Hard Rain (38 page)

‘Dear god,’ she said. It was barely audible.

‘Mrs Portman, if you want, I can provide you with the numbers of a support group . . . There’s a class action being put together . . .’ I went on to tell her a little about Kumayt and Portman’s work in the hospital there, helping and caring for those children.

She told me that since her divorce from Emmet, there had been no one else. From what I knew, there’d been no one else for Emmet Portman either.

I left her in tears.

H
arvey Stringer glowered as we walked into his office. ‘You’re late. Ten minutes by my watch.’ ‘Our apologies, sir,’ Masters jumped in. ‘But we just got a call from Colonel Portman’s ex-wife. She wanted to know if there’d been any developments. She and Emmet were still close, despite their divorce, and his murder hit her pretty hard.’

Stringer tapped an enormous finger on the desk in front of him, considering his response. After a moment, he grunted and said, ‘We have no room for romantics in our world, Special Agent Masters. Don’t waste my time again.’ He aimed a small remote at a spot on the wall, the lights suddenly dimmed and an LCD screen descended from a slot in the ceiling. ‘Now, Special Agents Telopea and Blitz tell me that you’ve had contact with these people already,’ Stringer continued, shifting his focus to a selection of familiar faces tiled across the screen.

Telopea and Blitz, alias Mallet and Goddard, were seated opposite. They remained deadpan, feigning good behaviour.

I nodded. Yeah, Masters and I had had contact with them. ‘We understand the woman’s name is Yafa,’ I replied. ‘We don’t know the name of the guy with her, though usually he chews on a silver toothpick. The
guy in the smock is an Egyptian industrialist and gun smuggler by the name of Moses Abdul Tawal.’

‘The woman’s full name is Yafa Fienmann,’ Stringer said, taking over. ‘The man with her we’ve identified as Ari Shira. They travel under Czech passports but they are in fact Israeli and ex-Mossad, though I’m sure neither nation would want to claim these two as their own. Both characters are serious fuck-ups. Shira went nuts one day and killed a bunch of Palestinian women and children. Just pulled them out of a marketplace and shot them in the street. He then bought an ice-cream and caught the bus home. He spent four years in a mental institution until they pronounced him cured. Fienmann was expelled from Mossad after a shoot-out that went wrong and she shot her partner by accident. There was another story doing the rounds that she killed her partner in order to sleep with his wife.’

Beneath the table, Masters tapped my foot with hers.

Stringer continued. ‘Moses Abdul Tawal is Jewish, rich, without conscience and open to the highest bidder. We believe that these three deviants are involved in activities against the interests of the United States, as well as in the illegal trafficking of extremely dangerous, high-value, high-security materials.’

‘Such as uranium hexafluoride,’ Masters offered.

Stringer fixed us both with an intense stare. If I’d been standing, I’d probably have taken a step back. But then the big man exhaled, the paper on his desk fluttered, and the immediate danger seemed to pass. ‘We don’t know where the HEX originated from or how Tawal got his hands on it, despite a surveillance operation that has gone on over the last twelve months,’ he said. Stringer was feeding us a little worthless detail to make us feel included, but I wasn’t buying. The CIA would have known where the HEX had come from, even if they couldn’t yet pinpoint the specific facility. But their intel would harden up substantially once they tunnelled through the tons of fallen rock and earth and recovered those storage cylinders. In the meantime, we still had our problem. I made a unilateral decision.

‘There’s an inside man,’ I announced. I felt Masters’ stare.

Stringer’s nostrils flared. ‘An inside man, eh? An inside man . . . How do you know it’s not me?’ Was it me or did the room suddenly become very cold and still?

‘As a matter of fact, Mr Stringer, we have you down as a potential suspect,’ I said. ‘Colonel Portman was the point man in your surveillance operation. And yet you deliberately impeded the investigation into his death.’

‘The truth, Special Agent, is that Portman’s murder took us by surprise. He went a lot further on his own than we had any knowledge of, becoming something of a loose cannon. As for impeding your investigation, if you remember I gave it a hand along with the Bosphorus shipping log when your investigation had hit the wall.’

Stringer had me here. Unless, of course, he knew where the
Onur
was headed in which case he’d given us the information knowing full well it would take us no further than the bottom of the port. Had he done that just to throw off any suspicion?

‘So tell me why you think there’s an inside man, Cooper.’

‘Information to which only this mission and the Istanbul Police Department had access was provided to Yafa.’ I then went on to discuss how our theory about the two safes at Portman’s house had also become known to the killers, and the fact that Portman’s email files had been selectively edited to remove any mention of Kawthar Al Deen, Kumayt, Thurlstane, or anything that would have helped us cut to the chase and perhaps prevent further deaths. Doctor Merkit’s, for example. I balled my fists.

The CIA boss smiled, his lips as big as a couple of porterhouse steaks. ‘Cooper, Portman’s activities on behalf of the CIA were top secret. We don’t leave information about Company activities – past or present – where it can be accessed by anyone who happens along. And we don’t just acknowledge that such-and-such or so-and-so is on our payroll when asked – not even by senate committees. As for the details about the existence of the second safe . . . they could have been passed along by anyone on a very long list, anyone with low-level access who wants a little extra pocket money.’

Stringer sat back in his chair, its joints begging loudly for mercy. ‘No, in our view Tawal
is
the top man, and he’s on Jerusalem’s payroll. Our next play is to remove Tawal from the board. By doing that, perhaps we can delay the game. An Israeli nuclear strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities is imminent – Arak, for example, where heavy water is made, is less than a couple of hundred miles across the border from Kawthar Al Deen and well within the range of the IDF Special Forces they intend stationing there. We can’t let it happen. People think the world changed on 9/11. But it will seem like a footnote in the history books compared to the day after an Israeli nuclear attack on Iran.’

‘Why are you telling us all this, sir?’ Masters asked.

‘Because you’re on the team, now, Special Agent Masters – you and Special Agent Cooper. You’re going to help us capture Moses Abdul Tawal. I’ve been admiring the way you handle yourselves. You’ve done extremely well since you’ve been here. So, until further notice, you and Special Agent Cooper are working for me. Here are your orders from the Pentagon assigning you both to me for the duration of this operation,’ he said, tossing a fax on the desk.

I was lost for words. For once.

‘Can you handle a weapon with that thing?’ Stringer indicated the cast on my forearm.

‘Yes, sir,’ I said.

‘Good. We leave for Cairo,’ he said, checking his watch, ‘in one hour. And this time, make me wait at your peril.’

Cairo traffic reminded me of a landslide: everything was headed in the same general direction, only that’s where the cooperation seemed to end. Aged Fiats, Renaults and Peugeots swarmed all over our Suburban and the one in front as we headed from the airport to the US Embassy.

A sudden electric shock against the top of my hand felt like a pinch. Cairo was warm and dry – perfect conditions. I turned and said, ‘So let me get this straight, Mallet, or whatever your name is today. You actually bought that suit? With your own money?’

‘The name’s Special Agent Telopea. And we’re about to go on a mission, Cooper. We’ll have high-powered weapons and it’s going to be dark. Get my drift? Thought you should be apprised.’

‘Just keep your suit away from inflammables, Mallet. It’s sparking. In the meantime, move over.’

Mallet put a couple of inches between us. We flashed past a ten-foot-tall concrete pharaoh standing in the middle of the road, its hands clenched. If I had to stand like that in Cairo traffic, hands wouldn’t be all I’d be clenching. I sat back and let my mind wander.

Anna and I didn’t have much time to talk back at the consulate-general before we’d had to leave. Neither of us wholly believed Stringer. He’d fed us a mélange of fact and fiction, making it difficult to sift the one from the other. Israel was planning some kind of strike and Kawthar al Deen figured in it somehow. No argument from us – we’d worked out as much on our own.

But we didn’t accept that Tawal was the number-one man. How could he be? The plan was to get our hands on him; then, with the spectre of a long stay at Guantanamo Bay ahead, there was a good chance he’d roll on everyone around and above him. Mostly, there was the issue of the HEX. Fact: somehow, someone had acquired it from a US storage facility. Fact: Masters and me had the serial number of the tank we’d unearthed, and that would tell us which facility. When we felt we could trust Stringer, the CIA would have it too. Ultimately what bugged Masters and me most was not that Stringer had given us half-truths, it was that he’d given us any truth at all.

The Suburbans crossed a sluggish river a fifth the width of the Mississippi, a signpost on the bridge informing us that it was the Nile. We turned right almost immediately on the other side of the bridge into a world of silence, the madness of Cairo held back behind concrete-block chicanes manned by military types armed with old MP5s and AK-47s behind portable armour shields. The driver flashed his ID at the checkpoint and the security guys eyeballed the passengers while another detail checked under the Suburbans’ skirts with mirrors on poles. Finding nothing of interest, they waved us on.

Across the road from the US Embassy, I noticed a large international hotel going broke with no one game enough to sit in the bar. Backing onto the same street was the Egyptian Academy of Music, revelling in the quietest location in all of Cairo. The Suburbans carried us through the embassy’s anti-blast gate, and parked.

It was not my idea of a good briefing. Several people I didn’t know asked questions that suggested they hadn’t been listening in the first place. Or maybe they were just of the belief that a good briefing was a long briefing. I was expecting something different, this being my first full CIA-only gig – like maybe folks doing forward rolls into their seats, something dynamic.

Stringer did his best to make the operation ahead seem like just another day at the office. There were observation points, photos, targeting strategies, logistics considerations, Sudanese- and Egyptian-language issues, air-traffic control sectors, the boundaries of Sudanese and Egyptian Army and Air Force installations in the operations area, ATC and ground frequencies, as well as the usual SIGINT, ELINT, maps and satellite intel. Need-to-know was paramount. By that I mean there was nothing provided to the folks at the briefing about Tawal, the target – who he was, and why the United States government wanted him in a nice secure place beneath the sleepless gaze of surveillance cameras. Just that he was wanted and that ‘Failure was not an option, people.’ The only CIA outsiders besides Masters and me were two women from State, neither of whom said a word. In the wrap-up, Stringer asked if they were okay with everything. I took it from the zombie-like way they both moved their heads up and down that they were. CIA can do whatever it damn well likes.

The overall picture of the mission was as follows: Tawal had taken up residence on his barge on Lake Nasser/Nubia, just south of the Egyptian–Sudanese border. Satellite intel showed fifteen to twenty armed personnel accompanied him. The strike team, which included Masters and me, would transit to a town in northern Sudan called Wadi
Halfa. From there, Masters and I, together with Mallet, Goddard and three sharpshooters, would deploy aboard a Sudanese fishing boat. There would be two other boats besides ours, also commanded by CIA teams. This was a lot of firepower. Tawal was a high-priority target and Stringer obviously didn’t want to take chances.

All vessels would make their way north to points less than a mile from the barge, where Tawal could be kept under observation. An hour before first light, the squad from one of the three boats would disembark and position itself to become a blocking force/cordon on the landward side of the barge. There was to be no chance of escape. Half an hour before first light, three Pave Hawks would depart Abu Simbel Airport, Egypt, and orbit five miles downwind of the operation zone, and wait for the radio call that the target had been secured. First light minus twenty minutes, and the strike teams would close with the barge. When within range, the sharpshooters would disable Tawal’s security force. Coordinating via radio, Masters, Mallet, Goddard and I would then board the barge and snatch Tawal. We’d all egress in the Pave Hawks, which would arrive three minutes after being summoned. Easy.

In practice, reality got in the way. We made it to Wadi Halfa without a hitch, but the boats weren’t available. One day lost there. Then the boats arrived but one broke down in transit. A prayer held its ancient motor together and none of the gods were listening when we tried to spark it back to life. Another day lost. A third day disappeared when two of the translators and four members of one of the strike teams came down with gastroenteritis.

There was concern that our presence might be conveyed to Tawal by the locals, so we spent these additional nights bivouacked out of town where there was sand, scorpions and snakes and not much else. Day four: ELINT and sat intel confirmed that Tawal remained in residence on his barge, so we were cleared in hot.

T
he moonless night was cold in the wind chill, merely cool out of it. High cloud eliminated the starlight, making the night thick and black. Occasional coughs from Nile crocodiles and the slap of fish clearing the water punctuated the low burble from our exhaust as we hugged the shore. An hour and a half till first light.

Two members of the fire team gave me a nod as they passed, heading below to get their equipment. Mallet followed. By now, the cordon would be in place. There was nothing to do but wait.

I yawned. Masters and I had checked our weapons a couple of times already – Tokarevs with three spare mags apiece, and AK-47 carbines also with fifteen spare mags, all of Chinese origin for ease of later misidentification by local authorities. Aimpoint Comp sights compatible with our night-vision devices completed our weapons ensemble. I couldn’t get comfortable in the CIA-issue body armour. It was tight, especially across that rib. I lowered the NVD, turned on the sight and aimed the weapon at the shoreline. Movement. There – a massive croc hauling itself up over the rocks and then settling onto its broad belly. The Aimpoint sight was a quality item. I turned everything off, sat on the gunwale and listened to the night.

With the lights off and without the night vision, all I could see of
Masters was the vague glow of the white CIA lettering across her back and the narrow green strip on her black Kevlar helmet. The boat captain cut the motor a hundred yards out from our designated position and we slid across the water in silence, the drag slowly washing off our speed. We inched around a spit of land and the anchor went down without a splash. I turned on the electrics and trained the sight on the barge. Tawal was up. The guy was an early riser. He was waving something about, leaning out over the water. A huge shape suddenly reared up out of the blackness and then fell back.

‘Must be breakfast time,’ said Masters, taking in the same show. ‘He likes to feed the wildlife, remember?’

I remembered Cain telling us.

‘You’d think he’d put some clothes on, though, wouldn’t you? Crocs might take the wrong item.’

I looked harder. Tawal was wearing some kind of loose dressing gown, completely open at the front. He was erect. A woman appeared from out of a doorway, also in some kind of dressing gown. She let it fall off her and beneath it she was naked. Lucky Tawal. From what I could see, the woman had a hell body. She kissed Tawal on the shoulder and then went back inside, swinging her ass at him. ‘Honey, come back to bed,’ I said. ‘You might catch something out here.’

‘Or something might catch you,’ Masters added.

Tawal must have heard us. He followed the girl back inside.

‘Do we know anything about her?’ I asked.

‘Not that I’ve seen,’ said Masters. ‘But Tawal’s worth a few hundred mill. Gotta have a little black book.’

‘Crazy if he doesn’t,’ I said. Everything went quiet on board the barge, though I counted seven heavily armed security guys. Four of them were smoking, begging to be shot. ‘With everything that has happened, I haven’t asked you . . . you still getting out?’

The boat rocked a little, unexpectedly, enough that I had to change my footing.

‘KMAG YO-YO,’ Masters replied.

‘Did you get that from Block?’ I asked.

‘Kiss my ass, guys, you’re on your own? A military chat room, actually.’

‘Any idea what you’re going to do?’

‘I still haven’t made up my mind – not completely. Being a special agent was something I always wanted to do. Starting a new life was not something I ever seriously considered before Richard, but now that’s over . . .’ She shrugged.

‘Then what
could
you do if you left?’

‘Well, I’ve spoken to my sister and we’ve talked about me joining her in the West Indies, to work on my all-over tan while I learn how to scuba-dive. Then perhaps I’d get my instructor’s ticket and teach other people for a while. Vin, if I leave . . . I’ve been thinking . . . Come with me.’

I thought about it for a moment. Could I? ‘Maybe I will.’

She scoffed. ‘Maybe you should. But you wouldn’t. You like locking people up too much to quit.’

Hmm . . . perhaps, perhaps not. Scuba diving with Anna anywhere sounded more attractive than another stretch busting heads in the OSI or CIA, or whomever it was we were working for. I wasn’t too keen on the thought of there being no Anna Masters in my life. Maybe it was time I left too, got out while the party was still going strong. And left with the hottest babe on the dance floor on my arm.

‘And then when I got bored, I’d go back to school.’

I snapped out of it. ‘School?’

‘To study law.’

‘No way.
Law
?’

‘Yes, way. You know I believe in the system. I’ve experienced law enforcement from this side. Maybe I could do some good at the other end of the process. Who knows, one day I could even come up against Richard and kick his damn – What’s that? Can you hear that? Are they Pave Hawks?’

The thump of helicopter rotors reached my ears at the same instant. It couldn’t be the MH-60s. They hadn’t been summoned. Something had gone wrong. I moved to the other side of the boat.

The familiar
thump-thump
was getting louder, closer. I could hear
them, but couldn’t see them. I flipped down the NVD, and aimed the scope in the direction of the sound. Mallet appeared from behind the wheelhouse, obviously also wondering who, what, where, why and a bunch of other goddamn questions besides. Goddard was behind him.

And then I noticed Mallet had a pistol in his hand. It was a Chinese Type 67. We weren’t issued silenced weapons. He raised it. The two-handed grip. Anna had her back to him.
What are you doing?
He held the weapon’s muzzle an inch from the base of her skull.
A silenced pistol . . .

Mallet hadn’t seen me. I didn’t think about it. I fired point-blank into the side of his face. His jawbone separated from his head, taking his NVD with it. The rest of him slid over the side of the boat. Gone. Just like that.

‘Jesus Christ!’ Masters shouted, spinning around.

Goddard came out shooting.
Phut, phut, phut . . .
Another Type 67.
They didn’t issue us with silenced weapons
. The pistol jumped in his hands. A round slammed into the ceramic plate protecting Masters’ front, then another – panic shots – the force of the hits sending her sprawling backwards onto the deck. A third round zinged off a winch beside Masters’ head as she rolled onto her side.

I dropped to a knee, fired into Goddard’s legs as he stepped forward and past me – a three-round burst. The slugs sawed his boot off at the ankle. Overbalanced and half falling, he took another step, onto the shattered bone stump, and stumbled. A burst of fire, this one from Masters, caught him in the throat as he fell and cored it. He slumped to the deck with a soft thud. Anna was on her back again, breathing hard, frozen, smoke curling from her AK’s flash suppressor.

The chopper roared low across the water a hundred yards to our right. It wasn’t one of ours. It looked civilian, a Bell 412. I could see armed personnel sitting in the open doorway, legs dangling over the side.

‘You okay?’ I yelled at Masters.

‘I’m okay, I’m okay,’ she replied. She got back on her feet, reaching for the railing. ‘Shit, that hurt.’

‘Welcome to my world. What the fuck’s going down here?’

‘You tell me.’

The helo flared in a hover over the barge as a gun battle erupted on the shoreline behind it.

‘The cordon’s being attacked from the rear,’ I said.

Ropes dropped from the aircraft along with the rain of machine-gun fire. Tracers told me that Tawal’s security force was returning the fire, though it was sporadic. Most of his twenty-man security detail must have been taken out from a distance by sharpshooters on the bird.

‘Our boat driver’s dead, and the radio’s smashed,’ Masters called out behind me from the wheelhouse. I had a feeling that below decks would look like a slaughterhouse, which explained the odd shift in the boat’s balance I’d felt earlier. Mallet and Goddard would have taken out whoever was down there first before coming up to whack us. Masters was incredibly lucky that my weapon was raised and in the firing position and that Mallet had just blundered into my sights. My thumb must have snicked the safety off without asking my brain’s permission – I didn’t remember doing it.

Our engine burst into life. Masters had decided we were going to charge right on in there. The throttle surged and the screw bit, launching us forward and ripping the anchor from the silted bottom. I braced myself against the wheelhouse, the helo and the barge filling the Aimpoint’s lens and getting larger. Machine-gun fire spat from the side of the helo and chewed up the prow of our boat, flailing me with wood splinters. Masters spun the wheel and brought us on a course parallel to the barge and the shoreline. I noticed the other CIA boat was on the move, coming in. I wondered who was controlling it, whether they had a Mallet and Goddard on board.

Tawal appeared on the deck of his barge, hands on his head, pushed along by two gunmen. He was still wearing his coat. The attacking force had complete control of the vessel. The machine gun in the Bell gave us another burst and a cluster of geysers erupted just beyond our stern. Whoever was firing it didn’t know how to lead a moving target, not that I was going to complain about it. What was going on here? The
gunfire had diminished to the point where I heard just the occasional shot. An explosion flared green in the scope and the mast holding the barge’s navigation lights, comms and radar aloft toppled, allowing the helicopter to settle on the roof of what was the main cabin. The attacking force was getting ready to leave.

I refocused on Tawal. He was being made to step up on the side rail of the barge. The two gunmen behind him had a hold of the back of his coat. It seemed to me they were making him lean forward, way out over the edge of the barge like he was on a trapeze. I could hear a lot of shouting going on over the noise of our boat and the chopper, but couldn’t see too much detail.

A black shape the size of a tree trunk reared up out of the water and Tawal was gone. My mouth was open.

‘You see that?’ Masters called out. ‘They just fed the guy to the crocs!’

I started firing into the side of the helo. The machine gun in its side door returned the compliment, and .50-calibre slugs smashed into our hull below the waterline and raked us from the bow all the way to the stern. The assault force climbed aboard the aircraft and it lifted off, a well-oiled operation. Whoever these folks were, they knew what they were doing. They also knew what the CIA was doing.

The helo altered direction and Masters brought the boat around to intercept it. I wasn’t sure this was such a good idea, given their firepower, but it provided a better view into the side of the aircraft. I emptied the remains of the magazine at it, but to no apparent effect. A few of the men that I could see ripped off their NVGs and helmet – only, one of them wasn’t a man.
Yafa
. The 412 banked around the spit of land, hovered there for thirty seconds and then climbed away.

Dawn wasn’t pretty down by the lake. Large black birds circled high overhead as we picked through the disaster. The woman we’d seen getting impatient and naked with Tawal was of Middle Eastern origin, maybe twenty-three and drop-dead gorgeous. Now she was just dead, a bullet through her left eye.

Masters had run our boat up on the shore. The .50-cal rounds did a lot of damage and we were taking water. Down in the hold, as we’d feared, Mallet and Goddard had dispatched the three CIA sharpshooters, sending them off on the big sleep. Masters and I were cuffed to the wheelhouse for an hour while the mess was sorted out and the senior agents on the scene came to grips with our story – that Mallet and Goddard were working both sides of the fence and that we’d killed them in self-defence after they’d slaughtered the agents below decks and came gunning for us. The silenced weapon in Goddard’s rigor-mortised fingers, in addition to the 7.62 millimetre slugs prised from the wood behind the sharpshooters’ heads, backed our version. But even after we were released, the suspicion still clung to us and soaked up the agents’ anger and frustration. Goddard’s remains were bagged together with his boot, his foot still laced into it.

‘I don’t think Mallet and Goddard liked you very much, Vin,’ said Masters as an agent zipped up the bag.

‘What makes you say that? I was nothing but helpful – charming, even.’

‘They didn’t have to show their hand. There was no need to kill us. Putting a bullet in you must have been something they wanted badly.’

‘Gee, I can’t think why,’ I said.

A gunshot rang out and a large croc retreated into the water. A couple of agents kept an eye on the lake’s edge from the safety of the barge. The last thing the CIA needed now was for an agent to end up an essential food group.

‘After they whacked us, Goddard and Mallet were going to RV with the helo round the corner,’ I went on. ‘Must have been why it stopped there in the hover. I think it wasn’t just me they wanted dead, and it wasn’t just Goddard and Mallet who wanted to do the killing. You saw who was on that Bell.’

‘I saw.’ Masters screwed a black ball cap down on her head. ‘I hate Monday mornings. I’m going to go help out. You?’ She climbed up on the gunwale and jumped down onto the mud before I could give her an answer.

None of Tawal’s people had survived. All twenty were shot dead. Amongst our blocking force on-shore, there was one dead and six wounded, one of them seriously. They’d been surprised, out-gunned and outmanoeuvred. After the shock of the initial assault, they’d at least had the good sense to keep their heads down.

Stringer arrived in a chartered helicopter an hour after sunrise to take in the scene and supervise the clean-up. We didn’t talk. He was wrong about there being no one on the inside – he knew it, we knew it, and we knew he knew it. What we wanted to know was whether he was involved in it. How could Mallet and Goddard operate without him being involved in it? Nevertheless, he was there assisting in the evacuation of the casualties, loading them into the Pave Hawks. The op was an unmitigated disaster. As far as Stringer’s future in the CIA was concerned, a crystal ball wasn’t needed to figure he wouldn’t have one.