Extreme Faction (34 page)

Tucker stopped him. “We can't leave him here.”

“We don't have a choice.” Jake checked his watch. “If we don't get out of here soon, the Turks will level the town. Unless we can convince them not to.”

Jake saw the movement behind Chavva's shoulder before he knew precisely what was happening. The door across the corridor was opening. With one sudden and fluid motion, Jake pulled his gun and fired twice, just to the side of Chavva's shoulder.

Chavva jumped and then turned to see what Jake had shot.

A man lay crumpled face down on the cement, an M-16 under his chin.

“That's the prick of a guard who kept kicking my broken leg,” Tucker said. “Damn it, Jake. I wish I'd done that myself.”

The three of them made their way back down the dark corridor to the control room. Nelsen was on the phone when they arrived. Helena was resting on the floor, sitting up against one wall.

“What's the word?” Jake asked.

Nelsen quieted him with the palm of his hand. “But we're stuck here, sir. The entire area is swarming with Peshmerga Guerrillas.” He paused for a moment. “Yes. Yes. I can't leave Garcia. I understand. Yes, I have it.” He looked at Jake. “He's with me. I don't think he's aware of that. Yes, sir.” Nelsen waited for a moment, and then slammed the phone down. “Son of a bitch.”

“What now?” Jake asked.

“They refuse to stop the air strike.”

“What?”

“The Turks want to take advantage of the opportunity,” Nelsen explained. “Besides, the Agency tends to agree with them. They want to make sure there are no other copies of this formula out there, or anyone who knows anything about it.”

“How much time do we have?” Jake asked.

Nelsen checked his watch. “Three hours before they level everything east of Lake Van along this mountain ridge.”

“They're not going to bomb the city of Van.”

“No.”

Jake saw the troubled look on Chavva's face. She had to be thinking of the Iraqi jets dropping chemical weapons on her city as a child. “We have to leave, Chavva.”

“I can't go,” she muttered. “I must warn the people. Most of them have done nothing. They just want a homeland. You go. Go now.”

Jake gazed around the room, and for the first time, noticed Tucker had gone over to Helena and was sitting next to her. Jake hurried to his friend. “You know each other?” Jake asked Tucker.

“I'll explain later.” Tucker said, and then gave Helena a kiss on the cheek.

Nelsen came over with the Tvchenko folder. “This is getting too weird. Now these two know each other?”

“Afraid so.” Jake was starting to understand how, without Tucker's explanation. Sinclair had said he was running an agent, and now he knew who.

“I can't let you go,” Chavva yelled.

When the four of them turned, they saw Chavva pointing her gun toward them.

Jake moved away from the others. “What are you doing, Chavva?”

“I'm sorry Jake. I must have the formula.”

“For who?”

She hesitated and tears streaked her cheeks. “For me. The formula is for me.”

Nelsen had the folder in his hands, and Jake quickly pulled them away from the larger man. “Don't give them over Jake.”

Jake moved closer to Chavva with the papers. “You don't want these for your Israeli friends, or for your Kurdish ancestors?”

She shook her head.

Jake pulled out a metal trash can from under the console, dumped out the garbage, and set the papers inside. “Do the honors, Chavva.” Jake backed away.

She squirted lighter fluid on the papers and lit a cigarette lighter.

“No,” Nelsen screamed. “That's the most important weapon developed in decades.” He thought about going for his gun.

“Don't you see, Nelsen,” Jake said. “She knows this more than any of us. She's been there. Nobody should have this one.”

Sinclair and Helena agreed with silence.

Nelsen was alone, yet even he wasn't protesting with any great vigor. He didn't say another word.

Chavva lit a small piece of paper and threw it into the can, which went up in a puff of flames. The room filled with smoke, but within a few minutes, the entire Tvchenko file was nothing but ashes. Chavva dumped the smoldering paper, which was light and fluffy now, onto the cement floor, and then dispersed them into nothing. There was no way to reconstruct the most deadly nerve gas ever conceived. It too was nothing more than thoughts in the air of the dead.

Sinclair Tucker helped Helena to her feet, and they stood together where neither could have probably done so on their own.

“Let's go ladies and gentlemen,” Tucker said. “Before we end up like those papers.”

Nelsen shook his head with a strange smirk. He realized that maybe thousands of lives would be saved by that one simple act by a courageous woman he didn't even know.

●

The five of them headed out toward the back door. As they reached the cell area, a flash of gunfire pierced the silence. They all dove to the side.

Jake and Nelsen quickly returned fire.

“Where's it coming from?” Sinclair yelled. He was on the ground with his arms wrapped around Helena.

“The middle cell across from your old home,” Jake answered.

Jake, Nelsen and Chavva returned fire.

“Is that you, Mr. Agency man,” came a voice from the cell.

Nelsen clenched his jaw. “Baskale,” he yelled.

“A good memory. I like that.”

“You know him?” Jake asked.

“The Kurd from Texas,” Nelsen said. “I had to know someone here.” He smiled. “What do you want?” he barked at Baskale.

There was hesitation. “The formula.”

“Too late. It's gone.”

“I don't believe you.”

Chavva yelled something in Kurdish and there was silence for a moment. The only words Jake understood for sure were Carzani and Halabja.

In a moment there was sobbing from the cell. Then a rifle slid out through the opening.

Nelsen frowned at Jake, and gazed at Chavva with surprise.

Chavva walked up to the cell, opened it, and looked down on Baskale, who was huddled in a ball. By now Jake and Nelsen had reached the cell.

Nelsen reached down and pulled the man to his feet. When his eyes met the large Agency man, Baskale's face turned to anger. He took a wild swing at Nelsen, catching him with a glancing blow to the chin, but barely fazing Nelsen. Nelsen retaliated with a quick flurry of punches to the stomach and then the face, and he followed up with a straight kick to the man's jaw. Baskale collapsed to the cell floor. Out cold.

●

Chavva helped them out the back way. She agreed to get them started on the road to Van, but wouldn't leave the village before warning the people. They could have a truck she had stashed on the edge of town. She handed Jake the keys. There was still a few hours before the Turks would sweep in and bomb the place.

Jake pulled Chavva aside. “Come with us,” he pleaded. “We still haven't gone out.” He tried a smile.

“I can't,” she cried. “Besides, I'd rather stay in like last time.”

“I'll wait for you in Adana or Istanbul.”

She pulled out a Turkish driver's license and handed it to Jake. “Here. I live there in Istanbul. Meet me there.” She pulled him to her and they kissed for a long moment. “Two days,” she whispered and smiled.

Then she was off into the darkness.

ODESSA, UKRAINE

Over thirty hours had passed since the Turks swept down out of the west in their F-16s, came in low over Lake Van, and dropped their 500 pound bombs. The attack had been more of a show than anything, with no casualties reported in all of Kurdistan. In fact, only four jets had dropped bombs.

Jake had said goodbye to Sinclair Tucker and Helena at the Diyarbakir hospital, where they both required medical attention, he with a cast and her with a better bandage. Jake had agreed to call him in London in a week to see how he was doing. He didn't expect to see Helena again. And that was a shame, because she was quite a woman. Tuck explained how she had been working as a double agent with the GRU and him. The two of them had become close, to say the least.

At Incirlik Air Base near Adana, Jake and Steve Nelsen had returned only momentarily to retrieve their bags. Baskale, Nelsen's prisoner, had been out cold for much of the trip. The Agency would take him to America, without regard for international extradition laws. While at Incirlik, Nelsen had briefed Jake on what the Director of Operations for the Agency, Kurt Jenkins, had told him on the phone when they were back in Carzani's operations center. The U.S. Air Force master sergeant who had tried to get their attention while lifting off on the mission had been trying to deliver a message from the DO, who had word that they might have been compromised. Nelsen would have to live with the decision to ignore that man for the rest of his life. Ten men had died, including his partner Ricardo Garcia. That fact had finally hit Nelsen, who had become extremely reticent.

Worse than anything for Jake, perhaps, was the news that Quinn Armstrong had been killed in Odessa just after Jake had departed. Jake had tried to sleep on that fact for a few hours, but it had become useless to even try. He knew what he had to do, and he wasn't going to enjoy it one bit. Somehow it had all clicked in his mind, and the bile rose up to his throat just thinking about it.

●

He was back in Odessa now. He had gone to the hotel, retrieved his 9mm from the safe, and was leaning against the wall in an apartment complex. He had never been there before, but had gotten the address from the DO before leaving Turkey.

It was just after noon and pouring rain outside. It was the kind of day that drove the solemn to insanity.

Jake was breathing hard. He tried to calm himself, but it was no use. He reached down for the handle on the door and let it sit there a moment. He pulled his Glock, thought of charging in, but then slipped the gun behind his back into his pants.

The door was unlocked. He slowly opened it.

Inside, the room was dark but everything was still in plain view. The man Jake had come to see was slouched back on the sofa, a glass of whiskey in his left hand and a cigarette dangling from the side of his mouth.

“So, Jake. You're back in Odessa,” Tully O'Neill said. “Have a seat.”

He was slurring his words. Jake could tell he was on his way to a great drunk. If he hadn't already reached there.

“Why?” Jake said.

“So you don't have to stand?” Tully laughed and then coughed until he inhaled on his cigarette.

Sitting on the table in front of Tully was his own 9mm automatic and an extra magazine, fully loaded. Jake assumed the magazine in the butt of the gun was also full.

“You know what I mean, Tully. Why did you sell us all out? Money?”

Tully swished his head from side to side. “You'd never understand. Just go back to your private practice and find some missing person, or save a Goddamned cat from a fucking tree, or whatever it is you do now. I don't need you. I don't need anybody.”

Jake didn't like where the conversation was heading. “I could see someone giving the locals special consideration, like you did with Victor Petrov. You figure, ‘what the fuck' make a few bucks off the Ukrainian Agriculture Ministry.” Jake watched Tully's eyes, then continued on. “Then you decide to work a deal with Omri Sherut, who, I might add, sold you out pal.” A little lie never hurt, Jake thought.

“You don't know what the fuck you're talking about.”

“I know enough, Tully. You set up the hit on MacCarty and Swanson, which is the only thing I don't fully understand, since they only wanted to set up a damn fertilizer and pesticide facility.”

“I'm supposed to know that?” Tully mumbled.

“You had them killed for nothing.”

“I didn't do it. I swear. It was Sherut. He thought they had worked a deal with Tvchenko, since you were the last to talk with him, and you worked for them.”

Jake felt like pulling his gun and shooting the bastard right through the skull. He was breathing harder now. “You knew that wasn't true,” Jake yelled.

“Sherut wouldn't listen. He wanted to cut down all the competition.”

Jake shifted his stance, his hands on his hip ready to pull his gun. “You knew Tvchenko had sold out to the Kurds before I even got here, and that the Kurds and Sherut were simply cleaning up all the loose ends. You had overheard all that from the tapes. You had Quinn bring them to you so you could hear them exclusively. You also knew that Petra Kovarik had contacted the GRU and was thinking of selling what she knew. That's why you sent Sherut's men to kill her. And me. Or anyone else who got in the way. The man I shot at the apartment was one of Sherut's men. I didn't realize it until much later, when Sherut only had one goon at his side. I connected the dots.”

Tully lit another cigarette from the butt of the first, and then finished his glass of whiskey. “You're a clever young man, Jake Adams. I could use a guy like you working for me.”

“Yeah, right. Like Quinn Armstrong?”

Tully looked away and then down at his gun on the table.

“You want to explain Quinn?” Jake asked.

Tully thought for a moment. “I never wanted him to die. He was a good man.”

“But?”

“He was too good. He found out about us. He would have blown the whole deal.”

“So, you blow his brains out?” Jake slid his right hand farther back on his hip, and fought off the urge to kill Tully.

Tully shook his head and inhaled deeply on the cigarette. Then he picked up the gun and stared at it. “We all die a little every day, Jake. Sometimes it's better to go quickly. Life is more painful.”

Jake was about to slide his hand back to his gun, when Tully quickly shoved the barrel into his mouth and pulled the trigger. The shot was muffled, but there was a hole in the back of Tully's head, with blood and brains splattered on the wall behind the sofa. Tully lay slumped awkwardly on the sofa like an old man who had fallen asleep in front of the television.