Shadow Agenda: An Action Suspense Thriller (45 page)

“So you figure he wants to stay close to his merchandise.”

“Something like that.” Her phone began to buzz. “Just a second, I need to take this.”

Brennan sounded winded. “It’s me,” he said simply.

“Where are you? You sound like you’ve been sprinting.”

“I’m in a suburb south of Vancouver, called Richmond. Bone tired; had to take jet ski into ocean water, then swim a distance.”

“I got the DynaTech intel. Konyakovich has a ship coming into Seattle today or tomorrow, the Liberty Lady, registered out of Liberia. He has another in three days heading into New York, the Dauntless, same company.”

“Konyakovich is dead,” Brennan said. He told her about the sniper and the hotel setup. “I don’t have any papers anymore; left them in an airport locker. But I’ve got my phone, a piece and cash, albeit all incredibly damp. I’m going to make my way south; there are a few spots along the border where I should be able to get over unseen.”

“My flight leaves in forty minutes,” she said. “Can you get to Seattle for six o’clock? That’s the earliest potential arrival time.”

He checked his watch; it was almost two. There was so much they still didn’t know. If Konyakovich hadn’t been behind the weapon theft, but just a hired hand, that meant they still needed to find out who was responsible, as well as stopping the bomb from being used, potentially on U.S. soil. “That’s pushing it, but I’ll try. I have to liberate a few sets of wheels and avoid the County Mounties, but I’ll get there. We have to.”

Malone knew he was right. A nuclear blast in downtown Seattle would kill millions, if that was the intent. Either way, they were on their own, with Brennan wanted by the cops, a contract on Malone’s head and total annihilation right around the corner.

There had to be an easier way to get a good story.

June 26, 2016, SEATTLE, WASHINGTON

The night was stretching on, and Perry Moore was bored; the machine gun rested across his crossed arms as he strolled, the black fleece sweater keeping him warm in the growing damp chill.

He’d been walking the foredeck of the container ship Liberty Lady, his only companion the gentle lapping of the water against the hull, and the occasional check in from the other guards via walkie talkie. It was mind-numbing, spending hour after hour moving from point ‘A’ , on the north side of the metal staircase to the bridge, to point ‘B’, at the other end of the ship’s upper level, past row after row of twenty-foot shipping containers.

The ship was over seven hundred feet long and more than a hundred feet wide, its form not much more than the gigantic, ocean-going equivalent of a flatbed truck. There was a bridge, near the bow, a crew cabin area that extended under the stern and into the bowels of the ship, and a lift crane. Other than that, it was row after row after row of cargo containers. And over the course of the past six hours, he’d seen them all.

Liberty Lady had moored at just after five o’clock on a gloomy Seattle afternoon. Perry and his crew, who were considered notable local muscle to more than one criminal organization, had been hired to guard it. The money was good… but that didn’t mean he had to enjoy it.

About seventy feet away, behind the rows of metal boxes, his friend Richie Kessler was performing the same function. His feet had probably started to hurt, too, Perry thought. But their instructions had been clear: no breaks, shift change after eight hours, three days of work.

Plus, they got guns, and maybe a chance to shoot someone. Their employers wouldn’t have provided so much firepower if they weren’t potentially expecting trouble.

So that had made the offer exciting to Perry and his hoodlum friends, despite the high potential for boredom.

Sixty bucks an hour was sixty bucks an hour, just to be a rent-a-threat.
On Sunday
, he figured,
I’m going to go get me an eighty-inch LED flat-screen, watch the Sounders become life-sized
.

“Cool,” he said to no one. He stopped for a few seconds and listened to the water, the sounds of the harbor, the background white noise of it all combined with the drifting remnants of the city’s natural din. He looked around quickly; fuck it, he thought, nobody’s coming. Perry fished a small, tightly rolled joint from his top pocket and lit up, the glare from the lighter momentarily ruining his night vision, so that when the lighter went out, he could barely see around him.

The forearm circled quickly around his throat from behind, his carotid artery caught in the sharp crook of its elbow; instinctively, Perry grabbed for the arm to pull it away instead of sounding the alarm; he tried to pry his fingers under it, loosen it before …

Brennan gently laid the unconscious guard down on the deck then slung the man’s gun over his own shoulder using the thin black strap.

He’d dressed entirely in black, his face smudged over. He glanced up at the stairs to the bridge, before turning his attention back to the containers. He headed in their direction. There were four rows, each thirty containers deep; that probably meant four guards… or perhaps just three now, Brennan assumed. The one he’d laid out with a sleeper looked like a local, probably just some minor league gangster.

There were gaps every ten containers and he moved quickly to the corner of the first, listening for footfalls, getting a bearing on the guard before he could see him. He waited until the man passed, then stepped in behind him, applying the sleeper hold again, careful to catch the man’s gun with his free left hand as he lowered him down.

It was too easy, he thought. If there was a nuclear weapon on board, the now-dead Russian gangster hadn’t done much to protect it. The guards looked like kids; and how did the South Korean contingent figure in the whole thing? Why weren’t any of its number present?

A spotlight from above the bridge swept across the deck, and straight down the second row. Brennan quickly stepped back into the gap between containers. Chances were good that no one was paying attention to the light anyway, that it was just there to dissuade would-be thieves and mischievous kids. But there was no point in being reckless.

He heard the radio chatter a second later, the guard in the next row over talking to someone; he was agitated. “What the fuck? Perry! Perry, you better not be fucking with me…” A second passed and Brennan heard him say, “Yeah… I think we got a situation.”

Footsteps, multiple, inbound from all sides. There must have been more in the crew cabins, maybe another shift’s worth of guards, probably two. He moved back to the corner of the containers and peered around … then snapped his head back, the nightstick slamming into the side of the metal and just missing him as the guard rounded the corner; he had a machine pistol in his left hand, an Ingram or MAC-Ten, Brennan thought. The guard was raising it, time slowing down as Brennan’s adrenaline kicked in, the pistol spitting bullets and fire at a thousand rounds a minute, even as Brennan crouched low, swinging his leg out and around in a wide sweep, taking the guard’s legs out from under him, the gunfire off into the air as he left his feet, his back slamming into the deck a moment later. Brennan’s palm caught him flush under the chin, and the guard was unconscious.

Sixty feet away down the row, a handful of the guard’s friends were closing on him. Brennan cut back between the rows then sprinted south until he was at his full head of steam, running up the side of one cargo container and pushing off with all his strength, using the boost to catch the top edge of the box across the aisle, pulling himself up quickly so that he was ten feet above them. He waited until they rounded the corner between rows, then dropped down behind the last, dragging him back with Brennan’s left hand over his mouth, his right arm choking the man out again.

The gun clattered to the ground; alerted, the guard just ahead turned around and leaped out of the container gap, spraying machine gun fire across the row. Brennan held the first guard ahead of him as a shield and grabbed for the man’s sidearm as the bullets’ impact drove both of them over backwards, pulling it from the holster just before they hit the deck, firing twice, the first shot missing, but the second catching the other guard in the thigh. He screamed and went down, clutching at the wound, and trying to reach for his machine gun even as his two other squad mates emerged from the next row over. Brennan moved in one smooth motion, throwing himself in their direction and landing on his knees and shins, sliding across the smooth deck to the spot between them before either could open fire, then reaching up, right hand smashing the wrist even as the left grabbed the barrel, then spinning, the butt end of the rifle catching the second guard flush, putting him out. And finally a spinning elbow strike followed by the rifle butt in the reverse direction, catching the first man in the temple and stunning him, a short front kick laying him out.

The remaining guard was crawling for his gun, his thigh wound bleeding badly, Brennan swung the machine gun around. “Uh uh.” The man stopped crawling; he leaned on his right elbow and raised both hands in surrender. Brennan crouched down next to him, placing the barrel against the man’s temple. He used his left hand to retrieve a black plastic wrist tie from his pocket. “Hands behind your back. Put this on,” he said. The man complied, looping it over his hands. Brennan pulled it taut. “How many more?”

The man spat at him.

Brennan raised the butt end of the rifle then feinted to strike the man’s head.

He cowered backwards. “No! No…. don’t hit me, man! There’s two more, in the cabins.” Brennan pulled a gym sock and a small roll of duct tape from the little black bag. He stuffed the gym sock into the man’s mouth and placed a strip of the silver tape over both.

He made his way to the cabins, his footfalls on the deck accompanied by the waves lapping against the hull. The hatch door was ajar, the lights out inside. Someone was expecting him; judging by the lack of skill on deck, they’d be nervous, trigger-happy, probably right inside the door. Brennan kicked it inward, the hinge swinging back with a squeal, the heavy door slamming into the man standing behind it. He went down hard, and Brennan could hear him scrambling to get up. The agent reached inside the room with his left hand, to where a light switch would instinctively be. A single bulb illuminated the cabin, the shadows cutting across the yellowed walls.

The man on the floor had a bloody welt on his forehead and a nine millimeter in his right hand. He reached up and Brennan jumped sideways out of the line of fire as he squeezed off two shots, the bullets ricocheting against the steel roof. The guard tried to rise but Brennan locked up the man’s forearm then bent it backwards quickly at the elbow until the joint popped; the man went down, screaming, and Brennan picked up the pistol, then slammed the butt into the man’s temple, driving him to the ground.

There was a second doorway at the back of the room and Brennan pirouetted around the corner, covering the room with the pistol.

The knife flashed across his field of vision, cutting his hand so quickly he didn’t have time to react. He dropped the pistol and caught a glimpse of the glinting blade to his left as it swung back toward him on a double slash. Brennan ducked backwards, then jumped back a foot to regain his posture. The knifeman stepped in, a blade in each hand, thrust after thrust; Brennan allowed him close so that he could parry the man at the forearms. He brought his right foot up hard, catching his assailant in the testicles. The man winced and began to double over and Brennan snapped the leg outwards, a powerful side kick catching him flush, knocking him out.

He bound and tied both men then headed back out onto the deck. If the count was right, that was everyone. Brennan took the small digital Geiger counter from his waist pouch, rented from a local outlet that afternoon, and slowly began to sweep the containers, row on row.

WASHINGTON, D.C.

In his twenty-five years in civil service, the director had maintained calm above all else. It was his trait, the gift for which others knew him, to be unruffled in any circumstance. It had brought him to the head of five different government agencies, after first exiting his military career and obtaining a law degree.

This scenario was no different; more sensational, perhaps, with more potential for public embarrassment. But a problem to be solved, just the same; and a cool head was what the agency needed to deal with its most recent crisis, he decided. Otherwise, he’d have stayed out of it all, let Jonah or one of the other senior ‘decision makers’ … well, make the decisions.

And so even though the news was not good, Nicholas Wilkie was smiling warmly when Carolyn and Jonah entered the office. “Have a seat, won’t you both? I’m just finishing up something,” he said.

He pushed the pile of papers to one side. “Right: here’s the scenario. We need this disseminated to anyone inside with an interest; but for pity’s sake keep it away from the general staff and the press.”

“Sir?” Jonah inquired. It was obviously leading to something important.

Wilkie composed himself again. “We’ve had an eyewitness report that David Fenton-Wright has become embroiled in the Euro sniper affair in some manner, and has shot and killed at least one person, possibly two. One, Walter Lang, you both know well. The other was a retired analyst named Myrna Verbish.

Carolyn gasped audibly.

“You knew her?” Wilkie said. “I thought Myrna was slightly before your time.”

“I knew her through Joe,” Carolyn said.

His eyes narrowed. “Was she in contact with him? You’re aware he’s been off the reservation for some weeks now.”

“I know, director,” she said. Carolyn had to choose her words carefully. “I haven’t been in contact with him either. But I think he met Myrna through Walter; she and Walter were very close, I understand.”

“Yes… well, we’re sweeping her belongings looking for any signs of contact,” Wilkie said. “Myrna had, by all recollection, some of the best contacts of any analyst in agency history. That would make her, even in retirement, a valuable ally for an agent on the run. But we believe it also put her in DFW’s crosshairs; the indication from our eye witness source is that he was working for a foreign agency, supplying information on the sniper case and performing counterintelligence.”

Jonah looked aghast. He was the closest DFW had had to a protégé. “I can’t believe it,” he said finally. “David spent a decade building the sort of power base needed to accomplish things, the sort of discipline that could have only benefited the agency.”

“Or,” Wilkie said, “the sort of power base that merely gave him power, to exercise positively or negatively as he saw fit. I’m sure you’re aware that I’m retiring in two years, both of you; I haven’t been as involved day-to-day as I should and I’m afraid David took advantage of that, consolidating control beneath me. This was my miss, Jonah, not yours.”

Jonah nodded but didn’t reply. He wondered how much of it was true, and how much of it was the director protecting his own position. Did he see DFW as a threat? Was that what this was about? Surely it was some sort of setup, a way push David out?

He had to say something. “Director, are we absolutely certain the evidence of his complicity is solid? Do we know for sure that he’s guilty?”