War Hawk: A Tucker Wayne Novel (5 page)

A soft smile rose to his lips, remembering when this picture was taken. Sandy had been a civilian intelligence analyst attached to the 3rd Ranger Battalion out of Fort Benning, Georgia. She had been a frequent part of their gang. Thinking of her now, Tucker remembered her wry sense of humor, her bright laughter. This was another friendship he wished he’d never let slip.

“What about her?” he asked.

“She’s gone missing. I hadn’t heard from Sandy for about a month, so I called her mother three days ago. She lives outside Huntsville, up in the mountains. Backwater county. Banjoes, square dancing, moonshine, the works.”

“Colorful. What did you learn from her?”

“Not a whole lot, but enough to make me worried.”

“Go on.”

Jane took a deep breath. “Sandy had taken a new position about a year and a half ago. Prior to that she was working as an analyst for the DIA.”

Defense Intelligence Agency
.

“In fact, it was Sandy who helped get me a job with the DIA. We worked alongside each other until she left.”

“But you still work there.”

She nodded.

Tucker knew better than to ask for more details. Jane’s skill set had no doubt landed her work in a classified field.

Jane continued. “After Sandy left, we stayed in casual touch. E-mails a few times a week. Phone calls a couple times a month. That sort of thing. But for the past several weeks, I sensed something
off
about her. At first I thought she was just preoccupied, but when I pressed her about it, she kept saying everything was fine.”

“And it wasn’t.”

“I could hear something in her voice, especially the last time we talked. She sounded scared.”

From what Tucker remembered about Sandy, the woman wasn’t one to scare easily. She had steel in her veins.

“Where was her new job?” he asked.

“Out at Redstone.”

Tucker recognized the name. “Redstone Arsenal?”

She nodded.

Redstone was a U.S. Army post down in Huntsville, Alabama. It was home to a slew of military commands, mostly involved with the aerospace industry, including the Missile Defense Agency and NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center.

“And her job?”

“She never said. Maybe couldn’t say. I assume she was hired as some kind of consultant out there. Involved with some highly classified project.”

“And now she’s gone?” he pressed. “And she left no word with anyone?”

“According to her mother, Sandy visited her three weeks ago, said she was going to be out of touch for a couple weeks and not to worry. But what struck me as strange was that Sandy also told her mother not to call the base or make any inquiries.”

“Odd thing for her to say.”

“I thought so, too.” Jane let that sink in for a moment.

“If you had to guess,” he asked, “what do you think happened?”

“Someone took her.”

Tucker sat straighter, reacting to the certainty in her voice. “What makes you say that?”

“After speaking to Sandy’s mom, I started making some discreet inquiries, checking on friends of friends. Both hers and mine. I hoped someone else knew something. Instead, I discovered two more of our mutual colleagues have fallen off the face of the earth. But far more disturbing, four others were dead.”

“Dead?”

“All in the past month. One of a carbon monoxide leak in his house, another from a heart attack, and two others died in car accidents.”

Too many for a coincidence
.

“What’s the common denominator among all of you?” he asked. “Did you work on something together? Were you all stationed somewhere?”

Jane looked into his eyes and said nothing, which was an answer in itself. Tucker knew her well enough to know she was holding something back, but he decided not to push it, remembering her earlier words:
the less you know, the better
.

“Why come to me?” Tucker asked.

She looked down at her hands. “At this point, I don’t know whom to trust, but I trust you more than anyone else in the world. And you’re . . . you’re . . .” Her gaze shifted back to him. “Resourceful. And someone outside of all of this.”

“Someone no one would suspect of helping you,” he mumbled.

“And a new set of eyes. Don’t think I’ve forgotten how good you are at looking past appearances to see the truth. I need that. I need
you
.”

He stared at her, knowing there were depths to her last words that were too dangerous to plumb at the moment. If it had been anyone else, he would have slammed the door behind them and made sure he erased his trail from here. Instead, he leaned over and gripped her fingers, feeling the slight tremble in her hand.

“You’ve got me . . . and Kane.”

She smiled up at him, stirring those depths. “Together again.”

3

October 11, 7:22
A
.
M
. EDT

Smith Island, Maryland

Pruitt Kellerman stood before the panoramic windows of his penthouse office. The view overlooked the expanse of Chesapeake Bay, but if he turned slightly, the view extended to the skyline of Washington, DC.

At this early hour, morning fog still shrouded the country’s capital. It softened the city’s marble-hard edges, erasing its monuments and domes. He imagined the mist eroding DC down to its shadowy heart, exposing the cancerous flow of ambitions that truly fueled the city, aspirations both petty and grand.

He smiled at his own reflection that overlay the distant capital, knowing he was the master of all he surveyed.

In a little over two decades, he had taken that city’s dreams of power, its hopes and fears, and turned them into hard cash. Horizon Media Corp had become the dominant outlet for all those crying for attention, those weeping for redemption, those clawing for the top. His media empire controlled countless means of communication: television, radio, print, online. Over the years, he had learned how easy it was to control that flow of information. It was as simple as strangling some channels, while opening others more freely.

What few truly understood was that the old axiom
information is power
no longer held water. The true engine of power today was the
framing and delivery
of that information. In this era of sound bites and short attention spans, perception was everything, and Pruitt was a master at creating it, earning him the keys to that shining castle on the hill.

There wasn’t a politician or a government servant beyond his reach. An election was coming up and already figures on both sides of the aisle were coming to him, hat in hand, recognizing who truly controlled their ambitions.

To maintain some distance, he had built the headquarters of Horizon Media on an island in Chesapeake Bay. Smith Island rested between Maryland and Virginia, and while it was mostly a national wildlife refuge, he had used his power to bend a recalcitrant zoning board to his will. He had picked one of the outer islands, the one closest to the coast, a sliver of eroding salt marsh that he expanded by dredging and filling, hiring a crew out of Hong Kong to fortify the foundations. He even had a private bridge built, along with employing a fleet of hydrofoils to ferry visitors back and forth.

A knock at the door drew his attention around. He checked his reflection, as he always did.

In his midfifties, he remained straight-backed and broad shouldered. He kept his head shaved, both to intimidate and as a matter of vanity, hiding a hairline that steadily receded. To further mask any signs of aging, he had begun to take injections of human growth hormone, a supposed fountain of youth. He also kept his body lean. Many had come to believe he was decades younger than his true age.

He straightened his silk tie.

Perception is everything
.

The door opened behind him without his bidding. Such an action would have normally irked him, except only one person dared such an intrusion into his inner sanctum. He felt his stance relaxing as he turned, a smile coming to his lips.

“Laura,” he said, greeting the young woman dressed in a prim navy business suit. “What are you doing here so early?”

She returned his smile just as warmly and waved to the hazy morning. “Like father, like daughter.”

God, I hope not
.

She crossed toward his desk, a folder tucked under one elbow. “I thought I should get a jump on the day.”

He nodded with a long sigh and motioned to one of the chairs. His office was a masterpiece of Swedish modern architecture, with light wood furniture, brushed stainless accents, and minimal decoration. What dominated the room was the suite of giant ultrahigh-definition flat-screens that covered the wall behind a conference table. They silently displayed the channels he owned, showing talking-head anchors, while news stories scrolled along the bottom edges.

His daughter settled into the chair, brushing back a fall of auburn curls. Freckles dotted her cheeks. Few would consider her beautiful by today’s unyielding standards, but over the years, Laura always managed to let her intelligence and charm win over a slew of suitors.

“Before today’s news cycle kicks into full swing,” she started, “I wanted to go over the message that legal has prepared in regards to this wiretapping business.”

As director of communications, Laura managed the press, for both Horizon-owned outlets and independent alike. This latest case—this latest
nuisance
—concerned the accusation that Horizon Media had bugged the phones of the
Washington Post
.

“The
Post
has no proof,” he groused, dropping heavily into his own leather chair. “Just word our response however you think best. I trust you. But stress the point that I had no prior knowledge of any such supposed activity. And if there’s evidence to the contrary, we’ll be happy to respond further.”

“Done.” Laura crossed an item off the list in the notebook on her lap. “So let’s talk about the Athens trip on Friday. Somehow AP got wind of it.”

“Of course they did.”

Over the years, Pruitt had found it advantageous to allow a reporter to ferret out a nugget of information about Horizon now and again. It distracted attention from what he truly wanted to keep hidden.

Such was the case with this Athens trip.

“Just tell them the truth,” he said.

She glanced up from her notebook, cocking an eyebrow with a small grin. “The truth? Since when are we in the business of disseminating the truth?”

He gave her a scolding look. “I thought I was the only cynic in the room.”

“I learn from the master,” she said, returning to her notes.

He sighed, wishing that weren’t true. After Laura had graduated from Harvard Business, he had done everything possible to nudge her away from working at Horizon. But in a world filled with vacuous daughters of wealth who spent their days drinking Frappuccinos and their evenings flashing their undergarments at paparazzi, he’d gotten one who wanted to work hard for success and didn’t have a pretentious bone in her body. Still, since bringing her onboard five years ago, he had done his best to insulate her from the darker side of Horizon Media’s enterprises, especially his plans for the next great leap forward for the business.

She read from her notes. “In regards to the Athens trip, we’re saying that it’s a part of Horizon’s ongoing efforts to modernize and consolidate the Greek telecom companies. We’re also stressing that both Horizon and the Greek government believe in a free-market system, one of openness and transparency.”

“That sounds perfect.”

Pruitt was only too aware this statement would cause an uproar among the antitrust zealots in this country and in the EU, but as it stood, most of Greece’s telecom industry was already headed toward naked monopolization. Someone had to take the reins.

Might as well be Horizon
.

“Anything else?” she asked.

“Yes, one more item on the agenda.” He stood up, crossed around the desk, and took her hand. “You’re everything to me, you know that, Laura, don’t you?”

She smiled. “Of course. I love you, too.”

“I’m worried that you don’t take enough time for yourself. Rumor has it you’re here ninety hours a week.”

“Dad, that’s no different than a lot of people here.”

“You’re not
people
. You’re my
daughter
.”

“And I love my job. I can handle myself.”

“Of course you can, but it’s a father’s prerogative to worry. Besides, with your mother—”

“I know.” Her mother had died of ovarian cancer when Laura was fifteen. It had broken both their hearts, and in the mending, the two of them had become even closer. She squeezed his fingers. “You’ve done a great job, Dad. I’m a well-adjusted, average thirty-something.”

“You’re anything but average, Laura.”

She patted his hand in thanks, stood up, and smoothed her pencil skirt. “I should get going. I saw your bulldog waiting outside. He had that steely eyed stare that didn’t look like good news.”

That would be Raphael Lyon, the head of his personal security team.

Before she turned away, he wagged a finger at her. “Once this wiretapping nonsense is put to bed, you’re to take a vacation. That’s an order from your CEO.”

Laura gave him a salute. “Yes, sir.”

As she exited, Lyon entered in her place, striding stiffly forward into his office. The bulldog analogy was not unwarranted. The man was squat and heavily muscled. His hands were huge and armored with calluses. His face was permanently tanned from years in the desert. Every movement as he crossed to the desk screamed ex-military.

Rafael Lyon was formerly with the French Special Forces—Brigade des Forces Specials Terre. Six years ago, he had been facing capital war crimes charges for actions in Chad. At the time, Pruitt had found it advantageous to intervene on Rafael’s behalf, mostly because Horizon-run newspapers had been implicated in riling up opposition forces in that country, stoking the fuels that ignited the country into a civil war. Still, when Pruitt spared Lyon from a long prison sentence, the man had become his most loyal asset, one who was not above getting his hands dirty, even bloody.