PRECIPICE (33 page)

“I hope the trip was as comfortable as it could be, under the circumstances,” the intelligence officer opened.

“Yeah, it was ok.” A hint of frustration came through in Chip’s voice. He was still shell-shocked from the experience in Mexico and didn’t feel like making small talk. What was he supposed to say?
No Sir, it actually sucked. My team got killed, I was stranded in the jungle then kidnapped by drug lords, my new girlfriend was shot to death, and then I had to fight my way out with a fucking machete. After the thirty-seven stitches, the flight home was smooth as butter. Never felt better.
But he just let it ride and waited for whatever Sutherland had for him next.

He was surprised when they turned south from the airport and soon got onto I-68 heading west. Apparently Sutherland would be his ride all the way to The Woods where his truck was stashed. The thought of going back there gave Chip another pang of lament for his lost friends, but he pushed it to the back of his mind. He was resolved to make things right.

Once they were on the interstate and Sutherland had the cruise control set at five over the speed limit, he looked to Chip. “What happened?” The suspense was killing him. He knew something had gone horribly wrong, but he still didn’t know what.

“They were waiting for us,” Chip answered simply.

“Why don’t you tell me what happened from the beginning? I know the operation was green-lighted and you deployed on Sunday. We didn’t hear anything else until Harris called us yesterday, and even then we didn’t get much information.”

Chip related the whole story as he had seen it. There were still huge holes in what he knew. He didn’t know exactly what had happened to the team when they arrived at the compound—only that three of them had been killed. He still had no idea how Harris had managed to get from the jungle to the desert to bail him out. The more he thought about it, the more he was astounded by his good fortune that Harris had made it there to save him. It was a one in a million situation, and Chip owed his life to that luck. Owing his life to luck was not his habit, and he quietly promised himself that he would never put himself in a situation like that again.

Sutherland listened intently to Chip’s story, occasionally interrupting with small questions or requests for clarification. Harris was still too out of it to talk and too far away for secure communication, so Chip’s narrative was the first version of the story that Sutherland had heard. He was immensely impressed. Not only had the young man survived, he had completed the mission, killed Cardenas, and rescued the girl. If not for a horrible twist of fate on the way home, he would have gotten away cleanly. If Chip could accomplish that with only two weeks of training, imagine how effective he could be as a fully-trained operative. It would take a delicate touch, but hopefully Sutherland would be able to entice the young man to do some more work for him in the future. People with that much natural ability were hard to come by.

Next he began to analyze the story. It seemed clear that they had a leak somewhere, and he was also fascinated to hear that Senator Moore was somehow involved. He didn’t know if there was a connection, but he certainly planned to use every source available to him in order to find out.

When Chip finished the story, he passed over the iPhone and satellite phone that he had taken from the cowboy in the desert. “There are two numbers in the call history of the sat phone that have DC area codes.” He’d used Google on the computer in the lobby of the hotel last night to find out where the 202 area code was located. Unfortunately, he’d had no luck figuring out whose numbers they were. He hoped that Sutherland could help. He hoped there was some way to make sure this didn’t happen again. And unlike his aimless anger when Daniel had died, this time there was some
one
responsible—someone who he hoped to hold accountable for the deaths of his friends.

“I’ll see what I can do. Why don’t you get some rest over the weekend and come back and see me on Monday?”

Chip nodded.

“Do you need a place to stay? You’re welcome to use The Woods.”

“No.” Chip cringed at the thought of staying at the secluded cabin without his friends. A weekend like that sounded excruciating, and he desperately needed a break from this world and everything that had happened in the last month.

Sutherland sensed the younger man’s disquietude and felt compelled to respond.

“We’ll find out who did this and make sure that they don’t get away with it,” he reassured the man who he had just begun to hope he could fashion into a new protégé.

Chip nodded. “Let me know what I can do to help.”

“I certainly will,” Sutherland said with approval. Perhaps this just might work. It was time to see what else this young hero was capable of.

*

It was half past 8 when Sutherland found his way into the restaurant. The place was absolutely jammed with famished families at the tail end of a brutal marathon of Black Friday shopping. Couples were arguing, kids were wailing, and the waitstaff seemed frantically tense under the pressure of the chaotic dinner rush. It took him a few minutes to make his way through the unruly crowd and find the booth in the back where Craig was about halfway finished with an aged, bloody-rare sixteen-ounce prime rib.

“Sorry I’m late,” Sutherland said as he slipped into the narrow space between the table and bench across from the hefty senator. Craig put down his knife and fork, wiped his mouth with a napkin, and reached across the table to shake hands without any attempt to stand. There was no way he could—although the tables were slightly bigger here than in the cramped diner where they had met before, there was only an inch of clearance between the table and the rotund senator’s paunch. He’d tucked his tie into his shirtfront to keep it from bunching up and dangling into his steak. At least this place served decent food, Craig thought, even if the dining experience still left a little to be desired.

Craig flagged down a passing waitress to take Sutherland’s order before picking up his utensils and resuming his meal. Sutherland had driven straight to the restaurant after dropping Chip off at The Woods, and he was starved. Craig tried to order him a drink and a steak, but he settled quickly on an iced tea and an Ahi Tuna salad instead. The Texas senator had to resist the urge to roll his eyes when he heard the intelligence officer’s order.

“So where do we stand?” Craig asked as soon as the waitress walked away.

“There’s good news and bad news, I suppose,” Sutherland said guardedly. He’d been thinking about how to handle this talk for the last two and a half hours while he drove, and he’d decided there was really no good way. He knew they must have a leak somewhere. It wasn’t him, and he was certain it hadn’t been anyone on the team. That left Craig, which meant this promised to be a very awkward conversation.

“Let’s hear the bad news,” Craig responded. They might as well get it over with. Any time you took a risk as big as this, there was a good chance of bad news. Craig looked at it as all part of the game, but that didn’t mean he had to like it. He had a lot invested in this, and he was determined for it to succeed. The mere thought of returning to the never-ending and fruitless quest for congressional consensus and approval of necessary operations made him feel like he might be sick.

“The bad news is that there was a leak somewhere. The team was ambushed, and three of the men were killed. The fourth was badly injured, but he should make a full recovery.”

Craig’s face tightened as he slowly put down his knife and fork. Sutherland had a moment of panic that the behemoth of a man would reach across the narrow table and wring his neck. The senator’s face was deadly serious, but he finally got control. He didn’t go back to eating—his full attention was now focused on the other man.

“Well then, what in the hell is the good news?” he asked. He couldn’t imagine what silver lining there could be in the destruction of his new team. He’d just gotten used to the idea of wielding this sort of power, and he absolutely did not want to give it up and dive back into the morass of partisan politics and endless bureaucracy now.

Sutherland had decided that it wasn’t yet time to tell Craig of Chip’s existence. If the big senator was the leak, telling him could only bring danger to the one man who had kept the mission from being a failure. Craig still didn’t need to know. In fact, if Craig was the leak, Sutherland had already saved Chip’s life and salvaged the mission by not telling him. Even if Craig wasn’t the leak, this was a valuable lesson that every aspect of their new venture should be kept strictly compartmentalized. It was the only way it could survive. Sutherland was frustrated to be relearning a lesson that he had learned the hard way so many times throughout his career at CIA.

“The good news,” Southerland said with more conviction, “is that the mission’s objective was still completed. Cardenas was killed, as was his second in command who tried to take over once he was gone.” As he said the words, Sutherland could see Craig’s features noticeably relax. “Not only that, we have also uncovered indications that Senator Moore of Alabama was involved in a deal with the cartel. Does that make any sense to you?”

Craig’s eyes widened in surprise as he struggled to make this information compute in his brain. Moore? How could his old friend have possibly been mixed up with a scumbag drug dealer like Cardenas? Moore wasn’t the smartest guy in the Senate, but it was hard for Craig to believe that the man could be a crook. Then it clicked in his mind, and his heart raced as he realized what had taken place—what he had done. This explained a lot.

In a tone of great regret Craig replied, “Sheldon must have been the leak. He was the only one I told about the mission. It’s my mistake. I dropped a small hint hoping that he would help us network and drum up some more business, but he cornered me and asked me a bunch of questions. I obviously told him too much. I never dreamed that he would be involved with someone like that. He’s hunted with me at my ranch in Texas, for Christ’s sake.” He knew the excuse sounded lame. He’d fucked up, and good men had died because of it. It was the smallest that Craig had felt in all of his years in government.

“What do we know about this deal between Sheldon and Cardenas?” he asked after a few moments’ pause.

“Well, we know that Senator Moore’s chief of staff was in contact with Cardenas’ second-in-command. Beyond that, we know very little except that the two had some kind of deal worked out.” Sutherland had also decided to leave out the information that Moore’s daughter had been kidnapped, ultimately leading to her death. Once again, Craig didn’t need to know.

“What are we going to do about it?” Craig asked.

“I suppose that’s still open for discussion, but I can’t imagine that it’s something we want to let slide.” It was a delicate line they were walking. It was one thing to take out a hit on a Mexican drug lord, but it was another thing entirely to eliminate a US senator and his chief of staff. It was certainly not something that Sutherland expected another senator to explicitly discuss or approve.

“Do what you need to do,” was all that Craig said in reply.

Just then the waitress arrived and placed a heaping bowl of salad in front of the thinner man. The two men’s eyes met across the table, and Sutherland nodded. Then they both picked up their silverware and went to work on their meals.

*

Chucho spotted a busy WalMart parking lot beside the interstate and quickly wheeled off the exit and turned into the gigantic expanse of asphalt. He was somewhere in the middle of Virginia, but he wasn’t sure where. Despite the fact that dark had fallen a couple of hours earlier, the place was still packed on the Friday after Thanksgiving. Shoppers streamed in and out of the discount store, a Ruby Tuesday restaurant, and a movie theater that also shared the same parking lot. He was getting close enough to DC that it was time to switch cars into something less conspicuous that couldn’t be traced back to him. He’d been driving for thirty-seven straight hours. Although he regretted that he’d been forced to drive all the way across the country, he couldn’t bring weapons on a plane. He didn’t have enough connections in DC to reliably get the guns he needed when he arrived, so he’d been forced to make the trip over land. The large silver .357 revolver in his waistband and the sawed-off, pump-action, pistol-gripped twelve gauge stored in his gym bag in the floorboards of the back seat were sure to come in handy over the next few days.

Chucho found a parking space on the far side of the lot from the stores and aligned his vehicle where he could see the rest of the cars. He pulled a baggie of white crystalline powder from the chest pocket of his sleeveless t-shirt and used one elongated, yellowed pinky nail to dip some out and raise it to his nose. He didn’t even notice the burn as he snorted it down—he’d been doing this for the entire trip and had gotten used to it. Electric energy jangled through his muscles and shivered all the way to the ends of his fingers and toes. He couldn’t believe how good he felt after driving for that long. He didn’t make a habit of indulging in his own product, but it had its uses. He had planned to take a full day to sleep off the travel when he arrived in Washington, but he felt so good now that he wondered why he ever thought that he would need to rest. Not resting left him with plenty of time for a little fun along the way.

He watched the stream of people coming and going from their cars to the stores over the next half-hour. Most of them were harried-looking families trying to squeeze in a little bit more holiday shopping before the sales ended. He finally moved over to the lot outside the movie theater for a better selection. After a few minutes, he saw the perfect one—a tall young blonde similar in appearance to the girl he had helped Héctor grab in California. The girl’s image had been stuck in his mind for the last week almost to the point of obsession. He watched as her look-alike waved goodbye to some friends outside the movie theater and walked toward an older model maroon metallic Chevy Malibu parked not far from where he sat. Chucho admired her for a moment as she strode across the parking lot in her tight blue jeans and white tasseled jacket, her poofy blonde hair blowing in the gentle November breeze. Taking the gym bag with him, he got out of his PT Cruiser and walked across the asphalt to meet her at the Malibu.