Enemy Agents (24 page)

They had Julia. The bastards had Julia.

“I told you, you should have left me alone,” said the smirking Fatale. “If you’d just gone after the mole like Quarrel wanted, well then maybe the mole wouldn’t still be free to beat the piss out of old Missus Thorpe. But you had to have me. You had to have Mercier.” She was trying to open the door now, but it was locked.

“Well now we’ve got you, instead of CIB having me. And unless you want someone to finish the job on the old lady, you’re working for us now.”

Tears gliding down his cheeks, Thorpe opened the car door. “OK. I surrender.” He held out his pistol for Fatale to take. She was still smirking.

“Get in the other seat, William,” she said. “I’m driving now.”

#

Thorpe needed a drink so bad he was practically shaking. The woman, Erica or Fatale or whatever she called herself, was strutting around with such arrogance that Thorpe fought to suppress the urge to slap her. He resented that she hadn’t even bothered to tie him down, so instead of fighting against bonds he had only to fight his own rage, to swallow his frustration.

There were two other men, posted on either side of the open garage door. The hanger was mostly empty except for the chair Thorpe sat in, a folding table, and a few boxes that sat on the table. One of the men was holding a video camera that was connected to a laptop computer that sat on the floor next to him. They were transmitting video of Thorpe’s capture to someone, probably Martin Mercier.

Fatale’s cellphone beeped. She answered, listened for a second, and hung up. After capturing Thorpe, she had changed into a black dress, styled her hair, and applied makeup. She had changed from a defeated prisoner into a domineering femme fatale, and every facial expression she made drove Thorpe further into his rage because there was no denying that she was in charge now.

“Let’s put on a show,” she purred through her bright red lips.

She strutted over to the table, opened a box, and pulled out a white shirt and a black dinner jacket.

“You’ll wear these. I’m sure you’ll notice that one of the buttons on the shirt is a microphone and one of the buttons on the jacket is a camera. If you tamper with either the sound or the picture—”

“I know, I know,” Thorpe interrupted.

She sneered at him, ran her tongue over her upper lip, and continued her speech. “If you tamper with either the sound or the picture, my associate in England will cut your wife’s left arm off and cauterize the wound with a blowtorch. And don’t interrupt me again, or I’ll tell them to give old Julia some free dental work.” Fatale paused, tilted her head as if thinking deep thoughts, and taunted him. “You think she would even feel it if they did? From I understand, you married a brain-dead vegetable.”

Thorpe balled up his fists so tight his arms shook. His voice cracked when he spoke. “She feel
s
everythin
g
. She feels every little thing you do to her. Don’
t
yo
u
feel the slightest guilt for abusing and taking advantage of a defenceless woman?”

Fatale brought the shirt over and laid it in his lap. Her fingers found the top button on the shirt Thorpe was wearing, and started to strip him. “Oh, I’ve been taking advantage of defenceles
s
me
n
for so long, this is just a change of pace.”

She got him changed into the new shirt and jacket, and the men watched him while she went to her new car—a black BMW that had been waiting inside the hanger but was now parked outside—to check the feeds from the camera and microphone. “Get him to say something!” she yelled.

“When this is over, I’m going to bury your head and leave your body for the birds.” He spoke in a voice that tried to sound defiant, but only betrayed how afraid he was.

“Excellent! Coming in loud and clear!” she called from outside.

She walked back slowly, taking her time. It was clear that Fatale was enjoying her momentary triumph over Thorpe. No doubt she had strutted like this after she left him in a room with a dead body and the police on their way, but that trap hadn’t worked. Nor had her attack at Quarrel’s hotel. Thorpe tried to convince himself that this trap wouldn’t work either, but for the first time in decades, his confidence was gone.

They had his wife, on another continent, a world away. It would take him at least nine hours to reach her, whereas they could send the order to kill Julia in an instant.

“So I’m a walking camera crew. Who am I to spy on?”

“We’ll get to that. But first you’re going to call Harry Milton and give him a message.”

“And what’s that?”

She smiled. “You’re going to call in a team to arrest Jack Hall.”

“Arrest Jack? Nobody can even find him.”

She pulled out a satellite phone and started dialing. “Oh that’s easy. He’s in Carolina committing treason.”

PART FOUR:

WE HAVE WAYS

OF MAKING YOU TALK

29

Jack Hall didn’t reach the facility until the late afternoon. He had spent the day driving here, which on its own was a six-hour journey, but he also took pains to avoid major highways or anywhere that he might be seen by a security camera. Breaking into the Pentagon files would bring a half-dozen federal and military agencies after him, so he had to be careful. Once he found some proof of what was going on, once he caught the terrorists who were going after the nuclear materials, he would let the authorities know. And one thing he was sure about was that once they knew where he was, they’d come running.

He had a line on CIA chatter, thanks to his old pals from the Navy who were working on some other high-clearance-level jobs and who still trusted that Jack was acting in the country’s best interest. According to the chatter, the word was out that Jack was snooping into nuclear secrets, that Jack was the leak who had caused the attack on the convoy. He didn’t much care
.
If they send extra guards to watch the bombs being decommissioned and to escort the materials off-site, all the better. More security was more security, no matter the reason. That was all that mattered.

He parked a mile away from the secure location that he had discovered in the Pentagon’s files, and hiked in from there. The facility was in the middle of nowhere, North Carolina, surrounded by forest. There was only one road in, which came in from the county road to the east. Jack parked on a road to the north and hiked through the woods.

The nuclear storage site was a fairly boring place. A chain-link fence surrounded the building, which looked like it was a cheap steel-walled warehouse or a sort of square Quonset hut. The facility’s cover story was that it was a factory space for an artist who made large metal sculptures. The artist actually did work there, recycling old steel into metal absurdities for towns that wanted abstract statues, but beneath the floor there was a repository for retired nuclear weapons. Whether they were being dismantled or just shelved, Hall didn’t know.

There were no soldiers patrolling the outside of the building, but the security cameras were obvious. Somewhere inside the steel building were highly-trained guards, and they were watching those cameras. There may have been cameras in the trees as well, but Hall would never spot them if they existed, and the fact that he had made it so close told him he hadn’t been noticed; if they had seen him coming, he’d have been attacked or arrested by now. A helicopter sounded in the distance, but Jack knew not to be paranoid. The helo would pass.

There was a glint of light to Jack’s left. Just one little flash as something shiny moved in the distant trees. Someone was out there.

Hall moved straight toward the target, never quite breaking out into a run. When he reached the area where the flash had come from, Jack spotted a small black duffel bag resting next to a tree trunk. He studied the area carefully. There was no sign of another person, and the ground looked free of traps. He ran to the bag and opened it.

There was a black nylon rope on top. Below that, wire cutters, pliers, screwdrivers. There were two Sig pistols and six spare clips, as well as a small black packet of various tools and useful gadgets. He recognized that package. This was his own gear.

Suddenly Jack realized that the helicopter in the air still hadn’t passed, but was hovering or landing somewhere nearby. He turned to read the horizon and saw a group of soldiers in camouflage body armour approaching with their rifles aimed straight at him. Turning to face the north, where he had come from, he saw a second squad. They had circled behind him to spring the trap. Unless he wanted to kill American soldiers, he was caught.

#

Jack was searched, disarmed, had his hands cuffed in front of his body in order to have them visible in the car, and had shackles locked to his ankles. Once he was fully prepared for the road, Hall was loaded into the back of a Hummer. Agents got in the back on either side of him, one Caucasian and one Asian, both men. Another agent drove, and the passenger seat was empty. They drove between two other vehicles—a Jeep in front and a Mercedes sedan behind. All three were different colours; the Jeep was black, Hummer green, and the Mercedes was silver. It was less conspicuous that way, as opposed to the mythical black SUVs that people seemed to think the CIA used for everything.

Jack asked just one question, “Who set me up?”

He got the response he expected, which was silence.

“Call the President,” he said. “The President trusts me. He owes me one. You’re arresting the wrong man. Whoever called in my location is the one who planted that packsack full of my gear.” Jack knew he sounded crazy now. His excuses were flimsy, his evidence non-existent. Someone had known he would try to stop the theft of nuclear materials from this site, and they had known exactly when to plant the incriminating evidence. Digamma, whatever they were, were good.

The agents said nothing, and their faces revealed less. If they were from the government, they were a top CIA extraction team; if they were soldiers from the storage site, they were probably among the best of the best. Hall could risk taking them on, but with his handcuffs chained to his ankle shackles,he’d have narrow odds of winning the fight. Twenty years earlier, or even ten, he’d have been foolish enough to try it anyway, and strong enough to survive. But Jack Hall was in his fifties now, and he wasn’t likely to defeat three armed men while shackled and surrounded. Still, the itch was there. The nagging feeling at the base of his skull that told hi
m
Youdon’t have time for this. Do something
.
It was a feeling he hated, but rarely ignored. He swallowed hard and tried to push the feeling out of his thoughts.

After about twenty minutes of riding in tense silence, the three vehicles pulled onto interstate 85 going east. It was past dinnertime on a weekday so the traffic wasn’t bad. The convoy picked up speed and Hall leaned back in the seat and let out a sigh through his nose. It was a deliberate test to see how the agents would respond. The one on his right, a short white guy with a crewcut, responded to Hall’s sigh by letting his guard down. His eyes looked out the side window and his shoulders slumped a little. For that instant, he wasn’t on edge, and wasn’t protecting his weapon.

It was enough.

Hall threw his body up and to the right, whipping his head sideways at the short man. His headbutt snapped the agent’s nose to the side. That kind of jolting pain would flood his eyes with tears and distract him. As the agent screamed, Hall was already grabbing the gun from the agent’s shoulder holster. A small Sig.

Sensing the other soldier, the Asian man, going for his own weapon, Hall pulled his feet up, leaning his whole weight on the short man, and kicked at the Asian guy with both feet. The chain between his shackles took the Asian in the front teeth, breaking them. Without hesitation, Hall raked the chain down the man’s chin to the hand at his chest. When the chain hit his knuckles, the agent dropped his gun, which clattered the floor between his feet.

“Don’t you dare reach!” screamed Hall, who now had the short man’s sidearm aimed at the Asian’s bloody face. “Hands on your knees! Lean your head toward me.”

The agents slowly complied, tilting his head toward Hall. Hall raised the gun and hammed it down, cracking the top of the agent’s head and knocking him out cold. That was where Hall had made his mistake. Because he had leaned over, the Asian man’s body had nowhere to go but straight down into Hall’s lap. That was enough of a burden and distraction that the short man was able to get his hands around Hall’s throat. The agent was cutting off his air, but so far he hadn’t cinched the choke hold enough to cut off the arteries and knock Hall unconscious. He didn’t want to kill any of these guys, but as the panic of choking started to take over, he raised the gun, angling it backward at the short man.

The black Jeep at the front of the convoy exploded.

The green Hummer hit the wreckage at full speed.

For a second Hall felt that he was free from the short guy’s choke hold, and for another moment he was weightless.

Then there was just pain.

Hall had crashed cars before, but generally he was in the driver’s seat, hitting an airbag. This time he was in the back, laid out across the seat and entangled with two other men. When the hummer rolled—and he couldn’t count how many times it rolled—Hall was bombarded with impacts from every direction. The Asian man’s head and arms pummelled his torso. The short man’s arms cracked against Hall’s skull. The roof of the Hummer hit him like a wrecking ball.

When it was over, Hall had lost the gun. His wrists and ankles were bleeding where the steel restraints had dug into him. He was pretty sure he had a broken rib, and his head was incredibly heavy. The whole right side of his head felt like it expanded to double size, and his ears were ringing so loud that no other sound could be heard. He freed himself from the other men’s bodies and felt for the window. He felt only air, crawled forward with his hand outstretched, and the feeling of empty air continued for a distance that seemed too far, as if he should have found the Hummer’s door already. He had to make an effort to lift his head to look, since just tilting it upward sent jolts of pain through his whole body. His hand was sticking out through the hole where the window had been. Shaking off cobwebs, he felt along the bottom of the window frame for a door handle and couldn’t find it. It took a moment to realize that in an upside-down car the handle would be above the window, not below. He was vaguely, distantly aware that he was thinking too slowly, his mind not understanding what his eyes were showing him. In a very dreamlike way, he knew that his brain wasn’t working right.

Crawling out, he was surprised that the Hummer was still on the pavement. In the roll he was sure they must have gone off the side and down the embankment. The team from the silver Mercedes were hiding behind their car, popping out occasionally to return fire at whoever were inside a maroon plumbing van parked two car-lengths away. Unable to hear anything and with blurry vision, Hall didn’t realize the implications of the flashing light coming from the van’s windows. The windows were a constant flash of muzzle flare from a machine gun, but Jack just stared at it, trying to figure out why the van was flickering like that. Once he clued into the fact that the van was full of enemies who had attacked the convoy, and that someone was attacking the CIA team, his instinct was to crawl toward the silver Mercedes and join the fight. He struggled to crawl, pain flashing though his numbness with each movement, and saw a flicker of recognition from the nearest member of the Mercedes team when they saw him coming.

Then the plumbing van moved, cutting him off from the Mercedes. The side door slid open and two men in black ski masks jumped out to pick him up and pull him into the van. Once he was in, the van took off. He saw the thick barrel of an RPG launcher sticking out from under the seat and understood what had blown up the Jeep.

Someone stuck a needle in Hall’s arm. The stinging made him turn to look, and there he saw a familiar-looking man with a face that was half-melted. Of course it was him. Who else could lead an attack against a CIA kill team and win so easily?

“You’ve always been a traitor . . .” he managed to say, still trying to focus his eyes on his captor.

“Go to sleep, Jack,” the man said in that gruff, familiar voice.

#

Jack woke up in a bed, shirtless, his head and ribs bandaged. He was tied to the bedposts at hands and ankles, although the captors had been kind enough to wrap gauze around those areas before they tied him up.

“Hello?” he called out, grateful that he could still hear.

His voice triggered the sound of movement and a man stood up from a chair in the corner. He was a big man, muscular and square-jawed, but his grey hair and deep wrinkles showed his age. Jack was familiar with him, having chased him around the Mediterranean for most of the nineties. Anton Sidorov. Former KGB, but since the fall of the USSR he was extending his talents in all manner of illegal trades. Killer for hire. Drug smuggler. Some informants called him the king of the Russian underground, others said he was just a trained dog whom the real shot-callers turned to when times were tough. Either way, Jack hadn’t wanted his first face-to-face to happen like this.

“Sidorov.”

“Jack Hall.” Sidorov smirked. “It’s insulting to meet an adversary like you under such circumstances, but sometimes these games are necessary.”

“Games?”

“Distraction. Misdirection. You were arrested for treason, Jack. But you broke out of custody. Cameras in the truck saw you fight the guards just before the kill squad came to free you. Lots of dead Americans, Jack.”

Then there was the gruff voice again, the hard, hateful American who had killed the CIA team on the highway and stuck a needle in Jack’s arm. He stood in the doorway, smoking a cigar and squinting at Jack.

“It’s your turn to be public enemy number one now, Jack,” said Shark Scarret. “Let’s see how you like it.”