The Hand of Christ (24 page)

The DHS looked puzzled. Reaching back for the arm of his chair, he slowly lowered himself into his seat and waited for Ron to continue.

“
The Syrian agent transferred documents to Dr. Sterling, the information contained a kill list. The Ayatollah’s name was on it as well as others. Dr. Sterling is on his way to the States as we speak. He will be debriefed and will be given orders to fly to Langley.”

Just as Ron was about to continue, the perimeters of the LCD panels flashed red. There was an incoming, urgent communication. The President’s personal secretary rushed into the room and whispered into the President’s ear. He digested her unheard words, and then looked up to the gaze of the rest of the room. “Ladies and Gentlemen, it would seem that we have a call from the President of Iran.”

He looked to his secretary who understood his silent command. Expertly, she attacked a keyboard with a series of strokes. The images that had been on display disappeared and in there place, the face of the Iranian President appeared covering all six panels; he seemed ominously larger than life.

“
Hello, Mr. President, I wish your call had been under better circumstances. How can we help you?”

The Iranian President looked as if he wanted to jump through the screen, “Help me? What an odd question. You send one of your CIA officers into my country and kill our beloved Ayatollah, and then ask what else it is you can do for me?”

“
Mr. Ahmad, we were just discussing the unfortunate loss of the Ayatollah. We certainly have our differences, but the US is not behind his assassination, and is not in the business of conducting assassinations; we are as concerned as you are.” The President had to lie, confirming CIA activities could have devastating consequences. “President Ahmad, the US was not conducting any operations in the Middle East, or, in particular, in your country. Just to be certain, I had ordered an accounting of the location of all US personnel in the region. There was no one within five-hundred miles of your borders.”

“
Is that so?” The Iranian President lifted a silver object from his desk. It was a gun, the gun. “If it wasn’t your man, then please explain to me how it is that this gun was left in the home of the Ayatollah? This is the gun that killed him.”

Turning the gun over, a command in Farsi by the President to zoom in on the weapon was heard. The serial numbers of the gun could clearly be seen. “Do these numbers not belong to the man assigned this weapon? Are they not the identification numbers that the CIA uses when they issue a weapon to one of their officers, do they not belong to an officer named Dr. Michael Sterling?”

There was a collective gasp in the Situation Room.

“
How could you possibly know that,” shouted the Director of Homeland Security (DHS). The President shot him an angry glare that told the DHS to shut up.

“
Do not worry about how I know, and you do not need to answer my question, Mr. President; we both already know the answer. Mr. President, you have forty-eight hours to turn Dr. Sterling over to us. If you choose not to, the consequences will be devastating. Forty-eight hours, Mr. President, not one-minute more.”

The US President started to raise his voice in protest to the Iran’s nearly outright declaration of war, but it was too late, the communication ended. In its place was the seal of the United States.

The President turned to the silent room and commanded, “Everyone out! Dick, you stay.”

The room emptied quickly, only the President and the Director of the CIA remained.

Turning to the Director who was still seated, the President peered down at him and with an icy tone said, “Dick, I am going to ask you this only once: is there something I should know, was this your mission?”

“
No, Mr. President, absolutely not; you know we don’t conduct assassinations.”

“
Is it possible that Dr. Sterling was involved?”

“
Mr. President, nothing is impossible.”

“
Bring him in, Dick, and I mean now!”

“
Yes, Mr. President.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

Flight 369

SFO to DIA

Sitting in the back of the plane, Michael reminded himself, had its benefits both practical and psychological; boarding the tail end first always assured him of a place in the overhead bins to store his carry-on baggage and more importantly he felt safer.

It never ceased to create amusement, if not annoy him, when other passengers struggled to find a place for their baggage. They would place items in bins nowhere near their seat, or would shove jackets, stuffed animals, or some other tiny parcel into an overhead spot stealing prime plane real-estate from the rightful owners of the seat below that bin.

And there was always at least one longhaired, pretend hippy with a guitar, or some guy frantically canvassing every bin on the plane for a spot to put his obviously oversized and non-regulation carry-on bag; the obligatory flight attendant would be in tow, pretending to assist in looking for an open place whilst uttering the cruelest of phrases, “We may have to check your bag, sir.”

In addition to the practical nature of an assured overhead bin, Michael, perhaps erroneously, believed that if the plane crashed, the tail section would afford a greater chance for survival to the passengers in its section. Michael had no refutable proof for such a statement other than the snapshots in USA Today or the scenes broadcast by CNN, or other news sources of plane crashes, which typically showed the tail of the plane intact while the rest of the fuselage was charred and strewn into pieces over miles of terrain.

One would think that a former Airborne Ranger turned CIA Officer who had just been extracted from a terrorist attack by a Blackhawk, catapulted off the deck of a secret carrier in an even more secret plane flying 9178 miles at mach-fifteen, and then strapped into an F/A-18F Super Hornet for a brain numbing
quick trip
would have little concern with flying.

This couldn’t be further from the truth.

Michael hated flying.

There was a time when every flight Michael was on – over a span of fifty-two flights – that, instead of landing with the plane, ended with him jumping out of it and descending under the canopy of a T-10C, MC1-1B, or Ram Air Chute to the ground below.

But that was a long time ago.

The difference between being under the mushroom of a parachute and waiting for rubber to meet tarmac was that a chute opened instantly; thus, any fear one had was relatively short-lived. Besides, he always packed his own chutes, but never flew the plane, and Michael trusted only himself.

Unable to give up his need for control of all situations, Michael had a problem knowing that his life was solely in the hands of some unseen person locked behind a little door pulling levers, pushing buttons, and staring at colorful blinking lights in some Wizard of Oz fashion.

Humans are prone to error: they come to work tired, hung-over, pissed-off, and depressed. In the hands of a pilot having a really bad day, passengers are subjected to his ability or inability to focus on doing the right thing.

The cockpit is the pilot’s office. Statistically, one of these pilots is certain to have had just a bit too much Jack Daniels the night before, or had just walked in on his wife with the co-pilot or some other guy between her legs. And, with near one hundred percent probability, at least one pilot each year is going to die from a heart attack in the cockpit mid-flight because his answer to calorie counting was eating two donuts a day instead of three.

This was a bit much maybe, even borderline neurotic, but still plausible. Humans are simply fallible. Michael didn’t trust them, but was smart enough and conscious enough of his own compulsions to be aware that the notion that some perceptible shred of safety offered by sitting in the back of the plane was really just that, a compulsion. But in the back he sat.

Unfortunately, sitting in the back always meant being served food and drink somewhere near last; right now, Michael needed a drink.

Perhaps, it was due to the now worn off adrenaline that had fiercely scorched his veins only four hours ago, and now having worn off, or that his temporary blindness from hypoxia was gone, that the need to imbibe was doubly important. His hands only just stopped shaking. Looking at them, Michael could see remnants of dried blood still under his fingernails. There weren’t proper facilities on the Shadow; actually, there weren’t any facilities on the Shadow, he should have washed them back at Travis.

The implication of this was that he would need to get up and go to the restroom to clean them. Becoming self-conscious of his bloody fingernails, he crossed his arms and waited; the drink seemed more important.

Sitting in the cramped seats of coach was a risk; the person next to you may be of a larger persuasion, too talkative, or even worse, it could be somebody’s young and obnoxious toddler.

It would be difficult to be an advocate for giving a child on a plane some drug to make them drowsy, or to lace the child’s juice with a bit of bourbon. This had been tried before and with litigious results; the guilty party being led away in cuffs and becoming sudden Internet fodder. Assuredly, every passenger on that plane understood why it had been done in the first place, and, more assuredly, had some empathy for the guilty party.

The obvious answer to most of these problematic potential situations was a seat in first class. Even though he could afford it, the Company preferred that he not fly in the first class cabin. Michael’s salary was modest, but the additional incentive pay for language, hazardous duty, and bonuses for previous work left him reasonably comfortable.

In addition, being married to a doctor had its financial advantages, too. The Company paid all expenses for these trips and Michael offered to cover the difference in cost between coach and first class, where leg room was certain to be ample and that, ever-so-necessary, drink would already have touched his lips; however, they told him no. Michael never understood the bureaucracy of government, sure that his leadership always enjoyed first-class.

The effects of vodka over ice, not only calmed him, but also seemed to help him memorize the cover story he would soon recite to his wife. At least, that’s what he told himself: alcohol equals confidence.

The rationale for the cramped coach seat was that taxpayers should not be made to foot unnecessarily the bill for certain luxuries and that government employees should not receive extra frills. Such a mentality is pervasive throughout government service, first experienced by Michael while assigned as an Interrogator to the 82
^nd
Airborne Division, 313
^th
Military Intelligence Battalion, Long Range Surveillance Detachment (LRSD) – Ranger.

“
Never take what you wouldn’t, first, provide to your troops.” Unsolicited but well understood advice given to him by his company commander when Michael had been promoted to Sergeant. If other intelligence officers had to travel in cattle class than he would also have to travel like a cow.

Moo
, Michael thought.

At least after this flight he would be at home; soon he would be with Sonia.

These commercial flights were always after a mission overseas; some trips were under “official cover” while others required “non-official cover.” It was the latter that Michael particularly hated; should a mission go wrong, the Company, or “The Agency” depending on the circles you traveled in, would not avow any knowledge of his existence.

How would that be explained to his wife should he suddenly be dead?

Perhaps they would tell her that he died in a head on collision when, in fact, he had perished from a hastily placed Improvised Explosive Device hidden in his hotel room. Or, that he had walked in on a robbery at some convenience store; that would explain the bullet holes in his corpse.

It was on these flights home that Michael incessantly rehearsed the story that he would tell everyone he knew. It was never easy lying, but after years of practice it came easier to him. Telling lies to his friends, his father, even his mother, with whom he often spoke, was not tremendously difficult. But regurgitating some fabrication to his wife was ever the challenge; he felt that she always saw through his mendacious script. They told him that it was for their protection.

This was the woman, his wife, that looked at him with such purity and devotion that it actually pained Michael to launch on a diatribe about how some consultant in San Francisco was causing the current IT project to be behind schedule and over budget. That it had been critical for Michael to fly at the last minute to San Francisco for three-days, maybe more, depending on how the “project” was going.

Michael met Sonia while both were in graduate school at Georgetown; she had been in medical school and he had been nearly finished with his doctorate in Middle Eastern Studies (although she thought he was getting his MBA). The attraction between the two was immediate and reciprocated. Michael had just ended a relationship with a woman who, externally appeared perfect, but internally was wrong in every way one could imagine.

Neither was in a hurry to start a new relationship. She had spent the last four years with a man that was not yet aware of the forthcoming revelation that his content relationship to Sonia was about to end.