The MPs didn’t stop to talk to her. She simply saw them coming and pushed a button on her desk. The Commandant’s office door buzzed open, and I was moved inside.
I stopped. The MPs removed my handcuffs, and I snapped to attention. Arms straight at my sides, chest up. Stiff as a fence post. Hard to do with my nose still throbbing.
“Stand at ease, Sergeant Mason.” Commandant Williamson said, softly. Williamson wasn’t what I expected when I was first sentenced to Leavenworth.
Least of all because Williamson was a woman.
I’d taken orders from female officers before. Not in combat, but while on base, sure. And Williamson was a Colonel, so unless I wanted to be shot, I’d better listen up. The top of her head stopped somewhere around the middle of my chest, and she spoke softly, but she didn’t repeat herself. If you were dumb enough to ask her “what?” or “can you say that again?” you’d get slapped with Labor Duty while everyone else did morning PT.
Anybody with their head on straight, even the crazier convicts here, knew an hour of morning PT was a damn sight better than digging ditches all day or breaking rocks.
Commandant Williamson stood up behind her desk. She had hot coals for eyes, enhanced by the way her hair pulled back in a tight, dark bun, and by the crisp lines of her uniform. If I stood too close to her, I was afraid my skin would burn off.
But her office was tight. Especially with me in it—let alone the MPs, and the Commandant, herself.
All I could do was stand-at-ease. Hands clasped behind my back, and sweat.
“You’re bleeding, Sergeant,” Commandant Williamson said.
“There was an incident downstairs, ma’am.” I didn’t dare say anything more than that.
Her eyes focused more intently on me. Sizing me up. Then, she let go a weary sigh. She knew I wasn’t telling her the entire truth, but right now, something else was pressing her.
“Please leave me with the Sergeant and our guest,” Commandant Williamson said.
Guest? What guest? My eyes started to drift to the side.
“Eyes forward, Sergeant,” she said.
The MPs filed out of the door we’d entered through. I was left standing there in front of the Commandant’s desk, alone. Her eyes did not leave me. The room did not feel any larger.
The door clicked shut behind me.
“Sergeant Mason, I’ve received a very... puzzling message regarding you,” she said. “Frankly, I’m not sure what to do with it. I figured it was a hoax. I wasn’t going to take it seriously, until this morning.”
“When I came through the front door.” The guest said behind me.
I knew that voice. The low, gravelly churn created by a lifetime of heavy smoking. A voice I hadn’t heard since I’d been on assignment in London, nearly six years ago.
I took a risk. I broke the Commandant’s order and turned my eyes to my left. There, sitting in a small, wooden chair, was the one CIA Field Officer I never thought I’d see again.
“Vance Greer,” I said.
Chapter 4
VANCE GREER WAS NOT a good man. He was not a trustworthy man. He was a company man. An Agency man. So long as the order came in on CIA letterhead and was signed by one team leader or another, he’d skin his own mother alive.
By the book and to the letter. That’s how Greer worked. Morality never came into play. The last time I worked with Greer, I kept a Yemeni twelve-year-old from blowing himself up at a London soccer game.
Greer, the man who was supposed to mentor me on my first real job in the field—the job in London—fought me every inch of the way. Not because he wanted to see pieces of some kid raining down on the streets of London, but because stopping a bombing was outside the scope of our assignment. We were there to observe an American-born Muslim extremist, not save a kid’s life.
I thought he was a damn fool for looking past an attack right under his nose. And I told him as much. Using colorful language.
He relieved me of my assignment.
Now, here he was, in the Commandant’s office at Leavenworth. The lines on his face were deeper since the last time I saw him. His left ear looked like it had been chewed off by a rabid dog. And now he had on a slick, dark suit, with his black hair combed back, and his thick arms crossed over his barrel chest. He had almost as many scars on his face as me.
But he was still the same guy. I could see the hardness in his face.
“Don’t gawk at me, Mason,” he said. “I’m here to offer you work.”
“I don’t want it,” I snapped back.
He smiled at me like a wolf coming across a wounded antelope. Then he stood up and stepped close to me. I had eight or so inches on Greer, but he was every bit as thick as me. Like a tree stump that refuses to move, no matter how many chains you use to try and yank it out.
“You do this job for me, your sentence is done.” The tip of his finger brushed across my upper lip. It stung a cut on my nostril, but I didn’t move. He looked at the blood on the tip of his finger. “No more bleeding in the basement of Leavenworth to pass the time. No more being stuck in a cell barely bigger than you are.”
“I like it here,” I said.
He sneered at me. “That’s a damn lie.”
“I know.”
Greer took a tissue from the box on the Commandant’s desk, then cleaned the blood from his finger.
“You’re wasting yourself here,” he said. “I’ve heard about the things you’ve done over the years. Florence. West Rock. Madrid—all those were hard assignments. Not many people have the balls to pull off one of those, let alone all three.” He balled up the bloody tissue and dropped it on the floor.
I could almost hear the steam hissing from Commandant Williamson’s ears. But she had the good sense not to test Greer.
“Can I be honest with you?” I said to Greer. I didn’t wait for him to answer. “I know you don’t like me. Maybe you never did. So when you come here, telling me I’m gonna get out of the DB if I do whatever mission you want me to do, sight unseen, all I’m thinking to myself is: this man wouldn’t do me a favor. Not for free.”
“You don’t trust me, Mason?”
“Not one damn bit.” I turned my eyes up to the ceiling, away from him. Something as little as having his shadow in my sight line started to piss me off.
“Is that what you’re going to tell Libby when she asks why you miss your little girl’s birthday this year? That some scumbag offered you a way to commute your sentence, and you said no, so the two of them are just going to have to sit tight for fifteen more years without Daddy Barrett around.” Greer whistled. “That’s a hell of a thing to lay on somebody. Adopt a kid, cut and run.”
My blood simmered. Too much more of this, and I was going to have a real reason to be in prison—not the bullshit I had for pissing off a Marine Corps General.
“If I were you, I’d do anything I could to get back to my wife and my little girl,” he said. “It’s a big, dangerous world. What could happen if I’m not around to protect them?”
In my head, I saw Greer sneaking through a ground floor window of my house. I heard Libby scream bloody murder—and that was it.
I lunged at Greer. It all happened like a thunderclap. Managed to get an elbow into the side of his head. I took his fist to my already bloodied nose. Next I knew, I was on the ground, getting hammered by the four MPs who had walked me up here.
“Take him to solitary,” Commandant Williamson said quietly.
They dragged me out of the office. All I hoped was that Greer got my point.
Chapter 5
THE WORST PART OF ASSASSINATING a power-hungry despot was all the political maneuvering that came after.
Blood gets washed away. Bodies are burnt or buried or dumped into the ocean. All the mistakes of the past are eventually forgotten. But the jockeying for position stays for generations.
Thinking about it almost exhausted Colonel Milares. But he had to press on for the good of Venezuela.
President T
oro was dead on the spot—right there in the middle of the Great Hall. After the militants retreated and the smoke cleared, his personal doctor poked his head out of a coat closet to confirm the President’s death. And no less than twelve hours later, Venezuela’s Constituent Assembly called an emergency session.
They also called for the hero of the day, General Barrios, to join them at the Palacio Federal Legislativo—the Federal Legislative Palace—a golden-domed building in the heart of Caracas, Venezuela’s national capital.
And if the General went, Colonel Milares had to go too. There was no avoiding that. He would have to be at the General’s side for the foreseeable future.
So, the two of them sat shoulder to shoulder in the narrow, red velvet seats on the floor of the legislature, with a couple hundred politicians and other military leaders, every one of them angling to get a piece of this or that.
For Colonel Milares, the domed ceiling felt closer tonight than it had ever been. The stakes were high. If any single person here tonight—aside from the General’s inner-circle—figured out the truth, Milares and the General and all the other conspirators would be shot where they sat.
Milares pushed the thought out of his mind. For now, he would have to control his nerves. He was stuck listening to none other than Marco Erazo—a Diputado with the Constituent Assembly. The same politician who had the mic as the militants stormed into the Great Hall and President Toro was assassinated.
“My brothers and sisters, if we don’t act now, we will lose Venezuela to the capitalists who want to rip your children’s skin from their bones and sell the pieces to the highest bidder!” Diputado Erazo pounded the podium. He was deadly serious. A little scared, even.
General Barrios looked like he barely held in a laugh.
“They have killed our rightfully elected President. They will not stop there!” Erazo spoke so forcefully, his shock of white hair jumped with every word. “We must institute martial law, and we must do it now. Not only for our safety, but for the safety of our citizens, and of our very way of life.”
“It’s three in the morning,” General Barrios whispered to Colonel Milares. “Nobody wants to get up at three in the morning. Not even to kick a protester’s teeth in.”
Erazo’s eyes swung to the General.
“General Barrios,” he said. “Is there a recommendation you’d like to make?”
“Time to earn your paycheck,” Colonel Milares said under his breath. The General discreetly waved him off as he stood up from his chair to answer Erazo.
All eyes swung to the General. He was an impressive man. Broad shouldered with a dark, full beard. When he walked into a room, his gravity always seemed to pull people toward him. Maybe it was the way he always laughed with his full throat, or how the General always seemed a little too confident—whatever the case, people admired him. They respected his opinion. They looked to him for expertise.
Tonight would be no different—which, Colonel Milares assumed, was partly why Los Chacales tapped him to help carry out their coup.
“I’m in agreement with you, Diputado.” The General’s deep voice filled the hall. “Decisive action is needed. We cannot let our enemies march into our halls of power and kill our elected leaders. Nor can we trick ourselves into thinking they’ll stop at the assassination of our beloved President.” He stopped and looked around the room for effect. Let the politicians come to their own conclusions before he spelled it out for the slower ones. “Everyone here tonight in the Palacio is a high-value target for the militants. You are not safe. Your families are not safe. Not until we can station men on every corner in every neighborhood in Caracas.”
Applause followed the General’s voice.
Colonel Milares shot out of his chair, clapping. Part of his job was to build up the General’s ideas. Make them seem good, when, if these stupid, lazy politicians had half an ounce of sense—they’d question everything the General put forward. Especially now, when Venezuela had been plunged head-first into crisis.
The General held up his hands, calling for quiet.
Colonel Milares clapped harder, at least for a few seconds. Then, he sat down in his chair. The rest of the Assembly did the same in good time.
“Diputado Erazo, I ask that you bring a vote to the floor now,” General Barrios said. “For the good of Venezuela!”
There were shouts of “seconded!” and more applause, too. The vote would happen. Milares squeezed his hand into a fist. It was all playing out exactly as the General and Los Chacales predicted.
Behind the podium at the front of the room, Erazo raised his wrinkly old hands until he had quiet.
“There is a call for a vote,” he said, “Should we, the members of the Venezuelan Constituent Assembly exercise our constitutional powers by enacting martial law? All in favor?”
“Aye!” The sound was louder than a gun blast. Must’ve been every single member of the Assembly shouting out at once.
“All opposed?” Erazo asked.
A wave of laughter slowly started at the back of the hall, and worked its way forward, until Diputado Erazo cracked a smile. He combed his white hair back with his fingers.
“Good. We are united,” he said. “And who from our armed forces should organize our people?”
Here it was. The point on which the entire coup rested.
Colonel Milares looked down at his fists. His knuckles were white as chalk; his thumb trembled. He tucked it beneath his other fingers and squeezed as tightly as he could. His heart drummed behind his ears. The immediate silence was almost too much to bear. Should he say the General’s name? Would that be too obvious?
Someone had to say something.
Milares took a breath and lifted his eyes from his hands. He almost said the General’s name, but when he looked up, he was struck by the gazes of everyone around him. Not that they were looking at Milares—they were looking at General Barrios.
The plan worked. Their coup would be unstoppable now.
Chapter 6
I SPENT THE NIGHT ON a cold concrete floor in solitary. At first, the chill felt good. Helped ease the tenderizing my muscles took from the MP’s clubs.
But that didn’t last long. I think. When you’re locked in a dark room with nothing but your brain, time skips and crawls all at once. All I know for sure is that at some point, I started to feel an ache so deep, it seemed to have skewered me. And I guess I figured out that solitary confinement had to be pretty damn close to what purgatory felt like.
While I sat in the darkness, my thoughts danced between all my cuts and bruises and my wife, Libby, and my adopted daughter, Kejal. If Greer laid a finger on them, I’d snap off his entire hand. Don’t matter if he’s CIA, DoD or POTUS. Anybody who hurts my family is gonna catch me.
My mind wandered to Kejal. What was she doing now? Her thirteenth birthday was coming up in about a month or so. Was she still doing robotics at school? Had she noticed boys yet? Wasn’t I supposed to be there, cleaning my gun on the coffee table when some kid came to pick her up for winter formal?
I didn’t get to think on it too long. My train of thought was broken by the sound of footsteps. I heard them coming for me. They weren’t the deep clump of MP boots. They were lighter. More refined. Dress shoes.
The footsteps stopped in front of my door. Then, the lock clicked open, and the hinges whined. A shaft of dull, orange light spilled into my cell, and I scurried backward, pressing myself against the wall, like the light would scorch my tan jumpsuit and barbecue me.
“You look like you’ve been through hell, Mason.” Greer again. I must’ve been down here for at least a night because he had a different suit on. Looked crisp and clean—fresh from the cleaners.
“With that suit on, looks like the CIA is trying to turn you into a cheaper James Bond.” My voice croaked. My tongue moved in my mouth like cotton balls on sandpaper.
Greer laughed and squatted in the doorway. Met me eye-to-eye.
“The Agency has afforded me a pretty good
life,” Greer said. “They could do the same for you, if you were a better patriot.”
“Guess I ain’t willing to do whatever bullshit is thrown my way just so I can wear a little flag pin on my lapel.”
“Don’t you want your life back?” Greer asked. “The Agency can give it to you.”
“So I can be an agency man like you?” I asked. “Every second of your life is probably done on their orders. Where to go. When to sleep. When to eat. How to take a leak.”
“There are rules, but not nearly as many as you’ve got here.”
I sat up straighter. “The CIA’s got your ass until you’re in the grave. Even then, they get to pick out the plot, or decide if you’re gonna be buried at all. At least here, I know I’ll get my freedom back after a while.”
“Don’t be so sure,” Greer said. “Do you even know why you’re being held at Leavenworth?”
“I disobeyed an order from a General in DC,” I said. “Stopped a nuke from being launched.”
“Right. But what’s the official reason?” Greer said. “Because I’ve seen your service record, Mason, and there are some very interesting details in it. For instance, did you know you’re being held here for desertion?”
Nope. But I wasn’t going to let Greer know that. That smarmy bastard just wanted to get under my skin. He was probably making it up, anyhow.
“I’m not a betting man, because betting can be so unpredictable and messy, but I’m tempted to wager that once the desertion charge wears off, they’ll stick something else on you,” he said. “In short, you’re not walking back to your family without cooperating.”
“Cooperating,” I said. “I’m sure you want me to kiss babies and deliver aid to refugees.”
“I want you to go with me to Puerto Rico,” Greer said. “Then, you’ll get on a boat and head south. To Caracas, Venezuela.”
So that was the mission. Venezuela. Being stuck in prison the last four months, I wasn’t up on current events, but I knew Venezuela was a communist country with a president who was loudly critical of the US. Probably the CIA wanted someone to shut him up.
Jackal: Barrett Mason Book 3 Page 2
