Scott Roarke 03 - Executive Command (34 page)

Randolph AFB

In the end, no real interrogation was required. The MS-13 gang leader gave Watts phone numbers, bank routing numbers, dates and locations, pseudonyms, call signs, his transporters still on the road, and other Maras likely to be involved in different cities. Estavan explained how money was wired to his accounts in Cyprus and St. Vincent, how cash was withdrawn and brought into the United States by couriers, and how he first got involved with a well-dressed foreign businessman two years earlier.

Watts called his boss, FBI Director Mulligan, after the “discussion” concluded.

“Did he ever directly meet his contact?” the FBI chief asked.

“No,” Watts said. “But it wasn’t simply a
contact
. Estavan indicated that he wasn’t speaking to a go-between. This was the guy. He knew everything and berated and threatened the gang leader like someone who was in charge of facts, money, and the plan.”

“No name?” Mulligan asked.

“Only a pseudonym.
Solon.
”

“Solons? What the hell kind of word is that?”

“Don’t know. We’re running it now. Feels Middle Eastern. And even though Estavan doesn’t really have an ear for accents, we ran some tape for him and he seemed to feel that Solons fit a Middle Eastern voice pattern.”

Given the threat, Mulligan wasn’t surprised. Given the scope of the attack, he had one man in mind.

“Can Estavan dial Solons again?”

“Not according to the last conversation.”

“But can he?”

“Well, why don’t I bring him a cell phone and find out,” Watts said.

“Do it. Now. And keep him on long enough for an international trace. In the meantime, stay on those numbers and bank accounts and let me know the soonest you have something on this
Solons.
”

Washington, D.C.

Later

Roarke and Christine returned to the apartment at 9:45. The “exterminators” left a note on her door indicating that they found no evidence of cockroaches, but they would be back in two weeks to check again. They also tagged three other doors on the floor requesting a time and date for an inspection. Of course, it was for show.

“You definitely had bug problems,” Roarke said as planned. He’d gotten a text confirmation from Bessolo’s FBI team that indeed she did, hidden in the walls and the phone. Now they ran the conversation they rehearsed at the White House.

“I saw some run through the kitchen and under the stove,” she added. This building has had problems.” Bessolo backed that up with some false paperwork with the exterminator company, an agency cover that actually performed two jobs. Removing insects and rodents and installing listening devices and cameras.

“Same with my building, especially in the winter. Guess they’re trying to stay warm, too.”

All of this was outside her door.

“How about you, want to get warmer?”

“Warmer?” he asked.

“Actually, I was thinking more about
hot.
”

This was off the script.

When first told about the hidden microphones, Christine was embarrassed. Then she felt violated and angry. Now she didn’t seem to care. She stood on her toes, dropped her purse and keys on the floor and found his lips giving him a very real, though short kiss. Then she worked up to his ear and whispered, “Got to make it sound real.”

Christine Slocum was right.

And so it went. A bottle of Pinot Noir, light classical music, candlelight, a move from two chairs at the table to the living room couch to Christine’s bedroom.

That’s where they rested making fitting noises for twenty minutes. Just noise. When the playing was over, Christine rested her head on Roarke’s chest. He held her and ran his fingers through her hair, feeling her body shake as she wept, resigning herself to reality. Christine longed to make love with him, to feel him inside, to feel protected by his strength. There would be none of that, and Slocum cried more.

Roarke touched her tears with his finger. She nestled in closer. He held her affectionately, but not lovingly. And there, they feel asleep.

At 2 a.m. Roarke whispered loud enough for the microphone to pick up, “I have to go.”

“Why?” she asked quite honestly.

“Got an early meeting with the boss on what’s going down.” It should have been enough to interest anyone who might be listening live or playing recordings later.

“Oh?” she said, again rehearsed.

“Can’t talk about it now.”

“Please stay. I really want you to stay.” She meant it.

“I’m sorry.” Roarke was.

There was the sound of dressing staged for the microphones. “Can I see you after work?”

“I hope so,” he answered. “I’ll call you.”

“Will you really?” It was a typical question after a first night in bed.

“Really.” He returned to the bed and kissed her on the forehead.

“Wait, I’ll walk you to the door. She slipped out of bed with the sound of her bare feet adding to the authenticity.

“I wish you could stay.” She meant it.

“Me too.” He didn’t.

At the door, Slocum took the chance again, raised up on her toes to reach his lips and kissed him. He separated from her and smiled. And she knew there would be no more.

Two transcripts of the conversation would be made in the morning. One going to the FBI from their microphones; another eventually to Ibrahim Haddad from his mics with what would confirm very credible contact. However, it really wasn’t necessary.

Randolph AFB

“Hello Solon, it’s Estavan. I have to talk to you.”

“What? No! Do you have any idea of the hour?” Haddad was furious with the gang member. Another loose end he would absolutely have to deal with.

“Wait it’s important. There’s a problem.”

That got Haddad’s attention.

“What kind of
problem
?”

Estavan spoke slowly as he had been rehearsed. He was also told to use longer sentences to give the CIA computer tracers more time.

“One of my drivers got away. He called and said someone tried to kill him. I listened to him. Of course, I didn’t say anything. But he’s alive.”

“That’s your problem not mine. Take care of it.”

“He’s in jail in Montana. The police found him on the side of the road after his car blew up. They started doing some checking and…”

Watts watched on his iPad as the trace worked its way from Houston to Bonn, Germany, to Istanbul, Turkey…

He gave Estavan a stretch, as if pulling an invisible string apart with two hands.

“If he starts talking, it’s going to come back to me.”

“Look. You take care of this now.”

The trace continued to Jakarta, Indonesia…

“You do it or I’ll have someone who will. If that happens, then your usefulness to me will have ended.”

Jakarta to Mexico City…

“I can do it,” Estavan said. “I’ve got people nearby. Someone can slip in the jail where he is.”

“Then we don’t have a problem.” Haddad stated.

“No, Solon.” Estavan was running out of ways to stretch.

…Mexico City to Ciudad del Este, Paraguay. That’s where the signal terminated.

“No more calls. Ever.”

“Yes, Solon. But…”

The line went dead. Watts was satisfied.

Washington, D.C.

25 January

0125 hrs

The January cold slapped Roarke in the face. He’d done what he’d been ordered and he wasn’t happy. He couldn’t say
nothing
happened. Not now. But
nothing else
would happen.

The frigid wind made it all the more clear to him. Katie Kessler was the one and only.

Roarke’s personal thoughts did not prevent him from noticing a man who suddenly slinked down into a black Thunderbird parked down the street.

Roarke avoided eye contact. But there was no conceivable reason for a man to sit in a parked car in the middle of a twenty-degree night pretending to be asleep. No one in his right mind.

He passed the car and continued down the street away from Slocum’s apartment. Roarke kept his ear cocked for the sound of a car door opening, which it did not. He peered back before turning the corner of Dumbarton onto Twenty-ninth Street NW.

Intuitively, Roarke recognized that he was dealing with someone equally cautious.

He crossed the street and waited for some coverage to allow him to double back. A minute later he had it. A
Washington Post
delivery truck approached. The driver already had his blinker on to turn left back onto Dumbarton where Slocum lived.

He ran alongside the truck and ducked behind a van diagonally opposite the Thunderbird. The limited street light made it hard to see. He looked for movement again, a beep of a lock unlocking, the door opening.

Still nothing. Worse. Less than nothing.

Roarke crouched down, retraced his steps, and crossed the street with the cover of a passing car. He slowly crept up. Only feet away now, with his Sig Sauer in his right hand, he raised up.

“Shit!” he exclaimed.

The driver was gone.

Roarke raced back to Slocum’s. The downstairs door had been jimmied open with a screwdriver.

Roarke had three flights to cover. He calculated the time lost. Two minutes at the most that
Bird,
the name he dubbed the man, had on him.

Do the math,
he told himself as he took the stairs two at a time.
Fifteen seconds to get to the door. He took another fifteen to get through the lock. Forty-five seconds to climb the stairs. Another fifteen at the upstairs door. What’s that?”
Roarke added it up.
Thirty seconds to play with!

Roarke ran faster. A lot could happen in thirty seconds.

When he reached the landing on the second floor he heard a door close one more flight up.
In or out?

Out. He saw Bird approach the steps.

Bird saw Roarke as well and fired first. The only thing missing as the bullet sped through the silenced barrel was his aim. Roarke dove down and leveled his weapon, more prepared than his quarry, but now without a target. Bird ran up to the fourth floor.

Roarke followed, passing Christine’s door with single-mindedness.

A floor above him, the door to the roof flew open. Roarke felt the cold air as he rounded the landing. Bird fired a second shot. It was wide but only by inches. Roarke pressed his body flat against the wall, creating an awkward obtuse angle for the gunman. Neither man had a good shot or an advantage…but the power of a bullet fired from a Sig Sauer at a distance of less than twelve feet, and the resulting impact it can have against a one-inch dry wooden door, can be significant.

Roarke saw the end of Bird’s Walther barrel four feet above floor level. He traced back to where the arm and torso would be. He stepped out into the hall and fired three quick shots into the door.

It wasn’t just the bullets that killed Bird. Wood shards had drilled through the man’s heart.

Roarke ran back down the stairs to Christine’s apartment. He used his full body weight to crash through her door. Once inside he saw the most beautiful blonde he’d ever met dead on her lonely bed.

Two hours later, Roarke stood outside Katie’s apartment totally drained. He looked up to her second floor bay window. The bedroom light was still on. He had a key, but he rang the doorbell instead. Moments later, she called through the intercom.

“Yes, who is it?”

“Me.”

There was a long pause, then soft-spoken “Okay,” and the buzzer that unlocked the front door.

Upstairs, Katie stood in her doorway. She recognized that something was terribly wrong. All other thoughts disappeared with his distress.

“What’s the matter? What happened?”

Roarke looked lost for the first time. “I couldn’t save her, Katie. I tried, but I couldn’t save her.”

“Here, come in.” She took his hand and led him inside.

“What? How,” she asked, drawing him to her couch.

“I set her up and they killed her.”

The words hadn’t fully sunk in yet. Katie looked perplexed. Then it all came to her. She whispered, “Oh no.”

“Christine Slocum, Katie. Christine. Shot in her bed.”

“Oh my God.”

“It was my fault, Katie.”

“No! It wasn’t.”

“It was. I left. I shouldn’t have left.”

She let go of his hand. He sensed why.

“Nothing happened, Katie. Nothing was going to happen. But if I hadn’t left, or if I had gotten back there in time? I tried.”

She took his hand again and squeezed it gently.

“I set her up.”

“Wrong,” Katie said defiantly. “She set you up. I’ve talked to Eve Goldman. Christine pursued you, on orders, like she pursued others.”

“And I tricked her. Entrapped her.”

“Don’t go legal on me. You did not entrap her, mister.”

“The scene at the gym where you walked out.
We
set her up, Katie.”

“And how do you know that had anything to do with her death? She’d likely outlived her usefulness to…” Katie suddenly stopped, shocked at what she’d said and the
we
he used. “Jesus, Scott, what did we get into?” she said.

Omaha, Nebraska

28 January

It started with a brick. One brick against a Department of Water and Power truck windshield window.

Sharon Fitzgerald had never done anything remotely illegal before in her life. But she’d never held a dead child in her arms either.

The brick smashed through the front driver’s side. It happened too quickly for Sam Masters, himself a father of two, to swerve out of the way of the woman who threw it; the woman holding some sort of package. He’d never find out what it was.

Sharon Fitzgerald died on the spot. Sam Masters would join her shortly. He slammed into a utility pole at forty mph. It collapsed on his cab. The impact didn’t kill him. That honor went to three men who witnessed the impact.

“Hey, he killed the mom and her kid.” A fact that was only half true and not his fault; a fact that was lost on the scared men. They saw the DWP as the embodiment of the means by which poisoned water was reaching their homes. Sam Masters worked for the DWP. He was an instrument of death. They made the connections that fast. And they beat him to death and then torched the truck.

A crowd gathered and cheered at the spectacle. These were the same people who would have helped Masters to safety barely a week earlier. But not today. Not in Omaha or many other cities and towns across the country. Frightfully similar scenarios were playing out in Fort Meyers, Florida; Portsmouth, New Hampshire; and Albany, New York. Eight hot spots yesterday. Twenty-five today. Probably one hundred tomorrow.

The anger was lit by fear, fueled by bloggers, fanned by talk radio, and impossible for local police to contain.

The White House

John Bernstein tossed the morning’s
Washington Post
on the president’s coffee table. The front page was uncharacteristically all pictures, all bad. Rioting across the country. People running through the streets looking for targets and finding them with nothing but dread in their hearts and nothing in their minds. Inside, more pictures and articles to go with them that depicted and described looting in supermarket aisles; police barricades and fires. Inevitably, thefts expanded their bounty from soda bottles and prepacked juices at Safeways, Publixs, Ralphs, and Shaws to items that had nothing to do with water. They hit the big box stores like Best Buy, Walmart, and Fry’s Electronics. Self-preservation gave way to chaos. Poisoning was the trip wire for turning a country of laws into a lawless third-world nation.

“It’s going to get worse,” Bernstein predicted. “By the hour. You’ve got to get the National Guard in. Bush put four thousand troops and one thousand federal officers on standby in Los Angeles in ’92. At this rate we could have five hundred LAs, maybe a thousand, by the end of the week.”

Morgan Taylor focused on a notion shared by millions and celebrated by one. “How can this happen in America?” He knew the answer. In the age of hate speech and demagoguery, too many people were only a flashpoint away from reverting to primal behavior. The worst, and often most popular, talk show hosts encouraged it. The best couldn’t stop it.

The president answered his own question. “This happened because it can. A total breakdown of civil authority. No missiles or bombers, but in a matter of days, civil authority as we know it will be at risk of disappearing.”

Taylor stood and looked out the West Wing window where John Kennedy had contemplated where and how the Cuban Missile Crisis would end. This is where Lyndon Johnson realized he had lost the America people and the Vietnam War. Where Ronald Reagan fashioned an end to the Cold War. Where George W. Bush strategized over lost causes; the world’s and his own. Now it was Morgan Taylor’s time to wonder.
How many would die?

He turned to the TV sets in his office. The sound was down, but the images were virtually all the same. CNN, MSNBC, FOX News, NBC, CBS, ABC, HLN. All the same.

CNN cut to a camera outside the White House. District police were moving forward, driving protesters away from the iron fence along Pennsylvania Avenue. A young man tried to climb over. An officer grabbed him and slammed him to the ground. This only encouraged others to go for the fence. A stupid and deadly move. It wasn’t a problem with one or two, but when it became twenty…

Snipers on the White House roof had them in their sights.

Taylor heard the shots through the walls that couldn’t be heard over the muted TV. A horrible situation had, as Bernstein said, just gotten really worse.

The rioters never expected to see the president. But as he rushed to the gate, running faster than his Secret Service detail, the crowd hushed. Men, women, and children traded the rocks in their hands for their cell phone cameras. Their coverage would go viral.

Morgan Taylor knelt down beside the victim. He took off his suit jacket and covered the young man’s head. The president was exposed to the freezing cold in only shirtsleeves. Taylor shook his head revealing his utter sorrow; an emotion that few presidents would dare show the world. Then he rose and looked around. More than three hundred people at the foot of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue were stone silent. The fight was out of them.

Taylor seized the moment.

“This is America,” he said in a sweeping hand motion across the landscape. “And this is America.” He gestured to the young man. “Everything that we believe in will be gone as quickly as this man’s life unless we regain our senses and get control of our actions.

“We are under attack, but we cannot turn on ourselves. We’re all frightened. Yes, all of us. But I am charged with dealing with this, and deal with it I will. I will not rest until the hideousness of the act perpetrated against our nation has come to an end, until the perpetrator is punished, until order and reason are restored. I will not rest. And I, we, will end this insidious plot with a vengeance armed with a cold, cold heart and the firepower of the greatest nation in the world.

“That’s what I will do. Now I ask you to go home. I plead with everyone to go home. Here and across America. Watch over your families, but don’t destroy what we have. That’s what our enemy seeks—an enemy that is empowered and emboldened by your actions; by events like this.

“Go home. For God’s sake go home. For your own safety go home. For the sake of America, please go home.”

The president knelt one more time and patted the head of the dead man. A quiet minute later, Morgan Taylor rose and walked back inside as the crowd loaded their smart phone videos and pictures on YouTube and Facebook, launching them around the world.

Ibrahim Haddad saw it five minutes later. The image of the president beside the victim reminded him of how he held his dead child in his arms. He was hurting his enemy deeply.

West Virginia back roads

Richard Cooper could slip into dozens of characters on the outside. But on the inside, he would always be a man on the run, alive only to himself; dead to his family.

Money was not a problem. It never would be. The assignments he’d accepted from the Middle East would cover him for life—however long that might last. Unless he changed his own strategy, it might not be too long. He had put himself in a far too exposed position.

Richard Cooper was a brilliant operative and a resourceful combatant. And right now, he considered himself lucky to be alive. The same could be said for General Johnson and the Secret Service agent who was always barely a step behind him.

It was time to disappear again. Away from Washington. Out of the cold. On the beach.

The word that best described the fiasco he barely escaped was
reckless
. Maybe
brainless,
Cooper thought as he drove through a light drizzle into the West Virginia mountains.
No, never again.

He steered well clear of the Interstate and kept at the speed limit in a used 2008 Ford Fiesta he bought two years earlier under one of his aliases. This was one of four cars he strategically garaged around the country and drove only when necessary.

With every swipe of the windshield wiper blades, Richard Cooper, for now Rengal, ran his next moves in order like a calculating chess player.

Forget the general,
he realized.
Let politics kill him. Death by a thousand political swords. Far more cruel.

And what of his own future? The buyers of his services thought he was dead. Resurfacing would unduly expose him. And then there were the good guys. The FBI, the Secret Service,
that damned Roarke
, and every satellite dish linked to the NRO. They’d all be searching for him.

No matter how hard he had tried to avoid photographers at the party, he was undoubtedly in some pictures. They’d be in every police cruiser by now.

His disguise as Rengal was good, but not great. Rushed. He’d dyed his hair blond. And a black William and Mary sweatshirt covering a blue checkered shirt, jeans, and boots was hardly a full disguise. The only real accent came from thin-framed designer glasses. He knew he needed to do better.

The rain came down heavier now. He had five more miles to Fairmont, West Virginia, and the Super 8 motel he’d found on the Internet where he planned to hide. Richard Rengal would check in for three days. His plan was to abandon his car, not such an unusual sight in the backwoods, catch a cab to Morgantown, then buy a ticket on the Mountain Line Transit bus. After four switches, he would end up in Knoxville, Tennessee. Beyond that he wasn’t sure yet.

Where?
he wondered again as he drove. Richard Cooper didn’t know and Rengal sure as hell wasn’t telling him. Maybe it would come to one of them.

He rolled into the motel lot and paid cash for his stay. Dinner consisted of a boneless steak, peas, and mashed potatoes at the Poky Dot, a rock-themed restaurant. He ate undisturbed at a corner table, biding his time reading a day-old
USA Today
. There were more reports about poisonings from coast to coast; random cities, but enough to create nationwide panic.

Insidious
, he thought, even by his standards. But Cooper knew the cause and the perpetrator. He’d been offered the opportunity to participate by the man who funded his exploits. However, mass murder was not Cooper’s calling.

He read on. Reports of riots in major cities and deaths in communities stretching from Maine to Florida on the east coast, Oregon to California in the west, and ten states in between up the Mississippi into the Ohio Valley and…

Cooper froze. One sentence in the article, one cold sentence, written without shading or emotion, spoke to him. His eyes never left that one sentence until the full paper was reduced to the size of a baseball in his grip.

A young couple opposite him saw what he had done, but they kept to their own dinner, avoiding eye contact with the visibly obsessed outsider.

Not that Cooper would have noticed them. He was in his own deep thoughts.

That one sentence he read over and over now dictated where he would go and what he would do. One sentence in
USA Today
.

Washington, DC

“Scott, it’s Penny,” CPT Walker said without a hint of her typical flirtation. She caught Roarke walking from Katie’s apartment to the White House.

“Yup,” he answered, not even pausing to recognize how serious she sounded.

“I’ve got something new for you. But there’s a lot of wind noise. Can you find someplace to duck in?”

“Sure.”

Roarke shifted the cell to his left hand and shoved his cold right hand that had been holding the phone into the pocket of his parka. But he wasn’t feeling anything other than rage, and something even colder—revenge.

“Okay, better?” he asked from inside the lobby of an office building down from Dupont Circle on Connecticut Avenue.

“Better. First of all, I’m sorry. I heard what happened.”

“Right.”

“I also know that there was nothing you could have done, Mr. Roarke.”

“Wrong.”

“No, you’re wrong,” Walker replied. “It was a hit. No one could have seen it coming. Not you or anyone. So stop beating yourself up. Anyway, what I have should get you thinking about something else.”

Roarke shifted his weight and straightened up, prepared to pay attention. “What do you have?”

“I’m still checking any usual deaths across the country that might correlate to Cooper. Apparently no one else in the service. But…”

The “but” centered him.

“General, ah the vice president, was Cooper’s final target, right?”

“We think so.”

“Considering the security around him now, I’m betting that Cooper will be more cautious.”

“Or more determined. Penny, a minute ago you said that Christine Slocum was the target of a hit and I couldn’t do anything. Now you think Cooper doesn’t care about J3 anymore. No way.”

“What if Cooper has something else on his mind.”

“Like what?”

“Someone who died. Poisoned.”

“Where?”

“Ohio.”

“So?” It was a cold, dispassionate response.

“So, look if you’re not interested….”

“I am, I’m sorry. Who?”

“The name only came up because of my random search.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You will.”