Clear by Fire (24 page)

“Try to act professional.” Mason shoved him as a group of soldiers jumped off the bird and fanned out. Before dropping the NODs, Mason could see four more infrared lasers dancing over his chest as a team approached their position with rifles at the ready.

“You better be glad that your friends are here, or by Allah I would kick your ass,” Zeus hollered, shoving Mason back.

“Oh, really . . .”

“You two, shut the fuck up,” one of the soldiers commanded as he placed his barrel into Mason’s face.

“Uhhh, okay,” Mason replied, looking up at the man he could barely see. “So, what’s going on?”

“Keep your mouth closed,” he said as two of his teammates reached down and roughly pulled the two men out of the hole.

“Hey, go easy, I’ve got a bad back,” Mason complained as he was tossed to the ground. He felt a knee in his spine as they slipped plastic flex cuffs around his wrists and pulled them tighter than necessary. One of the men jammed a muzzle into the back of his skull, and the American prayed the operator had his finger off the trigger.

“Get him up,” a voice commanded.

The two men jerked him painfully to his feet by grabbing his secured arms. Mason was able to get his legs underneath him before they nearly pulled his arms out of their sockets and stood grinning at them in the darkness.

One of the men flashed a red-lens flashlight into his face. The
soldier’s night-vision goggles were flipped up on his helmet, and the green hue that glowed out of the eyecups barely illuminated his dark beard and cold eyes.

He held up a picture and compared it to Mason. A moment later he clicked the small disk on his chest and spoke into the microphone that jutted out in front of his mouth.

“Hunter 6, jackpot.” He took his finger off the talk button and turned back to the helicopter.

“What about the other guy?” one of the men asked.

“Bring him too.”

A soldier pulled a black bag out of his cargo pocket and pulled it over Mason’s head. Mason was guided back to the bird and felt his head being pushed down under the rotors before being forced into the Pave Hawk. The door was slammed shut and he heard the rotors spinning up as the helicopter jumped into the night sky.

Mason had no idea who these men were or where they were taking him. He was glad that they hadn’t shot Zeus and left his body in the desert, but he felt bad that he’d gotten his friend caught up in another shitty situation.

His mind ran over the possibilities. If they had wanted him dead, they wouldn’t have taken him, but that didn’t mean anything. Right now there were too many unknowns, especially the identity of whoever was working behind the scenes. Depending on what they knew, Mason felt that he was in for a bad experience. He knew what he had been willing to do to get Decklin to talk, and there was no doubt that whoever was waiting for the bird would do the same, if not worse, to him.

T
he Pave Hawk’s wheels hit the tarmac with a rubbery thud, and Mason felt the bird’s hydraulic struts compress as the pilot began shutting off the engine. He had no idea where he was and the only thing he could see was a tiny sliver of daylight at the bottom of the black bag.

The door to the Special Operations bird was thrown open, and he felt a pair of hands grab him and yank his body out of the door. The toes of his boots scraped against the ground as strong hands dragged him across the pavement and tossed him into a truck.

A body bumped into his shoulder in the artificial darkness and then the door slammed.

“I told you this was a terrible idea. You know I hate being tortured,” Zeus hissed from his side of the backseat.

“Calm down,” he replied in Arabic.

“How am I supposed to remain calm? This bag smells of rotten assholes.” They had placed an operator between them, and the man told them to shut up, and Zeus fell quiet for a moment, then whispered, “I have to go to the bathroom very badly.”

“Can you stop crying for a second and act like a professional? I’m trying to figure out where we are.”

“How are you going to figure out where we are when we have
bags over our heads? These men are going to chop off our dicks and leave us in the desert to die.”

“What are you talking about?”

“That is what your CIA does. I have heard all about it.”

“If you two don’t shut up,” the voice from Mason’s left yelled in Arabic, “I
am
going to stop this vehicle and chop off both your dicks.” Both men fell quiet and Mason tried to get a sense of where they were.

The silence didn’t last long. Zeus was nervous and unable to stay calm.

“I told you they were going to cut off our dicks,” he said.

“What is it with you and getting your dick cut off all of a sudden?”

“I don’t know,” Zeus whispered back.

“Well, shut the fuck up about it.”

“I can’t.”

“That’s it. Stop the car, Mike,” the man seated between them exclaimed.

“Mike, don’t stop the car. My friend is nervous,” Mason said quickly, trying to get some control over the situation. “Zeus, will you shut the fuck up? Look, guys, I think I’ve been pretty cool up to this point. I let you put a bag over my head and zip-tie me and do all your little spy shit, but let’s not get crazy.”

“Mr. Kane, no disrespect, but we have our orders,” a new voice said from the front seat. “If you two could just sit back there and enjoy the ride, I would really appreciate it.”

The vehicle was quiet except for the sound of the engine, which droned on as they drove. Mason didn’t feel any bumps, so he knew they weren’t going off road, and the speed was constant, so he assumed they weren’t in traffic. He was almost certain that they were driving around in circles on a base somewhere close to Libya.

The vehicle slowed before coming to a halt. The mechanical sound of a door motor creaked in the background as his door was pulled open from the outside. The overhead lights allowed Mason to see through
the fabric of the mask. It was like looking through a fogged window, but he was able to see the outline of a man reaching in to grab him. Strong hands yanked him roughly from his seat, and he scrambled to get his feet under him. A heavy grip clamped onto his shoulder as he blindly struggled to get his balance. Once he was set, he felt the man pushing him across the floor, which squeaked under his shoes.

Mason was confident that they were in a hangar.

He knew he needed these little victories to keep him alive. Knowing you were in a hangar didn’t mean much in the scheme of things, but everything that boosted his confidence would help when things got rough.

A door opened to his front, and his escort pulled up on his shoulder and said, “Watch your step.”

He lifted his foot up tentatively and was guided over a step up and into a hallway.

The temperature dropped a few degrees, which suggested an office or at least a space that had air-conditioning. Mason was pushed down a hallway, and he hoped they were going someplace to talk and not the alternative. Another door clicked open, and he was pulled into a room and pushed down into a chair.

The seat was cold under his butt, and he could feel a change in pressure as the door shut and locked with an audible click. He was in an interrogation room, but the absence of the usual shit-and-piss smell calmed his nerves. This was not the place where the hard questions would be asked.

Sitting in silence, Mason had no way of keeping track of time. All he knew was that his butt was falling asleep and he couldn’t get comfortable. The metal chair had been altered and led him to believe that he was in a CIA holding facility. The CIA loved stress positions, and one of their favorite techniques was to cut an inch off the front legs of a chair so that you had to constantly fight to keep from slipping forward. He’d known guys to spray wax on a metal chair before an interrogation just to screw with the detainee.

He was sliding himself back into his seat for the hundredth time when the door opened and footsteps scuffed across the floor. The bag was pulled off his head, and he blinked against the bright lights of the room.

Mason’s eyes adjusted slowly and the first thing he saw was a wooden table in front of him. A medium-height man, in a starched white shirt and black pressed pants, ambled slowly around into his field of view. He tossed the black bag on the table, followed by a thick manila folder, which landed with a slap.

The man took a seat. His shirt was open at the collar and his thin gold-rimmed glasses, perched on a bony nose, gave the man a banker’s air. Mason could handle muscle-bound goons and the thick-necked interrogators who spat on you when they yelled, but this guy immediately made him nervous.

“Good evening, Mr. Kane. I apologize for any theatrics on the part of my associates, but we have a few topics we need to address. I hope you understand.”

Mason stared at the man. He was going to let him do all the talking until he could get a handle on the situation.

“My name is Mr. David, and I’ve been looking for you for quite some time,” he said, peering at Mason over the top of his glasses.

Mason remained silent, and the man opened the file and began casually turning pages.

“May I call you Mason?” he asked without looking up.

“Yes,” he finally replied.

“Good,” he said, managing a thin smile. “Mason, you have had a very extraordinary and distinguished career. According to your file you were one of the youngest men to ever pass Delta selection. You have remarkable ability with languages and are fluent in Arabic, Pashto, Dari, and Spanish. Everything was going according to plan until that night in Wardak.” Mr. David looked up from the file folder, crossed his hands, and looked at Mason. “Would you mind telling me what happened?”

“It’s not in the file?”

“Oh, it’s in the file, but I think it only fair to hear your side of the story.”

“I was a member of the Anvil Program, and I believed that some of Colonel Barnes’s methods were not in the best traditions of the United States government.”

“You were in Afghanistan at the time?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And what exactly was the problem, in your opinion?”

“Colonel Barnes killed a local family when they wouldn’t give him information on a Taliban network that was operating in the area.”

“So you believe that he murdered these people in cold blood.”

“Yes, sir, I do.”

“And you had a problem with that?”

“Yes, sir, I had a problem with that.”

“So for brevity’s sake, you reported the allegations to General Swift, and what was the result?”

“They tried to kill me.”

“Who are
they
?”

“Barnes, the team, Decklin. Pick one.”

“And where did this occur? In Libya?”

“Yes, while we were on an operation.”

“But you survived, and after that the situation got decidedly worse. When did you decide to start killing employees of the CIA?”

Mason didn’t like where this was going. “What do you mean?”

“Well, I am curious: at what time did you decide that it would be a good idea, for a man in your position, to torture an Algerian national, put a bomb in your handler’s cell phone, and cut off another man’s head in Libya? It’s a simple question.”

Fuck.

“I guess it happened around the time they decided to kill me,” he replied.

“It seems that a lot of people are trying to kill you. I wonder why that is.”

“I’ve been told that I have a smart mouth,” Mason replied honestly.

“Right now the CIA has a problem. We seem to be suffering from major incompetence among the operational elements in the theater. The last two station chiefs in Libya and Somalia are probably working at Walmart right now as greeters, and we have had to shut down our intelligence operations in the area. I’ve been watching you since we discovered you were communicating with Vernon, and I believe you can help me. But honestly, you hardly have a choice, really.” All signs of the banker who had been sitting in front of him moments ago had vanished. The man’s eyes had hardened and his face was filled with determination.

“Since the attack on Benghazi the CIA’s operational footprint in North Africa has been reduced to zero. Right now we are unable to recruit assets, gather intelligence, or conduct operations in most of the countries where terrorism is thriving. And now with Hamid Karzai’s assassination things have gone from bad to worse.”

“Wait, what did you say?”

“The president of Afghanistan was assassinated with a drone. The people of Afghanistan blame the Americans and have begun a massive uprising.”

“How the fuck did that happen?”

“Our best guess is that Colonel Barnes has decided to prosecute this war on his own terms,” the man said.

“So, what do you want from me?”

“We’ll get to that in a moment.” He slipped the glasses back on his face and returned to the papers before him. “According to your files, you have a problem with authority but are extremely capable. Your handler Vernon categorized you as, and I quote, ‘a valuable weapon who will continue to operate in any capacity as long as properly motivated.’ Is that true?”

“I accomplish the mission assigned to me in a timely and efficient manner.” Mason felt he needed to toe the party line until he got a better grasp on the situation’s dynamics.

“That is a very cute answer. However, your records indicate that this is actually true.”

“Sir, what exactly do you want from me?” Mason felt like he was at a job interview, but the flex cuffs told him otherwise.

“Well, Mason, your credibility in the United States and the Middle East is at a very low point. We are blind, deaf, and dumb right now, and my only salvation is a man accused of treason and acts of terrorism. Your friend Zeus has ties to Hezbollah and al-Qaeda, and you yourself are a known associate of quite a few terrorists.

“Right now the team needs a win, and I think that you two would fit the bill. I can offer you the same deal that Agent Vernon proposed. Except this time I can promise we’ll follow through on it. No more false missions. You get Barnes and I’ve been authorized by the president to take you off the terror list and welcome you back into the fold.”