Retribution (7 page)

“Why? Why so soon? And why would Yousef al-Qadi want the attention?” Parker leaned up in his chair.

“Radicals such as al-Qadi have never shied away from news coverage. Before September 11, bin Laden sought out ABC and NBC and every major American network. After 9/11 they have gone to more protected sources but have nevertheless continued to use the media.”

Scott had a way of staring at you as the conversation became more intense.

“Now that bin Laden is dead, a vacuum has been created. Someone will fill it.”

“Yes.”

“The media is a weapon. It's complicated. Men like al-Qadi want to gain a following in the Muslim world. Their jihads only succeed when they have a following. But many of the countries are controlled by governments that have no intention of letting men like al-Qadi be any part of the news. So they use a back door.
Al-Quds
or CNN International gets to the same people.”

“That explains why their acts are so violent.”

“Exactly. It's all about PR. They want to get on CNN. But to be on CNN, terrorists have to blow other stories off the front page.”

“So why al-Qadi and why now? And why should he trust Zabara to meet him?”

“Actually, Yousef was instrumental in getting Zabara his job.”

“Now I really don't understand.”

“This asset has been buried for some time. It's killing MI6 that we've asked for him. Zabara has been writing articles for years saying that the time of bin Laden has passed. That there is a new warrior needed to lead the jihad.”

“Enter Yousef al-Qadi.” Parker sensed the multilayered plot. “So he gets this journalist the job at a paper with a much bigger distribution to provide his own new media platform.”

“Exactly. And the time has come. Zabara has received an invitation to visit Yousef on Yousef 's home turf. There, from deep in the Hindu Kush, he's to conduct an extensive interview with our man.”

“When?”

“Soon. Very soon. But no date's been set. The problem is that once the date is set, we won't have a minute to spare.”

“But what then? And how long?”

“We have a commitment for virtually unlimited funds and time. There will only be one person above me: the deputy director of the CIA. No one else. His aide is out of the loop. His staff, their wives, are all out. No one knows. Period.”

Very much like the Korean mission, thought Parker. Including the fact that there would be no rescue wagon if things went south.

“So Zabara gets put in storage somewhere.”

“Yes, MI6 puts him in a safe place before he even gets off the airplane in London.”

“And you're suggesting I become Mr. Zabara?”

“Yes.”

“So I get the invite and fly around the world. Let's say I pass muster. Then what? A GBU in the right place?” A reference to the laser-guided Mk-84 bomb, which carried over two thousand pounds of explosives. The explosion would crater a football field.

“Possibly. A botch job. A quick and dirty. Maybe a bullet to the rear of the skull with something small slipped in.”

“Hmm. I'm not sure of that.” Parker had killed men in combat and knew his share of death. But this was not James Bond. One doesn't fly in, shoot a man in his head, and then take the next international flight out of the Sherani clan's local airport. No, this would take something far more sophisticated.

“Don't forget that we have both Yousef and his Muslim from Grozny to reckon with. You would need to get both of them. And their tribe is more than just two. If you don't get them all, they'll be gone. A chased fox only goes deeper into the woods and then pops out somewhere else to hunt again.” Parker looked down at his coffee. “The fox needs to have a reason to be pulled out of his den. A strong reason.”

Scott nodded, both agreeing to the point and acknowledging that they had no simple solution.

“There is one way to pull the fox out.” Parker looked across the distant trees as he spoke his thoughts.

“Short of assassinating the president of the United States, we have license to do whatever it takes.”

“You know my ANGLICO team.”

“Yes.”

There was no point in being coy. Parker would assume that Scott would remember the team from Korea and, if not, would have at least researched Parker's contacts.

“One of them was Hernandez.”

“Staff Sergeant Enrico Hernandez.”

“Yes. He's with the Centers for Disease Control now. Works on their security team.”

“He mentioned to me a doctor there named Stewart. I think his name is Paul Stewart. I would need to start by talking to Dr. Stewart.”

“When?” Fire had appeared in Scott's eyes. If he wasn't already seeing the direction of Parker's idea, he was at least energized by the fact that Parker was hatching a plan.

“Now.”

Scott nodded. “One more reminder, Colonel Parker, of the stakes involved. If Yousef wants to make a name for himself, it will take something very violent.”

“Yes,” said Parker. “I can only imagine.”

CHAPTER 8

 

W
illiam Parker tried to hold the steering wheel steady on the road while he glanced at the iPhone in his hand. He would look down at the electronic map loaded on the iPhone, then glance up at the roadway and then again down to the map. Each time he glanced down, the rental car tended to pull to the left and the center line. The occasional pickup truck coming in the opposite direction laid on the horn as he wandered closer to the paint.

This is stupid.
He knew better as a pilot. Lesser distractions had caused many an airman to plow into the ground.

Waldrip Road.
He knew the turn was somewhere to the left. He had seen it from the air as he flew over the western portion of the lake. There it was. Parker took the turn.

He'd reached the western side of Lake Sidney Lanier. Lake Lanier sat an hour's drive northeast of Atlanta, just west of Gainesville, and squarely in the path of the tidal wave of people moving from Detroit to Atlanta. Property on the lake, if you could find it, went for millions.

In a few miles the turn would be to the right. He glanced down at the iPhone again. Up ahead, a street sign stuck out from the bushes with a visible lean to the right.

Martin Terrace.
His next turn. Parker saw a driveway to his right and the lake beyond as he crept down the single lane that twisted through pine trees. Another house lay ahead.

MONCRIEF PAINT COMPANY
.

Finally.
The sign hung on a tree below another that advertised Lake Lanier Construction. Parker turned onto the gravel driveway and saw an old beaten truck with a tailgate that looked broken and a slew of empty five-gallon buckets tied together in the bed. The side of the truck also showed
MONCRIEF PAINT COMPANY
and, below it,
PAINT CONTRACTOR
. And below that, in smaller but perfectly neat type:
GUNNERY SERGEANT—USMCR (RETIRED)
.

The Cape Cod house was in its final stages of construction. The copper gutters and shake shingles gave it that distinctive look of an expensive cottage, as if pulled up and dropped down from a lake in the White Mountains, but the front yard was still a wide mess of red clay dirt. Deep tire tracks puddled full with water showed the recent rains. Black plastic tubes from the sprinkler system stuck out of the dirt in a regular pattern across the yard. It was only a few weeks away from the final touches, landscaping, and plantings that would take the house from this rough stage to something ready for
Architectural Digest
.

As he neared the front door, Parker heard a fast, loud voice engaged in a conversation with another, similarly energetic voice. Parker smiled and swung the door open quietly, as if sneaking into his parents' house well past midnight. He could have called out to Moncrief, but catching him by surprise would be worth it.

“Goddamn it, the prince was right!”

The sound of a hotly contested debate came from the small living space just to the right of the front door. There, a man, maybe a hand's width at most under six feet, spread cream-colored paint on the walls. He was solid, with broad, muscular shoulders that reminded one of a charging bull or linebacker. His shoulders tapered down to a tight waist, giving him a dogged, self-assured bearing. A high-and-tight haircut helped frame the head with a new Yankees baseball cap squarely on top. His garb looked far from spotless—white paint overalls splotched with a variety of colors—but the Yankees hat was spotless. It might have just been issued by the team uniform manager.

“Yeah, well, the Astros were fools,” he replied.

Parker looked around the room and smiled, realizing there was only one voice in this conversation. Yes, maybe two minds, but only one voice. He decided to watch and listen for a while.

“In the sixth round.”

Kevin Moncrief actually sounded angry with himself, painting all the while. Parker quietly pulled up the sleeves to his blue denim shirt and leaned against the wall in the hallway, enjoying the show.

“The kid was drawing pictures of pinstripes in Mrs. Padley's class! Hell, Newhouser knew what he had. Soft hands. A feel for the game. A natural. A pure, goddamn natural.”

Parker tried not to laugh, listening to this high-strung conversation between Kevin Moncrief and his good friend, Kevin Moncrief.

“An American League MVP drives three and a half hours to see a kid play, and then the front office tells him to go to hell.” He kept rolling paint as he continued to talk, his attention focused fully forward the entire time with no clue that anyone else had joined him in the room.

Moncrief's debate was over the rejection of Hal Newhouser's advice to the Houston Astros to sign a kid from Michigan named Derek Jeter. Newhouser told management that this skinny teenager would be the anchor of a winning Major League club. They signed a no-name instead. The teenager went on to have five World Series rings locked up in his safe-deposit box. Newhouser, the man who was always perfectly dressed, quit baseball for good after his advice was rejected.

“Newhouser should have been a Marine.” He sighed and then paused for a split second. “Colonel?” he said suddenly, never once looking back. “Your fancy denim shirt has some Sherwin-Williams Copper Harbor on it now.”

Should have known
. Parker checked his shoulder, only to find a streak of yellow-orange paint.
Oh, well
. It was worth it.

“Gunny Ndee.” Moncrief's nickname explained much. Only three men on the planet had license to call him by that name. A biker once overheard it being used in a bar in San Diego. He thought it was funny. He made the mistake of expressing that fact. The biker didn't even get the final syllable out, trying to repeat the word, before he was unconscious on the floor in a pool of blood. Moncrief was one-eighth Chiricahua Apache on his father's side. Although Apache was the name that their enemies gave them, the warriors called themselves
Ndee.
And there had been no more determined warriors on earth than the Ndees. The tribe, when necessary, could strike their tents and move—warriors, squaws, barefoot children, the crippled and ill—more than a hundred and fifty miles without stopping and without hesitating once for a drink or rest. Moncrief had that same relentless, strong-willed, pit bull mind-set. And like an Apache warrior, Kevin Moncrief had a sense of perception, especially on the battlefield, that had become legendary in the brotherhood of the few good men.

“What are you doing here, boss?” Moncrief finally turned toward Parker.

“I need your help.”

Moncrief stopped, laid the roller on top of the screen on the bucket of paint, wiped the paint off his hands, pulled back the Yankees hat, checked it again to make sure that not a drop of paint was on it, put it back with a tilt on his head, pulled out a wrapped, short stub of a Gloria Cubana cigar, unwrapped it, stuck it in the corner of his smiling mouth, and said, “Let's get out of this overpriced dollhouse.”

The lake was still recuperating from the nearly decade-long drought. The bleached rocks and raw, exposed shoreline showed the drought's success. But really, two thieves were involved in the crime. Mother Nature took what water it could, and the growing city of Atlanta used the rest. At last, in recent months, the rains had returned.

“They're hoping that by the time they move in, it will still be a lake house.” Moncrief smiled as he spoke and pointed out over the lake, making reference to the receding waterline. They pulled up two chairs. “How's the shoulder?”

“Fine. Do you still have a contact in DIA?” Parker asked. The Defense Intelligence Agency had been a good source for Moncrief for years.

“Yes, I actually do.”

Parker nodded. It wouldn't have surprised him to learn that Kevin Moncrief took a break from painting every so often to help out his friends from the past.

“I need to find out everything I can on Operation Intekam.”

“I've heard of that.” Moncrief pulled out his cigar and absentmindedly smelled it as he spoke. He looked up and for a moment stared at Parker. “It was the Iranian operation after the
Vincennes
shot down the Iranian passenger jet. Some thought it was linked to the Pan Am flight.”

“Exactly.
Intekam
is Farsi for ‘an equal and just revenge.' They lost two hundred and ninety innocent people, and they were determined to get an eye for an eye.” Parker knew that the USS
Vincennes
had given Iran Air Flight 655 no chance, misreading the commercial aircraft as an inbound fighter. The SM-2MR surface-to-air missile tore through the Airbus 300, ripping the wings from the airplane. At that altitude, death was instantaneous.

“I need to know if a man named Yousef al-Qadi is connected to Intekam and, more importantly, whether Intekam is connected to Lockerbie.”

Moncrief smiled and took out a pad of paper and pen to write the name. “Do I smell a mission coming on?”

“Perhaps.”

“I'm in.” The gunny looked like a kid on Christmas Eve.

“There is something else I need to know,” Parker said. “What was the CIA's connection to all of this?”

Moncrief raised his eyebrows. “You think the big boys were in on that?”

“I'm not sure. Something doesn't feel right. How quickly can you find out about this?”

“How much time do we have?”

“A matter of days, maybe less.”

“I always work well under pressure.” Moncrief took out his cigar and smiled his best broad, toothy smile. “We'll use our backdoor e-mail.”

 

 

No sooner had Parker landed back at the lodge than his computer showed an e-mail from Moncrief. They had a special scramble program that Moncrief had lifted from his friends in the IDF. He'd modified the program to use words from the Apache language as keys. It could be broken, like all crypto programs, but it would take some very big computers working on it for several days and by then the operation would be over.

When will you be available?
The e-mail came from “Quo-Qui,” a name that Moncrief used often.

Anytime
, Parker shot back.
Did you find out anything?

Parker stared at the lines of text for some time. That one line made up his mind. Parker was now in on this mission. It didn't matter if the CIA were lying.