No Way Out, page 28
“Hopefully no more than one.” He tilted his head as he studied her face. “You going to be able to do this, take this guy out?”
Vail looked ahead, out the windshield, struggling with the answer.
“I need to know, Karen. Doubt, conflicting emotions, that won’t cut it. If you’re not sure, if you have any reservations, I’ll go in myself.”
“You can’t do this yourself.”
“That wouldn’t be my preference, but we’ve got our orders and there’s a lot at stake. I’ll get it done.”
Vail looked down at the SIG in her hand.
“Okay,” DeSantos said. “Here’s the plan. Hang out here, keep a watch on the street, and buzz me if we get company.”
“I’m going in with you.”
DeSantos twisted his torso and faced her square on. “You don’t have to do this. I’ll take care of it.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not just saying that because you feel like you have to prove yourself, right? Because you’re a woman?”
Vail stared him down. If she were standing, she might have kicked him in the balls.
“Let’s go. And don’t ever say that to me again.” She reached up and turned off the interior dome light.
DeSantos nodded. “Very good. Nice tradecraft.”
“Don’t patronize me, Hector. What’s the plan?”
“I’ll go in the back. You watch the front in case he comes out. If he does—”
“I’ll handle it.”
“This is a known terrorist. His mission is to release ricin on the British population. Our mission is to make sure he doesn’t get the chance.”
“I get it. I was at the briefing.”
“He may be armed.”
She gave him another stern look.
“Right. Let’s go.”
Vail pushed open her door and got out.
They used the short brick wall for cover as they approached the house—handguns hidden, in case they encountered someone taking a dog for a late night walk.
Vail nearly tripped on a raised fissure of broken sidewalk. Don’t these people believe in streetlights?
They reached the perimeter of the house and separated, Vail taking the front door and DeSantos the rear.
Vail settled herself on the porch, her back against the front wall, facing out, eyes straining to scan the area ahead of her, ears tuned to any unexpected noises emanating from the interior.
DESANTOS MADE HIS WAY through the yard to the backdoor. He would have preferred to be wearing night vision goggles, but this was an unorthodox op. He had made do with minimal equipment and a paucity of information in the past.
He quickly picked the door locks and stepped inside. It was completely dark. He stood a moment, allowing his senses to adjust to the surroundings. He needed to learn the normal sounds so that if he heard something else, he could react appropriately—a measured, efficient response. Disable his target as swiftly and as quietly as possible, with minimal struggle.
Although he had the SIG in his waistband, he drew a Black Raven tactical knife from a sheath in the pocket of his 5.11s. This was likely going to be a close-quarters fight, and a handgun would not be his first choice. Normally he would have brought a favorite brand from his SEAL days, an Ontario, but the MK3 was a government-issue blade, and he did not want to carry any identifiable equipment that could place him in a US-sanctioned operation.
The Raven was no slouch, however: its Tanto-shaped tip was as lethal as any other knife. In truth, however, a skilled operator had to be able to fight with no weapons—just his hands.
He advanced through the kitchen and into the dining and living rooms. Nothing; if this guy was getting ready to flee, it was the most sedate exit he had ever seen. Perhaps the intel was flawed.
Odd—the interior of the house was completely black. No lighted microwave clocks, no cable box power LEDs.
He headed up the stairs to the second floor and took a right into the master bedroom. As he cleared the adjacent bathroom, he heard a noise back out in the hall.
He emerged and saw a shadowy figure draw back.
“Who are you?” the voice asked. He shone a flashlight in DeSantos’s direction.
The man was part of Rudenko’s network, which automatically made him a threat; and DeSantos’s mission was to terminate, not interrogate. Too far away to use the knife effectively, he instantly drew the SIG.
As he cleared his waistband, the man turned and ran down the steps, yelling. DeSantos was not sure what he was saying, but it didn’t matter. DeSantos drew down and squeezed off a round. It struck the large wooden knob at the bottom of the staircase just as the man yanked open the front door.
VAIL HEARD VOICES, WHICH was not a good sign. She raised her handgun and moved back a few steps, facing the house.
A gunshot—and then the front door opened.
A man ran out and Vail yelled, “Freeze!”
The man turned, clearly startled at hearing a female voice—and DeSantos drilled him. Twice in the chest and once in the forehead: the lethally effective “failure drill” technique.
DeSantos did a quick assessment of his target, then grabbed both his arms and started pulling him back into the house.
“‘Freeze?’ Are you kidding me? That was not the plan.”
“I wanted to see if we could ask him some questions, see what he knew.”
“Nice idea,” DeSantos said as he dropped the man’s arms and then kicked the front door closed with his foot. “But those weren’t our orders.”
“I was never any good at that part of the job.”
DeSantos turned the guy over and froze. He pulled out his phone and turned on the flashlight. “Shit. This is not good.”
“What’s wrong?”
His hands moved quickly, patting down his target’s pockets and finding nothing.
“He’s in sweats,” Vail said. “No socks. Doesn’t look like he was on the run.”
“We’ve gotta search the place.” He stole a look at his watch. “Three minutes, max. Go!”
DeSantos took the upstairs, Vail the ground floor. She found a name and address on a utility bill by the telephone. The name meant nothing to her. She continued through the rooms and found a family photo album on the coffee table—the man DeSantos had shot was pictured with a woman and two children. Judging by the woman’s hairstyle, Vail estimated the photo at perhaps fifteen years old. The kids were now likely grown and out of the house. But this guy was a terrorist, preparing to let loose a chemical weapons attack on London in concert with one of the most notorious gun dealers and money launderers in history.
Not unheard of—an example from this very region, Northern Ireland, was proof enough that revolutionaries could have wives and children and look like perfectly harmless family men. Hell, many notorious serial killers could make the same claim.
Still, she could not shake the sense that this did not add up.
Vail turned a few more pages of the album and froze when she hit the glossy 5 x 7—the last one in the book. Her heart skipped a beat, and she felt the uneven rhythm in her chest.
Whatever Hector had seen when he looked at the man’s face, she was now having her own “oh shit” moment.
DeSantos came bounding down the stairs. “We’ve gotta get out of here. Now.”
“But—”
“Now, out the back!”
Vail grabbed the 5 x 7 print from the album and shoved it into her pocket, seconds behind DeSantos.
They made it to their car and DeSantos sped away as quickly as possible without spinning his wheels and calling even more attention to themselves.
In the distance, sirens.
When they had navigated a safe distance from the house, Vail cleared her throat. A feeling of dread enveloped her, and a sense of claustrophobia gripped her throat as if she had been in a tight elevator stuck between floors with fifteen other passengers crammed in front of her.
She rolled down the window and the cold late-night air blew in her face. As the panic waned, she rolled it up and looked at DeSantos. His jaw was set and his eyes were wide.
Vail could not help but think that this was definitely not the way she had seen her evening going. Actually, she hadn’t thought much about how things were going to unfold. Maybe if she had, if she hadn’t been kept in the dark and if she’d had a full mission briefing, she could’ve prevented them from doing whatever it was that they had just done.
After they had driven several miles, DeSantos pulled over to the curb. He rooted the Nokia out of his pocket and pried off the back.
“Remove the battery from your BlackBerry.”
While Vail did as instructed, she said, “What happened back there?”
“Best guess?”
“You don’t know?”
“I’ll tell you what I know: we fucked up. Big time. We’re in real trouble. We just—Do you know who we just killed?”
“I’ve got a name, but I have no idea who—”
“Basil Walpole is an up-and-coming member of Parliament, a very prominent politician, someone widely expected to be prime minister in the near future. That is, before we broke into his house and murdered him.”
Vail’s mouth was desert dry. She managed to scrape, “What?” from her throat, followed by, “How?”
“I don’t know, I have to—I have to think this through.” He rested his forehead on the steering wheel. “Walpole was pushing legislation for the UK to have one fiscal policy and one foreign policy—essentially, they’d become the United States of Europe. That obviously runs counter to the BHP and their more radical right-wing friends.”
“So we just assassinated a prominent politician? We did the dirty work of a rival political party?”
“Right now that’s the best explanation I’ve got.”
Vail pulled the photo from her pocket and looked at it in the stray light streaming in from the headlights of a car passing from behind them. It was a shot of Walpole shaking hands with former US President Jonathan Whitehall—in the Oval Office.
DeSantos sat back in the seat. “He was also spearheading efforts, with the US, to pass legislation to make money laundering a whole lot more difficult.”
“Which would be bad news for despots in the Middle East and Africa, Russian organized crime, Iran, Hezbollah. The list of those who’d want him out of the way is ridiculously long.” Just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse.
“Our friend Hussein Rudenko is on that list.”
She shoved the picture back in her pocket. “We need to clear our heads, look at this logically. Not what’s possible but what’s feasible—what’s most likely. Agreed?”
“Works for me.”
“The kill order came from Aden Buck. He used the CLAIR device; it was a secure message. Let’s start by explaining that.”
DeSantos checked his watch. It had been twenty-four minutes since he received the text from Buck. He removed the CLAIR from his pocket and reviewed the messages. “Everything’s right.” He powered down the handset and removed the battery, as they had done with their phones. “We can’t take a chance they’ll be able to use it to find us. I have no idea how it works. For all I know, it could be outfitted with a microphone.”
“That’s being a little paranoid.”
“Is it?” DeSantos asked. “I used to have that healthy dose of paranoia. Somewhere along the way I lost it. I’ve lost my edge.” He slammed his hand on the steering wheel.
They were both alone with their thoughts for a long minute.
“No matter how I look at it,” he said, “there’s no way out of this. We’re black, no one will step forward and acknowledge what we’re doing, or why. And we can’t come forward and explain it because if Rudenko thinks we’ve keyed in on his plans, he’ll hit the wind.”
“If he hasn’t already.”
DeSantos closed his eyes. “We’ve irreparably altered British politics. And the very man we were relying on to watch our backs and feed us intel on how to stop the ricin attacks has set us up.”
Think of something, Karen. Think! There’s gotta be a way to fix all this.
“The lights,” DeSantos said.
“What lights?”
“Everything was off in the house, the power. Someone cut it. Walpole probably looked out his window and saw that his neighbor had electricity on, so he grabbed a flashlight and went down to the circuit breaker to see what the hell was wrong.
“But I walked in and scared the crap out of him.” He slammed the steering wheel again, then took a deep breath. His demeanor changed; his brow hardened and his eyes narrowed. “Okay. We can’t worry about Basil Walpole. So—”
“What are you talking about? We just killed an innocent man. We murdered him. How can we just push that aside?”
“For now. We compartmentalize it, lock it away, because we can’t fix it and we’ve got a job to do.”
Vail turned away.
“What would you have us do, walk into the nearest Met station and confess? Sorry guys, it was all just a misunderstanding. Now we’ll be on our way to head off a ricin attack that you know nothing about.”
“Of course not. But how can you just forget that we killed that man. He’s got two kids—”
“I know, okay? We fucked up.” He sat there a long moment. Finally he said, “Right now, Karen, we have to shove our feelings in a drawer so we can complete this mission.”
Vail sat up straight. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I’m tired, I’m—I’m being emotional.” Did I just admit that?
DeSantos pulled away from the curb.
“We need to radically alter our appearance. Caps and glasses won’t cut it.”
DeSantos checked his mirrors to make sure they were not being followed. “How do you figure?”
“Whoever set us up is going to leak to the press and the police, or both, that we kil—that we were seen leaving the scene. This wasn’t some last minute frame-up. It was well planned, well timed, and well executed.”
DeSantos nodded. “You’re right. Fine. We’ll find a place to crash for the night. We’ll need to get new SIM cards because the ones that Buck gave us are likely in their system by now and they may’ve voice ID’d us to those cards.”
“And that brings us back to figuring out what the hell’s going on. The most logical person behind this is not the Russians, or the BHP, or other radical far right groups. It’s Rudenko. He’d be hit hard if money laundering rules were changed and he suddenly couldn’t move his funds around—or hide them.”
“Agreed. So, what? Buck’s been working with Rudenko all along? Is he the mole who exposed all the security service agents? Why?”
Vail considered the question a moment. “Because if he takes out his entire domestic and international spy network, or disables it for a bit, then Rudenko is free to operate as he sees fit, giving him enough time to launch his attack.”
“But why bring you and me here?”
“To make a good show, to stall. I’m sure he got pressure from the prime minister to take action, to track down Rudenko and find this ricin shipment that landed on their soil. And he probably didn’t see you as a threat. He was definitely surprised when you keyed in on Paxton.”
“There’s only one person involved in this thing that we can find, right?”
“Yeah,” Vail said. “Buck.” She turned to DeSantos. “No.”
“It’s the fastest way to answers.”
Vail shifted in her seat. “That’s a mistake.”
“Kidnapping the director general of MI5 isn’t a whole lot worse than anything else we’ve done the past few days.”
“Don’t remind me.” Vail rubbed both hands over her cheeks. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”
DeSantos pulled the car over again. “I am.” He assembled his phone, powered it up, and typed out a text. When it had sent, he removed the battery again.
“What was that?”
“I just sent Knox a coded message.”
“What kind of coded message?”
“An electronic SOS.”
43
Douglas Knox, seated with Earl Tasset and Senator Tom Hendricks as they polished off their after-dinner drinks, stole a look at his BlackBerry. The screen had lit up and the handset was vibrating on the table in front of him.
He puffed on his Hoyo de Monterrey Double Corona, which was perched between his teeth, and tilted his head back to read the message.
“Shit.” He removed the cigar and set it on the edge of the crystal ashtray.
“Everything okay?” Hendricks asked.
“The usual. I’ll be right back.”
Knox donned his wool overcoat and walked outside. He dialed a number and waited while it rang.
“Agent Uziel, this is Douglas Knox.”
“Good evening, Mr. Director.”
“We have to meet. Fifteen minutes, at the Pennsylvania pillar of the World War II memorial.”
“I’ll be there.”
UZI, LEANING AGAINST the stone wall, looked out at the brightly lit Washington Monument. The wind was chilled and strong, and the vapor escaping from his mouth obscured his view.
Douglas Knox cleared his throat and Uzi pivoted around.
“Mr. Director.”
Knox gave a quick survey of the area—which immediately set Uzi’s senses on edge—and he, too, started taking note of who and what was nearby.
“I received a message from Hector.”
He swallowed hard, expecting the worst. “What did it say?”
“It was in code, but the gist is that he’s in trouble and needs help. If I interpreted his code properly, he wants you and Troy Rodman to get to London ASAP. Do you have a go-bag in your trunk?”
“Always, sir.”
“Go directly to Dulles and grab the United flight at ten. I’ll have whatever equipment you need from your office or house brought to you. Rodman will meet you there and bring your kit and boarding pass.”
“Have you gotten a SitRep from him?” Uzi asked, referring to a situation report.
“He’s dark—and black. So we’re not having this conversation. And no, I don’t know what the problem is. I’ve told Rodman to prepare for a real shit storm. I suggest you do the same.”
