Days of Rage (39 page)

T
he Charleston humidity was cloying but I still insisted on sitting outside, as Jennifer knew I would the minute I said where we were going. Fuel was a bar and grill with a Caribbean flair built on an old gas station, and one of my go-to places for visitors. She wanted to take Shoshana and Aaron to someplace more upscale and so-called Charleston, but I was having none of it. Complete with two-dollar PBRs and an outdoor garden with a bocce ball pit, Fuel was way better than someplace with white tablecloths.

A summer breeze kicked up, wiping the heat away, and it felt good even with the humidity, reminding me I was alive. While it had been three days since our near-suicidal plane flight, I was still waking up each morning mildly surprised to feel my heart beating.

We’d floated in the water for close to three hours before Aaron and Jennifer found us in a rented speedboat. I had begun to wonder if maybe we were going to have to swim back home. Once we’d returned to the airport I’d immediately ordered everyone to buy tickets, and we settled on Charleston as a destination. Well, most of us did. The pilot of the rock-star bird was a little aggravated that I’d destroyed his aircraft, and he’d opted to fly straight back to DC, where I’m sure he went straight to Kurt Hale, crying like a four-year-old. Sure enough, I’d heard about it as soon as I talked to Kurt, but it was mostly in jest, and not something I gave a shit about on a summer day like today.

Jennifer slid her hand over mine and squeezed. She seemed to be doing much better about the whole
Am I a murderer?
thing, but I suppose saving the world from a nuclear strike will do that to your moral code.

Watching Shoshana laugh at Aaron’s pitch, she said, “I never told you how much Aaron appreciated what you did for Shoshana. He cares a great deal about her.”

I said, “Maybe he should be giving
us
an award.”

Once we’d arrived back in the United States, I’d called Kurt. I’d sent a SITREP before we’d left, and by the time we’d landed, we had a message from the president of the United States saying he wanted to convey his thanks to the Israeli team in person. It would be private and off the record, but it was still pretty prestigious.

Shoshana caught us looking at them and winked. Jennifer said, “I think she’s smitten with you.”

I smiled and said, “She doesn’t swing that way.”

“I don’t know about that. She’s making all the wrong moves for someone who isn’t interested in the opposite sex.”

I opened the laptop and fired it up. “Maybe it’s you.” I squeezed her hand. “I’m fairly sure I could understand why that would happen, if last night was any indication. You know she’s an empath, right? She’s seen through your prim-and-proper facade.”

She blushed, actually looking worried. She said, “I hope that’s not true. Either way, whether it’s me or you, it’d kill Aaron. I
know
he’s smitten with her.”

I started tapping keys, going through the laborious process of working through the TOR network and getting into the NYM and Blofeld applications.

Watching me type, she said, “So Knuckles is flying down here just to take that computer back to DC?”

“Yeah. That’s his story. In reality, I think he’s going stir-crazy up there. And he likes it here in the Holy City. Plenty of hot single women running around for a Navy SEAL to stalk.”

“How did he sound on the phone?”

“Better . . . Here he comes.”

I saw him through the old roll-up garage door next to the bar and waved. He came outside smiling, his hippie hair trailing in the breeze. Two women at the bar, wearing scrubs from the medical university, followed him with their eyes all the way to our table.

I gave him a man-hug and said, “Long flight just to get a computer.”

“Yeah, I know. I might have to spend the night here. Maybe two nights.”

I laughed and sat down while Jennifer gave him a peck on the cheek. “How was Decoy’s memorial?”

It had happened while we were down in Brazil. For once, I hated how quickly the Taskforce did them.

“It was good, Jenn. Good.”

I said, “I wish I could have been there.”

He slapped my shoulder, “I know, but you were saving the world. Usual shit.”

“How’s that going inside the beltway? I haven’t seen anything at all on the news. How are they keeping a lid on it?”

He grinned and said, “Believe it or not, your idea of flying the weapon out into the ocean has solved more problems than just saving lives. The Oversight Council is pretending it didn’t happen. There are a bunch of questions being asked down in South America about a ‘large explosion’ over the ocean, but since every bit of evidence has been destroyed, DC is looking in the sky and whistling.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“Nope. They’re just going to ignore the whole thing. Turn it into a meteor strike or something. Pretend it never happened. Keeps them from having to try to tightrope around the Taskforce.”

“What about the radiation? The fallout?”

“Apparently it won’t be that big of a deal. They figure it was a one-kiloton bomb, and we used to test two-kiloton airbursts in Nevada all the time without any ill effects, so it’ll just disperse out in the ocean. I didn’t ask them if we needed to worry about Godzilla being created, but apparently it’s no threat to humanity.”

He looked at Jennifer and said, “By the way, I heard you were the one who found the bomb. Saved the day. That’s going a long way to spare Grolier Recovery Services from Pike’s bullshit, but it’s not a done deal yet.”

She gave an embarrassed smile at the first part of his statement, then showed confusion at the second. I said, “I put you in the SITREP to Kurt, because you did, in fact, save the world from nuclear devastation.”

She grinned and said, “What’s that about GRS?”

“Kurt told me the Oversight Council was considering cutting our contract because I don’t know whether I’m a government employee or a civilian. Basically, that I’m uncontrollable. We might get fired.”

She looked at Knuckles and said, “Really? After what he just did?”

Knuckles said, “Don’t worry about it. Kurt’s on your side. So is President Warren. Just don’t do anything stupid in the next few days.”

I said, “Oh, we’re going to do some foolish things over the next few days, trust me.” Jennifer turned beet red and punched my arm, mouthing,
Pike!

I tapped the final keys on the computer as Knuckles rolled his eyes. He said, “I really don’t want to hear about the fraternization.”

I no longer heard him, my brain focused on the computer screen. I had a message on my fake account. An e-mail from the mole sent four days ago. I translated the Blofeld URL. It was short and to the point.

Americans getting content on Associated Press e-mail accounts. Sanitize them ASAP.

Jennifer saw my expression and said, “What is it?” Knuckles started to lean over to see the screen and I rapidly exited the Blofeld account, destroying the message forever.

I said, “Nothing.” I closed the lid and handed him the computer. “Here you go. This is what you came for. Hopefully they can find something about that mole on this.”

I stood up and pulled out my Taskforce phone. Jennifer said, “Where are you going?”

“Calling Kurt. Only be a minute.”

After getting shuffled around by minions, I finally got him on the phone. He said, “Hey, superhero, what’s up?”

“I hear I’m getting fired.”

“I already told you that. Is Knuckles spreading RUMINT? Ignore the hearsay. Nothing’s changed since our last conversation. No decisions made.”

“Okay, but that’s not why I’m calling. The Taskforce didn’t crack the Associated Press e-mails. Who did that?”

“The NSA, and I’m telling you, it was a close run thing. Tupper, the DNI, didn’t want to do it. The president had to order him.”

“Who knew the NSA was doing it? Who outside of you and the president?”

“Just Bruce Tupper. President Warren kept it very, very close hold because it was basically a felony. Why?”

“No reason. Hey, Jennifer’s calling me. I gotta go.”

“Don’t let those Israelis show up late. Get them on the plane. I know how you are in Charleston.”

I said, “Don’t worry about that. The sooner I get them to DC the better.”

I hung up, thinking. Debating. The first compromise had been internal to the Taskforce, when the cache location had been penetrated. The second one—the one I’d just seen—was outside the Taskforce completely. The mole had knowledge of both and the ability to manipulate our surveillance systems.

I thought about what I knew and my possible actions. I considered Jennifer, now content in the knowledge that she was no murderer and that the Taskforce was a force of good. That
I
was a force of good.

Then I thought of Decoy dying. Of Daniel dying. Of how close Jennifer had come to dying. How close thousands of people had danced near slaughter. I thought of the name Nephilim, of the Old Testament punishment of an eye for an eye. Of the information I had about a Middle Eastern CIA case officer’s connection to the Munich massacre, and how the Americans were petrified it would fall into Israeli hands. And made my decision.

I said, “Shoshana, can I see you for a second?”

She came jogging over and I went deeper into the garden, away from the group.

Puzzled, but grinning, she said, “What, are you going to try to change my stripes?”

Her smile faded when she saw my expression. “Pike, what is it?”

“I have some information that affects Israeli interests.”

B
ruce Tupper put the finishing touches on his landscape painting, then signed the bottom with a flourish. His wife came in as he set his brush down. She hugged him, saying, “It looks wonderful. I take it by your burst of artistic energy that things are better at work?”

He smiled and kissed her. “Yes. Things are decidedly better now. It’ll probably get worse again, but right now, it’s pretty good.”

She said, “Can we go for a walk finally? Forget about work? I haven’t seen you in a week, and it’s a gorgeous summer day.”

“Can I smoke a cigar?”

“Yes. But just one.”

He said, “I’ll meet you downstairs.” She left the room with a little skip in her step, and he put his paint away feeling the same. The awards ceremony today had been the capstone event for a difficult few weeks. The Israelis were courteous to a fault, and he had heard nothing from his new contact in over a week. He wondered if his secret had been completely welded shut on the far side. He dared to believe that he would never hear from the Russians again.

In this, he was correct.

He went downstairs and found his wife talking to their driver/personal security man. She saw him and smiled. He felt a warm glow. He showed their Rhodesian ridgeback the leash and the dog went wild, bouncing up and down. The entire scene was idyllic. Something he never would have had in the Soviet Union. He had been blessed.

They exited the mansion and began walking. He let her lead the way, the ridgeback sniffing every bush. They worked around the winding neighborhood streets, the mansions glaringly massive in the dusk, the security man behind them at a respectful distance. They said nothing for the first thirty minutes, Bruce thinking of how close he’d come to being exposed and his wife simply enjoying the walk. The sun began to set and the summer evening reached that tipping point between night and day, the air still.

Bruce heard the motorcycle before he saw it, a smaller bike with two people on it, both wearing full-face helmets. He thought nothing of it, even when it pulled abreast of them and stopped. The person on the back tossed him something and he caught it in confusion. It was a plastic medal. A replica of Olympic gold. He knew instantly what it represented.

He heard his security shout, the man drawing a weapon and running toward them, but not nearly as fast as the assassin. He returned to the passenger and was staring down the bulbous maw of a suppressed pistol. It spit twice and he scarcely felt the pain. His wife screamed and he sat down heavily, his legs losing their ability to hold him up.

He barely registered the motorcycle leaving, even with his security man firing blindly in the growing darkness. His vision tunneled until he was looking at his lap as if through a straw. A string of viscous red drool fell from his mouth, dripping down from his lip. His breathing became labored as his punctured lung strove for oxygen. He coughed, spraying his lap with blood. In the center was the plastic medal, the fake gold now tarnished with red. Sitting there proudly still, as if he’d earned it.

As his brain shut down, he supposed he had.

Yes, yes, I know, the Israeli national football team did not qualify for the World Cup in 2014, extending their absence to forty-four years. But at one point they were looking strong! When they failed, I had a choice of either redirecting the target or just using literary license. Since the Munich Olympics factored in heavily on the motivations of the Mossad team, I decided to use literary license to juxtapose the repercussions of the threat.

While Israel didn’t make the World Cup, they did attend the Munich Olympics in ’72, and their athletes were murdered in a horrific terrorist act, much like I depicted. The mastermind of that event, Ali Hassan Salameh—aka the Red Prince—was a real person, and we really used him as a source for information about Lebanon and the greater Middle East, so much so that his Force 17 commandos once protected Henry Kissinger on a state visit to Beirut. We did not, however, start that relationship until after Munich. Robert Ames, the CIA case officer mentioned in the book, was Salameh’s actual case officer in life, and Robert really was killed in the Beirut embassy bombings, but Bruce Tupper and his machinations are false. It is fiction that we knew about Munich before it happened but fact that while Israel hunted Salameh, we courted him. Eventually, Israel’s Wrath of God teams won. Well, conventional wisdom is that he was killed by Israel. They’ve never admitted to it, but the second chapter in the book is pretty much what happened.

As for the WMD, the W54 SADM is a real man-portable nuclear weapon designed for use during the Cold War by Special Forces teams—known as Greenlight teams—on planned missions that were seriously suicidal in nature. In the words of one member of a Greenlight team, “There were real issues with the operational wisdom of the program, and those who were to conduct the mission were sure that whomever thought this up was using bad hemp.” Little is known about the existence of USSR “suitcase nukes” (at least on the US side of things). Congress did conduct several hearings on the subject in the 1990s, and the verdict is still out on whether the USSR had them and, if so, whether they still maintain control of them. Historically, whatever weapons system we invented, the Soviets stole and duplicated, so I don’t see why this would be any different. For research, I used the W54 platform and not the wild mock-ups shown in the Congressional hearings, which were pretty much panned as unfeasible by nuclear scientists. Since the SADM was real, and had been successfully tested, it provided concrete data on size, weight, implementation methods, destructive radius, fallout risk, et cetera.

While my Director of National Intelligence, Bruce Tupper, had nothing to do with the Red Prince in the real world, he actually
is
a real person. I donated the chance to name my DNI (who up until that point was called Angus Smackmaster) at an auction to raise funds for the Georgia chapter of the Make-a-Wish Foundation, which grants the wishes of children with life-threatening medical conditions. Bruce himself was at the auction but didn’t bid. Someone else did, and then, after some thought and consultation, provided the name. I will always wonder if Bruce is flattered to be in a novel or a little chagrined he ended up being a murdering traitor.

As always happens when researching my novels, I owe a debt of gratitude to an unnamed, unregistered “tour guide,” this time in Istanbul. For fifty bucks he showed me everything I needed, including where the illegal African immigrants hang out, the Russian sector of shopping, and the Russian consulate, in addition to all of the usual tour stops. All it cost me was a detour into his uncle’s carpet store, where I was subjected to a hard sell for an hour and a half. I had no such luck in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, but I did just fine on my own.

There’s a lot more to writing books than just, well, writing books. I have to thank my agent, John Talbot, who manages all the behind-the-scenes business for me. I truly appreciate our friendship and all of your work on my behalf.

It’s an understatement to say that I’ve been truly blessed by my association with Dutton. To have lucked into this team as a new author was nothing short of a miracle. The tireless efforts of the Dutton team are apparent in the success of my books. To my editors, Ben Sevier and Jessica Reinheim, thanks so much for giving me the leeway to follow my gut, along with astute guidance to prevent me from running off the rails. To my amazing publicists, Liza Cassity and Emily Brock, you rock! To the marketing team, especially Carrie Swetonic, thanks for putting the best foot forward for Pike and his team and always turning our requests around quickly. Finally, these acknowledgments are always about the hardcover books, leaving out Danielle Perez and the hard-working team at Signet who ensure the paperback release is perfect. Thank you!