve been deemed threats to national security and have been locked up down there, without trial, without access to attorneys, some of them for months.”

  Li couldn’t believe this. “Are you saying these are American citizens who were helping the terrorists?”

  “No,” Nash replied. “What I’m saying is that these ‘special prisoners’ and the guys who showed up at Hormuz and Singapore are one and the same.”

  Li was astonished, almost speechless. “These heroes everyone has been looking for are in jail? Who the hell is responsible for that?”

  “That’s a question for another time,” Nash said hurriedly. “The important thing is that the way it looks now, seven of these ‘special prisoners’ somehow managed to take the place of the seven Iranian POWs who got their throats slit. How? No one has a clue. But even that doesn’t matter anymore — in fact, it’s a very moot point.”

  “Why?”

  “Because,” Nash said deliberately, “shortly after takeoff, this transfer plane blew up in midair. One second it was on the radar; the next it was gone. It went right into the sea, taking everyone with it.”

  She gasped. “My God … what happened?”

  “The Iranians themselves most likely planted a bomb onboard,” he told her. “You know, set to go off as soon as the plane left Gitmo? The brain trust here think the Iranian bigwigs never intended for the plane to get back home. Their POWs were all related to high government officials in Tehran, and the mullahs probably didn’t want a bunch of Taliban heroes, with connections inside the government, to be running around loose. Iran’s a pretty volatile situation these days.

  “Now, you’ll probably never hear word one about this ever again. We got our Al Qaeda guys as promised at a checkpoint in Iraq, and the Iranians got rid of seven troublesome relatives, one way or another. A good day all around. Everyone should be happy.”

  “Except for the ‘special prisoners’ on the plane,” she said. “Who were they really?”

  “Well, that’s the bad news,” Nash answered slowly. “That’s why I felt it was important to tell you all this. That you heard it from me first — and not someone else.”

  A much longer pause. “They’ve ID’d at least two of the people who were aboard that plane.”

&n
bsp; A troubled breath.

  “And it was your bosses, Li,” he said. “Those guys Fox and Ozzi. We just got the official word from Gitmo. Both are confirmed deceased.”

  Chapter 4

  Li drove around Washington for the next hour, aimless, confused. Crying.

  Very unlike her.

  From the Potomac Parkway to Independence Avenue, along Constitution, and back on the Parkway again, she’d tried to hold it in. But the tears finally came near 26th Street. There was a box of tissues in her car, just for such rare occasions. It was nearly empty by the time she reached the Whitehurst turnoff.

  Fox and Ozzi …

  After they’d first gone missing, she eventually came round to thinking they’d simply be missing forever. Never to be heard from again. Now this freaky plane crash. Their last moments a violent death in the Caribbean. That the Iranians would blow up their own plane was most certainly true. Li knew the mullahs had done it before to get rid of troublesome expatriates. But Fox and Ozzi? How did they get on that plane? And why? And what the hell were they doing in Cuba as prisoners in the first place?

  More tears. More tissues. Maybe this was a grieving period she couldn’t have anticipated. Maybe this was closure. But what really hurt, and it was selfish, she knew, was that all that time she’d been missing them, and thinking about them, the two had actually been alive, until just a few hours ago.

  Fox and Ozzi.

  The bastards …

  They’d never even bothered to give her a call.

  * * *

  A light flickered to life on her dashboard. She was running low on gas. She found herself back on the Parkway, in third gear, going 20 miles under the speed limit. The fuel-warning light got brighter. She didn’t want to, but finally she put the pedal down. It was time to go home.

  Windows open now, she looked around her and realized she was the only one on the road. The only one. This was odd …. It was not yet ten o’clock. It was a spring evening. A Friday night, and the weather was perfect. The Parkway traffic was usually brisk at this hour. Instead, it was empty.

  Foolishly she tried calling Nash again. Their conversation on the garage roof had ended with her hanging up on him just as he was saying: When can I see you again …? But now his cell was turned off and she was being routed to his office voice mail. She was sure that was being tapped, so she didn’t leave a message. What was the point? They were through, probably, her and Nash. And maybe that was a good thing. This was hardly a time for spies to fall in love.

  She got off the Parkway and eventually reached 17th Street, not far from the White House. Again, the prospect of returning home was not a great one, but she needed some tea and then some sleep. She pulled onto Pennsylvania Avenue, heading west. The streets were empty here, too. Strange again. It wasn’t that late. She passed New Hampshire Avenue and then 26th Street again. Still no traffic, no cars at all. Suddenly panic rose in her chest. Oh God …. She snapped on her radio, expecting to hear that a major catastrophe had taken place, an Al Qaeda attack or something. But her favorite station was playing soft rock as usual. So were her second favorite and her third. She flipped around. She heard news, weather, sports, commercials. But no Emergency Broadcast System. Nothing out of the ordinary. The iceberg hadn’t hit … yet.

  She turned onto M Street — and was suddenly blinded for a moment. A line of very bright headlights was coming right at her, and not at a slow pace.

  What was this? A parade? A funeral?

  It was neither. It was a convoy of Army vehicles. Humvees and small troop trucks painted a very dark green. They went by her like she was standing still, two dozen in all, heading back toward Pennsylvania Avenue. She felt another chill go through her but fought the temptation to turn around and follow them.

  Instead, she just kept going straight, heading for home.

  * * *

  It wasn’t quite House on Haunted Hill, but it was close.

  It sat behind a row of empty warehouses at the end of a dead-end street, near the Potomac Reservoir extension road, just over the line in Virginia. The Navy had built this place back in the twenties as an auxiliary weather station, but the sailors back then were better at sailing ships than constructing houses. This one was ugly from the first nail, and eighty years of rain and heat had only compounded the error. It had a strange miniature Kremlin look to it, with a skin of faded green shingles and two creaky turrets rising from the back. A black brick chimney, leaning 70 degrees, sprouted atop the sagging roof. Add the rickety fence, the dirty brown lawn, and the two dead apple trees out front and what was once homely was now just plain creepy.

  This was what Li called home. She lived here for one reason only: the rent was very, very low. In fact, when she first came to D.C., she nearly had to turn around and go back home, so scarce were safe living spaces for young women just starting out on the government payroll. After weeks of searching and living out of a bag, this place became available. It was convenient and it was affordable. So, creepy or not, she took it.

  She parked out back now, in the small turnaround. Li had lived here for almost a year, but she’d yet to go into the garage, never mind park in it. It was chilly up here as usual. A fog had lifted off the smallish reservoir and was pouring through the old chain-link fence into her backyard. She made sure her car was close as it could be to her back door, then grabbed her briefcase, her phone, and her unused overnight bag. Because this place was so isolated, she made it a habit to always hurry inside.

  She climbed the back steps to the porch. From here, over several neighborhoods and the winding Potomac beyond, the lights of the Lincoln Memorial burned dully in the mist. The normal bustle of the city was lacking; she could tell even way up here. Li paused for a moment, trying to make some sense of it. Everything was so quiet. Even the wind was still. But then a muted rumbling from the south. What was that? Not a truck on the highway nearby. Not thunder, in the clear sky.

  She looked out from under the porch’s roof.

  Two more F-15s flew overhead.

  * * *

  She fumbled a bit with her keys, finally letting herself in. But she stopped two steps over the threshold. Her place was dark. Completely dark. This was not right. She always kept two lights on during the day, one in the hallway and another in the living room, just so she wouldn’t come back to a dark house at night. But both were off now.

  She thought a moment, frozen in the doorway. Did she forget to leave them on that morning? No — she had painted her nails during breakfast and had a definite memory of pushing the living-room switch up with her elbow and finessing the hall light on as well. Maybe then there’d been a power outage?

  She dropped her things and waited for her eyes to adjust to the dark. But even after a half-minute or so, she was still blind as a bat. She heard something creak up on the second floor, an area of the house she avoided at all times. Might be the wind, she thought uncomfortably. If there was any wind. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Can this night get any weirder? she wondered. A voice deep inside her replied, Don’t ask ….

  She began creeping down the hallway. The lamp was located on a table to her left. By touch and feel she made it without stubbing her toes. She found the light and tried to switch it on. Nothing. She tried again. Still nothing. Her power outage theory was gaining support. But then she reached up inside the shade … and discovered the lamp’s lightbulb was not there. The socket was empty.

  Her hand instantly went to her ankle holster. Her cell phone wasn’t the only thing she carried here. She came up with a Magnum 440H Specter, a powerful handgun with not an ounce of metal in it. Composite fibers and plain old plastic, it was the first Stealth gun. And Li knew how to use it. That was a requirement for her graduate degree.

  She continued down the hall, a bit flush now with the confidence that comes from a gun. The living-room door was shut tight. She never shut this door. She twisted the knob and toed the door open. The living room was dark inside. The wall switch was to her right. She re
ached up and pushed it on. Nothing. She reached down to the lamp itself, not bothering to try the switch. She just felt where the lightbulb was supposed to be. It was gone.

  Now her gun was up in front of her, pointing this way and that, just like in the movies. She slipped through the living room, carefully, leading with her weapon as she’d been taught to do at Quantico. Into the bathroom now. No lightbulbs in the ceiling lamp. None in the fixtures over the sink. A huge bar of Ivory soap she always kept here was also gone. She turned, slowly, and opened the shower curtain. The stall was empty, but another bar of soap was missing from here, too.

  She moved out of the bathroom and edged her way through the kitchen. It was even darker here, and she did her best to avoid walking into the breakfast table. She went into the pantry backward, her gun pointing in front of her. She felt around on the top shelf with her free hand. Brushing aside some oatmeal and aluminum foil, she found a bag she always kept up here. Within was her one and only spare lightbulb.

  Back across the kitchen, back through the living room, to the lamp beside the door. She screwed the bulb into the fixture and tried the switch again. The light came on.

  This startled her. A movement off to her left turned out to be her own reflection in the coatrack mirror. She almost blew it to bits. She caught her breath and looked back at the dimly burning bulb. This was no power outage. Someone was messing with her. But taking her lightbulbs? And her soap?

  Then she looked around the room and noticed something else. The place was clean. Vacuumed. Newspapers picked up. Dinner tray put away. Not a dirty dish in sight. Even her original pencil drawings were stacked neatly. Everything was in order. Everything was in its place. Li was not the best of housekeepers. And this was definitely not the way she’d left it ….