Countdown, p.12
Countdown, page 12
I open the door to the second Peugeot. “I wish to ride with Jeremy.”
Victor purses his lips. “It will be crowded.”
I wait for Jeremy to enter before me. “We won’t mind.”
Actually, it is crowded with the three of us—me, Jeremy, and the French intelligence officer—shoved into the rear seat, but I don’t care, even if my pistol is digging into my right ribs. But I don’t move or shift or do anything to display that I might be uncomfortable, not in front of these two men.
Even though I’m being shoehorned in, the ride is comfortable—much more comfortable than I’ve been used to in the last few days, bouncing around in up-armored Humvees, the interior all metal and sharp edges. As we race along a wide expanse of runway, passing aprons holding Lockheed C-130 Hercules four-engine transport aircraft, Victor says, “Where is Oliver? Is he on his way to London?”
“No,” Jeremy says, the words simple but as hard as iron. “Oliver is dead.”
“Oh, Jeremy. My condolences.”
“He was beheaded.”
Victor shakes his head, says a brief prayer in French.
I keep quiet, and so does Jeremy.
Exactly ten minutes later the two Peugeots pass through the wide-open doors of an aircraft hangar and park near three Puma helicopters, their blades secured to landing struts. We climb out of the cars and the muscle goes ahead of us, to an office at the right side of the building. Everywhere there are large signs saying NE PAS FUMER.
Victor leads us in and there’s a desk on one side, a cluster of phones and computer terminals, and nearby, a conference table. Three young men in slacks, white shirts, and neckties are sitting in front of the terminals. The muscle takes up positions near the door and in the corners of the room. On the other side of the room is…
What?
Yeah.
A buffet table holding plates of cold meats, at least half a dozen types of cheeses, and assorted fruit. There are juices, wines, and a coffee dispenser.
The French way of counterterrorism, I suppose.
Victor says, “Some refreshments?”
“No,” I say, grabbing a chair, pulling it free, sitting my weary butt down. “We’re looking for a debrief. Where’s Rashad? What’s he up to?”
I see Victor look to Jeremy and there’s the briefest flicker of an expression on Jeremy’s face. That little gesture has just marked an unofficial change-of-command ceremony.
Victor knows I’m in charge.
He says to one of the men, “Michel!”
The youngest man hands over a sheet of paper, and Victor and Jeremy sit down. Victor lets out a long, bone-weary sigh.
“As we were afraid,” he says, rubbing the back of his bristly head. “Rashad is here. And tonight…if all goes well for him—we hope not—he will be taking possession of an RA-115 from a criminal ring operating out of Kazakhstan. We have heard various whispers here and there that afterward he’s arranging transport to New York. Manhattan, I mean.”
Through my exhaustion and overwhelmed feeling of being here in France, cut off and alone, part of my intelligence training suddenly roars to life, and I’m not a bit tired anymore.
“Wait,” I say. “An RA-115? Are you certain?”
“Quite,” Victor says.
Jeremy slowly shakes his head. “That’s correct, Amy. A Russian-made suitcase nuclear bomb. And if we don’t stop Rashad in the next few hours, it’s on its way to New York City.”
Chapter 35
A FEW dark seconds pass, and I look to Victor and Jeremy. There’s birdsong nearby, and the far-off grumble of aircraft engines at work, and I smell the cheeses, and that’s when you take a breath and hope that in the next few seconds, the two intelligence men—one from Britain and one from France—will break into grins and say, “Fooled ya!”
Oh, yeah, that’s what I’m hoping for: that these two capable and brave men will show their manly heritage and laugh at pulling one over on the naïve American woman. (After all, women will believe anything.) But there’s no laughter, no smiles, no knowing glances at each other.
My intelligence mind is really kicking into overdrive now, and I feel sick to my stomach, recalling a certain training module I experienced when I was once an Army captain.
I say to them, “You know what will happen if a nuclear device of just one kiloton—one-fifteenth the size of what we dropped on Hiroshima—were to detonate in Times Square?”
Victor nods and Jeremy says, “I think we all know the scenario.”
“The scenario…” I stare at the both of them and say, “Back in the Army, I once took part in a classified training mission, complete with virtual-reality helmets. It was like you were really there, south of Times Square on Broadway, standing on the sidewalk. There was a bright flash of light from the north…and then there were fires. Buildings. Cars. Men in suits walking to work. Sharp young women moving quickly, also on their way to work. Little lines of schoolchildren, heading to school. Instantly…all were turned into flaming lumps of screaming, charred bodies. Some of them moved a few feet before dropping to the sidewalk.”
Victor clears his throat and I roll right over him. “Others were cut down by all the flying glass, or crushed by the falling concrete. Paint bubbled up on buses and taxicabs from the thermal flash. That virtual-reality training…I was there. I saw it. Felt it. Heard it. Smelled the burning bodies. The training module said in the very first hours of that one-kiloton burst, seventy-five thousand people would be killed outright in Manhattan, with more than one hundred twenty-eight thousand injured. The radioactive fallout would extend from Manhattan all the way to Stamford, Connecticut.”
I pause. “That’s what the scenario says.”
Another few heavy seconds pass.
I have both men’s attention, and even the other French intelligence officers in the room—sensing something has changed in the tone, in the atmosphere, from having mentioned something so deadly and obscene—these professionals have also fallen silent.
I clear my throat, wipe my moist hands on my new black slacks. I look to Victor and then to Jeremy, and back to Victor.
I say, “You say Rashad Hussain is somewhere near here, and is going to receive a portable nuclear device?”
“Yes,” Victor says.
To Jeremy I say, “And you want to stop him?”
“Yes,” Jeremy says.
I shake my head. “We’re not going to stop him.”
I pause.
“We’re going to cut off his goddamn head and put it on a pike.”
Chapter 36
IN HIS perfectly clean and ordered office in Langley, Ernest Hollister’s assistant comes in and takes a chair, holding two sheets of paper in his hand.
“Update?” Ernest asks.
Tyler Pope says, “The smoke order has been dispatched. Amy Cornwall has attempted to check in via the normal channel and at the embassy in Paris. Neither attempt was successful.”
“Good,” he says.
“Her husband has also tried to reach out.”
“Remind me again who is he, what he does?”
“Tom Cornwall,” Tyler says, crossing his legs. “Journalist now working with Criterion News Services out of Manhattan. Covers national security issues. Contacted our night desks twice this morning, looking for information about his wife. The first number he tried had already been disconnected after Amy was smoked. He got through the second time, but no joy, of course.”
Ernest nods with satisfaction. “Happy to see a reporter getting stonewalled for a change. Just for safety’s sake, I want eyes and ears on Tom Cornwall soonest. I want to know what this poor man is hearing from his wife.”
“Poor man?” Tyler asks.
He says, “Any man unfortunate to be married to Amy has to be poor. Tell me, where is she now?”
“Sir, she’s still with Jeremy Windsor. The MI6 operative. They were going to London, but now they’re heading to Paris.”
Now he’s not satisfied. “Paris? Why in hell are they going to Paris?”
Tyler pauses. “It seems Windsor is chasing after BROKER. Our asset who’s in Paris. And Cornwall is at his side.”
Ernest feels a cold, deep anger rise inside him. Damn woman. Damn that woman…if she had just followed orders, had done her job, this complication, this horrible complication would not have arisen.
And now it was still on him, even if she had been smoked, had gone rogue.
Amy Cornwall was still his.
Ernest says, “How many snatch teams do we have in Western Europe?”
“Two,” Tyler says. “One in Sicily. The other in London.”
Snatch teams are civilian contractors working for the Agency and other friendly intelligence services around the world, grabbing terrorist suspects and supporters and transporting them to black sites for interrogation—although, officially and legally, black sites were no longer authorized.
Which is true.
There is not a single memo or slip of paper in all of Langley that indicates that black sites are still open.
Ernest says, “Give them the whole rundown on Amy Cornwall. I want her snatched and dumped into a black site in the next twelve hours.”
“Yes, sir,” Tyler says.
Chapter 37
TOM CORNWALL is in his office at One World Trade Center when his boss comes in without bothering to knock. Tom always keeps his door open, but knows from experience that courtesy is a rarely used word in Dylan Roper’s vocabulary.
Dressed in his Upper West Side–style seersucker suit, Roper thrusts a sheet of paper out and says, “You write this?”
Tom fights off a yawn, knowing any sign of fatigue would ratchet up Roper’s pissed-off meter a few more degrees, and says, “If it has my name on it, I’m sure I did.”
Roper says, “There’s not much here beyond the piece that Vicky the Vampire moved overnight.”
Tom gathers himself and says, “Vicky’s piece was just a news brief. I got a few additional comments from reps in the DoD and unnamed folks I know in the intelligence world, plus some background info on the use of mercenary forces by the government in the past few years.”
“Is this the big piece you told me about at lunchtime the other day? If so, it’s a piece of shit.”
The lack of sleep last night, Denise calling him a liar, and his attempts to find out what’s going on with Amy bubble up inside Tom. “With all due respect, Dylan, it’s got my name on it, so it’s not a piece of shit. And that’s a story that broke overnight. The piece I’m working on is going to be much, much bigger.”
Roper crumples up the paper, tosses it in a nearby wastebasket. “How much bigger?”
That message from Yuri:
Get out of New York.
“It might approach 9/11 bigger.”
Roper’s eyes widen. “You bullshitting me?”
“No.”
Roper rubs his chin. “If you’re right, that’s going to be one hell of a story. Remember post-9/11, when it was revealed that the FBI field office in Phoenix had sent out a warning in July 2001 about Arabic students taking flight-training lessons? Some of them were at the controls on 9/11. Yet that warning was ignored—the intelligence agencies were too busy following procedures and protecting their turf.”
Tom says, “Yeah, I remember. Lots of folks have forgotten, but not me.”
His boss says, “Imagine if one of those FBI agents back then had gotten angry enough to leak it to the New York Times or the AP. The story could have broken back then…the plot could have been stopped dead in its tracks. Pulitzers all around, thousands of lives saved, a couple of wars averted.”
Tom thinks about that, his hands feeling cool with anticipation. His boss is oh so very right.
Roper says, “How much longer?”
“I’m still working on it.”
“Have you reached out to your wife, Amy?”
One of his phones starts to ring. He ignores it.
“My wife and I keep our separate careers separate,” Tom says, repeating what he’s said before to Roper and others here at Criterion.
“But she works for the CIA, right? Or the NSA? Or something like that?”
His phone keeps on ringing.
“She’s a government contractor,” Tom says. “You know that.”
“So why aren’t you using her as a source?”
“She wouldn’t be my source,” Tom says, “and I’m not going to ask her.”
Roper nods with disdain. “All right. Then get the story, one way or another. Nail it—or you can explain to Amy how the two of you are going to support a family living in Manhattan on one salary.”
His boss leaves the office and Tom kicks the side of his desk, and notes that his phone has stopped ringing.
Damn.
Which one?
He checks out his office phone and his two burner phones. They turn up empty, but his personal iPhone is winking at him.
Voicemail message.
He checks the number.
UNKNOWN
He slides through the commands on the iPhone and puts it on speaker. The first thing out is a burst of static.
And then another.
Then four words from a familiar voice that rivets him to the chair.
“…Tom, it’s me. I’m…”
Then the call cuts off.
Amy.
Amy was trying to reach him, just as he was dealing with his dick boss.
Damn it!
He replays it three times, trying to gather what’s going on, how her voice is, her mood.
“…Tom, it’s me. I’m…”
Her voice is tired, flat, seems tense.
I’m what?
I’m okay?
I’m wounded?
I’m a prisoner somewhere?
Again he plays the message, gets no further answers.
His reporter’s instinct tells him what can be proven, nothing else.
All he knows is that Amy is alive, and that she tried to reach him. But because the number came in as UNKNOWN, he doesn’t know where she is.
That’s all.
Damn it.
Chapter 38
JEREMY WINDSOR’S seatmate hands back his iPhone, disappointed.
He asks, “No success?”
“Some,” she says. “Not a total failure, but I was able to leave a message on his voicemail before I lost coverage. At least he knows I’m alive.”
“And well,” Jeremy says.
“That still remains to be seen,” Amy replies.
The two of them are in the same Peugeot, being driven through the French countryside toward the setting sun on the two-lane D4 outside Paris. An identical car in front of them contains Victor and two of his staff; a third one behind them carries three armed men and the driver.
The silence is thick between them in the rear seat, until Jeremy says, “Lot of battles have been fought on this very land we’re passing through, during the First and Second World Wars. Hundreds of thousands of Frenchmen perished out here.”
“You trying to cheer me up?” Amy asks. “If so, you’ve got a hell of a way of doing it.”
Jeremy says, “Just wanting to make a point. The French get teased a lot about being ‘surrender monkeys,’ shite like that. Not true. After what they’ve been through, they’re just a bit more particular in choosing their fights. I’ve worked with enough of them in the field to know that.”
“Is that where you and Victor hooked up?”
The lead Peugeot makes an abrupt left turn without signaling. Jeremy holds on to the seat as their Peugeot follows. The road is narrow, ill-maintained, lots of cracks and potholes, but the ride is still a comfortable one.
“Yes.”
“Which field was that?”
“Chad,” he says, the memory now coming back to him, associated with burning heat in the day, shivering cold at night, and the smell of camel dung. “Victor and I were on a joint operation, surveilling a Boko Haram group on a march. They were approaching a village…out in the open in daylight.” The memory gets stronger and he squeezes his right hand into a fist. “Out in the open! We both were able to contact our respective militaries…we had RAF assets and a helicopter squadron belonging to their Foreign Legion at an airfield in N’Djamena…less than thirty minutes’ flying time away.”
Amy goes right to the heart of the matter. “Why didn’t they answer your calls?”
“Diplomacy,” Jeremy says, nearly spitting out the word. “We learned later that high-level negotiations were under way among the EU, the UN, Nigeria, Chad, and Boko Haram. Blasting this column away to atoms was going to upset these negotiations. We were told to stand down…and we watched as the village was burned, the men were lined up and shot, and the women and children were raped and then dragged away in chains.”
Jeremy realizes he’s let loose information about a highly classified operation, but so what? Poor Amy here is out of a job; she’ll probably never even get back to America. So what difference does it make?
He goes on. “That’s when Victor and I reached our…arrangement. Going forward, if we ever had a chance to do good and screw diplomacy, we would take it.”
Amy says, “I’m with you.”
“And glad of it,” he says, meaning every word.
“I know.”
“Do you?” he asks.
Amy says, “I certainly do. A while ago Victor offered you an opportunity to bundle me up and ship me home. You didn’t take it.”
Jeremy sits very still for a moment. “You heard us.”
“I did.”
“You speak French.”
Amy says, “I most certainly do. Hard not to, considering where I grew up.”
Jeremy quickly thinks things through and says, “You told me you were raised in LA.”
“I was,” Amy says. “Lewiston-Auburn, in Maine. Two closely knit towns with a huge French-Canadian population. You assumed I meant Los Angeles.”
He can’t help smiling. “Good job,” he says. “You fooled me.”
“Let’s see if I can keep it up.”
