Retribution (2 page)

CHAPTER 2

 

W
illiam Parker awoke to a lightless, frigid bedroom, the green glow of his digital clock the only thing visible.

As always, his internal clock had awakened him at three in the morning. He clenched his fist, once, twice, and then a third time. The flexing was a habit, often unconscious, that he had developed during therapy to restore function to his scarred right shoulder.

Parker sighed and pulled back the covers, standing up in the chill air. It was that time of year, the changing of the seasons, between air-conditioning and heat. Not that the heat would come on any time soon. He preferred a cold house. The clock, though . . . the clock was hers. Parker didn't need one. Combat had taught him sleep was a luxury, not a necessity. His experiences in North Korea and Iraq had trained him to sleep for only a couple of hours at a time. Even the bed was a comfort he had never gotten accustomed to.

Parker made his way through the dim light, down the stairs, across the wide space of the lodge's main room to the kitchen. He could smell the faint, oaky scent of burned wood from the fireplace. He closed his eyes as he swung the refrigerator door open. Intentionally blinded by his shut eyes, he felt for a bottle of water on the second shelf. She insisted on Dasani.

As the fridge door closed, he opened his eyes while looking away, but the last flash of light from the refrigerator passed through the kitchen, across the main room and through the large windows and doors that framed the stone fireplace. In the instant that it occurred, Parker sensed a stranger outside.

He moved along the wall, again in the darkness, keeping something solid to his back. Another habit of combat.

He reached the corner of the room near the glass door on the far right of the fireplace. Others might have reached for the Glock in the drawer by the kitchen's back door, but the pistol would be the least of any intruder's worries.

The grassy knoll behind the lodge was draped in the darkness of a quarter moon. Most, looking out through the door, would be barely able to make out the shapes of the rocks or the tree line beyond the edge of the small field. Here, though, darkness wasn't Parker's enemy.

Something moved.

A hidden motion detector triggered a light. And like a flashbulb, it froze a deer standing in the center of the field. Her large eyes stared directly into the light. The green reflection from her retinas glowed with an almost chemical color. The condensation from her breath left a wisp of a cloud around her nostrils. Except for the faint sign of breath, the doe was motionless, as if a wax model of a living creature.

Parker smiled.

The doe stood her ground for what seemed to be an eternity, not moving a muscle, frozen, and then, as if comprehending a danger, she darted off into the darkness. Her white tail flashed in the light.

Parker's smile vanished.

He, too, sensed something.

CHAPTER 3

 

T
he concussion wave from the blast shattered windows for several city blocks. The crater on the edge of the building quickly filled with water as the main to the embassy was sheared in the blast. It was an odd sight of smoke, blowing dust, and water spraying up from the pipe.

As the winds began to die down with the passing of the storm, the smell of burned rubber, wood, and human remains overwhelmed the rescue crew searching through the pile of debris for survivors.

The soccer field now served as the landing zone it was intended to be. Marine CH-46 and CH-53 helicopters landed in wave after wave, and soon the smoldering ruins were an armed camp with men in black jackets stenciled with FBI combing the wreckage. The teams were on the grounds before the last of the wounded had been pulled out from under the timbers and shattered blocks and bricks.

Later, the regional security analysts concluded that the attack was a failed attempt on the ambassador's life. They were wrong.

The actual target had been caught under the torn wreckage of the building, her legs pinned under a fallen steel roof beam. The rescuers raced to jack up the beam and pull the limp body out from under the weight of the debris.

Locked within Maggie O'Donald's unconscious mind was the password.

 

 

“Air Force Six-Niner hold.”

The bulky C-17 Globemaster's brakes squealed as the medevac aircraft stopped on the taxiway of the Al Udeid Air Base just outside of Doha.

“Six-Niner holding.” Colonel Danny Prevatt looked over to his copilot with impatience.

“What now? Don't they realize we need to get these folks out of here?”

Danny Prevatt knew that several of the wounded were on the verge of their mortality. It was an unusual record for his trade, but Prevatt had never lost a life on a mission. He attributed it to speed, skill, and mostly luck. As always, he planned to climb fast and catch the best winds.

The only good news for the bombing victims was that the aircraft had been at Al Udeid refueling when it had gotten the word. Every asset had been only minutes away. And Air Force 69 knew what it was doing. Danny and this crew had flown well over a hundred medevacs out of Iraq without a loss. But time remained the critical factor.

God, what a base.
From his vantage point in the pilot's seat atop the C-17, Danny could see out over the fifteen-thousand-foot runway and, across from the runway, the new hangars and aircraft bunkers of Al Udeid. It was one of the newest military airfields in the Gulf.

During his last stopover at Al Udeid, Prevatt had asked another pilot, “Why Qatar?”

“Well, beyond its central location in the Gulf . . .”

Qatar had not been known to most of the world until after September 11. The small country jutted out into the central Gulf. Surrounded by Saudi Arabia to the south and west, UAE to the southeast, and, across the Gulf, Bahrain, Kuwait, Iraq, and Iran, for centuries it was a crossroads for merchants. Its markets were full of Persian rugs, some more than a century old, smuggled out of northern Iran, and brass handcrafted urns and pots. Each rug reflected the mystical story of its respective village in maps of bright colors, designs, and shapes. The pots were shaped by hand with thousands of blows from a hammer that turned the metal.

“In 1939,” the pilot had explained to Prevatt, “Sheikh Thani bin Mohamed let engineers dig for oil. They didn't find one oil field but three. Stacked on top of each other. Any one of 'em would've made this Bedouin tribe a bunch of billionaires. But then, below those three, they found the mother lode.”

“Some super oil field?” Prevatt asked.

The pilot had shaken his head. “The largest natural gas field in the world. Trillions, and just when the rest of the world was starting to perfect LNG technology. Liquefied natural gas. They cool the stuff down so that they can ship more of it and send it off to Europe for all of those energy-efficient cars.”

Now, thirty or forty years later, all that wealth stood visibly on the skyline of Doha.

Still, it was just another assignment to Prevatt. He loved to fly and sighed at the mere thought of his next assignment: A desk job, which to a pilot was akin to a diagnosis of cancer. At least this one would be in the Afghanistan theater. As air officer to the combined task force, he would control the air support for all of the units in theater. If he couldn't fly, at least he would be in combat. It was a cruelty of advancing rank. Colonels could not fly as often as captains. He would be grounded by his rank and he resented it.

Just as he now resented waiting on the runway. For what?

Prevatt looked up to see another aircraft on final approach in the distance.

“Air Force Six-Niner, hold for a passenger.”

His copilot stared at him. “What the hell is this?”

Prevatt scratched his head. “I think it's that same executive bird that was going into Kuwait last night.”

He had heard the call sign as the two aircraft crossed the North Atlantic on parallel paths the night before.

As he spoke, a Gulfstream jet landed before them with full flaps extended. As the wheels settled on the surface, the massive jet's engines went into reverse, causing the aircraft to stop like a hesitant motorist with a last-minute light change. Smoke from the wheels puffed up underneath the aircraft. The pilot wasn't wasting any time. The plane turned to taxi off the active runway and, as it did, the bold markings of blue, white, and silver, reading U
NITED
S
TATES OF
A
MERICA
,
flashed by the C-17. It was one of the executive fleet aircrafts and Prevatt watched as it pulled up on the side of the medevac aircraft, stopped, and, as its door opened, two armed men carrying M4 automatic rifles ran down the stairs to the tarmac. Both stood at the wingtip of the jet as another man, dressed much like a corporate attorney, disembarked and approached the C-17.

“I know that man,” Prevatt said.

His copilot peered over the pilot's seat, craning to see the three men on the ground.

“Yep, it's the damn deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency himself,” said Prevatt as he turned to the flight chief behind him. “Go unbutton the door for our guest.”

 

 

The CIA deputy director climbed from the blazing hot tarmac into the dark, chilly cave body of the C-17, losing his vision for a brief moment. The flight chief took him by his arm and led him and his bodyguards over to three web seats in the bay of the aircraft.

“Strap in, sir. We are ready to roll.” The flight chief pulled their seat belts out and handed them to the passengers.

 

 

As Deputy Director Robert Tranthan fumbled with the seat belt, his senses began to adjust to the dark, the antiseptic smell, and the quiet. The jet rolled forward and the engines began to spin up in a high-pitched roar, until he felt the aircraft tilt sharply upward. As it tilted and his eyes were adjusting, he realized the bay was crammed, wall-to-wall, with the beds of the injured, the IVs swinging with the motion of the aircraft. Some were lying on gurneys, their heads wrapped in white gauze stained bright red.

“Sir, I'm the physician in charge of this flight.” A lanky, thin man in a desert brown flight suit stood over Tranthan. His stethoscope hung loosely around his neck. He seemed to be a look-alike of Jimmy Stewart and had the same easy, soft voice.

“Robert Tranthan.” They shook hands. “We diverted from Kuwait City when we heard about the bombing. How many do you have on board?”

“Thirty-six wounded.”

Tranthan was concerned only about one in particular, but he could not allow himself to be so direct.

“How badly?”

“I am told that the cement truck had about two tons of explosives in it. It left a crater twenty feet deep. Six are reported missing, with no trace that they ever even existed.” The flight surgeon spoke in his low, somber voice, barely audible over the hum of the engines.

“How about the ambassador?”

“He wasn't even in the embassy at the time.”

“Do you know who the six missing are?”

“Two Marine guards, three locals, and the security officer.”

Maggie had mentioned Pat Stuart to Tranthan on several occasions. In fact, she had even joked that Tranthan must have put her with Stuart, a married man with a pregnant wife, so that Pat could act as her watchdog.

“What happened to the security officer?”

“He apparently stepped directly into the bomb blast. Nothing was left.”

“What about the woman that worked in his office? Our representative at the embassy, Ms. O'Donald?”

“A concussion, but that isn't the worst of it. A beam of the building collapsed onto her legs. It took them over an hour to get her out of there. If the blood loss isn't too great, she might make it.”

“God.” Tranthan rested his head in his hands. His first sight of her had been those long legs walking down a stairway at Langley. He felt sick. She would not have been in Qatar but for him. It was supposed to be a safe place. The relationship risked both his marriage and career. He had weighed the decision carefully. She had to be placed out of sight. He just didn't anticipate how good she would become in her new job. Maggie was coming up with intelligence that no one had even a hint of.

“Where is she?”

“Follow me.” The doctor led him back down the row of injured to the last gurney. She looked so small and helpless. Two small tents covered her legs and a bandage covered most of her head.

“Maggie,” he whispered into her ear. As he leaned over, he saw the shimmer of the gold necklace and locket that he had given her prior to her leaving.

“Maggie,” he whispered again, but she didn't react to his voice.

He touched her on her shoulder. She turned upon being touched, and he looked directly into her dazed eyes.

“Hey,” Maggie mumbled under the morphine.

“Hey, you, Maggie E.” Tranthan didn't really know what to say. He could only use his nickname for her. Her body was virtually covered except for those green eyes. Blood-tinged gauze wrapped around her head. She seemed slow to react to his words, as if, in addition to all the other damage, the blast had deafened her.

“Hey,” she said again. He could see the confusion in her face. “We need to pull it.”

“Pull what, Maggie?”

“Pull it out.”

“Pull what out?”

“Yes, that's what we need to do. Pull it out.” She kept repeating it in a low, soft mumble. It was as if she knew what to do but had no idea how to do it.
Pull it . . .
He had no idea what she was talking about. Perhaps the severe head injury had torn apart her memory.

“Where's Pat?”

He could barely hear her voice.

“He may be in the back,” he lied.

“His phone . . .” Then her eyes closed as she drifted back into a deep morphine sleep.

“Hey, Maggie E, don't try to talk. Just take it easy.” Tranthan spoke the words encouragingly, but he felt desperate, powerless. He slumped next to her until sleep found him as well.

Tranthan stayed by the side of her gurney throughout the long night. And it was near the end of that night that he made a decision. Both his career and his life had been nothing but safe moves, but now he wanted to hurt someone very badly.

 

 

After the C-17 landed and Maggie was installed in the trauma unit in Landstuhl, Tranthan's Gulfstream returned to Washington. He could not be seen with her at the hospital. He knew she would understand.

“There was an operation two years ago called Nemesis.” Tranthan leaned over his desk back at Langley, speaking in a low voice to the man across from him, Brigadier General Ben Arnault of the United States Marine Corps.

“I don't recall that one,” said Arnault.

Tranthan expected this. Those who knew of the Nemesis operation could be counted on the fingers of one hand. One of those lived at Number One Observatory Circle.

“A man named Scott was involved,” said Tranthan. “I know him. He used to be pretty good.”

“Yes, sir,” said Arnault patiently.

Tranthan liked his young general. Arnault came to work at 4:00
A.M
., seven days a week, and rarely left until well after dark. He was always at his desk, just outside Tranthan's office, except for two workouts a day, which were runs or swims while the boss was either at lunch or away from Langley. He also felt comfortable being assisted by a military man. Tranthan himself had left the army after twenty years of service. He could have become a flag officer like Ben Arnault. Tranthan was fluent in both Farsi and Russian, he had a master's in psychology, and he was married to the oldest daughter of the senior senator from Pennsylvania. His ticket had all the necessary punches. But after the wedding he had been offered a mid-level appointment to Langley and left his army career behind. It had been the right decision. Langley represented the chance to play in a different game, at a different level. It had an edge. It had opportunity. It gave a young, ambitious climber the chance to gain a lot of IOUs. And he knew he would be good at it. But still, deep inside, Tranthan was aware that he'd always be that army major. And if he were honest with himself, he got a charge out of having a flag officer at his beck and call.

“Oh, Ben. Before I forget . . . The security officer in Doha may have had something on his phone.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Can we check that out?”

“Done.”