White: A Novel (5 page)

The air in the room grew too thick to breathe. No one wanted to watch the president twist in embarrassment.

“Director Alred, I’ve been president of the United States just long enough to find the toilet paper dispenser in the Oval Office toilet. How am I supposed to make sense of all these acronyms you keep throwing at me? Speak English!”

Everyone except Beechum suddenly felt the need to check his or her watch.

“Don’t worry about the details, sir,” Havelock said. He had regained most of the composure he’d lacked in the meeting downstairs. “All this country needs right now is gravitas—a president who can act decisively and stand behind the tough calls. Nobody understands all that spy crap anyway.”

II

Monday, 14 February

14:10 GMT

Homestead Ranch, Kerrville, Texas

ONLY THREE THINGS
mattered to Colonel Roderick “Buck” Ellis. Family, God, and country. Not necessarily in that order.

“Poppy! Poppy! Look at me!” a child called out from the other side of a split-rail corral. His oldest grandchild, a towheaded six-year-old cherub named Gracie, sat atop her brand-new Shetland pony. She wore the white gaucho skirt and linen blouse her momma had dressed her in for the birthday party. Calfskin roping boots the size of teacups kicked against the pony’s sides as she waved with one hand and clutched the reins with the other. A fifty-X Stetson sat proudly atop her widely beaming face. To everyone watching, she looked like a rodeo princess just waiting for a bigger horse.

“Ride ’em, cowgirl!” the colonel hollered back at his little treasure. Gracie looked every bit her beautiful momma, with the confidence and energy of her Special Forces daddy.

“Sun’s gonna get hot today, Colonel. Better watch yourself.”

Buck Ellis continued staring at Gracie as he wrapped his arms around the woman responsible for all this. The former Patricia Margaret Nash—always just Pat—had given him five children. Through twenty-nine years in the military, eleven duty stations in seven countries, interminable overseas tours, and the loss of a sixth child while he was away on “business,” she’d never offered anything but complete devotion.

“Thank you, darlin’,” the colonel said, turning back toward the party. Dozens of children ran about, yelping and hollering beneath the colorful birthday banners, piñatas, and trestle vines. A seven-piece mariachi band filled the air with festive music. His grown children and their spouses and family friends sat at tables full of food or stood in the glow of an unseasonably warm morning sun.

“This is some spread we’ve built here, isn’t it?” Ellis allowed himself a moment of pride.

His wife, still fit and lovely at fifty-eight, hugged him close and nodded her head. Everything around them—all that they could see in any direction—from the horses and lawn chairs to the 3,600-acre ranch they called the Homestead, meant nothing compared to the love behind it. She enjoyed the ranch, but material things didn’t seem to matter. It was heritage and a cleansing faith in Jesus Christ that sustained her.

“Wonderful, Colonel.” She beamed. “Isn’t it wonderful?”

Native Texans, they had returned home to Kerrville a decade earlier. But not to retire. The colonel had turned what was left of his great-grandfather’s spread into one of the finest facilities of its kind in the world—a tactics, operations, and firearms training facility that catered to everyone from his old friends in the military special operations community to law enforcement SWAT teams to private citizens willing to cough up tuition. The Homestead represented more than a home to him and his extended family, more than a job. It was a way of life—a vocation. A calling.

“I wish all of us could have been here today to share in it,” Pat said, turning to her husband. “Have you heard from him?”

“Not yet.” He smiled. The sounds of gunfire from nearby training ranges provided background they never even noticed anymore. “But he’s been busy. The boy’ll call just as soon as he gets a chance.”

Their eldest son had always proven conscientious and responsible. He wouldn’t have missed a family function like this without good reason.

“I guess you’re right.” She nodded, turning for a kiss. “But look at you. You are going to burn yourself red if we don’t get you into the shade.”

Years outdoors in the military had turned her husband’s face brown and rough as tree bark, but she worried about him just the same.

“You hush now,” the colonel said, wrapping her up in his arms. “I’ve had lots worse to worry about than a little Texas sunshine.”

With that, he winked, pushed the brim of his Resistol rancher higher onto his forehead, and kissed his wife between closed eyes.

“Now you leave me be.” He smiled. “That little girl over there needs her granddaddy to show her a thing or two about riding. Run on back up to the party and see to the hostessing . . . git.”

He playfully spanked her on the butt, the way he would have shooed off a freshly groomed mare.

When his wife had gone, Colonel Ellis sidled over to where a handful of men stood talking quietly near the corral. The sounds of laughter, festive music, and playing children drowned out the distant gunfire. He tried to concentrate on his granddaughter’s smile. This should have been a happy day, he decided, but darker thoughts filled his mind.

JEREMY WALLER LAY
tangled in a pile of sheets, soaked through with night sweats and spilled beer. The only light in the room peeked through drawn shades in tiger stripes of neon—a false light that glowed so brightly across his bed, he could poke his fingers through the beams.

Bangkok,
he decided, trying to remember himself.
Another hotel room in a long series of foreign cities.
It had been more than forty-eight hours since the Irian Jaya raid, and he still hadn’t heard from his controllers.

Jeremy reached to the nightstand and pointed the remote at a small television, flipping through the channels:
Gunsmoke
reruns dubbed in Thai, Bollywood movies full of dark-mustached villains and fainting love interests, an old World Cup soccer match, women in brightly colored veils dancing to some Southeast Asian variation of MTV.

He climbed out of bed and pulled open the blinds, allowing the energy of a bustling downtown to come flooding in.

Another exotic city I’ll see but never enjoy.

He’d been confined to this room, waiting for word about his exfil. There was nothing to do but watch TV and sleep, but despite the three hits of Ambien, a six-pack of Tsingtao, and endless reruns of
Magnum, P.I.,
he’d mustered nothing more than a couple yawns.

“Push-ups,” he suggested aloud, hungry for the sound of any familiar voice. His head felt groggy, lost in a dull haze of pills, hangover, and sleep deprivation. “Five bucks says you can’t knock out two hundred.”

Jeremy got down on his knees and assumed the “forward leaning rest” position HRT had taught him so well. He elevated his feet on the edge of the bed and began cranking out protocol-perfect repetitions, counting silently in a room that seemed distant from the rest of the world.

Thermit,
he thought as the push-up count passed ten. He lapsed back into recollection of what had happened once GI Jane ran out into the clearing. Only Thermit, a compound of iron oxide and aluminum with a potassium permanganate and glycerin initiator, would have caused such a lightning flash.

Jeremy had seen Thermit’s aftermath during the war in Kosovo, but it wasn’t until after joining HRT that he’d witnessed its real power. Delta breachers had demonstrated the incendiary during a training trip to Fort Bragg the previous fall. The grenades ignited at 2,200 degrees Celsius and burned like brimstone.

This was supposed to be a rendition,
he thought.
A simple snatch of a terrorist the CIA had tracked to a jungle hideout.

This wasn’t Jeremy’s first covert operation, of course. It wasn’t even the first time he had killed. During a rendition in Yemen the previous year, he and his team leader, Jesús Smith, had eliminated a handful of terrorists. Unfortunately they had killed women and children, too. Jeremy still woke up some nights seeing an eight-year-old boy stumbling out from behind a curtain with a disabled AK-74 in his little hands, recoiling from the impact of Jeremy’s bullets. Dead.

Twenty-two, twenty-three . . .

Jeremy shook his head, trying to clear it for more tolerable thoughts. His muscles began to pump up with blood, reminding him of the PT sessions he’d enjoyed back at Quantico. That’s where all this had started of course, with the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team. He had survived two weeks of tryouts and six months of New Operator Training School, or NOTS, only to be shipped off to the U.S. Marine Corps Scout/Sniper school for another month of “specialization.”

Thirty, thirty-one . . .

Then had come the Puerto Rico mission. Terrorists had kidnapped the governor’s daughter and would have killed her if not for the team’s brilliantly executed assault. Jeremy remembered peering down into the cellar hole where they had secreted her, a violent attack raging around him, bullets flying up from the dark space below. He remembered leaning in with his MP-5 and blowing the back of the terrorist’s head off.

“Good shooting,” FBI headquarters had said after the OPR investigation.
At least it was better than Yemen,
Jeremy thought.
And better than what I just witnessed in the jungle.

Fifty.

Jeremy blew out a couple cleansing breaths, adjusted his hands on the cheap polyester carpet, then continued.

He’d seen the Americans through the magnification of his rifle scope. Three white males, thirty to thirty-five years of age, three-day beards, Western clothing. And that Bass Pro Shops hat. By the time Jeremy had mentioned them out loud, GI Jane was already running.

Americans.

Nothing unusual had happened for some time after that. The task force entry team had separated the men into two groups, knelt them with their hands flex-cuffed behind their backs, and slipped burlap bags over everyone’s head. Everyone except Mahar. This was a technique perfected in Iraq during the war, Jeremy knew. Special operations teams working with CIA Special Activities Division interrogators had determined that the initial disorientation and pursuant fear yielded significant on-scene intelligence.

Sixty-one . . .

So it made sense to Jeremy that he would see the same thing there in the jungle. GI Jane had moved first to Mahar, kneeling beside him and placing her hand on his shoulder. She talked for a few minutes, evoking an occasional nod or turn of the head, but from Jeremy’s distance there was no way to tell what the terrorist said.

After a few moments, Jane stood up and walked over to the second Indonesian. The task force team leader—a Delta Force sergeant everyone called French—stood over the man with his M-4 assault rifle hanging from his right hand. French wore Vietnam-era OD fatigues with the sleeves rolled up, a Ranger hat, and black SWAT gloves.

GI Jane had knelt down on one knee, as if she planned less conversation and didn’t want to get too comfortable.

Seventy-two . . .

After a few more minutes, she moved across the compound to the three Westerners. They had been arranged side by side, close enough that they could have held hands if not for the flex cuffs.

Seventy-five . . .

She spoke to the one on the left first. GI Jane pulled the burlap bag off the man’s head, exposing what Jeremy now saw as bleach-white hair and skin the color of Xerox paper. GI Jane asked the man—whom Jeremy guessed to be an albino—a couple questions and jotted a few notes on a small pad she kept in the thigh pocket of her BDUs.

Seventy-eight . . .

After a moment or two, she replaced the burlap bag, walked over to French, and mumbled a few words. It was only then that everything began to unravel.

My God,
Jeremy thought.

He paused his push-ups and blinked his eyes, trying to shake off images of what had happened next.

JORDAN MITCHELL LIVED
for acquisition. From the companies he bought up through hostile takeovers and proxy skirmishes to the secrets he gathered through government sources and industry moles, everything in his world came down to spreadsheets delineating what he had and what he yet had to have. He was CEO and principal stockholder of Borders Atlantic, after all—one of the world’s largest multinational corporations—a man
Forbes
ranked as number five among the world’s richest men.

According to trade projections, his recent Quantis project, which included new Middle Eastern cell phone broadcast monopolies, had positioned him well to move higher.

“Is she here yet?” Mitchell asked. He sat at a massive red oak conference table with four other men, running his hands over a rare three-barreled Drilling, which he had just obtained from a museum curator in Stuttgart. The magnificent rifle bore intricate Black Forest engravings along its Brazilian rosewood stock, nickel receiver, and ivory trigger guard. It had eluded him for years, but like all great conquests, this had been worth the wait.

“Yes, she’s on her way up,” Trask said. Mitchell’s chief of staff moved through a stack of folders, preparing for what promised to be a particularly busy day. “Should I have the weapon mounted for you, Mr. Mitchell?”

The men sat in what was known within the company as the War Room, a sanctum sanctorum defined by claro walnut paneling, Tiffany lamps, and the stale smell of fear. Floor-to-ceiling display cases lined two walls, each filled with hundreds of weapons—Henry buffalo guns in .5440, Winchester carbines, Remington prototypes, Belgian Brownings, Damascus steel Parkers, early Kentucky flintlocks, Colt Peacemakers in shiny nickel and gunmetal blue. This extraordinary collection—rare specimens that chronicled the history of war and predation—offered threatening testament to Mitchell’s might. When he brought executives in for a meeting, he expected allegiance. If these rifles suggested consequence, so be it.