Red Cell Seven (10 page)

CHAPTER 10

“A
LL RIGHT
,
all right!” the leader shouted at the other two men, who were still shooting into the air. The helicopter was moving off quickly. The eye in the sky had gotten the message. “Hold your fire.”

“What do we do now?” one of the men yelled, panic-stricken. “We can’t stay here forever.”

“We’ll be fine.” The leader smiled confidently. He nodded over their shoulders. “You see, help is coming already.”

The two men turned in unison to look, as if their chins were connected, completely convinced of the sincerity of their leader’s gesture. However, it was nothing more than an old playground trick.

The leader shot both of them in the back of the head as soon as they glanced away. As they lay sprawled on the ground, he put an extra bullet into each man’s brain.

When he was sure they were dead, he burst from behind the wall toward a line of police cars. He knew why the authorities had waited so long. He knew what they were doing, and he was too committed to the big picture and the greater good to allow them to derail it this quickly.

He’d been tortured once before by U.S. intel, and he wanted no part of another interrogation session like that. He much preferred a quick death over what would undoubtedly take many painful days to die. Besides, what was waiting for him on the other side was much more beautiful than this world. That’s what he believed, anyway.

He dropped his weapon and threw his arms up in the air in full view of the authorities. Then he began to jog straight at the center vehicle in the line of cruisers. He could see the faces and the expressions of the policemen who were stationed behind the line of cherry tops. They were confused by his actions. Where were his compatriots? What in the hell was going on? They had no idea how to react.

They should be shooting me now,
he thought as he ran.
I would be shooting me. But they are not trained well, and the chain of command has failed them. Some idiot five levels above these street soldiers still hasn’t made a decision on how to deal with this emergency, probably because it was being broadcast live for the world to see and they d
on’t want to be perceived as vicious and insensitive. So they are paralyzed.

Their hesitation allowed him to make it all the way to the center of the line before they finally raised their weapons and ordered him to stop. By then it was too late—and he pulled the cord.

The bomb in his backpack unleashed its fury, releasing a terrible blast that took eight policemen and women with him.

A
S
K
AASHIF
watched the man jog toward the line of police cars on television, he actually felt the exhilaration his brother in arms was experiencing. It was taking the form of a great rush in his chest and a tingling sensation that extended from his heart all the way to his fingertips and toes. The man on TV was doing the right thing. He was sacrificing himself rather than take any chance of giving away something during an interrogation. Of course, the cops had no idea what they were dealing with. They would in a second.

The bomb exploded, incinerating this brother as well as several police officers.

As the sound of it faded from the TV, Kaashif allowed his face to slowly fall into his palms, and he began to sob. They’d been planning this attack for almost three years. Now the first stage was complete, and its success had been nearly perfect. The Minneapolis squad was gone, but they hadn’t been apprehended, and every other team was back in hiding and accounted for. Seventy-three civilians were dead, and more than two hundred had been wounded. Even better, the United States population had run for cover. Reports were already coming in that with a week to go to Christmas, malls across the country were empty.

It was the greatest gift he could have received, and the tears would not stop coming. There were others in the house, and he could not have them see him like this, so he moved quickly to the bathroom and locked the door.

Then his tears flowed in earnest.

T
HE RUSTY
hinges creaked as Major Travers pushed open the wooden door of the tiny house he’d built deep in the woods of Virginia’s Appalachian Mountains.

It wasn’t really a house. It was a shack, and not much of one at that. It didn’t have running water, electricity, or heat—not even a fireplace. The stove was nothing more than a crude burner that was fired by a natural gas cylinder, when he remembered to buy one. So he usually ate the soup cold out of cans, when he remembered to buy them. And not many of the up-and-down planks that formed the four exterior walls of the relatively square floor plan rested flush against each other, and he’d never bothered to install insulation, so the place was drafty as hell. But it served its purpose. It was remote out here in the George Washington National Forest, as remote as any place could be within a hundred miles of Washington, DC.

Most important, as far as Travers could tell, he was the only person on the planet who knew about the place. The closest farm was several miles away, at the bottom of the mountains, so it lay outside the national forest. And hunters weren’t allowed to take game within the forest’s boundaries. Which didn’t preclude poaching by the locals, of course, but he’d never had a problem with anyone using the place. He always set up a few inconspicuous indicators when he left so he could tell if it had been used or inspected when he returned. But they’d never been set off, just as he’d seen tonight when he’d gotten here. He’d checked even though he was exhausted after the steep climb through the cold, dark, wet forest.

He built the shack himself five years ago. He’d snared the lumber and other materials from a construction site down in the valley along the river. Then he’d lugged the stuff up the side of this mountain in the dark, without even a path to follow on his trips back and forth to the pickup he’d left on the logging road that night. He’d robbed the site so there wouldn’t be any record of him buying anything at a store. Even if he’d paid cash, someone might still have remembered him. He was ultimately paranoid, he knew. But that had always proven to be one of his most formidable weapons.

Roger Carlson would have built him something out here if he’d asked, Travers knew. Carlson would have done anything for him. But then at least one other person would have known about it. As sad as it was for Travers to understand and accept, he couldn’t completely trust anyone, even Carlson. And that hadn’t been the old man’s fault. Travers just had a terrible time with it. The only person who’d come close to that level of trust was Harry Boyd—now Harry was gone, too.

Travers stepped inside the shack, flipped on the tiny flashlight he’d dug out of his pocket, and played the beam around the small, mostly bare room. It was chilly in here, but it wasn’t wet. A cold, soaking rain had begun to fall on the Mid-Atlantic an hour ago, as he’d been driving around DC on I-495—and he was glad to be in a dry place after hiking up the mountain in the dark. He didn’t use this place very often, only when he desperately needed to go underground. Given what had happened three hours ago in Wilmington, this was one of those times. Shane Maddux wouldn’t be happy when he found out his two young soldiers had been killed.

Travers stripped off his boots and the drenched poncho he’d worn up the mountain, tossed everything in a corner of the shack, and grabbed a rolled-up nylon sleeping bag off the table by the burner. He untied the bag and shook it hard to get rid of any black widows or brown recluses that had decided to make it home since the last time he’d been here—which was six months ago. Then he spread the bag out on the wooden floor.

It wasn’t going to be comfortable, but then maybe he deserved some discomfort, maybe even some pain. He’d failed miserably in his job today. The United States was under attack. Hundreds of people had been killed and wounded, and the population was terrified, much more so than it had been after 9/11. People were cowering inside their homes with their doors and windows locked. Families who owned guns felt only marginally more secure than the ones who didn’t. The men who’d carried out the attacks today were maniacs, but they were good. Only one team had been stopped—and they’d committed suicide. His gut told him this was going to be a long, hard campaign that might never end unless the country took unprecedented actions. Despite the brutal and ferocious nature of the attacks, Travers still wasn’t certain the federal government would take those unprecedented steps, which would delve deeply into the personal privacies America’s population held so dear.

When he was wrapped inside the sleeping bag, Travers flicked off the flashlight. As he lay on his side and listened to the rain falling on the roof, he stared into the darkness above him. Was Kaashif involved with what had happened today? His instincts told him yes. At least that gave him a place to start. He needed to get in touch with an associate. He needed cash and a secure location. This shack had its purpose, but he couldn’t conduct operations from it. It was too far from anything to be effective.

Travers shut his eyes and forced himself not to think of all the issues facing him. There would be plenty of time to think—and act—tomorrow. But right now he desperately needed to recharge his body.

Moments later he was unconscious. It was a technique he’d learned in the foxholes of Iraq and Afghanistan from an older Marine vet. The guy had taught him to force himself to get sleep in any situation. An exhausted soldier was a poor soldier, and the trick to the technique was turning off the mind and all the bad thoughts it fired at him when there were no distractions.

But Travers never turned off his mind completely. It was always there to warn him of danger.

He bolted upright in the darkness and peered around the shack’s interior. He couldn’t see anyone, but he sensed a presence. Unfortunately, the warning had come too late.

Before he could draw his pistol, someone stepped on his wrist, immobilizing it and his ability to draw his weapon. Then a brilliant light bathed his face, and he shut his eyes tightly against the powerful rays.

“We meet again, Major Travers.”

Travers recognized the voice. “How?” It was all he could think of to ask.

“Turnabout’s fair play, don’t you think?”

“I don’t know what the hell you—”

He didn’t finish. The dart was fired from nearly point-blank range, and it dug deeply into the side of his neck. Electricity flooded through his body as he dribbled around the floor.

CHAPTER 11

“A
RE THERE
any RCS associates who would help Maddux even though he’s gone rogue and they know it?” As the private plane eased down into the thick cloud cover toward Westchester Airport, it shuddered slightly. Troy buckled his seat belt when the turbulence hit. “And would they do it without telling you? Maybe do it even when you specifically told them not to?”

It had happened exactly as Troy anticipated. A few minutes after the situation outside Minneapolis ended with the last terrorist igniting a suicide bomb in his backpack and taking several law-enforcement people with him, a young aide had knocked on the door and informed them that the president would not be able to meet with them again after all. The guy apologized halfheartedly and then left the situation to four Secret Service agents, who had immediately escorted Troy and Bill off White House grounds. Because of the Holiday Mall Attacks, security had been tightened another notch around the president, and all visitors were being escorted out. Even some of the regular staff had been told to leave and not return until they were contacted.

“I hate to say it,” Bill admitted, “but all those things are possible. Maddux was smart about getting to know a few of the other associates even though Roger and I tried to block him from doing that. And I’m pretty sure he did them a few favors to entrench himself.”

“What kinds of favors?”

“One of the associates was having a problem with his daughter’s fiancé. The guy was abusive. He was beating her almost every night, and—”

“Don’t tell me,” Troy interrupted as the plane broke through the low clouds. He glanced out the window. It had been raining in Washington when they left, but it was snowing here in New York, he could see in the plane’s lights. “The guy went missing.”

“No, they found him all right. He was floating facedown in the East River. They pulled him out of the water down off Alphabet City in Lower Manhattan. It was ruled an accident, but nobody has any idea how he got in the water or what he was doing in that part of town. It’s a rough area, and he lived up in White Plains.”

“Jesus,” Troy muttered. Maddux had pushed the vigilante deal for his own purposes after all. After promising Troy he never had, the liar—if Bill was telling the truth.
Mind games,
Troy thought as the plane rocked again.
Always the mind games in this profession.

“Another one of the associates was having a problem at one of the companies he owned. He was pretty sure the chief financial officer was defrauding him, but he couldn’t prove it.” Bill looked out at the thin layer of snow on the ground as the plane touched down. “What do you know—one day, out of the blue, the CFO walks into the associate’s office and voluntarily admits everything.” Bill glanced from the window to Troy with both eyebrows raised. “I wonder why.”

“Damn.”

“The guy’s face was badly bruised. He claimed he’d been in a car accident the day before. That’s what I was told, anyway. I was curious, so I checked. There was no record of a car accident where the guy said it happened.”

“Well, at least you know which associates they are. You can monitor them.”

Bill shook his head. “That might not be all of the associates who are helping him, and I can’t do anything about the ones I suspect are. These are very wealthy people, son. Each of the twenty associates has a personal net worth of at least a hundred million dollars, and most of them are much wealthier than that. It would be impossible for me to figure out what was going on in their personal finances without a SWAT team of forensic accountants analyzing and dissecting every wire and money transfer they’ve made in the last two years. And of course, that won’t be happening. I won’t ever get that kind of access even though I know them all very well.”

Every associate ha
s a net worth of at least a hundred million dollars.
The words echoed in Troy’s mind.

It was the first time he’d heard his father even vaguely put a number on the net worth. It was no secret that the family had serious money. His parents’ mansion outside Greenwich was over ten thousand square feet, and it sat in the middle of five hundred acres of pricey Connecticut real estate along with a stable full of expensive Thoroughbreds his mother loved to ride. The mansion’s back porch, which they were sitting on when Jack had been shot, was a hundred feet wide and thirty feet deep. And the family maintained several other homes around the world. Troy had used two of them when he was on missions—so had other Falcons.

He glanced around the beautiful interior of the plane. This was the family’s G450 they were flying on tonight. No wonder Bill could afford it.

“Can’t you just tell them not to help him?”

“I wish it were that easy,” Bill answered. “These people respect me as the leader of the associates, but they aren’t accustomed to being told what to do. And they’re very loyal when it comes to someone who takes care of a problem they’re having. Particularly like the ones I just described. They don’t like getting their hands dirty, if you get my drift. So they appreciate people who will and who will stay quiet about it.”

“Of course.”

“Which means Maddux has at least somewhat of a support system,” Bill continued. “When it’s only a few agents Maddux has with him, two or three associates would be plenty to support him. He’s smart. He probably wouldn’t have defected without arranging it. He’s a front-line guy, but he understands and appreciates the need for logistics.”

That was true. Maddux had always preached to Troy about the need for warriors to be well-supplied. How heroics and grit only went so far.

“There’s someone I want you to work with on the Mall Attacks,” Bill said as the plane turned off the runway and headed for the terminal. “Maybe you’ve run into him before on one of your missions.”

“Who’s that?”

Bill leaned toward Troy, as if he was concerned about listening devices on his own plane. “Major Wilson Travers,” he said quietly. “He’s in the Interrogation Division.”

Troy shook his head. “I might have met him, but those guys are pretty careful about not using real names around anybody they don’t know. Even Falcons.”

“He’s the best interrogator we have, other than Maddux, of course. Unlike Shane, Travers is completely trustworthy, and he’s a big, good-looking African American guy.”

“Agent Walker,” Troy murmured.

“What?”

“I think I know who you mean. Last spring I took cash and instructions to a guy over in Athens, Greece. I think that was Travers. He was with another guy. They called each other Agent Walker and Agent Smirnoff.”

I
T TOOK
three men to get Travers into the tiny cell. They’d tased him again several times on the ride to keep him subdued, but he was already recuperating. When they dropped him roughly on the wet cement floor, he tried to crawl after them. So they’d secured him to an iron ring that was affixed firmly to a wall of the room. One end of the chain was locked to the ring in the wall while the other was attached to a collar that was locked around Travers’s neck. They were taking no chances.

“That’s one tough bastard,” the man who’d tased Travers muttered as he locked the cell door.

Nathan Kohler nodded. “Yup.” He chuckled as he admired the bars of the cell. “I’m glad I had this thing made so strong. And I had that ring sunk into the wall.”

B
AXTER HURRIED
into the Oval Office. He’d just finished a briefing with Homeland Security. The news wasn’t good. “Mr. President?” He stopped with the toes of his black leather tasseled loafers resting on the eagle’s tail. Dorn hadn’t even looked around when Baxter opened the door. He just kept staring out the window into the dark, rainy night outside. “Sir?”

“Yes, Stewart,” Dorn finally answered, slowly turning the wheelchair back toward the desk.

“I just finished my briefing with Jane Travanti and her staff.”

“Let me guess,” Dorn responded stoically. “We have no leads on any of the death squads. They all evaporated into thin air, except for the ones we think attacked the Mall of America in Minneapolis. And even though we have the remains of those men, we don’t know anything about them.”

“Not yet.”

“We never will, Stewart.”

“We’ve taken DNA samples and—”

“Did we at least confirm that they were the men involved in the MOA attack?”

“Yes, sir. Spent ammunition found at the mall matched the guns in their van.”

“But other than that, we have nothing. Correct?”

Baxter nodded. “Yes, sir.”

The president gestured at Baxter, then at Connie. “Will you two give me a few minutes alone?”

Baxter didn’t like the sound of that. “Mr. President, I don’t think you should be—”

“Enough, Stewart.” Dorn glanced at Connie. “Please go. Take him with you. I’ll call you in a few minutes. Don’t come back until I do.”

Connie looked quickly at Baxter for guidance. He pointed subtly at the door and nodded.

When they were both outside the office, Baxter took Connie’s hand in his. “Stay right here,” he ordered. “Wait two minutes and then go back in. I need to get something from my office and make a few calls. Then I’ll come back.”

“But, Mr. Baxter, the president said—”

“I don’t care what he said. You go back in there in two minutes. And when I get back, we’ll take him up into the residence together. In fact, I’ll call Mrs. Dorn on my way to my office. She’ll help us convince him. If the president doesn’t get some rest soon, he’ll die of exhaustion. I can’t have that.” He hesitated. “I mean,
we
can’t have that.”

T
ROY STARED
at the tombstone as snow fell on the graveyard, covering the freshly turned earth above the coffin. It was just before midnight, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep well. So he’d come out here after saying good-bye to Bill at the Westchester Airport. He rarely needed more than five hours a night, and tonight wouldn’t have been one of those nights even if he wanted it to be. He was tired, and tomorrow was going to be a long day. But he had way too much on his mind to get that kind of rest.

“I miss you, brother,” he whispered.

“I miss him, too.”

“Jesus.”
Troy whipped around at the sound of the female voice coming from behind him.

“Sorry about that,” Karen said as she moved up beside him. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“I’m fine.” Troy glanced up through the darkness at the bare trees towering over the graveyard like sentinels—or ghosts. His heart was still pounding. He didn’t like graveyards to begin with, and hearing that voice out of nowhere had shocked him. “What are you doing out here?”

“The same thing you are. Trying to say good-bye to Jack.”

Troy reached out and took Karen’s hand. She’d been engaged to another Falcon—Charlie Banks—who’d been a close friend of Troy’s. Until Banks had been thrown into the Bering Sea from the
Arctic Fire
for the same reason Troy had—discovering that Shane Maddux was doing things he shouldn’t have been. Unfortunately, Banks hadn’t made it out of the water alive after he’d been tossed overboard by the four-man crew of the
Fire
who worked for Maddux. Banks hadn’t been lucky enough to have a brother race to Alaska to save him. His body had never been recovered.

Jack had begun his quest to find out what had really happened to Troy that night on the
Arctic Fire
—he hadn’t believed the official story—by contacting Karen. She lived in Baltimore, and Jack had shown up unannounced at her waitressing job in Fell’s Point on his way west, the night after he left Connecticut. When she understood how the same thing that had happened to her fiancé had happened to Troy, she’d made it clear to Jack in no uncertain terms that she was going to Alaska with him. And they’d fallen in love.

“I’m sorry for you more than anyone else,” Troy said, squeezing her fingers gently. “You’ve already gone through this once before, and it wasn’t that long ago. No one should have to deal with so much.”

“Thanks.” She smiled sadly as she nodded at the headstone. “He loved you very much, Troy.”