Betrayal (7 page)

“Speaking of morning tea,” she said, “I’ll go brew some.” Standing, she followed Stuart’s gaze. He was looking at her hand as she reached for her flute and nodding to himself almost imperceptibly. He looked up suddenly to catch her expression. She felt the lining drop out of her stomach as their eyes locked. The flute slipped from her grasp but Cassi instantly forgot it. Stuart knew.

Chapter 10

Tafriz, Iran

F
EELING
HUMILIATED
AND
infuriated, Odi watched from behind a sandy knoll as his team disappeared into the inky Iranian night. For a second he considered tracking their progress further with the assistance of his Urtel sniper scope, but the thought of having to look in from the outside like a wannabe voyeur just rubbed salt in his wounds. He shook his head. What had Potchak gained by relieving him of command? He asked himself for the dozenth time. A lousy ten minutes? Ten minutes that might have made the difference between eliminating terrorists and murdering kids? Was it extreme urgency that drove Potchak’s severe reaction? Or was Odi missing something? He could not get his head around the incredible stupidity required to make a decision like that. It just did not compute. Potchak was a hard-ass, but he was no fool.

Odi had no idea why Potchak had been so quick to strip him of power. Aside from the occasional disagreement—like the one where Potchak prohibited him from informing his men about their mission—their relationship had been smooth enough. It was not a particularly warm relationship, but then The Bulldog was not a warm-and-fuzzy kind of guy. Again Odi came to the conclusion that there were forces at work about which he had no knowledge. He hoped that once the dust settled, one of those forces would get him off the hook. As it was, Odi did not know what to hope for as he listened for the gunshot that would begin the questionable attack. His was a damned-if-you’re-right, damned-if-you’re-wrong situation. Either innocents were about to die, or his career was over.

Odi also worried about his team. They were doing as demanded, following orders. That was rigidly expected of course. In fact, command repeatedly drilled in that very response in the course of some of the world’s most grueling military training. But every man still had to take responsibility for his own actions, and they knew that. The guilt resultant from pointlessly killing scores of innocents could not later be ordered away—not when they had been fairly warned.

As Odi pondered that, his earphone cracked to life. Waslager’s oily voice said, “All teams report.”

“Red team’s a go.” “White team’s a go.” “Blue team’s a go.” Derek, Adam, and Flint replied in sequence.

Odi ripped off his headset and threw it to the ground. He told himself that he did not want to hear anything that might later legally jeopardize his men—like them conspiring to frag Waslager for example—but in fact he simply could not stand to listen. If the hospital did turn out to be legitimate and an investigation ensued, he would tell internal affairs that he removed his headset for tactical reasons, to better detect potential threats among the ambient noise.

It began.

The explosions reverberated like a giant’s footfalls across the sleepy land. Every ten seconds there was another six-point bang as the next salvo of explosive grenades brought the suspect buildings closer to the ground. Just like clockwork. He was proud of their precision if not their mission.

Odi watched plumes of dusty smoke billow toward the inky sky, reflecting starlight back in a ghastly dance. Air that only moments ago was arid and crisp was now filled with an ominous cordite stench. He waited for the sounds of tortured screams and imploring pleas, but nothing rose above the deafening echoes of so many grenades. So much the better, he thought.

He began counting down salvos, working backward with the knowledge that there would be ten. Ten ... nine ... eight ... At two he found himself rolling across the ground with a sharp pain pulsing lighting through his left shoulder. One way or another, he had been hit. Was it shrapnel? A bullet? Divine intervention? He twisted his neck and shoulder, provoking more pain as he tried to get a look at the mysterious wound. All he could see was blood pumping through the sleeve of his shirt.

He strained to compress the wound with his chin while struggling to remove his belt with his one working hand. If only he hadn’t taken his radio off, he cursed himself. Stupid, stupid, stupid. With effort he got his belt noosed around his left arm and a heartbeat later he cinched it down half an inch above the pulsing stream. He saw the flow ebb to a trickle, but it did not stop. Gritting his teeth, he cinched it further, ratcheting down until the pain was almost too much to bear. Finally the bleeding stopped. His makeshift tourniquet would be safe for a minute or two. He only needed something to keep him conscious until his team returned. Then Adam could apply a pressure bandage and achieve hemostasis without cutting off the blood-flow to his hand. He hoped he would still have enough juice in his system to run. The guys would give him grief for the rest of his career if they had to carry him to the extraction site.

Odi began laughing at the irony despite the intermittent jolts of searing pain. He could not help it. Realizing that his boisterous laughter was both dangerous and an indication of the onset of shock, he forced himself to stop. That was when he noticed the eerie silence. It would only be a few seconds now.

He pictured his teammates emerging like demons from the dark and smoke and strained to see them. He anticipated the wry smiles and jibes he would get when they saw his wound. “Can’t we leave you alone for a minute, Carr?” “We should have hired a babysitter.” “I think he’s really a Marine.”
 

No one came.

That was strange, Odi thought. He wondered if the loss of blood had warped his sense of time. He checked his stopwatch. Four minutes and ten seconds had passed since the first salvo. They were seventy seconds overdue.

Odi waited another fifteen seconds, but no one appeared. “The radio,” Odi said, cursing himself again. He looked over to the left where he had thrown down his headset and saw a broken mess. Whatever had hit his arm had obviously demolished his headset too. The sight made him think of the magic Kennedy bullet.

Glad to have a backup he patted his breast pocket. It was empty. Empty? Then he remembered Waslager commandeering his sat-phone. “Great. Just great.”

Odi was seriously worried now. If grenades were still exploding or bullets were still whizzing he would understand the delay. They would signal that his team had encountered unexpected resistance. But all was quiet. Wounded or not, Odi knew that he had to investigate. Someone might need his help.
 

Getting to his feet, he wondered how long it would take for local law enforcement to arrive. The complex enjoyed a peripheral location and the village itself was remote, but capture was not the only concern. He replayed the Commander’s incessant order that they not allow themselves to be identified.

The protest emanating from his left fingers became unbearable. He eased the pressure off his improvised tourniquet and craned his neck to observe the sight of the wound. Crimson began to gurgle forth. He was still losing arterial blood.

He ripped his compression bandage from his pack and slapped it down directly atop his pulsing wound. The position was awkward and neck-cramping, but he still managed to hold the wad of gauze in place with his chin. Wishing he had a spent bullet to bite he cinched his belt down directly over the wound. Judging by the pain, the shrapnel was still inside. He screamed “Waslager, you bastard!” and then made for the rubble.

Odi needed only a minute to find the first man. O’Brian. He lay in a crumpled mass and was already covered with course gray soot. Although Odi could not see the entry wound, the expansive pool of blood beneath his body indicated that he had been hit in the head or neck. Odi felt his own pain give way to a flood of rage. Then the implications registered and he felt a chill of fear followed by a wave of guilt. Hospitals did not employ snipers.

He had been wrong.

His doubt had diminished the team’s strength by nearly fifteen percent—easily enough to cost O’Brian his life.

Percolating with self-loathing, Odi began cursing himself but stopped abruptly. There was no time for that selfish sentiment now. He had to investigate. He had to see if anyone from his team was still alive.

He knew that investigating would become ever more dangerous as seconds passed and smoke cleared. Visibility was still next to nothing with the smoke blocking out the stars, but that would change with dawn’s first rays. Come daybreak he would be as visible as a pimple on the prom queen’s nose.

As he mentally mapped out the most efficient way to canvass the complex, he realized that there was a quicker way. He muttered a fast “Forgive me brother,” as he rolled O’Brian over to remove his radio. The sight that met his eyes was striking enough to give him pause. O’Brian’s headset had also been hit. It was useless.

As alarm bells went off in his mind, Odi wondered if the al-Qaeda sniper had some new high-tech equipment that allowed him to hone in on a target using radio waves. He would report that possibility—if he ever got home.

Without giving further thought to his own safety, Odi set off following a parallel trail of tracks. Twenty yards from O’Brian, Odi found Adam. His best friend also had a savage head wound, but miraculously he was still alive. Adam was just lying there, stoically silent, looking wide-eyed up at the sky as though searching for distant stars. He grew a feeble grin and groaned, “The weasel,” when he caught sight of Odi.

Odi was afraid to touch his friend, afraid to make his condition worse, but as his eyes focused he realized that worse was not possible. Extreme adrenaline was the only thing keeping Adam alive.
 

“Swear, Odi. Swear you’ll—”Adam sucked in a long, ragged breath “—get the weasel for me.”

“I swear,” Odi vowed perfunctorily, bending to cradle Adam’s head.

 
“Don’t let him get away,” Adam gasped. Then he died.

As Odi stared down at his friend a fetid stew of surprises swirled around his faltering mind. His sudden loss of command, his shoulder wound, the mysterious death of his friends, the solicited vow of revenge—everything collided as it tried to congeal. Something about this mission was terribly wrong.

As he tried to grasp the conclusion that was hovering at the outskirts of his conscious mind, Odi realized that his head was spinning from more than just the confluence of radical events. His vision was now blurred and the ground seemed unstable. He turned his head and strained to focus on his left shoulder. His belt had fallen to his elbow. His bandage had slipped. Before he could react his world turned gray, and then, slowly, silently, it faded to black.

Chapter 11

FBI Headquarters, Washington, D.C.

W
ILEY
DUCKED
INTO
his private bath and closed the door to his office. He bent over the sink and splashed cold water on his face. After a couple of good dowsings he straightened up and studied his reflection in the mirror. “You can do this,” he said aloud. “This is nothing but a warm-up pitch. When you’re in the Oval Office you will be called upon to send thousands of the nation’s sons and daughters into battles where they will lose lives and limbs, serenity and sanity, innocence and affluence. Keep your focus on the big picture. This is nothing.”

He patted his face with a thick white towel embroidered with the seal of the FBI. After placing it back on the rack he took a step back and adjusted the knot in his emerald tie, using more force than was necessary. Stuart had made it clear as they left yesterday’s brunch, accenting his speech with pictures: Cassi had to go. Wiley did not agree with his campaign manager’s judgment, but he accepted the wisdom of deferring to it. Stuart was the pro. He was ice-cold and impartial. Like him or not, Wiley could not deny that the invisible man was good.

For a second or two Wiley had toyed with the thought of defying Stuart, but he knew rebellion was out of the question. If Stuart became convinced that Wiley’s campaign was a loser, he could probably still convince The Three Marks to back one of the other two contenders. Wiley had to avoid that at all costs. Someday soon his campaign would cross a mutual point of no return, and then he would tell Stuart off. At least that was what Wiley told himself this morning.