Black Skies (22 page)

Walker took the lead, with Conley following and Bluejay in the rear. In the small foyer, a simple chandelier hung from the ceiling, and a tattered carpet covered the floor. It was dark, but another door, closed, seemed to lead deeper into the house. Walker opened the door to reveal a corridor, in which a man who Conley had seem through the window was scrambling out of one of the rooms that were being attacked from the outside, a Kalashnikov rifle in his hands. His face contorted into shock when he saw Conley, but didn’t have time to react before Conley plugged him twice in the chest with his Beretta.

Another man emerged from the farthest room on the left, but Conley could not get a shot out before he disappeared into the back bedroom. Conley advanced, with Walker close behind. The door to the back bedroom had been left partly open. Conley plunged inside, gun out and ready to shoot any threats. He was shocked by what he found.

Raza had not armed himself, nor made any defenses for himself.

The terrorist was on the floor, kneeling, arms stretched at an upward angle, palms facing upward, in a position of prayer. His eyes were transfixed in some sort of religious ecstasy.

Walker, who had been right behind Conley the whole time, barged into the room.

“Where’s Wolfe?” Conley demanded of Raza.

“He is not here,” said Raza serenely. There was victory in his tone, in his expression.

Walker stepped forward, drawing a Desert Eagle semiautomatic. “Time to say good night, asshole.”

“Allahu akb—” Raza began. He never finished.

“No!” Conley yelled. But it was too late. Walker pulled the trigger. Raza’s head erupted in blood, and he slumped to the ground.

“Walker, what did you
do?
” Conley demanded.

“Clear!” he heard someone shout from the other rooms. “Clear!” called out another voice.

“Just exterminating a pest off the face of the Earth,” he said, with contempt in his voice. He spat on Raza’s corpse.

“Goddamn it, Walker, we
had
him. He wasn’t resisting, he didn’t have a gun.”

“He deserved to die.”

“He could have told us where to find the goddamn Secretary of State!”
Conley yelled, exasperated.

“Are you giving me crap about killing a goddamn
terrorist,
Cougar?” Walker demanded, chest out like a rooster in a cockfight. Blood was pooling around Raza’s mangled head. “Maybe you’d like to die a martyr like him. Is that it?”

“Hey, hey!” said Bluejay, getting between them. “We’ve done the mission. Now, let’s get the hell out of here.”

“You watch yourself,
Cougar,
” said Walker. “Just watch yourself.” He drew his radio. “This is Walker. Requesting extraction, over.” He turned back to Conley. “We’re leaving. If there’s anything you don’t like, you’re free to stay here with
him.
”

The Lambda team filed out of the room and down the hallway. Conley took one last look at Raza’s corpse before following them.

D
an Morgan picked up Lily at her hotel and led her to the garage door that opened into Zeta Division headquarters.

“Nifty,” she said, as he opened the circuit breaker panel and put his hand on the fingerprint scanner.

“Bloody hell,” she said when they reached the War Room. “You work
here?
This is a lot nicer than our facilities across the pond.”

“Agent Randall.” Diana Bloch, looking imposing in a white starched blazer that looked vaguely Japanese, walked forward to greet her. “Welcome to the fold. We’re glad to have you.”

Seeing her there was strange and uncomfortable, kind of like having your father-in-law meet your ex-fiancée. But she was good, and they needed good people. At the very least, he was glad as hell that she was no longer against them.

Morgan took his usual seat at the table and Lily took the cue to sit next to him. Diesel was there looking dour, and Spartan too, with half her face bruised and raw, but looking strong and self-possessed. Shepard had his seat flanking Bloch on the right, as usual. To her left was a seat whose emptiness was palpable. It was where Bishop usually sat.

“So, you want to tell them?” Shepard asked Bloch, who stood at her place at the head of the table.

“He’s in the country,” she announced. “Weinberg is in the United States. His sister, Lena, too.”

“Excuse me?” said Morgan.

“We have a record of him entering the country,” said Shepard. “He arrived this morning at JFK airport.”

“Why weren’t we there to catch him?” asked Morgan, banging on the table. “We almost died trying to get him. Bishop’s in the hospital! And now we had his goddamn location
in this country!
If we could have stopped him at the airport, all we’d have had to do was bring him in!”

“It’s not that simple,” said Kirby. “We didn’t have real-time monitoring of customs and immigration services, nor the manpower to stay on top of it. We got this from one of our guys at the CIA.”

“And now we have a terrorist on American soil,” Morgan snarled.

“We’re all aware of the gravity of the situation,” said Bloch.

“Yeah, I hope you are,” he said. “Well, can we track him now, at least?”

“Weinberg has been a lot more careful,” said Shepard. “His name hasn’t turned up in any government or private databases that we have access to—no hotel registries or reservations, no transportation beyond his initial entry into the country, no wireless communication, nothing. No hits on any of his credit cards or bank accounts. Whatever we were using to find him before, it’s no good now.”

“Great,” said Morgan. “What about the EMP? If Weinberg is here, is the EMP here as well?”

“It’s our working assumption,” said Bloch.

“Any chance of finding it?”

“We’re looking into it,” said Kirby. “But we’ve got thirty thousand shipping containers arriving in this country
every day.
”

“Plus,” said Shepard, “Weinberg’s in the shipping business. If there’s one thing he knows, it’s how to get something past customs.”

“So for all we know—” Morgan began.

“It’s already here, yes,” finished Bloch.

“Fantastic.”

“We do have one lead,” said Bloch. “It’s weak, but it’s something.”

“What?” said Morgan.

“The Governor’s Charity Gala at Liberty Island. Weinberg is one of the guests. That was supposedly his reason for being in the country.”

“And why the hell do we think he’s going to show up, being as he’s in hiding and all?” asked Morgan sarcastically.

“He RSVP’d,” said Shepard. “Look, Cobra, I know it’s unlikely, but it’s really all that we have to go on.”

“It’s thin,” said Morgan.

“It’s what we have,” said Kirby.

“Weinberg has been reckless before,” added Bloch. “He may be getting reckless again.”

Morgan looked at his hands, rubbing his bandaged fingers and finding that they still hurt like hell. “All right, so what’s the plan?” he asked.

“We send in you and Agent Randall,” said Bloch. “As guests to the gala to try to find him among the crowd.”

“He knows us,” said Morgan. “Our faces. That’ll tip him off.”

“We’re counting on it,” said Bloch. “We’ll have a team doing surveillance. If and when he leaves the party, we’ll have people on him.”

“What people?” said Morgan. “I’m sorry, but we’re a couple of soldiers short of a tactical team. With Bishop in the hospital, Spartan in no condition to go out in the field, Lily and me inside, you’re left with—”

“It won’t be the Zeta tactical team,” said Bloch. “That’s the other piece of news.”

“Bad news?” asked Lily.

“It’s more of a good news, bad news situation,” said Shepard.

“Haider Raza is dead,” said Bloch. “He was killed by the Lambda tactical team and Cougar late yesterday.”

Good,
Morgan thought.
Hope the bastard suffered.
“What about the Secretary of State?”

“That’s the bad news. He wasn’t there. He was at least two days gone from Raza’s hideout when Lambda moved in. Raza and his men were killed without interrogation.”

The people around the table moaned in frustration.

“At least it’s another terrorist dead,” said Morgan.

“The upshot of this,” continued Bloch, “is that the Lambda tactical team is returning from Pakistan.”

“And Cougar?” asked Morgan.

“Cougar, too. They will be running support for the gala, and will move in on Weinberg when it’s time. They will stand by with a surveillance van and a helicopter, and Shepard back here commanding satellite surveillance. If Weinberg’s there, he won’t escape us.”

“And we have to work with a team we’ve never even met,” Morgan said.

“You’ve done plenty of ops with assets you barely knew,” said Bloch. “You know how the game is played. Plus, we’ll have one of ours on their side.”

“So we’re abandoning the search for the Secretary?” Morgan asked.

“It’s been a dead end so far,” she said. “Let the government agencies work on finding Wolfe. It’s better to focus our efforts on finding Weinberg, and the EMP. Much as I hate to say it, if he detonates it on American soil, we’ll have a much bigger problem on our hands than a missing cabinet member.”

“H
aider Raza is dead,” said Smith without averting his eyes from the road.

“Jesus,” said Chapman, squirming in the passenger’s seat of Smith’s Hyundai. The car looked, inside and out, like it had just rolled out of a factory, with not a smudge or personal touch in its interior. “Thank God. The Secretary—”

“Was not there,” said Smith. “Although he had been.”

Chapman held up his hands, like he was attempting to grasp at something. “Where? How?” he asked.

“In the Chitral valley, on the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.”

Smith had called him earlier in the day and had asked him to wait at the curb at the northwest corner of Twenty-Fifth and Pennsylvania at 5
P.M.
sharp. He’d made his excuses and been there when Smith’s jet-black Azera pulled up.

“Your people?” Chapman asked.

Smith ignored the question, which was answer enough for Chapman. “I see,” he said.

“This information needs to get to the regular government intelligence channels,” said Smith. He drove carefully, following every traffic regulation to the letter. “Open the glove compartment.”

Chapman did. In it was a manila envelope.

“Go ahead and open it,” Smith said. “You’ll find a report from an asset of yours in Pakistan.” Chapman undid the metal clasp and upturned the envelope, letting the documents inside slide out. “The story is that this was a raid from the Pakistan Taliban—motivated by some arcane theological or political dispute over what kind of fundamentalist Islam is the best. Don’t worry about the details. All you, and anyone else, need to know is that this was Jihadi-on-Jihadi—and, of course, that the Secretary is likely nearby.”

Chapman leafed through the papers. They included eyewitness accounts written in Urdu and photographs of the bloody scene. This was thorough. “What if someone asks around and discovers that something about this is off?” asked Chapman.

“They won’t,” said Smith. “And it’s in your best interest to assist in that.”

“Right,” said Chapman. If the Agency knew he was passing on information to Smith . . .

They drove without speaking, until Smith spoke. “I know that the matter of payment is a touchy subject for you—”

“So let’s not, okay?” said Chapman. “You don’t own me. I help you and you help me. That’s how it works. Got it?”

Smith offered only tacit assent.

“Good,” said Chapman. “Now, take me back to where you picked me up. I’ve got work to do.”

D
an Morgan examined his face in the mirror in the morning light. The bruising was mostly gone now, and the cut on his cheek was scabbed over. He ran his tongue over his sliced lip.

He thought of Bishop, still in the hospital in Germany. That
bastard
Anse Fleischer. Morgan resolved that he’d get him, one way or another. When they got Weinberg, Fleischer would not escape.

Jenny had freaked about his injuries, as usual, when she saw him come home beaten and bruised. At one time this would have caused endless arguments between them about his recklessness and about how being a spy would eventually kill him. She had come to terms with it and understood the importance of what he did for a living. But that didn’t mean that she wouldn’t freak out anyway.

The way she usually freaked out was by cooking compulsively, and this time was no exception. She had started making pasta from scratch, and the kitchen table was now dusted with flour and covered with drying tagliatelle. She was also baking, giving bushels of pies and cakes to the neighbors who shared the sleepy little cul-de-sac they lived in, one at a time.

He disrobed and took his morning shower, then got dressed in jeans and a polo shirt. He had slept late, still a bit jet-lagged from the trip, so when he went downstairs he found his wife already working the stand mixer, a chili-pepper-patterned bandanna on her head and a floral apron tied around her waist. Thanks to the noise, she had not heard him approaching, and emitted a little yelp of surprise when he put his arms around her.

“It’s only me,” he said, leaning in to kiss her. Her cheek was dusted with white flour.

She gave him a peck on the lips without turning around. “Hey, you,” she said. “I’m baking a Christmas cake for the Rosens.”

“Honey, it’s June.”

“I know, I know,” she said. She picked up a knife and started chopping up dried apricots. “But Sandra really loves them. I think they’ll appreciate it just the same.”

“I’m sure they will,” he said.

“And it’s always a good idea to practice neighborliness,” she added.

“Be careful they don’t think you’re secretly trying to give them diabetes,” said Morgan.

“Very funny,” she said. “You’re dressed. Are you going out?”

“Just a quick errand in the city,” he said. He was going to check in on Lily, but Jenny didn’t need to know that.

“Before you go,” said Jenny, turning around to face him, “Dan, you have to talk to your daughter. She’s out and about on that motorcycle of hers at all hours. I have no idea where she
goes,
Dan, or what she’s doing. She won’t listen to me, she thinks I’m square. But she’ll listen to you. She worships you.”

Morgan stroked her cheek with his right hand. “Let the kid have a little longer leash, Jenny dear. It’ll do her good.”

“Longer leash? Dan, Alex is most definitely
off the leash.
She’s doing exactly as she pleases, and she is
too young
for that.”

“Eighteen’s old enough to move around on your own,” he said.

“I did it. Isn’t it kind of a double standard to treat her differently than I was?”

“I don’t care about double standards, I care about my daughter,” she said. “
Talk to her,
Dan.”

“All right,” he said. “I’ll talk to her.”

“Thanks,” said Jenny. “She’s over in the den. Go say good morning.”

“I don’t have to talk to her
right now,
do I?”

Jenny shot him a scolding look. “Today would be better,” she said.

“All right, all right.” He popped into the den to give his daughter a kiss and told her he’d be back later if she wanted to do something. Then he walked to the garage, got into the Shelby, and set off in the direction of Boston.

On I-93 he looked in his rearview mirror and noticed something that made him frown, although he couldn’t figure out why. It was a motorcycle some ten cars behind him, ridden by a woman in a black helmet. It made him think of Alex, although of course
her
helmet was pink.
Could it be . . .

He had to find out.

He took the next off-ramp, and watched. She had hung back, but when he was at ground level, he could see the motorcycle getting off the ramp way up behind him. He turned into McGrath Highway, and on seeing that she had followed him there, turned into Broadway.

After a few minutes he made a right into a narrow, one-way side street, which was deserted, as expected. He parked the Shelby about seven yards from the corner, completely blocking the street. He pulled the hand brake and got out of the car. He waited with arms crossed, leaning against the car for about twenty seconds until a familiar Ducati Streetfighter turned onto the street and screeched to a halt, turning sideways and almost tipping over.

In front of him was his daughter Alex’s bike, being ridden by none other.

“Busted,” he said.

She took off her helmet to reveal a face that was half ashamed, half proud.

“Just what in the hell do you think you’re doing?” he asked her.

“You know what I’m doing,” she said with a confident grin.

He had to respect her, and hell, he was even proud. It was like something he would’ve done, back in the day. But he couldn’t say
that.
This was a parenting moment. He had to admit, Jenny was right. Alex
was
going too far.

“I do,” he said, and her grin faded away. It pained him to take this away from her, but he had to be a parent. “You’re getting in
way
above your head.”

“Dad, I was just—”

“This isn’t a game, Alex. I agreed to teach you what I knew, and you agreed to stay out of trouble.”

“Dad, I’m not—”

“If you can’t honor that deal, I won’t teach you a single other thing. And that’s a promise.”

She looked at him with humiliated rage, tears welling in her eyes. She hid her face in her helmet and turned on the ignition on her Ducati.

“And one more thing!” he yelled out as she turned around to speed away. “I catch you following me or anyone else again, and you can kiss that fancy bike good-bye!”