Black Flagged (The Black Flagged Technothriller Series) (30 page)

"Glad I could amuse someone. My wife finds it annoying," he said, and his mind flashed to Jessica, but was jarred out of the thought by Farrington.

"The entire file," he said, handing the light tan colored nylon vest to General Sanderson.

"Thank you, Richard. Excellent work. Simply flawless execution on your part," he said and looked at Daniel while he ripped open the velcro straps to expose the contents of the vest.

Daniel started to sink into himself and felt his focus narrow. If the entire day's events had been orchestrated to steal top-secret information for Sanderson's benefit, he would kill all three of them in their seats without hesitation and take his chances on the outside. He had all of the money and papers he'd need to disappear with Jessica forever, even with the U.S. government and Sanderson's people on his trail. Money bought security and anonymity in warmer climates.

He watched Sanderson and Parker closely, as Farrington announced he would change into civilian clothes. This would be his best opportunity. With the colonel out of the room, and the other two preoccupied with the papers in the vest, he could put the MP-9 into action within a second. He desperately wanted to cut the general's strings for good and was convinced that the only way he could ever disentangle himself permanently from Sanderson was to kill him. Five years on his own, and the man walked right back in to unravel everything. All for this file? None of this made any sense.

"Still thinking about killing me? I don't blame you," Sanderson said, and Daniel lunged for the backpack.

His hand grasped the submachine gun's pistol grip and flipped the safety off before anyone reacted, but he didn't start firing. Instead, he rushed around the table and placed the gun next to Parker's head, aiming at the general. Parker and Sanderson remained motionless and silent, which kept them alive.

"What's in the file?" Daniel said, mentally giving Sanderson three seconds to respond before putting a bullet through Parker's head.

"I've never seen someone move that fast. Amazing," Sanderson said.

Daniel's expression never changed as he reached three seconds and committed to killing all of them. He could read the file for himself. His grip tensed on the gun still covered by the backpack.

"It's all that remains of the original Black Flag file, Daniel," he said, and this statement bought them some more time.

"You don't need the Black Flag file," Daniel said, as he slid the compact, black weapon out of the backpack and shifted to a position behind Sanderson's chair.

"You're right. I don't need it. I need to destroy it."

"General, you know how my mind works better than anyone…"

"Better than you," Sanderson interrupted.

"Then you know I'm not seeing a reason to keep any of you alive right now," Petrovich said.

"I needed to remove all remaining traces of Black Flag from the official archives, Daniel. Destroy any link to the dozens of graduates still out there. The ones not already reactivated," he said and turned his body around in the chair to face Daniel. "I'm restarting the program."

The words hit him like a gale force wind, quickly followed by General Sanderson's iron grip to a pressure point located on Daniel's wrist. Sanderson squeezed the pressure point with brutal force, causing Petrovich's trigger hand to reflexively open and lose its hold. Parker swung around the chair at the same moment, aiming a martial arts kick at his throat, which forced Daniel to abandon his remaining grip on the weapon to parry the potentially devastating attack. He felt the weapon slip away and knew he was essentially screwed. Oddly, the general released the pressure point, giving him a chance.

He backed out of Parker's immediate hand-to-hand combat range, but the former SEAL pressed the attack, while General Sanderson removed the ammunition from the submachine gun. Petrovich didn't have much time to process why Sanderson was doing this, while blocking a series of judo-style hand chops and launching his own retaliatory strikes. His forearms burned from each blocked chop, but he managed to get inside of Parker's balance line and swept the commando's legs. Parker toppled back, nearly falling over the table laden with computer equipment. In a flash, Petrovich retrieved the knife hidden in his front pocket and flicked it open, switching to a reverse grip.

"That's enough! Put the knife away!" General Sanderson yelled, and Daniel glanced in his direction long enough to see Farrington emerge from one of the bedrooms aiming a suppressed pistol at him.

"That won't be necessary either, Colonel," Sanderson announced, and Farrington reluctantly lowered the weapon.

Sensing no immediate danger from anyone in the room, Petrovich closed the blade and focused on one of the computer screens.

"This is my house. What the fuck is going on here?" he said, staring at a screen with at least a dozen camera feeds.

"Every location was raided about an hour ago. Simultaneously. Of course, nobody was home," he said.

"My wife was home," Daniel said.

"She'll be fine. She can take care of herself," Sanderson said.

Daniel stared at the screens for a few seconds and walked back over to the group standing near the couch. He had a little more respect now for Parker's skills. The former navy commando's hand-to-hand skills were impressive, but lacked the depth that could only be acquired by applying these skills in real situations, where your life depended on the outcome. Schoolhouse skills, but pretty damn good.

"You're already training new operatives?" Daniel asked.

"And recruiting old ones," Sanderson replied.

"I'm not interested."

"Suit yourself, but I'll still require your help with our CIA problem."

"And then I'm finished."

General Sanderson nodded and walked over to the table next to Daniel.

"You know, none of them hesitated to come back," he said and looked directly into Daniel's eyes. "And most of them were leading successful lives. Families, businesses, solid jobs…bright futures by American standards. Every one of them looked relieved when I asked them to join the new program. Their lives were covert missions, and they were waiting, praying to get out. You can't tell me you don't feel the same way, Danny. At least somewhat. You were one of the best to come out of the program," Sanderson said.

"I haven't had much time to think it over. My life has been pretty much gutted over the past twenty-four hours thanks to you."

"Well, if it makes you feel any better, I didn't have any confidence that you would take part in this voluntarily. The Ghani job had been assigned to another operative, but a problem developed at the last minute," Sanderson said.

"I don't believe you for a second," Petrovich said, and Parker interjected.

"He's telling the truth. The operative assigned to the Ghani job had a mental breakdown two days ago."

Petrovich started laughing, taking several seconds to regain control of himself. "Imagine that. Another one of your willing participants, General? And for the record, Parker, your glorious leader may be telling the truth about the last minute assignment, but his truths can be slippery. One way or the other, my life in Portland, Maine, was scheduled to come to an end today. It didn't matter who killed Ghani. Once the list of operatives surfaced, I was burned. Having that assassination shoved down my throat gave me a little more time to prepare for the inevitable," Daniel said.

"Nice work by the way. Parker should have provided you with a knife," Sanderson said.

"I keep a few around the house for the occasional murder," Daniel replied, wondering how much the general really knew about what happened the night of Ghani's murder.

"Parker, what do you think?" Sanderson asked.

"Based on the profile workup I'm seeing in this laptop, and Brown River's involvement, I'm pretty sure we have two problems at the CIA. Keller's memory is one, and that needs to be erased, but I think we have a bigger problem out there. Someone moved pretty quickly to take you out, and they didn't hire a few ghetto thugs to do the job. Keller took the information back to the CIA, and within a few hours, they found you. That's both impressive and frightening, and suggests the work of someone highly placed within the CIA, with NSA contacts…"

"Or a leak within your group," Daniel interjected.

"There's no leak here. Parker's the only one other than myself that knew about you, and I trust him completely. Whoever activated the Brown River team has a personal grudge against something you did while assigned to the Black Flag program. I can only think of one possibility."

Daniel tensed at the thought that someone at the CIA had made the connection to a secret he had taken every precaution to keep buried. Secrets like Daniel's died hard, and Sanderson's supernatural efforts to resurrect Black Flag might have raised a few other unintended specters from their burial sites. He had no choice but to finish this day's work for Sanderson. Black Flag would rise from the ashes, but Daniel's connection to Zorana Zekulic had to be put back under the ground, for good.

"Do you have anyone working in Langley?" Daniel said.

General Sanderson smiled, which gave Petrovich little satisfaction.

"We have a few people in the CIA, but not at Langley."

"I guess it doesn't matter. Colonel, what is Keller's status? Will he need to be hospitalized?" Daniel asked.

"No, I hit him with a Taser and gave him a specialized neurotoxin. He might be coming around right now. The toxin is harmless, as far as we know," Farrington said.

"They'll still take him to the hospital, or FBI headquarters for questioning. The FBI is going to shut everything down, I assume," Petrovich said.

"They'll be in a panic. As of thirty minutes ago, they lost every link to Black Flag and any hope of figuring out what happened today. The trail went cold for them," Sanderson said.

"We need to take care of the CIA problem immediately. I can breach hospital security. Might get messy, but they probably wouldn't expect it, especially since Keller was left unharmed at the Pentagon. I assume Farrington left him alive so we could find the bigger fish?" Petrovich said.

"Precisely. Brown River's involvement suggested a bigger issue. Pictures of you in this laptop confirm it. I doubt Keller will consent to hospitalization. He'll want to report immediately to his supervising agent. I'm not the only one who will suggest the Brown River CIA connection. He'll most likely report in person, and I have an idea where they might meet. If my instincts prove correct, we'll be able to take them both out at once."

"I don't think we have the resources available to breach Langley," Daniel said.

General Sanderson gave him a quizzical look and shook his head.

"You were always fucking crazy, and I mean that in a good way," Sanderson said.

"I didn't take it any other way."

"People talk in this town. Rumors fly…it's hard to keep a secret. There's a wonderful, quiet little street in Georgetown that I'd like you and the colonel to visit."

Chapter Thirty-Eight

9:45 p.m.

FBI Satellite Office, Portland, Maine

Special Agent D'Angelo led Edwards and Jessica Petrovich through a small maze of hallways and offices shared by several federal law enforcement agencies on the fourth floor of the building. The FBI officially occupied two rooms toward the back. One was Special Agent D'Angelo's office, and the other served as an administrative support center, with room for an assistant, several file cabinets, and a large all-in-one copy/fax machine. The different agencies shared a conference room past the DEA's offices, several doors down, and this was their destination. As team leader, Edwards had been given one of the spare offices used by agents on assignment to Maine, but hadn't felt the need to leave anything there. Everyone else processed the information he needed and reported to him, so there was little need for a briefcase or files.

While he walked the key piece of the FBI's puzzle to the conference room, his team was busy at her house with local police detectives, searching for evidence and clues linking her husband to the murder in Cape Elizabeth. He didn't think they would find anything relevant at the house. The Cape Elizabeth murder scene had been sterile and yielded nothing useful to the investigation. Still, he couldn't voice this opinion openly.

He had received a call from Special Agent Frank Mendoza stressing the importance of finding information that might help them locate Petrovich, so he put his relatively useless team to work processing the house. Address books with friends' information, computer contact lists, bank information, and the pictures. They seemed really focused on scanning and downloading every picture of Petrovich in the house. It sounded like another waste of time, but he could tell it was important to someone back in D.C. Hopefully D'Angelo would join his team back at the house. So far she had proved useful dealing with the locals, and he had made a mistake by keeping her out of the raid on Petrovich's house.

"Here you go, Mrs. Petrovich. Would you like some coffee, water, or a soda?" D'Angelo said, standing at the door to the conference room.

"I'm fine right now, thank you. Is there a bathroom I can use to change?"

"You can use one of the spare offices right across the hall. Do you have any shoes?" D'Angelo said.

"We sort of left in a hurry," she said.

"It was a hostile environment. They'll be lucky if she doesn't press charges," Edwards said, and D'Angelo shot him a concerned look.

"I've already heard," she said and added, "I keep a pair of running shoes in my office. You can use those for now."

"That would be great, Agent D'Angelo. I can't thank you enough. My head is still swimming," Jess said and walked across the hall to an empty office with her outfit.

Once the door to the spare office shut, D'Angelo turned to Edwards.

"What happened at the house? I get a call from Lieutenant Moody, and he's pissed. Pissed at you. Pissed at the FBI. Said you treated his officers like shit. Justin, I have to deal with these guys when you leave. Can you take it easy on them?"