Michael Walsh Bundle (10 page)

I
N THE AIR
: B
ARTLETT

The Gulfstream was clean and comfortable. On the tarmac at Van Nuys Airport it looked like any of the other corporate jets that allowed the winners of life's lottery to avoid the LAX nightmare. Whether you were flying down to Rio for a climate-change powwow, spending the weekend at your ranch in Montana, or just hopping over to Nevada for some stays-in-Vegas fun, the private jet was God's way of telling a sizable number of people in the LA area that they were making just about the right amount of money.

Inside, however, the jet that was ferrying Eddie Bartlett and his friends to Scott Air Force Base near Belleville, Illinois, about twenty miles east of St. Louis, was a little different than, say, the Paramount jet. For one thing, it was a state-of-the-art arsenal, with everything from nonlethal ordnance to armor-penetrating RPGs. Concussion grenades, cluster bombs. Small arms of every description, including the AA-12 automatic shotgun that Xe developed at its training grounds in Moyock, North Carolina. All hidden behind rotating panels that answered only to the team leader's palm prints, retinal scan, and voice register.

The jet was carrying two dozen men, each one of them identified only by a name tag. When he first came to Xe—it was called Blackwater then—the system had been to use only numbers, so as to inhibit the formation of personal relationships and the exchange of confidences. But numbers proved to be too impersonal for the unit's own good; some cohesion was found to be necessary, and so he'd hit upon a rotating, mission-specific structure of common first names—Jim, Fred, Bob, Jose—that could easily be remembered and, later, forgotten. The name tags were worn only during mission prep and needed to be memorized; once in combat they were discarded.

The men—there were no women—were all handpicked for their résumés and their code of silence. Except for the very odd occasion when he needed a woman for camouflage or misdirection, Eddie Bartlett worked exclusively with men. He was old school that way. No sexual jealousy, not protective empathy. Not that Eddie didn't have plenty of the latter—as a husband and father, he was a puddle of protective empathy. But when it came to taking care of business, he was all business.

So his team consisted of Delta, SEALs from Team 6, Green Berets, Rangers, 10th Mountaineers, Specials Operations Command personnel, some retired, some moonlighting, and some just freelancing. Officially, of course, none of them was there.

Once, men like these really were “special ops.” The Navy ferried the Marines, the Marines landed, the Army bore the brunt of the fighting and the mopping-up, and special ops were used sparingly, for intel and dirty work. Today, in the wake of the second Iraq War, special ops were the point of the spear—the first resort, not the last—with the regular Army acting in a support capacity. There was a lot of grumbling about it, but this was the brave new world of warfare.

Eddie Bartlett himself cut his teeth with the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (Airborne), 2nd Battalion, at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, better known as the Night Stalkers. Fast in, faster out, wholly lethal, the Night Stalkers were a special helicopter unit, trained to plan and execute the mission and extract everybody in one piece. All of them could fly a chopper between a nun's legs and she'd never even feel the breeze.

Ironically, the unit originated with the failure of Operation Eagle Claw in the desert of Iran, after which President Carter had belatedly ordered up an outfit that could actually have accomplished Desert One. So the Army got its best fliers from the Screaming Eagles and elsewhere, put together the 160th SOAR, and had been doing some serious damage ever since.

One of his three secure, direct-access lines buzzed softly and Bartlett picked it right up. The man on the other end of the line didn't have to identify himself and spoke, as he always did, without preamble or pleasantries:

“Be ready to bubble down the cell phone service for a ten-mile radius, except for our secure network.” In tech parlance, “bubbling down” meant to shut down cell towers within a given range. “I also want real-time infrared imaging, 3-D coverage.”

“Good idea. The school's out in the middle of a field, surrounded by nothing. Couple of outbuildings, sheds, whatnots.”

The voice of “Tom Powers” crackled in his ear. “That's why they picked it. They think they'll see us coming. But they won't. KRV. No heroes, no medals.”

Bartlett nodded to himself. He had the right crew for the job. “KRV. Roger that.”

“Got your playbook?”

“Consulting it now,” said Eddie. Actually, what he was looking at that precise moment was a computer playing the You Tube video of Miss Teen South Carolina desperately attempting to answer a simple question about Americans and maps, but he knew that “Powers,” who had sent him the link via a series of untraceable cut-out gmail addresses from a server in Abu Dhabi, had embedded the tactical plan inside the video; a self-extracting file, good for one use only, would call it up. And then the hard-drive would melt.

Bartlett looked up at the countdown clock located on both front bulkheads: just under an hour to touchdown.

“NSDQ,” he said, signing off.

When Miss Teen South Carolina got to her third repetition of “such as,” he clocked on the dummy link.

The download was nearly instantaneous. He had just enough time to hit the print button before the hard drive went into its controlled meltdown. The laptop's titanium case would contain the electrical fire. He read the page as it spat from the high-speed laser printer:

“Patriots, Red 54–40.” Right. Eddie Bartlett turned to his team. “Lock and load, gentlemen. The zone is hot.”

I
N THE AIR
: S
KORZENY

Skorzeny's Boeing 707 was not immodestly luxurious. This was, after all, a businessman's plane, not a sheik's whorehouse or a rock star's pleasure palace. Tastefully appointed, leather seats, a private sleeping compartment in the back for long trips, it was capable of being refueled while in flight, which meant, as a practical matter, that he could stay airborne for days, even weeks at a time. Rarely were there more than two or three persons aboard, not counting the pilots and the staff.

Flying time to Paris was less than ninety minutes, so there would be no napping on this trip. Skorzeny sat, as he always did, at his built-in computer console, from which he controlled the worldwide activities of Skorzeny International; since he did business in nearly every time zone on earth, sleep was an unprofitable activity.

Skorzeny's plane was equipped with an advanced, satellite-based air-traffic monitoring system, which allowed him to track his corporate fleet, on land, at sea, and in the air. To the naked eye, Skorzeny's screen was an indecipherable series of blips and letter-number combinations, but he could read it the way a great conductor could read a complex symphonic score. Thanks to deals he had struck with just about every air-traffic control system on the planet, and using a sophisticated transponder triangulation system that he himself had modestly conceived and developed, he could keep track of just about everything that belonged to him.

Additionally, it allowed him to monitor, through GPS, the location of every one of his operatives anyplace in the world. Carrying the modified cell-and sat-phones issued by the company, Skorzeny's employees could be instantly traced, located, and, if necessary, recalled or rescued. He trusted this information because it was provided by his own comsat, which he had piggybacked into space aboard one of the French
Ariane
rockets in the nineties. By corporate edict, everyone at a senior or operative level who worked for Skorzeny had to keep his or her GPS device on at all times. The only exception was when you were in duress, in durance, or dead.

“Sir?” Pilier's voice, over his shoulder. “We're approaching Paris.”

So engrossed was he that he'd missed the man's approach. Skorzeny made a mental note to see his doctor soon; if this was a sign his senses had started to slip, he wanted to know about it right away. He preferred to think that his inattention was the residue of the excitement he was feeling, and nothing more.

“You've contacted HARBOR and BOREALIS?”

“Yes, sir. Their offices are closed at the moment, due to the lateness of the hour.” Given all of Skorzeny's high-tech toys, what the old man wanted with this sort of thing was beyond him. Still, one of the ways Skorzeny was able to keep absolute communications security was through a network of microsatellites, which had been launched into geosynchronous orbit from high-altitude airplanes, so weather balloons probably had some practical use that he could not see. In any case, Pilier's job was to execute, not wonder.

“Thank you.”

He tried not to let his excitement show, tried to control his emotions, even when they were responding to the beginning of the realization of his lifelong dream.

Ambition in a child is fueled by many things—parental expectation, want, force majeure, disaster—but Emanuel Skorzeny's ambition was born of
Sippenhaft
: collective responsibility for actions of a family member. In the wake of the failed attempt on Adolf Hitler's life on July 20, 1944, not only the conspirators suffered, so did their families. Some were executed, most were separated and sent to special camps, where the mothers died but where their children's identities were expunged, where all memories of the sins of their fathers were extirpated, where they were allowed to live, albeit with new names and new souls. Emanuel Skorzeny was one of those children.

Skorzeny's father died twisting at the end of some piano wire, but he himself was spared and sent by reason of
Sippenhaft
to purdah or, in his case, a camp near Dresden. On February 13, 1945, the jewel of the Elbe was liberated by “Bomber” Harris of the RAF, with American support, and the camp was demolished. He was in, of all places, the outhouse at the time of the attack and thus survived when the barracks took a direct hit.

There were those who whispered that he was the illegitimate son of Otto Skorzeny himself, the great
Standarten-führer
who had rescued Mussolini from the partisans. He let them think that: it made the story of his life so much more…redemptive.

Pilier strapped himself into his seat as the plane went into a steep descent. “Sir?” he reminded.

“In a moment, Monsieur Pilier.” Skorzeny's fingers flew; for an old man, thought Pilier, he could handle himself around technology like a teenager. As Pilier watched, Skorzeny put on a headset to eliminate the noise of the plane's engines and began to speak softly. Pilier couldn't hear what he was saying, but he knew whom he was talking to: Amanda Harrington, who should be waiting for them in Paris.

Skorzeny finished his conversation and shut down the system. One of the conditions he was forced to accept when he bribed the French minister of the interior was to switch it off in French airspace. No matter how well shielded it was, it would not do to be discovered, and not wishing to annoy a duly appointed official of his host country, especially given his special needs within that host country, Skorzeny had reluctantly agreed. He prided himself on keeping his word.

“Do you read the Bible, Monsieur Pilier?”

Where that question came from, Pilier didn't want to know. He braced himself for a new and strange line of inquiry. “You know I don't, sir,” said Pilier. He was a good French Catholic, which meant that he never attended mass.

“What about the
Apocrypha?
The
Gnostic Gospels?
Surely,
Revelation?”

Where was the crazy old coot going with this? “No, sir.”

“The vision of St. John, a masterpiece of speculative superstition that some mistake for dogma. A book of visions, signs, terror, and wonders. Of the End Times. ‘And there appeared a great wonder in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars.' Chapter Twelve, Verse One.”

Now Pilier understood. It had something to do with Skorzeny's Blake obsession.

“The woman clothed with the sun. The point is, the cartoon versions of reality and history that we see on our so-called ‘news' channels are grossly distorted and lacking in specificity. But that, I suppose, is what comes from a century-long assault on western civilization. Don't false dichotomies enrage you? Left, right, communism, national socialism, capitalism?”

Pilier had no idea what Skorzeny was talking about, and wondered whether the old man did, either.

The wheels barely bumped as they landed, which was the way Skorzeny liked it. They were still rolling to a stop when he rose from his seat and let Pilier throw his topcoat around his shoulders. He ran a comb through his hair.

He was first out the door, walking briskly toward the car. Pilier was trailing behind him, carrying their effects. Even though it was dark, he could see her silhouette in the backseat of the Citroën.

E
DWARDSVILLE
—J
EFFERSON
M
IDDLE
S
CHOOL

Emma caught Rory's glance, but tried not to let on. She didn't want any of the bad men to realize they knew each other. She didn't want any harm to come to her brother. If anything happened to him…

She wasn't sure how she knew, but at some point before they had dragged his body away she had realized that Mr. Nasir-Nassaad was dead. She had never seen a dead person before, not even in a funeral home, and all of a sudden there had been two of them right in front of her. All four of her grandparents were not only still alive, they were thriving in North Carolina and Florida. Everybody lived forever these days. Except, of course, for Nurse Haskell and Mr. Nasir-Nassaad.

She'd wondered what it felt like to be dead. Wondered if it hurt, the way it hurt when you cut yourself really bad, and whether it kept on hurting even after you were dead. Or if your soul just jumped out of your body and went its merry way up to heaven or wherever, or whether you got to stick around for a while, to see what was happening.

These weren't pleasant thoughts, but under the circumstances, they were the most pleasant thoughts she could muster.

And then doors opened and the man with the funny accent was back again.

He was talking to a few of the other men, like he was the captain of the basketball team calling up a play or something. They broke and the other men went away, out of the gym, carrying their guns. After they'd gone, he started yelling again. “Okay, okay, we don't want no heroes now. Nobody going to get hurt. Everything going to be fine, but now we see if your mother, father love you or not.”

Emma had no idea what he meant by that—she was certain that her parents loved her and Rory—but it seemed to amuse him, because he started laughing again, and already she had seen enough of what happened when he started to laugh.

She closed her eyes.

What a difference. It was a world of stillness. But the tranquility had a trade-off: the silence in the gym was not really silence at all, but a mixture of deep breathing, small whimpers and groans, the muttering of bad men.

And the smells. You didn't notice them so much when your eyes were open, but now they jumped right out at you. Many of the children had soiled themselves, and that pungent odor wafted everywhere. Emma hoped she would be able to control her bladder when the time came because she didn't want to embarrass herself and she sure didn't want to ruin her new Citizens of Humanity jeans, which had cost her dad more than a hundred dollars.

A sudden, stinging slap across her face brought her wide awake back to brute reality.

It was him, leering into her face. “No sleeping missy. You wouldn't want to have bad dreams now, would you?”

The smell of his breath made her want to retch, and she fought down the rising bile. He was brown-eyed, with a stubble of scraggly beard and a hawk nose, and he made her even sicker just looking at him. Especially the way he was smiling at her, with his rotten teeth and stinking breath.

“OK pretty missy, brave girl, big hero, huh? When time comes, I think you will be nice date.”

He reached out and grabbed one of her breasts and squeezed it—

She said nothing.

He fondled her other breast and then leaned forward and licked the inside of her left ear.

Emma couldn't catch Rory's eye, which she knew was a good thing. The last thing she wanted to do now was to set this animal on her brother. She would just have to take it.

She'd heard some of her older girlfriends talk about kissing and licking and what it felt like when a boy licked your ear, how hot it was, but there was nothing hot about this at all. It was disgusting, and she vowed to herself at this moment that she'd never let another boy do this to her again as long as she lived.

Then he started to laugh again. And lick again.

Nobody said anything. Nobody did anything.

Suddenly, Emma was jerked to her feet, her hands still bound behind her. As she opened her eyes, all she could see was a very large, very sharp knife, which he was holding in front of her face.

“Okay, pretty missy, we go now.” And suddenly she was being pulled along by the man, out of the gym, toward the double doors that led into the main hallway and to the front entrance of the school.

Emma could feel her brother's eyes upon her, but there was nothing that either one of them could do. She shot him a quick, discreet, “don't worry” glance. Everything was as it had been before, except—and she only realized this later—the blond teacher who had been lying on one of the benches was gone.

“What do you want?” she said as they passed through the doors. The hallways was dead silent. No lockers slamming, no bells ringing, no voices shrieking, laughing, crying. She couldn't believe she was brave enough to say something, but she did.

The man still had her by the hand. “Nothing much,” he said.

Emma couldn't understand what was happening. Edwardsville wasn't one of those faraway places where the houses were made out of dirt, where the soldiers were fighting. This was a place of regular homes and regular families. “Then why are you here?” she asked.

The man stopped abruptly. The knife he'd used to cut her bonds was sticking in his belt. “We do what we are told. Just like you.” He smiled. She was afraid he was going to start laughing again, but he didn't. Instead he pulled out a cell phone and pressed the Talk key, redialing the last number he called.

“Ready?” he asked, then nodded. “When? Few minutes? Good.”

As scared as she was, Emma couldn't control her curiosity. “What's happening? What do you want?”

He gave her a look, the kind of look she didn't want to see. There was nobody else in the hallway. At this moment, there was nobody else in the world.

“You, pretty missy.”

She screamed as he reached for her and dragged her into the closet.