The Treadstone Resurrection

by Joshua Hood

  “Why did you try and kill me?” he asked again, thumbing the hammer into position. “Beep, time’s up,” he said.

  Snap.

  “FUCK YOU!” Black shouted.

  Snap.

  “That’s not it. Three left, though. You sure you want to keep playing games?”

  Snap.

  He could see the terror starting in the corner of Black’s eyes; he was getting close, but Hayes knew he didn’t have him yet. “Nobody is that lucky. Is this thing loaded?” Hayes asked aloud. “Maybe I got some bogus rounds?”

  Hayes opened the chamber and showed it to Black. “Nope, there it is.” He snapped the chamber shut, but this time he left the hammer down and took an exaggerated breath.

  “Next one is hot, you ready for it?” he asked, letting it out and inching the pistol back to the man’s groin.

  Black was shaking now, the tremors starting in his legs, moving up his body, until it looked like he was hooked up to a car battery. Sweat poured from his body, soaking his shirt, filling the room with the dank stench of fear.

  “Here we go,” Hayes said, his finger closing around the trigger. He started to pull out the slack and both men watched the hammer inch back, and the cylinder start to turn, rotating the live round in line with the barrel.

  “Don’t . . . don’t do this . . .” Black pleaded.

  The hammer hovered at the end of its journey. A tiny bit more pressure and it would slam forward.

  “Did my friends beg for their life?” Hayes asked, his voice cold as ice.

  “I’ll tell you!” Black screamed. “Jefferson Gray, he ordered the hit on you and Ford.”

  “Still on the clock, who the fuck is Jefferson Gray?”

  “He works for the CIA, some special-mission program, that’s all I know.”

  “How do I find him?”

  “He has a satphone, keeps it on him all the time,” Black said, rattling off the numbers.

  “Man, that was a close one. I’ve got to give it to you, Black. You have balls of steel. Took that one all the way to the wire,” he said, taking the pistol away. “So why did you come after me?”

  “The email that Ford sent . . . I was just following orders.”

  Hayes gathered the bullets off the ground and got to his feet. “Just following orders, huh?” he asked, thumbing the bullets back into the revolver and cocking the hammer to the rear.

  “I’m a soldier,” Black pleaded, “just like you.”

  “No, you’re not,” Hayes said, centering the front sight on Black’s forehead. “Soldiers don’t kill innocent people.”

  27

  SEATTLE, WASHINGTON

  It felt like an eternity before the echo of the gunshot finally faded into the night, and when Hayes lowered the pistol, Black was dead. For a moment his instincts took over, and Hayes started thinking about how he was going to tidy up the scene.

  Make sure no one could connect it back to him.

  But then he remembered who’d sent Black after him in the first place.

  Fucking CIA, he thought, eyes drifting over to the tangle of metal that had been the helicopter. Let them clean up their own mess.

  Hayes shoved the pistol back into the ankle holster and realized his most pressing problem was finding out where in the hell he was. He tried to remember the last few moments before the helicopter went down.

  We were flying east over the water. That would put us back over Similk Bay.

  Hayes knew there was only one way to find out and continued east until he came to a series of tombolos—low sandbars that connected the island to the mainland. He made his way across and found a parking lot on the other side with a sign welcoming him to the Swinomish Indian Reservation.

  Now that he knew where he was, Hayes’s mind turned to transportation.

  The reservation was mostly unspoiled timber, a snapshot of how the area used to look before developers started scooping up land and building lakefront estates. It was quiet and rural, and Hayes followed the road leading from the parking lot for half a mile without seeing a single car.

  But Hayes knew that even out here, someone had to have heard the helicopter go down—which meant it was only a matter of time before the cops showed up. His one chance was the cluster of cabins that he’d spent a week rewiring last fall. Hayes cut through the trees, praying the owners had gone through with their plans of renting the cabins out for the summer.

  When he finally cleared the trees and saw the trucks parked on a gravel drive in front of the rentals, Hayes let out a sigh of relief. He picked the oldest vehicle, a Chevy pickup, and crept to the door.

  It was unlocked. Hayes opened the door, wondering how he was going to boost the truck without any tools, when he saw the key was still in the ignition.

  Four hours later, Hayes was twenty miles from Seattle and the lights from the oncoming cars were giving him a headache. Light sensitivity—another side effect Treadstone had forgotten to mention.

  But the headache was the least of his problems. Hayes was having a hard time staying focused, keeping his mind on the task at hand. He knew there was a reason he was driving, but at the moment he couldn’t remember where he was going or why.

  Hayes wasn’t sure if the cognition issues were from the helicopter crash or the fact that it had been thirty-two hours since his last pill. All he knew was that every time he established a clear thought, his mind popped out of gear, shifting from the present to the past, like a truck with a busted transmission.

  “Think, damn it,” he said, slamming his hand down on the steering wheel. “What did Black tell you?” Hayes cracked the window, hoping the air would clear his mind.

  According to Black, Ford was dead and the man who’d authorized the hit was . . . Shit, what was his name?

  One moment he was on the road and in the next instant he was back in the shrink’s office, lying on her $2,000 Corinthian leather couch, talking about the side effects of the OxyContin she had prescribed him.

  * * *

  —

  “What happens if I miss a dose?”

  “Just one?” she asked. “Common side effects will be trouble recalling information, staying focused, restlessness, anxiety, aggression, some paranoia . . .”

  “Sounds shitty.”

  “Only if you forget to take them.” She smiled.

  Hayes hadn’t wanted to take them in the first place. He hated the idea of being dependent on something. Having a little yellow pill rule his life.

  “And more than one? What happens if I don’t like them and decide to stop altogether?”

  “You ever see anyone coming off a drug addiction?”

  Hayes had. It was why he wasn’t comfortable with the idea of the pills.

  “Once, after a surgery. I fractured my back when I fell off a scaffold at work,” Hayes said, the half-truth sliding easily from his mouth. He’d been at work, all right, but it wasn’t the construction job he’d mentioned in their first meeting. It was at the Hotel des Bergues in Switzerland, and the fall wasn’t from a scaffold, it was out of a fourth-floor window, his arms around the waist of Pieter Ernst, the German double agent he’d been sent to kill.

  Ernst was dead from the blade in his neck before they hit the ground, leaving Hayes to hobble down the alley with a fractured spine and a dislocated shoulder.

  Up until that point his only contact with the support personnel had been the quarterly psych evaluations and blood draws to which every asset was subjected. It wasn’t until after the surgery, when Hayes complained about the pain and they sent him to one of the Treadstone pain-management clinics, that he realized how many support personnel there were.

  “I can’t sleep, Doc, the pain, it just won’t let go.”

  “Not a problem,” the doctor replied, handing him a bottle full of white pills.

  “What’s this?” he asked.r />
  “Ranger Candy,” the man said and smiled.

  Ranger Candy? When he was in the Army, Ranger Candy was the name given to the 800-milligram ibuprofen the medics were always handing out. “Look, Doc, I don’t mean to complain, but I’m going to need something stronger than Motrin.”

  “No, that’s just what we call it because we hand it out like it’s Halloween around here. That’s not ibuprofen, it’s Oxy.”

  “Well, how many do I take?”

  “As many as you need,” the doctor said and shrugged. “That’s a six-month supply. Let me know if you run out.”

  It was the first time Hayes had ever taken anything stronger than Motrin. At first he took them only when he was in pain. He liked the way the pills made him feel. How the pills helped him sleep when you mixed them with a little booze before bed.

  One pill for pain turned into four by lunch, then came the night at the restaurant, Annabelle looking at him over her menu.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, why?”

  “You’re sweating.”

  “It’s hot in here.”

  “No, Adam, it’s not,” she said, watching his hand snake to his pocket. “You can’t keep doing this shit. Taking those pills.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I’m pregnant. You’re going to be a father.”

  * * *

  —

  The neon blaze of a truck stop at the top of the hill reminded him why he was on the road. Jefferson Gray . . . Phone call . . . Shaw.

  He pulled into the gas station and circled around the back to the payphone. Leaving the truck running, Hayes dumped two quarters down the slot, dialed, and pressed his back to the booth so he could watch the street.

  The line rang twice, then a recorded voice instructed him to “leave your message at the beep.” The system was analog—ancient by today’s standards, but it worked.

  Hayes read the phone number off the faded sliver of paper mounted to the payphone’s body so they would know where to reach him.

  There were three distress codes a Treadstone operative could send from the field. He dialed triple 9—the code for a compromised operative—and hung up.

  That ought to get someone’s attention.

  His hand wasn’t even warm in his pocket before the phone was ringing.

  Hayes picked it up but didn’t say anything.

  “Who is this?” Levi asked.

  “Someone at the CIA sent a kill team after me. What do you know about it?” he asked.

  “Hayes . . . Adam Hayes, is that you?”

  “I know how long it takes to track a call, so cut the shit and answer the question, Levi.”

  “Washington. The ferry on the news, that was you?”

  “Yeah, I’m two and zero right now when it comes to putting kill teams in the dirt.”

  “This is not something I feel comfortable talking about over the phone.”

  I bet not.

  “We need to meet. Tell me where you are and I will send a plane.”

  28

  McLEAN, VIRGINIA

  Levi Shaw pulled onto the Beltway, but instead of heading home to Alexandria to catch the end of the Mets game, he merged onto Dolley Madison Boulevard and headed west.

  Traffic was light, and ten minutes later Shaw arrived at his destination. A Beltway-boring collection of concrete buildings surrounded by mismatched hedges and short-cropped grass.

  Which was exactly the point.

  The first sign of the building’s significance came when Shaw turned onto Tysons McLean Drive and followed the asphalt to the security gate, where two men in black BDUs and with automatic rifles slung over their shoulders motioned for him to stop.

  Shaw handed his ID to the first guard while the second man checked the underside of his black Lincoln Navigator with a mirror.

  “You’re good to go,” the man said.

  Shaw followed the asphalt around to the west side and parked in front of the main entrance and headed for the door.

  The National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) was built in response to the 9/11 attacks with the goal of “leading and integrating the national counterterrorism effort.” It was a living reminder of how far Shaw had fallen in the intelligence world. Three years ago, his status as director of Treadstone meant that he had a satellite office on the second floor of the NCTC, complete with a full-time staff of intelligence liaisons.

  But those days were gone, and this time Shaw was just grateful that his badge unlocked the door to the operations center.

  Once inside, Shaw crossed to a spare office on the back wall, shut the door behind him, and logged in to the computer. What the hell were you doing over there, Ford? he wondered, typing the man’s name into the database.

  >>>>TREADSTONE Remote Portal

  Login: Shaw, L.

  _Access Granted

  >>>>Connection Established_

  Status: Online

  Query: Ford, Nicholas—VENEZUELA

  The connection in the NCTC made what he had in the Boneyard look like a decaf latte, and his fingers had barely cleared the enter key when the results popped up.

  Mission Log: Ford, N

  Venezuela—Operation Mongoose

  Target—Mateo, Diego

  During his time as director, Shaw had authorized thousands of operations. Due to the sheer volume of assisting with the War on Terror, he’d forgotten more than he could remember, which was the reason every Treadstone operation that ended in a kill chain was recorded.

  But Shaw didn’t need the video to remember Mongoose. He would go to his grave remembering that operation.

  “Shit,” he said, his hands finding their way to his eyes. Even with his eyes closed he could remember every detail of that night.

  While he waited for further results, Shaw leaned back in the chair and glanced over the freshly painted wall and brand-new carpet. There was a small part of him that felt marginalized, almost slighted, when he compared this empty office to what he had to work with; the rest of him was just happy that he was back in the game.

  Shaw was still waiting for the results when his cell alerted him to an incoming text, and when he saw the number, he forgot about everything else that had happened that day.

  9-9-9.

  He didn’t believe in coincidences and knew there was no way someone could have accidentally made the call.

  Who the hell could it be?

  He knew there was only one way to find out.

  Shaw dialed the number. The line connected, but all he heard was the rush of cars in the background.

  “Who is this?”

  “Someone at the CIA sent a kill team after me. What do you know about it?”

  The voice sent a chill running up his spine, and there was no doubt who was on the other end of the line.

  Hayes.

  * * *

  —

  From the first moment Shaw had looked at Hayes’s service record it was clear that the man was made for the job. Still, he had to be sure, which is why he hopped a flight to Afghanistan, pulled some strings, and had the man choppered back to Bagram for a session with a “psychologist”—actually Shaw himself.

  “According to your file, you spent your first tour in Ramadi with the Eighty-second Airborne,” Shaw said. “Then you went to Special Forces selection, got sent to First Special Forces Group in Washington. Six more deployments after that. Says here you’ve spent more time overseas than you have at home. Distinguished Service Cross presented for extraordinary heroism on July tenth, 2005, in Iraq. Silver Star, Afghanistan, 2007. A second one in 2009, this one with a Purple Heart,” he read, nodding his approval. “Sounds like you’ve seen the elephant a time or two.”

  “That make me special?” Hayes asked.

  Shaw had been recruiting men for Treadstone
long enough to recognize the hard cases, and he didn’t need a psychology degree to see that the death of Hayes’s teammates as well as the never-ending grind of the War on Terror had taken their toll.

  Hayes’s posture told him that the man was walled off, and a look into his eyes that he was checked out. Getting through to this one wasn’t going to be easy.

  “Captain Hayes, you’ve got it all figured out, don’t you?” Shaw began. “Lose a couple guys in combat and you decide to check out of the game.”

  “You’re the doctor, why don’t you tell me,” Hayes said.

  “Says here that on March twelfth your team was on a routine patrol when you came under fire. You lost a man that day.”

  “There is a war going on,” Hayes said. “We all lost people, doesn’t make me special.”

  “Two days later, your medic was hit, Staff Sergeant Deets—”

  Hayes was on his feet at the mention of his friend’s name. “Fuck this,” he said, turning to the door.

  I’ve got him.

  “You can walk out that door if you want, but I promise you that you will be back.”

  Hayes’s shoulders slumped and he turned back to his seat.

  “What the hell do you want from me?”

  “How did it make you feel, losing your men?”

  “Like throwing a parade,” Hayes deadpanned.

  “Is that when you stepped off the reservation, or, as your battalion commander put it, ‘subsequent to ambush of March twelfth, Captain Hayes displayed anger issues and put himself in harm’s way unnecessarily.’”

  “It was a hot AO, I was doing my job.”

  “But you were angry, yes?”

  “Yeah.” Hayes nodded. “I was pissed.”

  “You wanted revenge on the people who killed your friend.”

  Hayes nodded again.

  “But they wouldn’t let you, would they? Rules of engagement and all that.”

  “Look, man,” Hayes said. “I don’t know who the hell you work for, but we both know you aren’t a doctor. The only thing I do know is that we’ve been at war since 2001 and not a damn thing has changed. People think . . .” He paused. “Fuck it. If you want to put me away for doing my job, then go ahead.”