DEAD BEEF (Our Cyber World Book 1) (25 page)

“OK,” the president said. “Let’s walk through that. First up, his wife, who apparently he’s divorcing, but who also disappeared, and who Agent Ochoa told us, while Spencer and Cynthia were up on that God awful rock cliff, is with him now. I’ve read her file, too. My call? Solid woman, also a hero. Maybe hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, but she, though scorned, left everything behind, too, didn’t she? Why? She’s family to you. How do you read her?”

Odehl swallowed. “It’s simple, Mr. President. Martin has hurt her a lot during their marriage, but she loves him. And she’s a fiercely loyal person.”

“She’s a good soldier, too, isn’t she?” the president said turning to the head of the CIA.

“One of our best, Mr. President. We wish she were still in our service.”

“Looks like she is to me,” the president noted. By now he was leafing through another file, saying, “Stan Beloski. Ran the Iranian op, but I see him as little more than a desk jockey.”

“Served in the Air Force, too, Mr. President,” Odehl offered.

“As an acquisitions officer, never deployed, got out as Captain,” the president said. “I’ll leave it at that in respect for those who serve in that important capacity, but I don’t see Mr. Beloski tipping the balance much one way or the other.”

“He has some insight into the Iranian operation and the stranded payload,” Odehl offered again. “Perhaps that insight will prove helpful at some juncture.”

“Perhaps,” the president said, already moving to the next file. He read longer now. Odehl could tell he wasn’t just skimming. “Then there’s Sasha Javan,” he said finally. “Sasha, Sasha, Sasha. The love of his life, the one Martin set aside to serve his country, or himself, as some have argued. I’d like to believe the former, but I’m cautious not to disregard the latter.”

“That’s wise, Mr. President,” the CIA deputy director said. “Ms. Javan disappeared a few months after Spencer broke off with her. We have good reason to believe she’s been in covert contact with Iranian intelligence all along.”

“What sort of good reason?” the president asked.

“We’ve seen reports from Israeli intelligence.”

“I suppose that ought to count for something, though these days grains of salt are in short supply. By the way, why isn’t your boss here to tell me this?”

“The Director came down with a cold a couple of days ago.”

“Seems to be a plague these days. Same thing happened at the FBI,” the president said winking at Odehl. “On the flip side, this Sasha took a bullet for our hero in the making, and before that, according to Martin himself, she helped him with the fix. Actually, he gives her first billing, doesn’t he? The fix, he says, comes by courtesy of Sasha Javan with help from Martin Spencer. Doesn’t look like she’s taking the day off.”

The president set Sasha’s file aside, but this one he placed at his left, whereas the prior ones he’d set to his right. Odehl recalled the president’s left-hand man remark.

“And now we come to our two Aces in the hole, don’t we?” the president said. He took the two remaining files, slid them toward him, and arranged them side-by-side. He didn’t open either file, instead keeping a hand on each one.

“Rodrigo Ochoa,” he said, rolling the first R apparently to show his command of Spanish. “Medical school drop-out, Navy medic turned Navy Seal until a severe concussion changed his career. Had a lot of therapy, including electro-shock therapy on one occasion. Still gets severe, crippling headaches, needs specialized medication to control them, which we provide. Highly trained, not just your vanilla collector agent. Used to do dark ops, the kind Presidents want to happen but don’t want to know about. Requested transfer to Collections because he wanted to start a family, which didn’t come to fruition when his fiancée was assassinated by someone in his prior life, whom he promptly assassinated back in no uncertain terms and quite brutally. He’s received heavy counseling about that incident, and since we didn’t like that someone very much either, we’re all feeling better about the whole thing now.”

The president looked up and eyed the CIA deputy. “Do I have that about right?”

“Exactly right, Mr. President. Agent Ochoa is one of our best, highly skilled at transforming his demeanor and behavior for each mission so as to throw off his quarry.”

“And what Oscar winning role is he playing this time?” the president asked.

“I believe he calls it his dumb jock impression.”

“I see,” the president said. “Completely trustworthy?”

“Press the button, and he goes,” the CIA deputy director replied. “And you better get out of his way.”

“Does he stop when you press the off button?”

“Yes, sir.”

“No doubts about that.”

“No, sir.”

The president looked down at his left hand, under which rested a file with the name of Leticia Ortiz. “Then, there’s this lovely young lady, who will finally get her Purple Heart after this is done.” He looked up and glared at the CIA deputy director. “By God, if we have to make up a story of her swallowing bullets to save one-legged, blind Afghani children, we do it, and I’ll write it up. But she’s getting her heart if I have anything to say about it.”

“Yes, Mr. President,” the CIA deputy director said.

“Way overdue, Mr. President,” the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said. “Her husband died in combat as well. Her little girl just died of Leukemia.”

The president nodded and twisted his lips. Sitting to his left, Odehl wondered whether he was imagining tears beginning to form in the president’s eyes.

The president sighed and said, “I won’t bore you with a recitation of her exploits. Bottom line: she’s the real deal. The real deal with a very strong personal connection to Martin Spencer. She saved his life, he paid for a specialist to repair her shoulder, then paid for her little girl’s cancer treatment, which ended last night, by the way. Last night, when L.A. went dark, and when she volunteered to go on a fast-track emergency mission where she again probably saved Spencer’s life.”

The president took both files and set them to his right.

“At the beginning of the meeting, Mr. Odehl, I told you I wasn’t much for video briefings,” the president said. “But there are always exceptions, and here’s one I think you’ll agree is rather worthy. Are we cued up?”

“Yes, Mr. President,” someone said from the back of the room.

“Go.”

A split screen video appeared on the room’s front screen. “This is just sections of the video,” the president explained. “Both feeds are synchronized to show the same exact instant in time. The one on the left is a top view from our helicopter, the one on the right comes from one of the cameras at this fire lookout where we find our protagonists. That second video came to us courtesy of Stan Beloski, who furtively emailed it to us when no one was looking. For the sake of suspense I neglected to mention that about Beloski earlier. He can help us with the video during this mission.”

He tapped Odehl on the wrist, “Now, that man crawling across a rock formation no wider than 5 feet, with sheer drops on either side of him, while thunderstorms approach is?”

“Martin!” Odehl said.

“Yes, and by the way, that lady there clinging for dear life to a rope ladder, unable to help her Martin but there nonetheless because she has nowhere better to be is?”

“Cynthia?”

“Indeed. Now, we’ve cut ahead, and so you might miss that Martin has already gone out and is now coming back, pushing that red cooler which he hands to Cynthia. That red cooler contains blood for?”

Odehl shook his head. “Sorry, I—.”

“That would be Sasha, who at the moment is at death’s door after taking a bullet for Martin a few hours prior.” The video jumped, and the president added, “And now we cut ahead to one of the best parts. Martin is trying to catch a second cooler, this one with medical supplies for?”

“Sasha,” Odehl whispered.

“And look at that. He catches it on the first try. But he has a hard time releasing it, but man, he won’t let go.”

“Oh, God,” Odehl said. Then he breathed easy when Martin dropped to the platform.

“Now, another cut,” the president said. “He’s almost back at the ladder. This time he plans to take the cooler down himself. He’s so close. And Cynthia is right below, by the way, waiting for him with the other cooler, even though he probably told her to get the hell out of there ten minutes before. She’s down there, shielding herself as best she can, because by now the wind is blowing like crazy, and it’s raining. That’s right, raining, which means it’s slippery on the rock, and...”

Odehl watched in horror as the cooler and then Martin slipped and came to a stop on the far side of the rock. He found himself urging Martin on to come’on, get up top again.

The president tapped him on the wrist and said, “Relax, Mr. Odehl we know how this ends, and it’s a happy ending.” The video played on, until the president resumed his narration. “And here is Leticia no-one-thought-to-give-me-a-purple-heart Ortiz bouncing on that platform on the first try, and then skipping, across that wet, narrow rock like a cat. Then...” he waited for a few seconds, adding, “she latches herself to the rope, goes upside down, and... pulls Martin up... grabs the cooler. And off they go into the lightning storm.”

The video stopped. The president looked around the room and said, “So why did your president show you all that video? I trust it wasn’t a waste of time. It shows us far more than these files ever could. And it helps me make this point: when this is over, I will be highly disappointed if I don’t get to shake the hands of each of those three individuals.”

He leaned back in his chair and said, “Last comments around the room?”

No one spoke for a few seconds, and the president seemed fine with dwelling in the silence.

“Just one obvious point, Mr. President, if you don’t mind,” the CIA deputy director said. “We now know their location, and we have them contained. There’s really only one way in and out of there, and we have it capped.”

“If I may add to that,” the head of the NSA said. “Since we know their location, we can uniquely and in an isolated manner monitor their specific satellite communications and track their online activity.”

“I highly recommend that as well, Mr. President,” the FBI deputy director said. “But since it involves domestic action, we’ll need your support.”

For the first time in the meeting, the president seemed unsure, hesitant. “Let’s chat about that offline after the meeting.” He paused before asking, “Anything else?”

The president scanned the room, and when no one spoke, stood up.

“Thank you, everyone,” he said. “And a special thanks to you,” he added, shaking Robert Odehl’s hand. “Excellent briefing, low on BS, long on facts.” Odehl thought to himself that on the way out he would find a shredder and stick his resignation letter through it.

The president took one file to his left and tucked it under his right arm. “And now if you’ll excuse me,” he said, “I have a phone call to make. As many of you know my lovely bride and I had a fabulous dinner with the Israeli ambassador and his beautiful wife this evening. What most of you don’t know is that he gave me the name of a friend in Tel Aviv I must definitely call.” 

Chapter 35

The next morning, at sunrise, while Sasha and Cynthia slept on the two twin beds, and while Martin and Beloski still slumbered in their sleeping bags, Leticia grabbed one chamber pot and Ochoa the other to take them outside for cleaning.

Once they finished rinsing the pots he said, “Can we talk?”

She shot him a sharp look and said, “I know who you are.”

“That’s great. And I can say the same about you, so we’re even.”

“You as much as look the wrong way at Martin,” she said, “and I’ll tear you up piece by piece, and no one will know how to ID you when I’m done with you.” Leticia stepped to him, eyes glaring with contempt. She was tall, as tall as he was, and standing sideways she stared him down with a look that shook him. “I know who you are. I know what you do.”

“What I did,” he said evenly.

“What you do,” she said. “Once you do that, it never leaves you.”

“You ought to know.”

She looked him up and down. “Don’t even think your psycho-babble-BS is going to work on me. You and I are nowhere near in the same caliber of personhood. I know who I am, and I have lines I’ve never crossed and will never cross.”

“Good for you. Sounds like you should have been a nun. But here you are, adding a hundred reasons to need confession and promising a million more.”

That hit home, Ochoa thought, and perhaps a little stronger than he had intended. From the crucifix around her neck and the way her eyes flared, he could tell she was a devout Catholic.

“You want to bring God into this?” she said finally. “Go right ahead, but be careful now, because he’s not on your side. And I’ll be his angel of death to you if you so much as wink the wrong way.”

“Look, I don’t know what stories you’ve heard—”

“I was briefed for this mission,” she said. “You were chart number 2, right after Martin. I know who you are. I know what you do.”

“I’m just here to do my mission. And that is to protect Martin.”

“And when it isn’t? When they flip the switch? What happens then?” Her nose flared. “I’ll tell you what happens then. I pound you into mush.”

Leticia snatched the chamber pot out of his hand, and along with the one she held in her other hand, stormed back into the cabin. Ochoa gave himself a minute to stand there, rub his neck and think to himself that she was one dangerous, intense chick.

After what she called “a totally epic night’s sleep,” Sasha was sitting up in bed wearing a sports bra and a bandage wrapped around her abdomen, her legs covered by a thin blanket. The bandage was clean, a clear sign that neither bleeding nor infection were an issue, Ochoa said. Sasha seemed far more chipper and alert, and she attributed her improvement to “being off that junk,” by which she meant the pain medication.

For his part, Beloski was dithering around with the Internet, at one point finding and reading aloud a blog entry that, as Cynthia summarized, was recommending Martin for sainthood. At the counter, Leticia busied herself reordering the guns again.

Cynthia and Martin collaborated on breakfast, which featured overcooked oatmeal and some pieces of toast with butter and jam.

“We’re going to run out of food soon,” he whispered to Cynthia. In his tone she sensed him saying something would need to change, and soon.

Indeed, once they finished breakfast, Martin asked everyone to gather around the beds, so that Sasha would not have to move.

“OK, team,” he started. “We need to have a frank and free flowing discussion about our immediate future. Our situation is not sustainable, if you just think about accommodations and food. Add that our location is known, and things get complicated.”

“Complicated how?” Ochoa asked.

“There’s another attack coming,” Martin said. “We need both freedom of movement and untapped, unhindered COMMs to respond effectively. Undetected, Sasha and I could have probably gotten it done. Six of us, sitting here just won’t cut it.”

“How do you know another attack is coming?” Ochoa asked.

“We’ll get to that in a minute,” Martin said.

Cynthia watched Martin stand up and walk around as he talked. She liked what she saw. For the past couple of years, Martin had little say in how things ran at the company. That had rendered him aimless, morose, aloof, passive. He didn't care about much, sank into depression even.

He stood differently now, resolute and determined, as if he'd found new purpose.

He had thought things through, probably calculated a few scenarios, and now he was ready to move his team to action. He was in charge again, the Martin of old.

“Before we get to details, we need to have an open and free flowing discussion about a foundational principle without which we can’t get this done. It comes down to one word.” He paused, as if to let them wonder for a few seconds what that word might be.

“Trust,” he said. “We need it, and we don’t have it.” He stopped and pointed at Sasha. “Before you got shot, before I saw what you would do to protect me, I wasn’t sure I could trust you. I was happy to be with you, I wanted to trust you, but, and I still have lingering doubts. I had a lot of questions. And, if I sense the rest of our team correctly, they’d each be happy to flip you into the Feds and never think twice about it.”

“God, Martin,” Sasha said. “You always knew how to turn a girl on, and you still got it.”

“Am I wrong?” Martin asked taking the time to look each person in the eye.

“I don’t trust her,” Leticia said. She shrugged when Sasha gave her a fake look of disappointment. “It might be we just met, it might be the way I see everybody looking at you, or it might be the vibe you give me. But I don’t trust you.”

“OK, so what do we do about that?” Martin asked. “Trust is earned, so you, Sasha, are going to have to give the team something to earn our combined trust.”

“I don’t know what kind of kinky you have in mind,” Sasha said. “But I’m convalescing here.”

“I’m serious,” Martin said.

“He’s right,” Cynthia said looking at Sasha. “And before you blow him off, think of how much he loves you, and how hard it is for him to confront you like this.”

“So what do you think I should do, Cynthia dear? What can I, the dirty, evil Iranian spy possibly do to earn anyone’s trust?”

“Come clean,” Cynthia said. “Tell it straight. Stop all the BS and sophistry, tell everyone who you are, what you are, and show us why now, today, we can trust you.”

“Think about it,” Martin said. “We still have some other ground to cover. But here’s one thing I need from you: I need a full understanding of how you know what the Iranians are doing.”

“I’m not God,” Sasha said. “I only know certain things. I told you how. I tapped them, I walked off, and I kept listening.”

“You don’t just tap and walk off. To tap you have to be inside,” Martin said.

“Alright,” Sasha said, and with a grimace she tossed the sheet aside and pushed herself out of the bed to stand up.

Below the waist, she was wearing nothing but her underwear. “You want to have this out, right now, in front of all these people? Fine! Spoiler alert, spoiler alert. I was a double-agent, working for the Israelis when I met you. They approached me, knowing I had family in Iran that worked the intelligence business. Promised me a visa and a scholarship to woop-woop MIT. I bit. The only trick was I had to tell my family that I wanted to work for the Iranians. My uncle, who was already in the service cried. Yes, he cried, because he wanted me out of Iran and not working for the regime. But I was a big fancy agent! A big fancy agent going to one of the best technical schools in the world, all expenses paid, and I was hacking my brains off!” she shouted. “It was totally awesome!”

Her forced euphoria gave way to a grimace.

“Please, Sasha, sit down,” Martin said coming over to her.

His touch seemed to sooth her, and slowly, Martin helped her sit down on the bed.

“And then,” she said, sobbing now. “Damn it, I hate to cry like this! But maybe you’ll trust me if I cry like a girl!”

Sasha sobbed quietly, and finally through a constricted throat squeezed out, “Then I met a boy. A sweet, smart, caring boy. And I wanted to marry him. God I wanted to have his children and hold him tight the rest of my life. So I told them I was done, all of them, the ones that start with ‘I’ and the other ones that start with ‘I’. See how that works? It was easy to keep straight who I was fooling, because they both start with ‘I’.”

Martin knelt next to her and put his arm around her. “OK, let’s take a break.”

“Hell, no! I’m doing this all at once. I’m ripping the bandage in one pull,” she said and closed her eyes. “Help me lie down, though.”

Martin helped her and covered her lower half with the thin blanket.

Sasha breathed in and out several times, in an obvious attempt to calm herself down. Then in a lower, even voice said, “They left me alone. They didn’t let me go, they never do. They just let me be while they waited. They waited until the boy and I were working happily for the ITAA. The Israelis knew exactly what we were doing. The Iranians not so much, but they could smell blood in the water. They both came calling.”

She closed her eyes and grimaced. Cynthia couldn’t tell if Sasha was reacting to pain from the gunshot wound, or an older, deeper pain, or maybe a nasty convergence of both the above.

“I told them that I needed some time to think about it,” Sasha said. “They said sure, we understand, we’ll give you a little time, which turned out to be two weeks for the Israelis and three for the Iranians. I said it was complicated. Dangerous. We were being watched and monitored all the time. Which was true.”

Sasha smiled. “You remember how it was, Martin? Polygraphs and pee in the cup once a week. Apartments turned upside down once a month and any day of the week, whenever they thought it was good to show up and do spring cleaning without the cleaning. God, I don’t miss that. I also have no clue how I passed all my polys. Shows you why they’re inadmissible in court. Total crap, but the intelligent people sure depend on them to know if the dumb but honest people are guarding our precious secrets. Rubbish. You hear about all the honest people failing their polys because they feel guilty about spilling urine outside the toilet bowl while the ones without a conscience, the pathological liars and psychopaths, we all pass with flying colors. Yes, I said we because I’m a big girl now, big enough to admit I’m damaged goods.”

“I must say I don’t disagree with that last part about the polys,” Leticia said.