Scott Roarke 03 - Executive Command (12 page)

“Oh Jesus.” Roarke couldn’t believe it. “Cooper really is alive.”

“And the Honorable Lawrence Beard of the U.S. District Court in Minneapolis is dead as a result. All vets related to Cooper’s case. Now you want to hear the really interesting part?” she added to pique his interest.

“The rest wasn’t?”

“Not as much as this. They generally died in the order of their rank. He’s been working his way right up the ladder.”

“Holy shit!”

“That was exactly my reaction, but I put it more delicately.”

“Who’s left?”

“Well, sweetheart, that’s what I’m working on.”

“You better hurry.”

Washington Sports Club

Washington, D.C.

6 January

Ten more. Nine. Eight.
Scott Roarke was counting off the crunches left. He started with four hundred.

It was hard keeping up with the demanding Special Forces workout. Harder every year—twelve since he’d been out. But recent experience told him all he needed to know.
Gotta stay in shape.
Remaining physically fit was absolutely necessary.

As he slowed down to the final few sit-ups, Roarke noticed a woman; a beautiful woman in a form-fitting red leotard. She was working out directly opposite him on an elliptical machine. In an oddly sexual moment, she let out a relieved gasp at the end of her drill. It came at the same moment as Roarke’s.

Roarke hadn’t seen the blonde before. He was sure he would have noticed, even though he wasn’t looking.

The Secret Service agent made instant assumptions, as he always did. He assigned a name to the dynamic body.
Scarlett
. For the actress Scarlett Johansson. He often used easy-to-remember Hollywood names. Then again, he’d certainly have no trouble recognizing and remembering her anytime.

Scarlet smiled at him, noting that they’d shared some pain…or pleasure. He returned the greeting and that was that.

Roarke went to the weights. When he finished, she was gone. Not that he was interested in her, but he was half surprised she left so quickly.

Minutes later, in the shower, the image of the woman in the leotard came to mind.
No.
He willed away the thought. Roarke was truly, madly, and deeply in love with Katie. As far as he was concerned, there’d never be another.

Outside, the January cold slapped Roarke hard and another face formed before him. He hoped that today he’d get even closer to the person who really filled most of his conscious thinking— Richard Cooper.

Roarke was oblivious to a pair of eyes that followed him from across the street. The blonde. Christine Slocum, was watching him. She’d made first contact, as ordered.

An hour later

“Got another for you.” Penny Walker stayed the night at her Pentagon office. She was glad she did. Another name on her list came up dead. Major Gene Wesley, veteran of Iraq. Right place. Right time. Right assignment.

“I think you’ll want to check this out yourself,” she said on the phone. “It’s recent. Watch for my e-mail and be ready to travel.”

Moscow

Gomenko struck out at Cult the night before. Apparently references to American jazz chased away his potential conquest. Tonight, he was at Yuri’s, a smaller establishment closer to his apartment. He was only half watching a soccer game on the TV monitor when a tired patron took the bar stool next to him.

“Hello,” he said. “What’s on?”

“Another old game.”

The man watched for a half minute until he recognized it. “Ah, the match against Germany. We win.”

“We always win in the reruns.”

Once again, the state was trying to control the media as best it could. It included pushing patriotic gymnastics and soccer wins like in the old days. Most of it came off silly.

“Ready for a refill?” the stranger asked.

Gomenko got his first look at the man. He was eight, maybe ten years younger, but unshaven and not particularly well dressed. For a moment he wondered if the look was deceiving. After all, these days everyone and everything was worth questioning. Even the women he picked up.

“Maybe in a bit.” He decided to lose himself in the game and leave the newcomer to his own drink, which ended up being a glass of deep, red burgundy.

The man examined the color of the wine, took in the aroma, swirled the drink, and sipped.

Gomenko couldn’t ignore the ritual. He had to ask. “Good?”

“Just awful. But it’s going to make a cheap vodka taste so much better by comparison.”

Arkady laughed. His bar companion was all right.

After an hour of small talk, which included yelling at the German team unnecessarily since the outcome had been decided years earlier, the conversation turned to the women at the bar. The women who had been ignoring them all night.

“You’d think we’re invisible to them. Not even the time of day.”

Arkady had the same general feeling. But midway through the comment, he lifted his head out of his drink and stared into the mirror. The man had his vodka at his lips, nodding agreement to his own pronouncement. “Not even the time of day,” he repeated.

Arkady didn’t take his eyes off the reflection of the man. He replayed the aside.
Invisible to them.
Then the next sentence.
Not even the time of day.”
The words were precise. There was no mistaking them. They required a reply.

Arkady whispered the words he memorized years ago. He said them automatically and without any emotion. “And in ten years, they’ll be whores wishing they had a man at home as good as us.”

Then he waited, nervously. What would the stranger say next? The Russian felt his leg shaking. He willed it to stop.

The man raised his drink. “A toast,” he proposed to the women, who in fact looked very attractive and were simply out for a good time together. “Here’s to the ones who get away and don’t even know it.”

Gomenko had one more reply. Direct and unmistakable. “Fuck them.”

It was a conversation that could have played out between any two men and meant nothing. But between Arkady and CIA agent Vinnie D’Angelo it meant a great deal.

Light talk turned from women to weather, to the old soccer game on TV, and eventually to Moscow’s worsening traffic. All safe topics. Through the conversation, Gomenko never learned the name of the stranger or his identity.

Russian?
He spoke like a Russian, but he was not a Muscovite. Perhaps he came from farther North.

The man was on his third drink, Arkady on his fourth, when the years of waiting came to an end. To everyone else, they looked like two drunken friends, talking nose to nose. But the stranger suddenly cut to business and sounded completely sober.

“Tell me about the man who ran Red Banner.”

Five years of discrete payments. First, ten thousand U.S. Then twenty, twenty-five, and thirty. And last year another $35,000 in discreet accounts. All for waiting. Now he would have to work for the money. This required another stiff vodka. He signaled the bartender for a double.

Arkady gasped.
Why would he ask about the long-gone KGB facility?
The secret Soviet city where Russian spies were trained to pass as American and infiltrate U.S. institutions, corporations, and even government. A realistic version of hometown U.S.A. in the middle of the U.S.S.R.
Even today, it was better not to talk about Red Banner.

Vinnie D’Angelo, one of the CIA’s most valued agents, squeezed Gomenko’s arm. It was not a friendly gesture. He was letting the Russian know that this was non-negotiable business.

“We need to know about a former chief intelligence officer at KGB. Aleksandr Dubroff.”

We? We
had to be the CIA, Gomenko’s paymaster. He shivered. The money was real. So were the risks, which suddenly became greater.
And Dubroff?
He knew that name. Dubroff was a legend. So were his means. However, there was no record of his accomplishments. At least as far as Gomenko knew.

“It will be very hard.”

D’Angelo squeezed harder and smiled broadly. “You want to live to enjoy your savings?”

“Yes.” Arkady answered. “I will try.”

The CIA agent made his point. He lightened his grip. “Dubroff was trying to get information to us when he was intercepted and killed at the Gum Department Store in August. I need to know what he had. Why he was talking to an American reporter. I want to know who he trained. The names of his protégés. In particular, a Syrian named Haddad. Can you remember that?”

In spite of the liquor, Arkady’s head completely cleared. He committed all of the questions to memory and answered, “Yes.”

“Good.” D’Angelo raised his glass in a mock toast.

A loud cheer from the TV broke their chain of thought. The Russian team scored the winning goal against the Germans…again. D’Angelo used it as a cue to slap Gomenko’s back and clink his glass. From then until the end of the evening, there was no more talk about the Cold War–era colonel who plotted to infiltrate America with KGB spies.

At 2350, just shy of midnight, Gomenko offered to pay the tab. He lost the argument after loud complaints from his companion.

D’Angelo stayed for another twenty minutes, trying to make passes at the women down the bar. But it was just for show. Vinnie D’Angelo had been faithful to his wife throughout their fourteen years of marriage, even though she had no idea what he really did for a living.

The Blue Note Diner

Mayville, North Dakota

7
January

“What’ll it be?”

“What’s good?” Roarke asked.

“Depends what you like,” the waitress answered.

Roarke had planted himself at the counter. The food off the grill smelled good and he was hungry. He’d traveled all day from Washington. Reagan to Chicago, Chicago to Fargo. A thirty-minute drive from Fargo to the small town of Mayville. Hunger brought him to The Blue Note Diner, more famous for a juke box filled with songs containing the word
blue
than the food.
Blue Moon, Memphis Blues, Blue Velvet, Blueberry Hill.
Hence, the blue note. It was a 60s diner. Not because the owner was marketing nostalgia. He just hadn’t updated it from when he took it over from his father.

“What’s the blue plate special?” The printed price on the menu was crossed out. It was now six dollars higher.

“Turkey, peas, corn.”

“Anything fresh?”

The waitress laughed. “Freshly cooked.”

She was thirty, thirty-five, maybe forty. She would look the same at forty-five, and she’d be doing the same job at fifty. She wore a wedding ring and she looked happy.
A simple life,
he thought.
Uncomplicated. Safe.
He reflected on his own life. High stakes. People in shadows. Enemies of the state. These were the things that were going through his mind since he met Katie. Maybe finding a place like The Blue Note to eat instead of The White House commissary. Putting his gun away. Having a job he could talk about with others.

Scott Roarke wasn’t solely evaluating his life. He was considering
their
future. Because over the last year, it all changed. Everything. Katie completed him. Her softness compared to his toughness. Her smoothness to his edge. Katie’s sensuality to his masculinity. Her regard for the law to his lawlessness.

For their relationship to grow, let alone survive, he truly contemplated leaving the service. He thought about finding that simple life. Then, like most times he went there, he snapped back.

“Cup of coffee?”

“I’m sorry?” he said.

“Would you like a cup of coffee?”

“Sure, black. And a glass of water.”

“K. But I gotta charge you extra for both.”

Extra?
“Whatever.” Roarke leaned over and looked at the songs on the juke box. He loaded a dollar’s worth of quarters and started with
Blue on Blue
by Bobby Vinton. Dolly, the waitress, was back with his coffee and a bottle of water. It looked out of place in The Blue Note.

Roarke removed a small notebook from his vest pocket, careful not to open the flap too far to reveal his Sig Sauer, 9mm pistol. He studied the notes he’d made before he left Washington. CPT Penny Walker’s findings. They told the story of an army officer who served in Iraq. His rank of lieutenant colonel put him in a chain of command; a now deadly chain of command. He heard that a young lieutenant in the field was complaining about taking his men into harm’s way. LTC Gene Wesley could have ordered the squad to stand down. He could have saved the lives of 1LT Richard Cooper’s squad. He ignored the request.

Now, Wesley was dead, too. According to the report, he was a very successful rancher. His horse threw him. He cracked his head open on a rock.
Plausible,
considered Roarke
.
But much more likely, Wesley was murdered by the assassin he was tracking.

Roarke hoped he would learn more tomorrow. It was too late tonight. Traveling ate up his whole day. Tomorrow, Wesley’s son promised to drive him out to where he found his father. He also said he’d show him some personal letters his father sent from his last year in service.

The Secret Service agent also had an appointment with the coroner. His close friend at the FBI, Shannon Davis, gave him some very specific questions to ask.

Hutchinson, Kansas

The same time

Dr. Sam Brown now had three unrelated patients suffering from the same symptoms. He didn’t know what he was looking at, much less, what he was looking for.
Appendicitis? No. Flu? E.Coli?
Unknown to him, he was going down the same checklists that Dr. Satori, Dr. Gluckman, and Dr. Adam tried at different hospitals in different cities. The same checklists that a dozen other small-town doctors were scratching their heads over in nine other communities, too. But Brown had unique experience that put him above the others. He had spent a year working in Atlanta at the CDC, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He still had friends there, and he thought a little advice couldn’t hurt. One of them was a doctor he studied under at Boston University Medical School.

A Ranch outside Great Falls, Montana

That night

The target, like the others, had been selected by Haddad’s team of scientists based on accessibility, active and passive security, and impact on the community. Big or small, all were strategic. For the two colleagues who met on Interstate 15, one a geologist and the other a biologist, this was a small target. A single ranch well. They had four others of equal size tonight. An easy night. Each would take about forty-five minutes. Tomorrow they would hit the larger, conventional water treatment facility, which produced an average of 12,327,876 gallons of safe drinking water per day for some 58,000 people who lived in Great Falls.

One of the foreigners, the biologist turned bioterrorist, considered it ironic that the city took its name from the series of five waterfalls. Water would create such havoc for its citizenry in the coming days, weeks, and, if all went well, months.

But first things first—the well that provided water to the sixteen-thousand-acre Colin Baker ranch. It was the perfect size for what they had in mind. Direct distribution to an influential family whose death would be noticed.

Haddad’s research was accurate. The site was vulnerable. The ranch was serviced by submerged pumps which collected water from underground aquifers. With a confined volume of raw water, the agent of choice was a biological toxin, costing less than $10,000 and requiring little more than a home brewing kit, protein cultures, and personal protection. Money was no object, training was simple. The only real risk they faced was stupidity in handling the trillions of bacteria. That was not going to happen.

And so, they parked the Toyota they now drove midway down the road leading to the ranch. Google satellite photos showed them exactly where to go. The snowfall, which had begun two hours ago, would cover their tracks by morning. Though they were from warmer climates, Haddad had his men train in the Alps. They learned to drive in unfamiliar weather and work in freezing temperatures. Lights were out in the Baker house, and the property, which had never seen a robbery in thirty-five years of operation, had no active alarm. If all went according to plan, the seven members of the Baker family and the eleven employees who would be back by daybreak would not live long enough to regret the lack of security.

Given lax infrastructure protection, most of the targets were virtually open for business.

The terrorists, using new pseudonyms, found the well casing, and in minutes introduced
Vibrio cholerae
. It would hit the digestive track and lead to nasty watery diarrhea, rapid dehydration, a state of collapse. Maybe not death, but a good scare.

This was a precision bioterrorism attack. North, south, east, west of Great Falls, Montana. The Baker Ranch on Millegan Road, a second spread off McIver, the third along Eden Road, the fourth adjacent to Bootlegger Trail. Then a satisfying prime rib dinner at Clark & Lewie’s, a play on the area’s founding history by Lewis and Clark. The next day they’d hit the city’s plant, right at the critical downstream point in the distribution system. All was ready, from fake IDs to the
Turlaremia,
which is stable in water and chlorine-resistant. After that, they were on to their next destination.

As the two experts worked through the night, Haddad’s other teams were at their newest targets: Nashua, New Hampshire; Trenton, NJ; Lake Worth, Florida; Big Bear, California; Tucson, Arizona; and Verona, Wisconsin, also known as “Hometown USA.” They served
Shigellosis, Anthrax, Botulinum,
Cryptosporidium
, Saxitoxin
and other equally lethal cocktails, all shipped to staging points across the country by overnight delivery, long-haul truckers, and MS-13 couriers.

Mayville, North Dakota

Roarke was not one to ignore warnings. Even ones hastily written in soap on a motel bathroom mirror. “The water’s awful.”
Okay, I won’t drink it,
he said to himself. Roarke was happy he’d grabbed his unfinished bottled water from the restaurant across the street. The four ounces left would cover him for the rest of the night.

After finishing in the bathroom, Roarke sat on the double bed in his spartan room. He spread out the contents of a folder and committed the next day’s schedule to memory.

0800 Coroner
0900 Chief of Police
1030 Meet Family
1230 Depart for airport
1400 Flight

Roarke checked his watch and did the quick math. Given the time difference, Katie was still at work; maybe for another two hours. The promised good night call would come later. Now his choices were exercise or rest. He opted for rest.

The Secret Service agent stretched out and tried to get comfortable on the lumpy mattress. His head sank deep into an old feather pillow. Roarke stared straight up at the cottage cheese ceiling, which drastically needed a fresh paint job. The ridges in the speckles reminded him of flying high over the snowcapped Alps, only upside down. His eyes passed over Austria, Switzerland, and on to Northern Italy. He’d been there before, on government duty. Now he thought about vacationing there with Katie. Perhaps a honeymoon.

He surprised himself. They hadn’t talked about marriage. She’d only recently moved to Washington. They weren’t even living together full time. Now he was thinking of a honeymoon.
Where’d that come from?
He knew fully well. He loved Katie. This was the one woman he would marry.

Roarke smiled to himself as he continued to look at the ceiling. But suddenly the relief of the ridges formed an image in his mind. A familiar face emerged. A killer’s eyes bore down. He closed his eyes and willed the vision away. For a minute or so, there was only the sound of light traffic outside and he started drifting off to sleep. But then another notion came to mind.
Cooper could have been right here. Staring at the same ceiling.

On one hand his thinking was purely anxiety-driven. But increasingly, Scott Roarke felt that he and Cooper shared a great deal in common. Most of it revolved around death.

Were you here?
Roarke had a sinking feeling he had been. He decided to get up and find out.

Lou Panini.
The name was the giveaway. Everybody knew someone with a name that just fit their line of work: Harvey Strum, the guitar teacher. Dr. Eitches, the allergist. Well, according to the ledger, Lou Panini was an executive with Subway. The front desk clerk remembered him and explained to Roarke that he’d been in town to meet with people interested in opening a local franchise of the national sandwich company.

Roarke thought that Cooper was either getting sloppy or he was having fun. Deadly fun.
Panini.
He had to laugh.

The Secret Service agent was certain that a check with Subway would prove there was no Lou Panini on salary. A late call to the FBI set that in motion.

According to the ledger, Panini stayed one night, paid with cash, and left his room spotless. In fact, the maid told the front desk she thought the bed was never undone. He apparently slept on the covers and didn’t use a towel.
Definitely Cooper’s m-o.
He didn’t want to leave DNA traces on the sheets or in the bathroom.
Chances are he even wore a hairnet.

“Can you describe him?”

“Maybe.”

“His height and weight?”

The clerk looked at Roarke.

“Kinda like you.”

“Exactly like me?”

“Nope.”

“How was he different?”

“Darker hair. A bit taller.”

“That’s all?”

“He limped.”

“A lot?”

“A little.”

“Like a war injury?”
A trick. A diversion of Cooper’s.

“Maybe. Or sports. Now that I think about it, it wasn’t that bad.”

“How’d he sound?”

“Different.”

This was painful. “How different?” Roarke asked, trying to remain polite.

“Southern.”

“Any recollections of what he said?” he asked the motel clerk, a young man who had obviously found his life’s work.

“Nope,” he said through a pronounced Dakota accent. “But he was nice to everyone.”

“Did you get any confirmation that the name and address he gave you were accurate?”

“Nope.”

“Did you see him when he checked out?”

“Nope.”

“Any chance you still have the bills he paid with?”

“Nope.”

Roarke wondered if this was the future of America? People who saw nothing, who questioned nothing, who grunted monosyllabic answers.

“Is there anything else you remember about him?”

“Nope.”

Roarke bet his reputation that the six-foot-one black-haired salesman was Richard Cooper. Take away the fake Southern accent, a bogus limp, and a big salesman grin, and in Roarke’s mind, Cooper had come to Mayville and accomplished his personal mission.

Of course, there wouldn’t be any evidence. Certainly nothing physical. There was only a coroner’s report which cited a fall from a horse and a massive concussion. Roarke was convinced that neither gravity nor poor horsemanship had anything to do with it.

8 January

“An autopsy?”

“Afraid it’s too late,” the coroner explained the next morning. “Mr. Wesley was cremated.”

“Cremated? He wasn’t going to be buried for another two days.”

“You’re right about that, Mr. Roarke. Buried yes, in two days. But cremated first.”

“Shit!” Roarke exclaimed. The bureau had fucked up. He had fucked up.