Suicide Mission (15 page)

 

The windowless room Bill Elliott was in didn't exist. Langley was famous for being where the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency was located. That wasn't where Bill was. Any connection between the CIA and the outfit that leased this building was carefully hidden. Every yokel in the country knew about The Company. The people who knew about Bill's former and once again current employers numbered in the dozens.

Three men and a woman came into the room where Bill sat at a long, gleaming, marble-topped conference table. One of the men was Clark. He grinned at Bill and said, “Good to see you again, old buddy-roo. Looks like you've been busy since San Antonio.”

Clark pointed at the thick file folder resting on the table under Bill's hand.

“You told me to look for who I wanted,” Bill said. “I've been lookin'.”

As the newcomers sat down around the end of the table, he slid the file toward them. Then he reached over to an open laptop computer and hit a few keys. A big screen on the wall lit up.

“The information I'm about to go over is in that file,” Bill said, “but it'll be quicker if I just tell you about it and let you study the stuff in more detail later. These are the candidates I've picked.”

“Wait a minute,” the woman said. “You were supposed to come up with a pool of potential candidates, Mr. Elliott, and we would pick the team.”

“No offense, ma'am, but if you want me to lead this team, I'm gonna decide who's on it.”

The woman frowned and looked over at Clark, who shrugged and said, “I told you he's got a mind of his own. But I trust his judgment.”

“Very well,” the woman said coldly. “We'll listen . . . but no guarantees.”

“Fair enough,” Bill said, “since I don't have any guarantees that these folks will go along with what we want. The odds are gonna be stacked pretty heavy against 'em, after all.”

“Just get on with it,” one of the other men said. “I have to get back to the White House so I can brief the president. He's been very clear that none of this can ever come back on him.”

“We know,” Clark said. “Can't have the president doing anything that might offend other countries . . . even countries that hate us and are trying to destroy us.”

The other man flushed angrily.

“Can't we leave politics out of this?” he asked. “We have to put the good of the country first.”

“Since when did your party ever put—” Clark stopped short, shook his head, and went on, “Forget it. It's a waste of breath arguing with you. Just tell the guy in the Oval Office that nothing we do will come back to bite him on the butt.”

“You mean the president,” the other man snapped.

“I mean the guy sitting in an office that he bought, just like the two bozos before him.”

The third man started to get to his feet, saying, “If you're going to waste my time with your bickering—”

“Sit down, General,” Bill drawled, even though the man was in civilian clothing.

“You're not supposed to know who I am, Mr. Elliott.”

“I'll bear that in mind,” Bill said dryly. “For now—and I say this with all due respect—all of you just shut the hell up and listen.”

For a moment he thought at least two of them were going to storm out, but then they settled back in their chairs. Clark said, “Go on, Bill.”

Bill tapped a key on the computer and an image appeared on the big screen on the wall. It showed a big man in combat gear with a sandy wasteland behind him.

“John Bailey,” Bill said. “Did two tours in Iraq. Highly decorated. Then his squad was ambushed and wiped out except for Bailey and another soldier. Bailey was wounded. Got shipped home, and after he'd rehabbed, he waited out his enlistment and didn't re-up. Went back to New York City, where he was from. Had the same trouble fitting in that a lot of vets did, drifted from job to job, finally started workin' as a bouncer and doorman at a nightclub. But his friend from the squad, the other survivor of the ambush, was in New York, too, and he was a pretty scummy character. He got Bailey mixed up in a plan to rip off a drug deal. The job went bad, things blew up—literally—and a lot of people died, including Bailey's friend. Bailey wound up goin' down on murder, armed robbery, and weapons charges. He's been behind bars the past four years and has been nothin' but trouble there, too. He beat two other convicts to death after they attacked him for refusin' to join their gang. Doesn't seem to want anything to do with anybody. They've got him away from general population and plan to keep him that way, because they know if he goes back into gen-pop, sooner or later he'll kill somebody else.”

“Why do you want him?” the woman asked.

“Because I met him while I was over there in the sandbox doin' a little job for somebody who can just remain nameless. His squad helped get me where I needed to be. Bailey may have screwed the pooch when he got back stateside, but in combat he was damn good. A born warrior who can follow orders
and
take the initiative when he needs to.”

The man from the White House said, “You know all this from being around him for, what, a day or two?”

“A day or two when folks are tryin' to kill you nearly the whole time can tell you a lot about a man,” Bill said flatly.

“I don't have any problem with Bailey,” Clark said. “Can we move on?”

None of the other three raised an objection.

Bill tapped keys and changed the image on the screen. This one was a police mug shot of a mild-looking, sandy-haired young man.

“Wade Stillman,” Bill said. “Georgia boy. Also a decorated vet. He fit in better once he got back, or at least he seemed to. Until one day he snapped while he was at his job—workin' at a MegaMart, by the way—and nearly beat a customer to death. The way I understand it, the guy probably had it comin', but Stillman wound up in prison anyway.”

“Let me guess,” the general said. “He's killed men in prison, too.”

“Nope,” Bill replied with a shake of his head. “From all reports, he's been a model prisoner. Keeps his head down and stays out of trouble. Works in the prison library, even.”

“Then why do you want him?” the woman asked. “Do you know him personally?”

“Never met the young man. But I put out the word to some old acquaintances, and Stillman's commanding officer was one of 'em. He said I won't find a better fightin' man once he's riled up. Only possible problem is that Stillman's pretty laid back and it's hard to make him lose his temper. That shouldn't be a problem where we'll be goin', though, since everybody there will want to kill us.”

“So you want Bailey as your second-in-command and Stillman behind him, because of their military experience?” Clark asked.

“I don't know if it'll be that cut-and-dried, but basically, yeah.”

“Well, that sounds doable. Who else do you have for us?”

The next image that came up on the screen was that of an attractive young woman with a nice smile and long, honey-colored hair.

“This is Megan Sinclair. Used to be in Special Forces.”

“Special Forces!” the general repeated in surprise. “That little girl? You're crazy, Elliott.”

Bill controlled the flash of anger he felt. He said, “You can look her up if you want, General. She worked mostly in the command center with computers, but she did some fieldwork, too, and handled herself well. Until she took her skills and dropped off the grid. She surfaced in London a couple of years later when she was arrested for trying to rip off the son of a British billionaire. Turns out that after she deserted, she became a professional thief, mostly in Europe. Interpol wanted her, and so did several countries. But after untanglin' a lot of red tape, we got her back, since the first crime she committed was desertin' the Army. She's still in military lockup, and once she gets out of there, she's lookin' at bein' extradited back to England. In fact, it looks like she might spend the rest of her life goin' from one country's prison to the next, unless we step in and offer her a way out.”

“Do you know her personally, Bill?” Clark asked.

“As a matter of fact, I do.” Bill paused. “Her father's an old compadre of mine. The girl went off the rails, no doubt about that, but I don't want to see her spendin' the rest of her life behind bars.”

The woman said, “Do you really think someone like her can be of assistance on a job like this, Mr. Elliott? I have to say, she looks harmless.”

“Looks can be deceiving.”

“It's your show,” Clark said. “Who else do you have for us?”

Bill tugged on his earlobe, grimaced slightly, and said, “Here's where it starts to get tricky. Bailey, Stillman, and Sinclair all have military backgrounds. I know I can work with them. The rest of this bunch . . . well, they're lowlifes. Criminals. There's no gettin' around that. But some of 'em have skills we can use, and some of 'em are just plain badasses. And where we're goin', the badder the better.”

“They're all convicts?” the woman asked.

“Yes, ma'am. All of 'em serving life sentences without parole.”

“Then working for us is really their only chance to have a normal life again. Surely they're smart enough to see that.”

“Maybe,” Bill said. “As a rule, criminals aren't the sharpest knives in the drawer, if you know what I mean. And if they
are
smart, they're liable to see that their odds of comin' out of this alive are pretty damn slim. But when you don't have anything to lose . . .”

The others didn't say anything, so Bill took that as a sign to continue. He tapped computer keys again.

“Braden Cole,” he said as the image of a man in his forties appeared on the screen. Cole was pale, with a brush of dark hair that made the skin of his fox-like face seem even more washed out. So did the dark-framed glasses he wore. “Freelance killer. A hit man, as they say in books and movies. There's no tellin' how many jobs like that he's carried out.”

The woman said, “And you want an animal like that working for us?”

“Cole can kill in lots of different ways,” Bill said, “but his method of choice is with explosives. He's a demolitions man, and he's mighty good at it. That's a handy skill to have.”

“I suppose. Can you work with him?”

“We'll find out.” Bill changed the screen. “This fella's name is Nick Hatcher. Another professional thief, but unlike Megan, he didn't work alone. He was part of a crew that robbed banks all over the West and Southwest. Wheelman for the gang. Supposed to be a great driver. That's exactly what you need if you have to get out of a place in a hurry.”

“Was he sent away for bank robbery?” Clark asked.

“Murder,” Bill said. “His last job, two cops were killed. Hatcher didn't do any of the shooting, but since he was involved in the commission of a felony, legally he was just as responsible as the ones who did. And since he was the only member of the gang who survived, the legal system came down on him just as hard as it could.”

“He doesn't look like a criminal,” the woman said as she frowned at the image of a handsome, brown-haired young man. “He looks like he should be dating that Sinclair girl.”

“I don't think they'll have time for that.”

Bill changed the image again. This time, two pictures came up, side by side. He was watching from the corner of his eye, and the woman and the man from the White House both visibly recoiled. Not much, and they controlled the reaction instantly, but Bill caught it anyway.

“Now those two look like criminals,” the man from the White House muttered.

“That's because they are,” Bill said. “The white guy is Ellis ‘Bronco' Madigan. Ran a gang of bikers and skinheads that was tied in with organized crime all over the Midwest. He was convicted of twenty-two counts of murder and the cops are convinced his list is even longer than that. The black guy is Calvin Watson. His deal is similar to Madigan's: he was in charge of an extensive gang with ties to organized crime, convicted of multiple murders but probably not as many as he's actually guilty of. In a perfect world, they'd have both been executed by now, but the feds are keepin' them alive to try to get information out of them. They're in the same federal facility, where they've been tryin' to kill each other ever since they met. Talk about hate at first sight.”

“Why haven't they been separated?” the woman wanted to know.

“You'd have to ask somebody else about that, ma'am. I suspect the feds are keepin' 'em together to keep the pressure on them to talk. It's not workin', though. Madigan and Watson have never said a useful word since they went into the system.”

“Why do you want a couple of animals like that on your team?” the general asked.

“Remember what I said about badasses? Those two are some of the baddest you'll find.”

“You can't work with them,” the woman declared. “If they're the sort of men you say they are, they'll never cooperate with you. They'll have no reason to.”

Bill said, “They'll have a reason, all right. New identities, new lives. Because you see, whatever happens on this mission, Madigan and Watson are going to die . . . the same as all the others.”

“What in the world do you mean by that?” the man from the White House asked.

Clark said, “Officially, they'll be dead.”