Mad Powers (Tapped In) (15 page)

“I promise. Your thoughts are safe. Although I already saw your memory of us kissing in the Washington Monument.”

“Well, don’t read too much into that. You still have a lot to answer for. There’s not a U.S. Intelligence agency not looking for you, not to mention most international ones.”

“Listen. Veronica was a double agent. Pippa, I’d discovered she was working for the SVR; her cover was blown. She pulled her weapon, was going to shoot both Harland and myself. I shot her first.”

“That’s not how Harland reported events went down when he got back. As far as he was concerned, you shot his wife in cold blood, then went to ground. He was so devastated he eventually had to leave the agency.”

“The only reason I went to ground was because Veronica had the SVR already coming for us. How Harland got out still has me baffled.”

“So where did you go?”

“Remember Ladislav Skykora, the Slovakian national? You met him in Moscow several years back. Anyway, he was a friend and I knew he was no ally of the Russians. He agreed to keep me hidden, but he extracted a price from me for doing so that I still need to pay. Over that next year I couldn’t leave his flat. He was being watched … his phones were tapped; twenty-four hour surveillance on his flat. Several times, I had to hide in a crawlspace between the walls. I owe him my life.”

“Why didn’t you come in once you got back to the U.S.?” she asked.

“I was planning to. But I needed to keep my promise to Skykora first. It was only going to take me a day, two at most. That’s why I’m here in Kingman. I had to keep my promise.”

I watched Pippa’s face. She still looked skeptical.

“What was it you had to do for Skykora—what was your promise?”

“I had to kill a man. Another Slovakian national. I’ve actually already met him, but at the time, with my amnesia, I had no idea who he was.”

“Who is he?” she asked.

“A man named Drako. Drako Cervenka.”

Chapter 24

“You just can’t kill a man in cold blood. It’s not like an agency sanction, it would be murder,” Pippa said incredulously.

“Drako’s a pretty bad dude. I’m not going to lose sleep over taking him out. I’ve taken out worse—so have you. He’s been getting rich off human trafficking, mostly Slovakian women and children, for years. A master strategist, he’s always one or two, or even three steps ahead of the authorities. My friend, Skykora, lost his sister and niece to Drako’s trafficking enterprises. They were abducted from their small eastern bloc village, smuggled into an oceanic shipping container with thirty or forty others. Skykora was able to alert the authorities, and the freighter was boarded and searched. Unfortunately, they’d gotten to the container too late. Everyone inside was dead. His sister, niece, everyone, had run out of water halfway across the Atlantic. Died of thirst.”

Pippa was quiet for a while. I wasn’t sure if she had come to some kind of acceptance of my predicament. “If we get out of this, Rob, I need to bring you in. I believe what you’ve told me. And after what you’ve shown me, what you could show them—”

“No! No one can ever know about these abilities, Pippa. Can you imagine the potential for misuse? How I’d never have a life again?”

“You won’t last long on your own. There’s too many looking for you,” she said.

“I’ll think of something. But my days working for the government are over. If you think about it, you’d realize too what I’ve come to know. In a profession where everyone lies to everyone else, I’d quickly become a liability.”

She seemed to accept that. She continued to stare at me. The unspoken words were written in her expression.
What about us? What about what we had?

Noises were coming from above. Harland was returning.

“Get directly under the perch—stay out of sight,” I said. I fetched up the same long piece of metal I’d used as a fulcrum and waited for Pippa to get across the room. I licked my fingers and unscrewed the light bulb until the basement went black. Carefully, I moved forward in the darkness to where I remembered Pippa was standing. I walked right into her. Her arms instinctively came up, her hands resting on my chest. We stayed like that as the noises from above got louder. I felt her breath on my neck, could smell her light perfume. Then we heard Harland’s footfalls right above us.

A beam of light shone as his flashlight moved in slow, wide arcs around the basement.

“What are you up to, Chandler? I know you’re down there.” The beam of his flashlight had settled on the light bulb and extra coils of extension cord lying on the floor, then on the generator and the spliced-in wires. “Someone’s been busy here. What are you two up to, Rob?”

I heard him rack the slide of his handgun to chamber a round. Not so easy with only one working hand.

What Harland didn’t know was that I was already in his mind, tracking his erratic thoughts, feeling his ever-increasing apprehension that we, somehow, had actually found a way out. I interjected a suggestion into his mind:

They’re sly. They may be right below—below the perch. I’d be able to see them if I got down on my hands and knees and looked over the edge …

As I wondered if he had accepted these thoughts for his own, I heard the shuffling of his feet above as he lowered himself to his knees and squatted down on all fours onto the plywood perch. I was seeing through his eyes in real time. I knew exactly where he was—where he would be looking. My fingers tightened around the metal in my hand. I gently pushed Pippa to the side and stepped backwards until my back was up against the slump-stone wall. I waited. I could see what he saw as he positioned himself onto his belly. He placed the gun close by his side. Slowly he inched his body forward, out over the edge of the perch, right up against his hipbone. He held his bandaged hand behind him to steady himself, while his free hand held the flashlight. He lowered his upper body over the edge almost enough to see if anyone was hiding below. I pushed myself off the wall and took one, then two running steps, and leapt. I brought the piece of metal up over my head, gripped firmly in my hands. First, I saw the beam of the flashlight, then his head silhouetted behind it. I also saw my own face through his eyes. There, in midair, I aimed my metal spear high up toward his left eye.

I missed. Harland must have jerked to the right just as the metal shaft came near. It hit him in the temple instead. I saw the shaft’s edge dig into his flesh, and then break free, glancing off the side of his head. He yelped, and in a series of rapid movements, recoiled, grabbed for his head, and dropped the flashlight. For a moment he held steady there, but with his center of balance too far over the edge of the platform, he fell to the basement floor at my feet.

He’d landed on his back and the fall knocked the wind out of him. I fetched up the flashlight and walked over to the generator and the nearby light bulb. With several twists it was back on and the basement was again illuminated.

Harland had a hand up to his temple and his eyes were following my movements. Then he saw Pippa beneath the perch.

“Not sure how you two did that, but I have to give you credit. I’d say clever, but now you must realize all three of us are trapped down here, right?” He laughed abruptly and his eyes darted back and forth between us—he looked somewhat manic.

Pippa stood over Harland. She’d picked up my piece of metal and was holding it in two hands, like a bat. “You killed my partner. You slit his throat, Harland … let him lay there in that parking lot while he bled out.”

Harland kept his eyes on Pippa but spoke to me: “I can clear you, Chandler. But if you let her kill me, well, then the truth dies with me.”

“She doesn’t answer to me, Harland. Personally, I’m inclined to let her bash your head in. You’re a worthless piece of shit.”

“No! I can help you,” he said, with a distorted, forced smile. “Tell me what I have to do.”

“Well, a good start would be telling us who you’re working for, and why you’ve taken us hostage.”

Harland didn’t answer fast enough. Pippa swung the bat down on Harland’s bandaged appendage. He screamed out in agony. As he pulled his arm in to cradle his hand, fresh blood started to seep through the gauze wrappings.

This time it was Pippa asking the question: “Who are you working for?”

I knew the answer before he said the words—saw Dwight Calloway’s face in his mind. The

Deputy Executive Director (D/EXDIR) with the CIA. Four levels down from the top, the head of the CIA.

Harland reluctantly muttered his name aloud. “I work as a private contractor for Dwight Calloway.”

Pippa and I looked at each other. Neither of us had ever had much direct contact with the man. He was significantly above our pay-grade.

“What’s he want with us?” Pippa asked.

Harland was sitting up now, his hand still tucked into his stomach. “It was Calloway, his team, that got me out of Russia.”

“What do you mean his team? We were all his team.”

“No, I’m talking about his black-ops team. He runs a separate covert group; one that’s outside government channels. No one knows about it.”

“How did he drag you into that?” I asked.

“I’ve worked for Calloway for years. The price for my service, doing his special projects, was allowing Veronica to stay alive.”

“So you knew she was a double?” I asked.

“You’re ridiculously naïve, Chandler. Even you must realize the lines between treachery and heroism are often blurred. People like Calloway take in the big spectrum of things. He’s not blinded by single-minded patriotism.”

“What the hell does that mean?” Pippa asked.

“It means that it’s not the world’s various governments making the crucial decisions. It’s the financial consortiums. Economics span across borders. Interests must be protected, even if that means one’s country, or origin, takes a slight hit.”

“And what part does Calloway play in this organization?”

“As far as I’m concerned, and soon for you both as well, he’s God.”

“What’s the name of this consortium?”

Harland hesitated. His eyes leveled on me and I could see the hatred rising in him again. He was unstable—even crazed. I saw in his mind that he was poised to make a charge at me. His hatred for me trumped everything… his mission… even his own survival.

Pippa brought the bat back, ready for another swing.

“SIFTR!” he replied.

I was getting impatient with Harland and he knew it.

“It stands for Services of International Financial and Tactical Resources.”

I was back, probing into his mind, trying to get as much detail as I possibly could from him. It was then I heard a concussive explosion from above, while simultaneously seeing a dark red hole appear between Harland’s eyes. I spun toward Pippa, wanting to protect her from whatever was above us.

Chapter 25

Standing above us was a man in an impeccably tailored light-gray suit. He was flanked by four men: two on either side. Soldiers, they were dressed in black combat fatigues and each held an M4 carbine semi-automatic rifle, with both laser and night vision sights; their weapons also had the RIS vertical forestock handgrip and a suppressor.

The man had short-cropped gray hair and striking blue eyes. He was holding a Glock in his left hand and still had it pointed at Harland
’
s head. He nodded, as if satisfied with what he
’
d just accomplished. Handing the weapon to a soldier on his left, he brought his full attention down to us.

“
Mr. Chandler, Agent Rosette. First off, I
’
d like to apologize for the way you both have been treated. Agent Rosette, I especially would like to convey my condolences on the loss of Agent Giles.
”

Pippa said nothing, only stared up at the man standing on the perch above. I was already in his mind, monitoring his thoughts. What grabbed my attention, above anything else, was his total lack of emotion. Where Harland was an emotional powder keg, this man was ice. His mind was organized and his motivations were clear. He didn
’
t want to kill us
—
just the opposite. He wanted
…
no, needed our help. Harland had been right; Calloway was certainly the top player in the organization, this
SIFTR
. He was the one pulling the strings. It was Calloway
’
s ability to make decisions without the encumbrance of emotional conflicts that made him so effective. I wouldn
’
t have gone so far as to label him a sociopath, because in his reality he seemed to be concerned with taking the noblest course of action. From what I determined, in the brief few seconds I had to scan his thoughts as I stood below him on the basement floor, was that he was prepared to do anything, eliminate anyone, as necessary, to accomplish his directives.

The sound of the retractable ladder being lowered from above brought me out of his mind. I wondered, was he aware at some level that I
’
d been intruding there? That something was amiss among the incalculable order of things? I
’
d need to be ultra careful the next time I peered into his thoughts.

Two soldiers made their way down the ladder, while the other two standing above had their weapons trained down on us. I hadn
’
t noticed Calloway had left.

Arbitrarily, I picked one of the soldiers, the first one down the ladder, and peered into his mind. I arrived into a rush of frenetic thoughts and spiking emotions
—
images of a pretty young wife and two small children. Was he fearing for their lives? Was this man being coerced somehow into helping Calloway and this
SIFTR
organization? No, I soon realized, it was just the opposite. This man had been saved from a desperate situation. His loyalty to Calloway, and the SIFTR organization, was absolute. He would do anything, including killing Pippa and myself, if it came down to it.

At gunpoint we were ushered up the ladder to the plywood perch and then up into the opening at the ceiling. We followed the forward two combatants into the gloomy darkness of the hotel, back to what had become the deteriorating dining area. All trash and overturned furniture had been cleared from the room. Not a scrap of paper or an errant dust ball remained. Three chairs were positioned in the center of the room. Calloway sat primly in the one facing us as we entered.