Lost target a travis bis.., p.13
Lost Target: A Travis Bishop Thriller, page 13
At least not yet.
It was at that moment that Travis realized that while Director Stewart had called him into service as someone who knew what needed to be done and had the experience to do it, there was also something more deadly as part of the calculus.
Travis was expendable.
He wasn’t part of the CIA anymore, had no ties to the government, and was, for all intents and purposes, a private citizen. It was one of the CIA’s favorite ploys—disavow and disassociate. And now he’d been paired up with Jace, who had a wife and a child to consider.
Was Jace also expendable, just like him?
Travis didn’t have a chance to mull over his thoughts anymore. The helicopter quickly descended, landing at a small airfield next to another helicopter, this one painted green with prominent Marine markings. Getting the thumbs up from the pilot, Travis pulled off his headset, unbuckled his seatbelt, and hopped out, following Jace. They ran toward a tall, thin silhouette of a man who was waving at them from the doorway of an open hangar. Travis stopped as he got to the edge, looking around him. Inside was a small, highly polished Gulfstream G280 sitting inside, the door open, a set of steps touching the concrete floor. There were two men standing nearby, plus four dark-suited agents hovering along the perimeter. Travis strode toward the men, stopped, and extended his hand.
“Hello, Mr. President. It’s nice to see you again.”
29
President Robert Mosley wasn’t unfamiliar to Travis. But seeing him again left a knot in the pit in his stomach. It had nothing to do with the fact that the man standing in front of him was one of the most powerful in the world.
It had everything to do with why Travis had seen him in the first place.
Travis swallowed as he stretched his hand out to shake the President’s hand under the watchful eye of the Secret Service that was standing nearby. It wasn’t every day that the President of the United States met up with him at a secret location. Travis noticed how the agent’s suspicious eyes would dance over Travis and Jace and then move to other things in the area. Always watching. Always waiting.
Travis dropped the President’s hand and shoved his hands into his pockets, then swallowed and looked at the ground. The last time Travis had seen President Mosley, they’d shaken hands too, but that was after an unsuccessful assassination plot had almost taken out the President and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who were gathered in the Oval Office ready to be briefed by the CIA.
But the agents that had been there had been compromised.
Remembering the moment nearly knocked the breath out of Travis. He remembered standing at the door and looking at the woman who was holding a dart attached to a poisoned ring to the President’s neck, ready to plunge it into his vein.
It had been none other than his former dead fiancée, Kira Pozreva.
And given the situation, Travis had no choice but to kill her.
The President’s voice interrupted the train of thought that Travis was having. “Sorry for the diversion,” President Mosley tugged on the zipper of his jacket.
Jace answered before Travis had a chance. “No problem, sir. What can we do for you?”
Travis tried not to smile at the overly easy way that Jace spoke to President Mosley. It was as if his presence carried no more weight than if Jace was at a restaurant, serving President Mosley a cheeseburger, the President stripped of his title and just another regular guy.
It made Travis like Jace all the more.
“We’ve got a bit of a problem.” The President pointed to the man standing next to him. “This is Beckett Klein. You spoke to him on the phone, I believe?”
Beckett shook hands all around. “I’m in charge of the Secret Service detail for the White House. Yeah, I’m the one that called you.”
To Travis, Beckett Klein looked like a former basketball player. He was lanky with overly long arms and legs and giant hands that looked like they could grip the side of a basketball in one palm. He wasn’t tall enough to play basketball, though, probably only an inch or so taller than Travis, unless of course he was a forward.
Travis looked away and then back at Beckett again. His body might look like a basketball player, but his square jaw, dark brown skin, and black, close-cropped hair made him look like somebody who had gone into the military, and then hopped the fence into the world of the Secret Service. Travis narrowed his eyes. “You always been with the Secret Service?”
“Nope,” Beckett shook his head. “Marine.”
That figured. “Thought so.”
“You?”
“Army.”
Beckett raised a single eyebrow “Hoorah.”
Travis gave him a nod, looking back to President Mosley. “Sorry to be abrupt, sir, but why are we here? I’m supposed to be in Italy and not getting rides on your choppers.”
President Mosley chuckled, then his face became serious. “Sorry for the interruption, Travis. I know you’re not with the CIA anymore but there’s not a lot of people I can trust at the moment.”
Travis furrowed his eyebrows and crossed his arms in front of his chest. He knew as the President, there were always people who were coming to get you on every level –— whether that was the physical threat of assassination or kidnapping, the professional assassinations capable of political intrigue and innuendo, or just the physical wear and tear on the body that constant stress put on him. “What does that mean?”
Beckett looked over his shoulder and then motioned for the three of them to move a little farther away from the ring of Secret Service members that were watching them. If he didn’t want the security detail to hear, things were serious. “We have a significant problem, one that needs to be handled. It’s not something that I could just roll out to anyone.”
Jace interrupted. “Mr. President, we were in the middle of chasing down a threat that took out three CIA agents at a safe house in France. I’m not sure —”
The President held up his hand, which silenced Jace immediately. “I know, I know, Jace. I’m sorry about your team, but everything will be clear in just a second.”
Travis could see President Mosley’s eyes look off in the distance as if he was waiting for something. A moment later, it was obvious what it was. A vehicle pulled up. Travis could see three heads in the car. It looked like a driver, a man, and a woman — probably an attaché or assistant. Travis pressed his lips together. The government had all sorts of fancy names for people who did a whole heck of a lot of boring jobs.
A second later, a heavyset man with a crew cut and an ill-fitting suit got out of the car and strode toward them carrying a file. He extended his hand to President Moseley. “How’s it going, Robert?”
“Not bad, Sam. I’m still kickin’. Just another day at the office.”
The man that had joined them shook his head, his jowls underneath his chin nearly grazing his chest. “Don’t I know it. Who are these fine folks you’ve gathered here?”
The President pointed. “You already know Beckett Klein — the head of my Secret Service detail, but you probably don’t know these two characters. This is Jace McKee, CIA, and Travis Bishop.”
Sam reached his hand toward Travis and shook it. “Who are you with?” He frowned.
“No one.”
Jace put his hand on Travis’s shoulder. “Travis is former CIA.”
“Oh, you’re that Travis Bishop. Glad to finally meet you.”
Before Travis could respond, the President looked at Jace and Travis. “This is Sam Rose. He’s the head of the NSA.”
Travis scowled. The National Security Agency? What was the head of the NSA doing in the middle of nowhere?
For that matter, what was he doing there?
30
“I’m sure you’re wondering why all of us are here,” President Mosely said, rubbing his chin. “Sam, why don’t you go ahead and fill these boys in on what’s going on.”
Sam Rose, the Director of the NSA, reached up and loosened the tie around his neck unbuttoning the top button. Honestly, Travis couldn’t see exactly where the collar was buried up under the flesh of his neck, but Sam seemed much more comfortable after loosening it. “The reason you’re here is because you tripped over a plot that we have been watching unfold from D.C. with quite a bit of concern.”
Jace narrowed his eyes. “The Chechens?”
Sam nodded. “Yep. I’m sure you saw, like we did, that there have been small groups of them entering the United States. Cells. There are small groups of four or five highly trained operatives who have been prepared to be activated at any time. This is nothing new. Countries are always sending their operatives onto our land. Only this time, things are a little different.”
Travis cocked his head to the side. “How so?”
“Well, this time, it seems the Chechens were activated before they ever left their home country. They aren’t here to just sit and wait. They are ready to do something.”
Jace held a hand up, a scowl on his face. “Wait. These aren’t sleepers? Were we right about their travel? Are they moving through Ukraine?”
“Yeah. You were right. They are using Ukraine as a cover, posing as refugees. But we have a bigger problem than just the fact that some Chechens are here in the United States.”
Travis frowned. What could be worse than that? “Like?”
“They are getting classified information and access from somewhere in the White House.”
Travis shot a look at President Mosley, his heart skipping a beat. The President nodded slowly. “Sam’s right. I hate to say it, but one of my staff has turned. We think that’s how the safe house was found, Jace.”
Jace didn’t say anything, his face stony, his jaw set.
Travis leaned forward, his pulse racing. Someone compromised on the President’s staff could constitute a major breach of national security. That, in itself, explained why the Director of the NSA was with them. “Are you kidding me? How high does this go?”
“Pretty darn high,” President Mosley sighed. “Sam and I suspect that it’s Barry Pratt.”
Jace sucked in a breath. “Your Chief of Staff? The guy who has access to literally everything?”
President Mosley nodded slowly. “Yeah. That’s bad, isn’t it?”
Bad? Travis wasn’t sure that would be the word he would use. Devastating would be more like it. Travis’s mouth went dry. He knew the power of the Chief of Staff. The White House Chief of Staff was basically the gatekeeper for every single one of the President’s policies and movements during his administration. The Chief of Staff and the President were supposed to work in lockstep, much like the President and CEO of a business for all intents and purposes. The White House Chief of Staff was like the Director of Operations, someone who kept all the parts moving in the direction the President and his policy advisors dictated. But that meant that the White House Chief of Staff had to have access to literally every aspect of the government — everything from policy formation to military strategy.
Travis shook his head. “How was he compromised?” Travis knew that it was bad enough that Russian double agents had made their way into the White House and tried to kill the President and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Luckily, somehow, President Mosley’s team had managed to keep a lid on the assassination attempt. It had never gotten out in the press as far as Travis could tell. But having the White House Chief of Staff go rogue? Travis wasn’t sure that was something even President Mosley would be able to keep quiet from the American public.
But then again, stranger things had happened.
Jace ran his hand through his hair. “Wait. Are you saying that somehow the Chechens and Barry Pratt are in bed together?”
Sam loosened his tie a little bit more as if the thought of wearing it was choking him. “Yep. That’s what we think.”
Travis stared at the ground and shoved his hands in his pockets. His mind was reeling over the ramifications of the White House Chief of Staff being compromised. He knew from his years at the CIA that the Chief of Staff had exactly the same security clearance that the President did, plus he had access to all the same documents, the same intelligence, the same knowledge about the location of secret sites, where prisoners were being kept, political intentions and long-range policy initiatives designed to etch the President’s name in the annals of history. Everything.
Worse yet, the Chief of Staff, who was usually someone who had been on the President’s team for an extended period of time, always knew where the bodies were buried. He was probably the most dangerous person on the staff to have been compromised in Travis’s mind.
Travis stared at the President and Sam. The only thing he could do was shake his head. He noticed that both of the men had stayed unbelievably calm, as if the words that were coming out of their mouths were nothing more than everyday business.
Combined with the threat from the Chechens, things were far from every day in Travis’s mind.
Jace threw his hands in the air, clearly impatient to figure out what to do next. “Now what? Why are we here?”
Travis had a sinking feeling he was getting sucked down a drain, one that he couldn’t control. More accurately, he felt like the character Alice from Alice in Wonderland when she’d fallen down a hole, and everything ended up being upside down. He was supposed to be in Italy, supposed to be with Ronalfo honing his training skills for the benefit of his reining horses. He was supposed to be eating angel hair pasta with fresh pomodoro sauce, capers, and olives with the rest of the training staff and not standing at an unnamed airfield in the middle of nowhere with the President of the United States, the Director of the NSA, and the head of the White House Secret Service detail discussing a traitor that could lead to the destruction of the United States government.
Sam’s voice interrupted his thoughts. “Listen, I can only take this briefing so far. I brought with me the person that found the threat. She’s got all of the background on Barry Pratt and the Chechens and how they are tied together. She’s the one you need to work with to stop the Chechens and get a lid on the President’s staff.”
Sam held his hand up in the air and gave his assistant in the car a wave. Travis watched as a woman got out. She was wearing a navy-blue skirt with a matching navy-blue blazer, a rose-colored blouse underneath. Her hair was tied up behind her head. A few auburn strands touched the side of her face as she walked toward them, her beige heels making a clicking sound on the concrete pad that led to the entrance of the hangar. She extended her hand toward President Mosley, who shook it and gave her a single nod. She stood next to Sam, looking at Travis and Jace.
Travis blinked as Sam started the introduction. “Travis, Jace, this is Anya Pozreva. She’s —”
Travis felt a wave of nausea hit him like he’d been in a car crash. “Hey, Anya. It’s been a long time.”
“It has,” she said slowly.
Sam looked confused. “You two know each other?”
Travis shook his head. “Not well. She’s my ex-fiancée’s sister.”
31
Travis saw President Mosley elbow Sam. “You’re the Director of the NSA, Sam. You didn’t know Travis and Anya would know each other? Didn’t you read her whole jacket?”
Sam snorted. “I had no idea Travis was going to be here in the first place. How would I know that?”
Jace grinned. “This is better than a soap opera.”
Travis wasn’t sure he agreed. He didn’t have time to say anything, though. President Mosely interrupted. “Well, regardless of past history, the reality is the three of you are here because you have a certain skill set that I need in order to stop this madness before it gets out of control. Anya is the foremost expert at this point in the NSA on the Chechen threat. She’s the one who identified the breach in the White House and brought it to Sam when she saw Barry’s repeated access of sensitive files on the subject. So, she’s the one you’re going to be working with. Problems?”
Not that Travis had any choice. “No.” He glanced at Anya, who was staring at the President as if Travis didn’t exist. That was okay by him.
Jace shrugged. “Nope.”
The President stuffed his hands into his pockets. “Good. Anya, how about if you fill Travis and Jace in on what’s going on.”
“Thank you, Mr. President,” Anya answered formally. “As you have already figured out, the Chechens have used the front in Ukraine as a way to move people and products out into the wider European landscape. All of the chaos was set off when the Russians invaded. Ukraine has been a great distraction for foreign actors who have been waiting for a backdrop to move people and products without being disturbed. That, combined with the difficulties our government is having with the French, has provided a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for the Chechens to move freely throughout the Eastern Bloc countries and now into Europe. And now they’ve used that as a springboard to launch what looks like it could be a major attack on the United States.” Anya surveyed the men around her. “Barry Pratt, the White House Chief of Staff, has been turned. We don’t know what the Chechens have on him. But what we do know is who has his thumb on information leaking from the White House.”
Travis frowned. “And who is that?”
“Leca Islamov.”
Sam interrupted. “Anya has been tracking Leca for years. There is no one on my service who knows this man’s personality and movements better than she does. For God’s sake, she can practically predict what he’s going to eat for breakfast.”
Anya blushed. “I’m not sure I’m that good, Director, but I do have a pretty decent handle on what he’s up to.”
