Chasing the Lion, page 18
“Dude, it’s yours,” he said. He unplugged the white cord and adaptor from the wall socket and slid it across the worn check-in desk. He placed his hand on the hundred-dollar bill and said, “Are … are you still not here?”
“I was never here,” I said. The look on my face must have been convincing.
“Okay, well, I just thought you should know I’ve got one reservation for tonight, so you know, if you’re not here, that might be good to know.”
“Put him at the other end of the hotel,” I said.
“He’s a she, but yeah, okay,” he said. “I get it.”
“Can you order some food and drinks, have it delivered here, and then call me?”
He looked at the hundred-dollar bill and said, “Out of my money?”
I began to tug the bill back. “Four hundred dollars of my money for two nights in a shitty room. You’ll pocket no less than three hundred, so order me some chow. A pizza and you can eat half of it.”
“Chow,” the kid said.
“Food,” I said. “Call me when it’s here.” I released the money and walked across the barren parking lot to my room. I plugged in the iPad, connected the recharging cable, and began reviewing the hard drive of the iPad and the contents of the flash drive.
After fifteen minutes of mindlessly reading files, I found my first hopeful sign. It was a PDF of a long handwritten list of names. The writing was in block letters, not cursive, and appeared masculine. I hit the document search function and typed in:
Melissa Sinclair
My heart leaped as the document moved to her highlighted name.
Sinclair, Melissa; Secret
I stared at the words, mulling their potential meaning in my mind. Secret was typically a classification, but the way it was written didn’t seem to indicate a stratification of security clearance. Rather, it seemed to be a noun: Secret.
What secret? About President-Elect Campbell? If anyone knew any secret about Campbell, it would have been Melissa.
The words below read:
Admitted to National Cancer Institute / October 25
LTG Sinclair / Syria / Al-Baghdadi
That date was two days before the al-Baghdadi mission. I had been told she’d been rushed to Walter Reed, but this information placed her at Fort Detrick, where the National Cancer Institute maintained a research campus. Two days before she died? Why? Was this a last-minute treatment regimen that was kept off the books? Had then governor Campbell pulled strings to get Melissa the best health care the government could provide? Or was something more nefarious at play?
A car pulled into the parking lot as I began a search for her name through all the files, to no avail; however, I did see another reference to Fort Detrick.
Project Naomi
As a car door slammed not far away, my mind cycled back to Ben David in the Yazd Province cave when he whispered, “Naomi,” in my ear through the hanging flap of the protective mask he had been wearing. The document read:
MKUltra chemical experimentation in the 1950–1968 time frame was NOT halted as CIA reported. Sidney Gottlieb destroyed most records, but others have been found indicating Ultra’s predecessor, Naomi. Naomi first pursued mind control through any means necessary as a weapon of mass manipulation. Promising new developments have led State and CIA to resurrect Naomi to achieve non-kinetic effects in warfare using a drug called Demon Rain in Building 57. Intel fusion from AT&L and CyberCom shows significant smartphone shipments from China to Iran and application development for camera modification. MTF. Techno-drug development possible.
AT&L was shorthand for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics, the Department of Defense activity responsible for tracking global supply chains. CyberCom was the acronym for U.S. Cyber Command, the four-star functional command that monitored global cyberactivity. An analyst in the Intelligence Community had flagged the two separate threads of intel as possibly having some correlation, suggesting mind control impact derived from a combination between a hallucinogenic and smartphone technology.
Interesting.
It could have been psychosomatic, but my optical nerve spasmed, and a starburst of white light exploded in my eyes like fireworks. Fillmore and Owens had told me that the Iranians were developing Demon Rain. Now someone’s records indicated that both Melissa and Demon Rain had been at Fort Detrick. I had seen Dariush Parizad in Germany and Japan at former CIA safe houses. I steadied myself by sliding off the bed and standing, hands against the wall. I walked to the door and cracked it to let in the cold January air. Despite the chill, I had cold beads of sweat sliding across my face.
Through the crack in the door, I saw a shiny black Porsche Cayenne SUV park at the front door. A woman walked into the office and came out two minutes later as an older rust-colored Toyota Camry eased into the spot next to her. Suddenly, this was a busy place. The Porsche driver had kinky blond hair that fell past her shoulders. I instinctively retreated into the room and quietly closed the door before I could see the driver of the second car. I stuffed the pistol in my right pocket and my knife in the other.
The ringing landline phone startled me. I lifted it, and the voice said, “Dude who is not here has food that is not here.”
I hung up, shook my head, tried a weak smile at the bad joke, and managed to shake off the bit of nerves I had developed from seeing Melissa’s name on the flash drive. I watched through the sheer curtain of the dingy window spotted with road dust as the woman parked at the opposite end of the motel. She unpacked a small rolling suitcase that could fit in the overhead compartment of an airplane. She was dressed in a gray suit with crisp creases in the pants and narrow lapels on the blazer. Her white blouse appeared sheer, and I wondered why she wasn’t wearing a long overcoat. It was maybe forty degrees outside. She lifted the suitcase with no effort and strode confidently into the room. I had the impression she was a former college athlete.
An image blurred to the right on the opposite side of the window a second before there was a light rap on my door. The face on the opposite side of the peephole surprised me to the point that I opened the door without hesitation.
My friend Ben David stepped through, saying, “Quick, Garrett, close the door.”
“What are you doing here? How did you find me? Are you okay?” I asked. I was tired, hungry, and weak, but his presence provided a jolt of adrenaline that focused me.
David was dressed in black jeans, black combat boots, an olive Gore-Tex coat with the initials IDF on the upper-left breast, and a black watch cap not unlike the one I had stolen from Fort Detrick.
“Garrett, you’ve got to keep moving,” he said. His hands were pushing me back into the room as he closed the door behind him.
“Slow down, Ben,” I said. His eyes darted left and right, assessing the room, then focused on me. “How did you know where I was?”
“Heard about the breakout from Detrick. IC is lit,” he said. That the Intelligence Community would be searching for me was no surprise; that David found me, and so quickly, was. “I started thinking about logical hideouts within an escape radius. Some private eye reported to the IC that you left him for dead in the park near here. You’re on foot. This is logical. I’ve spent thirty years avoiding VAJA, Mukhabarat, GID, and even IDF.”
VAJA was the Iranian intelligence agency, while Mukhabarat was Iraqi, GID was Saudi, and the IDF, of course, was Israeli.
“Wasn’t planning on staying. Just needed to regroup,” I said.
“If I can find you, they can find you,” he said.
“Who exactly is ‘they’?”
“The CIA. You’re a threat, Garrett. They’ve got something planned. Mossad got me out of Afghanistan and into the U.S. to pursue it,” he said.
“In forty-eight hours? That’s quick, my friend,” I replied. My voice sounded more suspicious than I’d intended.
“Friend is the operative word,” David said. “I’m here. I’m warning you. I’ll be around. Use this,” he said, handing me a burner phone still shrink-wrapped in its packaging as if he’d just purchased it from Costco.
He turned, opened the door, and slid through the gap, evaporating before my eyes, which seemed to be his specialty.
I stared at the phone in my hands and checked the packaging, which seemed airtight, but it wouldn’t be a stretch that Mossad had made this phone, planted a tracking chip, and packaged it perfectly. It was Ben David, though, and my trust factor was high with him. If he or Mossad were tracking me, I assumed it would be, worst case, to paint a better picture for Mossad of what was happening. Best case, David wanted to protect me.
I stuffed the phone in the backpack and repacked all my other loot, waited ten minutes, and slipped out the door in my watch cap and duster. I walked behind my room while hugging the wall, found the military crest of the slope, and circled behind the office, which looked like a pillbox even from the back. My math told me it was twenty-four feet by twenty-four feet. Efficient construction, where twelve sheets of plywood laid in three rows of four dictated the building floor plan. I entered the office from the opposite direction, keeping the small building between me and the motel.
“Dude! I was just watching. Where’d you come from?”
When I came in, Chad was staring at my room through the window. A pizza box sat on the counter. I opened it and offered it to him first. He grabbed two pieces and placed a roll of paper towels on the counter.
“Damn. Me and the spy eating pizza.”
“Shut up,” I said.
He stopped chewing, his eyes grew wide, and he swallowed. “Sorry, man.”
“What’s her name?” I asked.
He looked at the register, the computer monitor, and through the window.
“Um, not really part of the complimentary pizza package, man.”
I said nothing.
He kept talking.
“Look, man. A few days ago, the cops came around checking to see who had reservations. All about the inauguration. Told us to watch out for suspicious characters.” His eyes shifted to the Kim Campbell campaign bobblehead doll on the counter.
“Do I look suspicious to you?”
“No. Totally not. I mean, maybe to others you might, but definitely not to me. You’re like the least-suspicious-looking character I’ve seen today.”
“So that’s a yes.”
I grabbed another piece of pizza and slid another of Denuncio’s hundred-dollar bills across the counter.
“Name, address, everything you’ve got on her.”
He pocketed the cash and typed into the computer keyboard.
“Chloe. Ha. Love that name. Chloe Kardashian. Just kidding. Chloe Collinsworth. Pretty good name right there.”
“Job?”
“We don’t get that info, man.”
“Google her,” I said.
“She’s pretty hot. Stalkerrrr.” His voice hit a high-pitched octave as he drew the last word out. Damn. Professor at University of North Carolina. Teaches dendrology.”
He started searching for the meaning when I said, “Trees. She teaches about trees.”
“Right. I knew that.”
I also knew that a common undercover legend for CIA or FBI field agents was serving as a professor, journalist, or photographer.
“Keep the rest,” I said, pushing the pizza toward him.
“Heading back to the room?” He raised his hand as he spoke.
“Where else would I be going?”
He was young and careless. He didn’t deserve to die, but neither did I. The stack of bills he had accumulated was significantly larger than the five hundred dollars I had given him. Someone else had paid him off.
As soon as he lifted his hand, I dove to the floor, and a bullet passed through where my head had been and slapped into his neck. His carotid artery sprayed like a geyser as he spun around, shouting, “Ohmygod, ohmygod!” I would have helped him if I thought it would do any good, but he was going to bleed out in less than a minute.
I dove through the window as a car rammed the front door. Spinning to one knee, I leveled the Glock on two white men in plain clothes with high-and-tight haircuts. They were either private military contractors or CIA assets. They aimed at me. I shot them. Sometimes it was as simple as that. They might have been half my age, but I was twice as quick.
I rolled to my right and felt the sniper’s bullet wash past me. It cracked overhead and singed the wool of the duster as it flared upward. The ground was hard and cold, crunching beneath me as I low crawled down the slope to the woods. Confident I was over the ridge, I stood and ran into the protective cover of the trees. Two more shots snapped overhead, crackling through the branches. At the nadir of the terrain was a creek that ambled from the mountains in the west to the east, toward Fort Detrick.
I splashed into the cold water, crossed to the north side, climbed up the steep bank, found a power line right-of-way, and sprinted for at least a mile until I felt safe enough to slow down. Reaching a road running north and south, I eased back into the trees that hugged the creek bed. I retrieved Denuncio’s phone, considered using David’s shrink-wrapped gift, but instead inserted the SIM card in Denuncio’s and used the iPad to call the number in the voice mail. I avoided staring at either device, though my eyes sparked as my optical nerve flared.
“Garrett, where are you?” Campbell said.
“Why did you send Melissa to Fort Detrick?”
She paused a beat, which I took as a tell. “What are you talking about? I was governor. I had no sway to send Melissa anywhere. Garrett, I’m concerned about you. Tell me where you are.”
I suspected she might already know. “What secret did she know?”
My voice choked as I spoke and considered the improbable but increasingly possible scenario that Melissa knew something that could have impacted Campbell’s election.
Secret
I was watching the road fifty meters to my front from behind a thick oak tree, its barren branches tangling to create a lattice canopy above the creek. The Porsche Cayenne with the blonde—Chloe Collinsworth—drove slowly over the adjacent bridge. She might have been studying trees, but I doubted it. While she didn’t look like a sniper, I had learned a long time ago to never be deceived by appearances. Bursts of mist puffed with every deep breath. My lungs ached.
“Secret?” Campbell asked.
“Never mind.”
I punched off the iPad, removed the chip from the phone, and placed it back in my boot, secured in the plastic sleeve. I then smashed both the iPad and Denuncio’s phone and tossed them in the water, leaving me with David’s phone if I needed to contact anyone.
A helicopter chopped in the distance. A black Cadillac Escalade dipped through the river and climbed up the hill about one hundred meters behind the Porsche. Once they were both out of sight, I checked what we call a linear danger area—a road—and darted across, racing along the power line right-of-way again and separating myself from my pursuers.
Campbell’s denials weren’t convincing. I had once considered her a friend, and now I determined that if she had anything to do with Melissa’s death, she was a mortal enemy, president-elect or not.
My optic nerves flared again as I slowed. I attributed this to my wounds and exhaustion. I considered for the first time that I had no idea what drugs the CIA—or whoever they were—had administered at Fort Detrick in my lockdown cell. Maybe they had given me more Demon Rain, if that was what Parizad had shot at me.
Regardless, the anger I felt toward Campbell began to boil into a murderous rage, which was unlike any emotion I had ever felt. Even when chasing al-Baghdadi or Soleimani, I was objectively above the fray, always focusing on the tasks at hand.
I slowed again, maybe two miles from the road, my lungs feeling like they had been perforated by ice picks. I was soaked with sweat as I slid back into the trees. I leaned against a tall pine, its needles the only green against a brown-and-gray backdrop of trees and mournful skies.
I looked at the ground and coughed out a sob, then lifted my head and shouted, “Melissa!”
Time seemed to stand still. Crows stopped pecking at feed in the adjacent farmer’s field. Squirrels halted their scampering in the bare limbs above. The crystallized particles of exhalation hung in front of my face like a motionless cloud.
Then I remembered.
Be Brave. Be True.
She had ended her deathbed letter to me with those words. Brave and True was the West Point motto of the class prior to my graduation: the one that had produced Samantha Owens, Kyle Estes, and Jim Tharp, the current CIA director, secretary of state, and secretary of defense.
Was she cautioning me against them? I had dismissed her warning as an errant inconsistency provoked by the grim reaper. Never before had I underestimated her. In my grief and without her reassuring nudge, I had missed this clue.
But what did it mean?
I needed to talk to Reagan. Melissa had confided in our youngest child when I wasn’t there. While Reagan had gone through her doting-daughter phase with me, my intermittent presence had forged an immutable bond between her and Melissa. Brad was exceptional in many ways and almost always respectful, but he carried an air of immaturity with him that gave Reagan the slightest of advantages when it came to any sort of edge in parental relationships.
A freshman at the University of Virginia, Reagan was now entering her second semester. I decided not to use the phone yet, though. If it was a Mossad device, I didn’t want them listening in to my conversation with either of my two children. I unfroze myself from the moment and powered forward by sheer determination and, as always, Melissa’s guiding hand.
Before I stepped to cross the road, another car drove slowly to the north. I followed the car with my eyes. Ben David was driving a late-model white SUV. He sped up the hill before I was able to race out and flag him down.
21
INSTEAD OF PURSUING BEN David, I continued east, where I reached the chain-link fence of Fort Detrick at about 4:00 p.m., though the low cloud cover and mountains in the west created a layer of darkness that gave the illusion of nighttime. As far as I knew, I had not been detected. I knelt in a copse of pine trees about a quarter mile away, the air becoming increasingly cold and bitter, winds beginning to lash like the erratic crack of a whip’s popper.
