The first deception, p.10
The First Deception, page 10
part #1 of Jack Noble Prequel Series
“That wasn’t our doing,” Noble said. “Someone led us to the Jeep.”
“I did.” The screen door scratched open and a tall brunette stepped in. Her hair was pulled back in a loose pony tail with strands draped over her right shoulder. Slight traces of makeup remained on her attractive face. She looked to be in her early thirties. Her tank top revealed toned arms and shoulders adorned with a small amount of ink. Might’ve been the tips of angel’s wings. Noble couldn’t tell from the current angle.
“It was you on the phone.” It started to crystallize in Jack’s head.
She nodded once. There was no smile or other sign that she did it for any reason other than it was part of the job.
“Gentlemen, allow me to introduce you to Alexa Steele. For reasons unknown, she selected and recommended you two scumbags for my program.”
Steele stepped forward. “Let it be known I did not agree with how the events of today were handled. And it is not your program, Cribbs. You oversee training. That is all.”
Cribbs pulled the cigar out of his mouth and spat a few loose pieces of tobacco toward the floor. His cheeks burned red, while his lip twitched.
“We were told the mark was—”
Steele held up her hand and cut Bear off while shooting a look at Cribbs. “Witherspoon was everything you heard, and more. My boss verified all of it. My problem does not lie with the job, but how Cribbs handled you two. It’s funny how someone who criticized his handlers for years could be so horrible at the job.”
“They made it out alive,” he said. “Passed the final test.”
Something about the smug look on the old instructor’s hardened face combined with the knowledge they were deliberately set up as a means for a test triggered a reaction in Noble. He lunged forward, fist drawn back. He didn’t care about the consequences for what he was about to do. But he didn’t make it that far. Bear hooked his elbow and spun him around.
“Stand down, man.” He grabbed Jack by the shoulders. “This isn’t the time or place.”
Noble stared into Bear’s intense eyes for a moment. The rage subsided.
Cribbs laughed, but the fresh sheen of sweat on his forehead told a different story. He knew what Noble and Bear were capable of, and the last thing he wanted was their anger directed at him.
“This was nothing different than we’ve done in the past.” Cribbs held up a finger to silence Steele as she started to speak. “You and I can discuss this alone, Miss Steele.”
Steele’s mouth drew tight and her nostrils flared. She took offense at the way Cribbs emphasized Miss. Made it sound like he didn’t regard her as an equal in any way.
“Guys, you passed.” Cribbs reached into his pocket and tossed them a set of keys. “You’re part of the team now, God help us. Take my car, head down to the barracks and get rinsed off and changed. There’ll be a meal waiting for you after.”
Chapter Eighteen
Alexa Steele sat at the table across from her uncle. She frowned at the man as he chugged half a can of beer. He slammed it down in the sweat ring on the table and drew his bare arm across his mouth. The wetness matted down his graying arm hair.
She’d known Cribbs as long as she could remember. He’d known her longer. In fact, he’d been there at her birth. Not all that uncommon, considering her mother was his sister. She grew up in awe of the man. A spy for the CIA. He always told her she could never tell any of her friends his secret. They could both get in trouble. He had spent years in Eastern Europe following the Vietnam War. Cribbs had ingrained himself amongst top KGB agents. He was responsible for collecting hundreds of secrets over the course of four years before outing himself when he took down a corrupt general in the early eighties. It wasn’t planned, but he couldn’t let the opportunity pass.
Steele knew from a young age she wanted to be like her uncle. She dedicated herself to martial arts, running track and cross country, and her studies. She was so devoted to school that she graduated a year early. She didn’t have many friends at that time, but it didn’t bother her. Dating and partying were for those without life plans. She’d been fortunate enough to have adopted one before turning eleven years old, a time when the other girls were starting to lose their minds over boys.
Cribbs had been a good uncle to her, even after her father passed away and her mother remarried when Steele was only eight years old. She took her new father’s last name and followed his advice regarding her future. If she really wanted to make a difference, he told her, then she needed to pursue her law degree before opting for the Agency. Then she could be placed in a position where her work would affect millions at any given moment. This strategy had served him well in D.C., as he spent years inside the White House serving both Democrat and Republican presidents.
Steele’s journey led her to Georgetown for her undergrad and law school. She had the grades and extracurriculars to go anywhere. Graduating top of her class while running track at the collegiate level was impressive, even to the board at Harvard. But D.C. was where she wanted to be. It pulled at her. It was home.
Cribbs tried his damnedest to talk her out of joining the Agency. A man with plenty of dirt on others, he pulled every bureaucratic string he could find. This resulted in numerous interviews for Alexa with some of the nation’s top law firms. Steele obliged and interviewed. And she turned down every job she had been offered. She wanted the CIA.
She wanted this, she supposed.
“Alexa, I know you don’t agree with my methods.”
Steele cut Cribbs off. “I don’t agree with the plate of bacon you eat for breakfast every morning, Douglas. This is an entirely different matter. Those boys could have been detained or could have even died today.”
“Could’ve, could’ve.” He leaned back in his chair. “Those boys, as you call them, are killers now. And I set that job up the way it had to go. We’re not gonna be there for them when they’re standing in the back of a Baghdad brothel trying to find a way out of the city because they were made by some terrorist’s girlfriend.”
“You wouldn’t have done this if they were any of the other recruits. All of whom, I might add, washed out. And now, we’ve got felony assault of police officers to deal with. This won’t go over well.”
“You can take care of that.” Cribbs lifted his bottle of beer to his lips and took a sip.
“I know I can take care of it. But I shouldn’t have to. That’s the point.” She pointed at her chest. “It’s only because they’re my guys you did this. I told you’d they’d make it through the first week when you were whining about them being unfit for the program, and they made it. I warned you about pushing Noble too far and you almost got your old ass beaten by him. Every step of the way, you fought me on them, told me to pull them, and they showed you up.”
Cribbs’s eyes narrowed.
Randall McKenzie stuck his narrow frame into the room. He offered a smile to his associates. “Am I interrupting something?”
Steele waved him off. “You got a beef with me, you take it up with McKenzie, or go over his head to the director. But you risked two lives today and it didn’t have to be that way.”
“What do you know?” Cribbs slapped the table with his palm, knocking over his drink. “You got your damn law degree and you sit there in Langley without a clue how things work in the real world.”
“I know exactly how they work. We put our agents in the best possible position to succeed. That’s the support they’ll get from us when they go over to do their jobs. Now you’ve set Noble and Logan up to distrust us from the moment they’re part of the team. How does that help anybody?”
Cribbs knocked his chair over as he rose to his feet. He aimed a stubby finger at his niece. “You listen to me, girl.”
“Girl?” Steele’s chair toppled back as she leapt up to meet him. They stood chest to chest. “I haven’t been a girl in—”
Cribbs moved his head to the side to get away from her sharp fingernail. “When everything goes wrong, it won’t be you heading out there to fix it. You understand? If I’m gonna have to work with these guys, trust them out in the field, I need to know they can survive. They don’t have the pedigree of everyone else on the team.”
“You mean all those guys who were outed as operatives and are sitting on their thumbs in Nice while waiting for a boat out?”
Cribbs took a deep breath. She’d cut him on that one. She knew her uncle prided himself on the work he had done, and the training he used to build up his recruits. They were an elite team who moved in and out of hostile countries at will. Whatever the job called for, they did it. One simple breach, and all that work meant nothing. It was ruined until they learned how far the information had been disseminated.
“If I might be so bold as to interject,” McKenzie said, splitting the pair apart with his arm and redirecting them to their turned-over seats. “Noble and Logan are the perfect pair to send over. There’s no tape on them, so to speak. They have no background in any force aside from half of Recruit Training on Parris Island, and as you know, the guys we’re up against have managed to gather intelligence on many of our operatives.”
“That’s been my point all along,” Steele said.
“No one could have predicted this situation,” Cribbs said.
“Regardless,” McKenzie said, “Alexa is right. So I move that we put behind us what happened today and move forward with preparing those two for what they are about to face.”
“They’re prepared.” Cribbs folded his arms over his chest. He worked his jaw, shook his head. “I didn’t think they’d get out of that situation today, but they did.”
Steele stifled a smile. She knew how hard this was for her uncle. No good could come from reveling in it to his face.
McKenzie leaned forward. “We don’t have much time, Cribbs. Every hour that passes places our asset in more danger. We need a team on the ground capable of infiltrating and rescuing her. Are Noble and Logan our guys? Because if they are, I want Alexa to escort them to Langley tonight, get them processed and read in, and outfitted for their trip. We need them overseas by this time tomorrow.”
Cribbs stared at the bottle in front of him for several seconds. He worked the corner of the label free and pulled it off. It rolled up tight, like a joint.
If only, Steele thought.
“They’re our guys.” Cribbs refused to make eye contact. “I hope.”
Chapter Nineteen
The plane touched down in Istanbul mid-day, capping off an intense twenty-four-hour period that saw Bear and Noble finish their first assignment, face betrayal from their handlers, and officially become unofficial contractors for the CIA. Outside of a small circle at the Agency and Pentagon, anyone who accessed their personnel files would see that they were Marine Scout Snipers, which was usually enough to put an end to any further prying.
When Noble asked Steele how small of a circle knew the truth beyond her and Cribbs and the ATRIA team, she replied, “Three people, and the President is not one of them.” He doubted the President didn’t know of the team’s existence. Later that night they met a man named McKenzie and fit him into the puzzle as Cribbs and Steele’s boss. Their interaction with him was minimal, consisting of a quick introduction and wishes of good luck.
Steele whisked them around the installment while filling their heads with more information than they should have been able to retain in such a short amount of time. Noble powered through with increased focus and managed to keep about eighty percent of it ingrained in his memory. He figured between him and Bear, they should have no issues recalling the most important details.
Both men were required to memorize three series of twelve-digit numbers linked to bank accounts and safe deposits in Switzerland, Grand Cayman, and Singapore. The accounts had accessible balances in the six-figures. A warning followed that if they drained them, the Agency would make sure they would have no chance to enjoy the money. In the safe deposits they would find small bills in multiple currencies, firearms, and alternate identities. Noble thought it was something out of a Bourne novel and wondered if the accounts truly existed, or were they mentioned solely to give Bear and him the feel-goods. The hour that Steele made them review the dossiers of their false identities was enough to convince him the accounts did in fact exist.
They left the facility the next morning with little more on their backs than they had entered with, but equipped with enough knowledge to survive for months on their own. Prior to boarding the Gulfstream bound for New York, they were briefed on the task ahead.
Mary Margaret O’Neil was a thirty-six-year-old, fourteen-year veteran of the Agency. She had been responsible for extracting intelligence from a well-placed foreign official that had led to the downfall of Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife Elana in Romania. Extracting information was her specialty, it seemed. When she began her career as a young woman fresh out of Trinity College, she had aspirations of becoming an analyst. Psychological testing indicated she was better suited for another path. Training revealed she had far more ability than she ever realized. She took to the job of being a spy like she had been born across enemy lines.
Two weeks ago, O’Neil’s small team had been infiltrated by a man they believed was a solid informant. Two of her men were captured and taken to Syria. The terrorists who abducted them made no effort to hide this from anyone. One man was killed shortly after arriving at their fortified facility. They tortured the other until he gave up the names of every man and woman in their group, effectively neutering the Agency’s Middle East clandestine operations.
By the time O’Neil realized the extent of the damage, they abducted her in broad daylight with a corrupt police chief’s blessing. He even provided them with an escort out of Istanbul.
The Agency moved quickly against the chief, detaining him and taking him to an undisclosed location in a non-neighboring country. To date, they had not been able to extract any information from him. He tried to pass it off on a colleague. This turned out to be false, as expected. Clearly his terrorist ties were stronger than those to his job.
Steele ended their briefing with one final piece of advice.
If you have the option of choosing between death or capture, take death.
They traveled from New York to Paris, switched planes, and flew to Istanbul’s Ataturk Airport.
Noble and Bear waited until the plane cleared out before exiting. The vessel whistled at them as they trudged down the deserted aisle. It was easier this way. No one bumping into them. No chance of their carry-ons being knocked loose or stolen.
They were dressed in jeans and flannels. The goal was to make them look like American tourists starting a journey across Europe in Istanbul. With their ragged beards, the look was convincing.
One step into the exhausting jetway, both realized they needed a change of clothing. The heat and humidity were as intense as late August on Parris Island.
They cleared customs with little scrutiny, found their checked luggage, and stepped out into the heat. Smog choked the horizon, diffusing the shimmering sunlight. Traffic in front of the terminal was unlike anything Noble had seen before. There were taxis everywhere, parked however the hell they wanted. The smell of exhaust was unbearable. Bearded men yelled at them in a language neither understood. The smart ones quickly switched to English.
“Give you a ride, buddy?”
“I know the best place in town for two Americans like you.”
“Come with me, I know special spot.”
They ignored them all. Bear led the way down the crowded sidewalk to the predetermined meeting place. A man named Serkan was to meet them. They hadn’t been told anything else about him. Wise, Jack figured, in case they were detained by officials at the airport. The less they knew, the less they had to lie about, and there was already plenty.
A man with close-cropped hair and a short beard stood at the end of the long walkway holding a piece of paper in his hand. He glanced between it and Noble and Bear. With a quick nod, he opened the rear door, grabbed their bags and dropped them in the trunk, and then hopped in on the front driver’s side without waiting for Noble or Bear to climb in.
“Guess that’s our ride,” Bear said.
Noble looked over his shoulder. Were they being watched by anyone? What if Steele’s transmission had been intercepted by the group who took O’Neil? They could have already dealt with Serkan and sent an imposter in his place. No picture of the guy had been provided to them.
Bear placed his hand on the door and leaned inside. Noble saw the driver pull something from his shirt pocket and twist in his seat to show Bear.
“I think he’s legit.” Bear stepped back and made room for Noble to see.
Jack stopped. “One day on the job and all of a sudden you can read people in a foreign country like you’ve got twenty years’ experience profiling?”
“Don’t know about all that,” Bear said. “But he’s got a shield that matches what we saw earlier.”
“Yeah, can’t fake that.” Noble shook his head. For the first time he wondered if they were in over their heads.
The guy leaned over and rolled down the passenger side window. “Gentlemen, you can continue to stand on the sidewalk all day if you wish. But if you see that car up there, inside it are two men who would like nothing more than to detain you two and find out why you are here. So I suggest, if you want to move forward, get inside of the car.”
“Jack, even if he’s armed, look at him. The two of us can take him.”
