True fiction, p.20
True Fiction, page 20
“The body is like a water balloon,” Healy whispered into her toasted ear. “Your skin is the only thing holding in all the fluid and, let’s face it, most of your skin is gone. The life is oozing out of you. And since you’re basically skinless, you’ve got no protection against infection. Your exposed organs are being ravaged by germs. We haven’t bothered removing the bullets from your knees because there’s no point. You’re never getting off this table, except to be put into a body bag. All of these tubes in your body will extend your life to the last possible second and keep you conscious, and in a constant state of unbearable, excruciating agony, until massive organ failure finally kills you. It might only be a day, or perhaps two, but for you it will feel like an eternity. That might seem cruel, perhaps even inhuman, but we both know that you deserve it, don’t we?”
Tears ran out of the woman’s eyes, which Healy found surprising, given how little moisture she had to spare.
“Or we can pump you so full of painkillers and other drugs that you’ll believe you’re living in Candyland until the end comes and you’ll die a peaceful, painless death,” Healy said. “It’s your choice. Give me a reason to show you some mercy. Tell us what Takahara was trying to cover up and you get Candyland. Keep quiet and you experience the worst death imaginable.”
“You don’t have to threaten me.” Her voice was weak and raspy. It sounded like each word that she spoke was serrated and cut the back of her throat on the way out. She wouldn’t be able to talk for long. “Victoria killed us all to hide what we did. I want to look that bitch in the eye in hell and tell her that she failed.”
“What did Blackthorn do?”
“We crashed an airplane into Waikiki,” she said.
Capitol Hill, Washington, DC. July 24. 10:00 a.m. Eastern Standard Time.
Acting CIA director Michael Healy sat at the table in front of the seven stony-faced senators in the hearing room and, having verbally shared the details of his investigation into the Blackthorn matter, was about to deliver the conclusion of his classified report. There would be no written copies, for obvious reasons, and he would be destroying his notes at the end of his unrecorded testimony.
“There was no foreign terrorist conspiracy behind the crash of TransAmerican 976 and Ayoub Darwish and Habib Ebrahimi were both innocent of any crimes. Those aren’t even their real names. It was all an elaborate ruse created and executed by Wilton Cross. The truth is that Blackthorn operatives, under his direction, hacked the jet and crashed it into Waikiki. The intent was to use that manufactured terrorist event to convince you, and the president, to outsource the CIA’s covert operations to Blackthorn. In my opinion, this was not only an act of homegrown, domestic terrorism but the most heinous act of treason in our nation’s history.”
“Unbelievable,” Senator Holbrook muttered. “Unconscionable.”
Seven heads nodded in somber agreement.
“Cross is dead and beyond our reach,” Senator Tolan said. “But what about the operatives who collaborated with him to plan and carry out the attack?”
“One of the four Blackthorn operatives killed by police in Los Angeles was in Honolulu at the time of the crash,” Healy said. “He stayed in a Diamond Head hotel that would have given him a clear view of Honolulu Airport and Waikiki. We believe he was the one who actually hacked the jet and crashed it.”
“Surely there were more than just two people involved in this conspiracy,” Tolan snapped. “What about them?”
“We believe there were a little over thirty people directly involved, all working out of Blackthorn’s Bethesda headquarters,” Healy said. “All but one of them perished in the fire that destroyed the building, which we’re telling the public was the result of faulty wiring. But the fire wasn’t the only cause of death. Our autopsies have confirmed that they were all shot by one of their own before the blaze.”
“Sweet Jesus,” Senator Hazeltine said.
“The one survivor managed to give us the broad outlines of the plot in the few hours before she died,” Healy said. “Since then, we’ve managed to fill in most of the blanks.”
“What were they doing at that actor’s house in Los Angeles?” Hazeltine asked.
“That’s one thing we still don’t know. Cross must have believed that Ronnie Mancuso figured out that Blackthorn was involved, in some way, with the plane crash or that he presented some other threat to them,” Healy said. “But we’ll never know for sure because the key players at Blackthorn are dead, the computers were wiped, and Mancuso is crazy.”
“When are you releasing a redacted version of your report to the media?” Senator Stowe asked.
“I’m not,” Healy said. “As far as I’m concerned, this matter is closed.”
“You’re doing the right thing,” Senator Holbrook said. “The scandal would be devastating for the country.”
“It would be devastating for us,” Senator Hazeltine said. And the North Carolina politician, more so than anyone in the chamber, had the experience to back up that opinion, having weathered so many corruption scandals of his own.
“It’s not his decision to make,” Stowe said, gesturing to Healy. “It’s ours. We can still reveal what really happened.”
“You’re right, of course,” Tolan said to Stowe. “But we’re the only ones left alive that the public can blame for what happened. If the truth comes out, we’ll all end up in prison and the president will be impeached . . . and that’s if we all get off easy.”
“We had nothing to do with crashing that plane,” Stowe said. “And we haven’t committed any crimes.”
“That doesn’t make any difference,” Tolan said.
The seven men were all experienced politicians. They knew that Tolan, who’d made his name as a showboating Texas prosecutor, was right.
“God help us,” Hazeltine said, more to himself than to anybody else in the room. “So how do we explain to the country what happened?”
“We already did,” Healy said. “We stick with the brilliantly constructed story that Cross created, and that everyone here and abroad firmly believes.”
“But it’s all false,” Stowe said. “Our government will be taking all kinds of major actions, domestically and overseas, based on a foundation of lies.”
“Let me ask you a question, Senator,” Healy said to Stowe. “Are the Harakat Ahrar al-Sham al-Islamiyya, and the terrorist groups under their umbrella, our enemies? Do they present a clear and present danger to America?”
“Yes,” Stowe said.
“Then who cares if they are blamed for something they didn’t do? It just means that some good will come out of this horrific event. The terrorist attack justifies the strong, decisive military action that the president has always wanted to take, and that we all know is necessary to protect our country, but held back doing because the American people haven’t had the stomach for it,” Healy said. “So you have a choice between a scandal that will cripple our country and turn the public against the government for generations, or gaining widespread public support for an aggressive campaign against terror that will make us all safer. But that, gentlemen, is your decision to make, not mine.”
Healy knew the senators would accept his argument, because it was politically expedient and the right thing to do for the country. But it was a hollow victory, one that truly frightened him, because in his heart he knew that this was how it started. This was how a man like him became a man like Wilton Cross.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
If aliens from another planet, perhaps contemplating whether to make friendly contact or to invade our world, were curious about how our culture and government worked and randomly sampled American news broadcasts over the fourteen months that followed the events that July night in Tarzana, these are some of the clips they would have seen:
From Nancy O’Dell on Entertainment Tonight:
The former star of Hollywood & the Vine, now undergoing psychiatric evaluation, is pleading innocent by reason of insanity to charges of assault with a deadly weapon, reckless driving, and a string of other charges related to the high-speed chase that ended in a shootout at his Tarzana home.
From Jake Tapper on CNN’s The Lead:
The Senate has confirmed Michael Healy as director of the CIA, a post he’d previously held on an interim basis after the resignation of Jonas Schepp in a scandal involving his extramarital affair with an agent’s wife. Healy’s unanimous confirmation was widely expected after his swift identification and killing of the terrorists responsible for the TransAmerican 976 crash within days of the attack.
From the CBS 2 News in Los Angeles during a live, impromptu news conference held by Tony Petrocelli, the famed criminal attorney representing Ronnie Mancuso, with dozens of media outlets on the courthouse steps:
My client believes that Blackthorn is part of a vast, continuing conspiracy being perpetrated by the global elites to control the world’s limited resources for themselves. We will prove that he was the victim of sustained and relentless harassment by Blackthorn that included constant surveillance, the destruction of his home, and an armed assault by trained killers. Is it any wonder that he snapped under that extraordinary pressure?
From Fox News, Shepard Smith reporting as video played of two men emerging bearded and dazed from an underground shelter in Nevada and into the custody of police:
The arrests of two Blackthorn operatives who had been imprisoned for months on Ronnie Mancuso’s Nevada property, and the wreckage of one of the infamous “black helicopters” so often referred to by those who believe in the New World Order plot, seem to confirm the actor’s claims of a vast conspiracy aligned against him.
From TMZ, and reported by some fat guy who looked as if he hadn’t bathed in a month:
Ronnie was released today from Corcoran Mental Hospital after six months of treatment. The first thing he did was go to In-N-Out, where he must have eaten forty double-double burgers. Look at these pictures. He was like one of those competitive eaters you see at a county fair.
From David Muir on ABC World News Tonight:
The remaining assets of Blackthorn Global Security, once the largest private security company in the United States, were sold today to satisfy the terms of the hundred-million-dollar settlement reached with actor Ronnie Mancuso in his lawsuit against the company. As part of the settlement, the company accepted responsibility for destroying the actor’s Nevada ranch and an attack on his Los Angeles home last year. The company maintains that actions against Mancuso were carried out by “rogue operatives” under the command of an unnamed executive, one of the thirty-four who were killed in a catastrophic fire at their Bethesda headquarters. The company still faces trial in Los Angeles on a number of criminal charges.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
An Excerpt from Death in the Sky by Ian Ludlow
The mood in the Blackshadow situation room in midtown Manhattan verged on festive. Clint Straker was dead, tracked to Grand Central Station using the RFID chip in his driver’s license. Their assassin had strangled Straker with a garrote in a restroom, left his body in a stall, and put an OUT OF ORDER sign on the door. All that they needed to do now was collect the corpse before it was discovered. A containment team was only minutes away.
For the first time in weeks, Dalton Trask could finally relax and truly enjoy his success. The president was on the verge of signing the classified executive order outsourcing the CIA’s covert operations to Blackshadow Global Security. The one man who could have stopped it from happening, who’d discovered that it was Blackshadow, and not the Islamic terrorists, that had crashed a plane into downtown Seattle, had just bled out on a toilet. Straker got what he deserved for meddling. He was just one man. He’d never stood a chance against them.
“The team has reached the target.” The status update was delivered by Andrea Zane from her command console with her typical urgent intensity, as if the agents were breaching a terrorist compound instead of a men’s room in a train station. Her report was also redundant, since the helmet-cam view from the team leader was visible on one of the flat-screens.
The team entered the filthy bathroom and pushed open each stall door, revealing one disgusting, overflowing toilet after another, until they came to one occupied by a man in a dark overcoat. Straker’s body was piled on the toilet, his head hanging down, his white shirt and dark slacks drenched in blood.
“They’ve found him,” Andrea said, once again stating the obvious.
“I want to see his face,” Dalton said.
The team leader heard Dalton’s order in his earpiece and lifted Straker’s head by the hair. The gash across Straker’s throat gaped at them like an obscene smile.
Except that it wasn’t Clint Straker they were looking at. It was another man, wearing dark sunglasses.
“Who the fuck is that?” Dalton roared.
“It’s our asset,” Andrea said, clearly confused. “But that can’t be.”
“Why not?” Dalton asked. “You just said that it’s him.”
“Because he’s here in the building,” Andrea said, pointing at her screen. “He came through the door ten minutes ago.”
To access the building, agents had to pass a retina scan and possess a card key that granted them access to selected areas of the building. Their every move within the building, and every keystroke on their computers, was tracked and logged.
“Take off the dead man’s glasses,” Dalton said.
The team leader removed the sunglasses from the corpse. One of the dead man’s eyeballs was missing. There was a collective gasp as every agent in the room reacted to the gruesome image. Dalton pounded his fist on the console.
Straker was in the building.
“Goddamn it,” he said. “Lock down the building. Track the asset’s card key and tell me where Straker has been and where he is now.”
“He was in your office and now he’s—” Andrea began, then looked over her shoulder in horror. Dalton whirled around and saw Clint Straker leaning casually against the wall, an amused smile on his face.
“You’ve had your eye on me for some time now.” Straker tossed a baggie at Dalton, who caught it. The baggie contained the dead assassin’s eyeball. “I’m returning it.”
Dalton was unperturbed by the eye in the baggie. He held it up, made a show of casually examining it, and set it on the console beside him.
“Bravo, Clint,” Dalton said. “You get points for drama and a clever quip but what have you actually accomplished for all of your pitiful efforts?”
“Justice. My old lover Aiko and her thirteen-year-old son were on the plane that you crashed into Seattle.” Aiko was the woman who’d taught him the ancient erotic art of 性的超越, or Seiteki chōetsu. Now he would never know if the boy was his child. “You killed thousands of innocent people to convince the president to outsource our nation’s covert operations to Blackshadow. I’m going to reveal the plot and expose you as the worst traitor in our nation’s history.”
Dalton laughed. “Even if it was possible for you to leave here alive, which it isn’t, you don’t have any proof.”
“I have a thumb drive full of incriminating files that I just downloaded from your computer,” he said. “The rest will come out in the investigation.”
“What investigation?”
“Into the bombing,” Straker said and lobbed a hand grenade into the center of the room.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
The crowd that came to see Ian Ludlow at Union Bay Books on that Saturday night was standing room only, perhaps because Seattle figured so prominently in his new thriller. The cover of Death in the Sky was a vivid illustration of Clint Straker’s silhouette toting a rocket launcher, charging toward the reader against the backdrop of a plane crashing into the Space Needle in an enormous fireball.
But Ian was disappointed by the turnout because the one person he really hoped to see wasn’t there. He walked outside into the hot summer night.
“Shall I take you back to your hotel?” asked Gwen, his author escort. She was a graduate student in the University of Washington English Department who ferried novelists around town so she could pitch them her book. It was a civil war allegory set on a planet of unicorns, zebras, and horses.
“No, thank you. It’s so nice out, I think I’ll walk,” Ian said. “See you tomorrow at the mystery bookstore.”
“Would you like to meet early for coffee?” she asked. “I can show you my first chapter. Clint Straker shares more in common with unicorns than you might think.”
“I’m sure you’re right,” he said. “Maybe another time.”
She smiled, got into her Prius, and drove off. Ian watched her go.
“Why are you so fucking polite?” a familiar voice asked. “Tell her where to stick her unicorn. That’s what Clint Straker would do.”
Ian smiled as Margo stepped out of the shadows. “I’m not Clint Straker.”
“You could have fooled me,” Margo said. “How did the signing go?”
“It was great. I may need to ice my wrist.”
“From inscribing so many books or because you’re practicing Ronnie’s method for staying healthy?”
“Both,” Ian said and he hugged her. She squeezed him tight. “I’m glad you came.”
“What else did I have to do? My dog-sitting business has dried up, all because of one negative Yelp review.”
“You left the dogs alone with a pile of food, a bucket of water, and a corpse impaled with a fireplace poker.”
“One time!” Margo said. “How often is that likely to happen?”
Ian laughed and gestured to the bookstore. “Why didn’t you come for the reading and the Q and A?”
“Living it was enough. I’m still suffering from PTSD.”
“Really?” Ian said.
“No, I’m fine. What we went through forced me to get my shit together. I’m focusing entirely on my music now,” she said. “I’m writing songs. I play three nights a week at a steak house here in town and I do a lot of weddings, bar mitzvahs, that kind of thing.”
