Retribution (24 page)

CHAPTER 44

 

“P
lease fasten your seat belts.”

The flight attendant was standing just behind William Parker when she said it. The airplane had flown across the Mediterranean through the night. Most in the cabin had tried to sleep in the small economy seats, either sitting up or twisted on their sides. Parker had been leaning against the back of his neighbor's chair, lying on his side. He only slept for short periods of time, but it was a deep, hard sleep.

He didn't need another explosion, even one he walked away from. It was like too many hits in the NFL.

Parker winced, thinking of Zabara's wife and their adopted child. He had thought about them all night. Them and Enrico.

And Hernandez's wife and baby.

He pulled open the shade to see a cloudless sky and a brown, tanned, rock-strewn surface below. In the short distance, several high-rises rose up near the aqua-blue water that marked the far end of Doha City and the edge of the Persian Gulf. Passing inland, Parker saw boulevards that were wide, broad spokes of a large wheel with two separate and distinct multilane highways that circled the city like the inner and outer rings of a doughnut. The airplane banked again, to the east, and as it did an unusual sight just on the horizon caught Parker's eye. A burned-out shell of a building in the northwest of the city. A massive hole stood in the center of the large compound that surrounded it. The dark hole appeared to be full of chocolate-brown water. Burned piping from the building rose up in an odd pattern similar to children's twisted sticks.

“The American embassy.” These were the first spoken words from Parker's seatmate. He was a young man with a long, curly black beard and a short crew cut. His clothes were thick but simple wraps of heavy linen cloth cut in loose trousers with a large vest. A yellow-tinted white, wrinkled collared shirt finished out the outfit.

“A bombing?”

“Praise Allah. Several dead.”

Parker noticed the young man's hands. Black dirt was caked underneath the man's nails. The tops of his hands were already brown and cracked by a lifetime of being exposed to the sun. His hands looked like the hands of a man much older. His shoes were plastic slip-ons, similar to shower shoes bought at a dollar store. These were a cheap form of footwear that provided little warmth but plenty of durability. The man's bare feet were like his hands. They had been exposed to the elements for most of his life and looked tougher than his hands. He had a broad smile of large, stained teeth, as if he'd had a pack-a-day habit since he was a young teenager.

Parker looked again at the wreckage below.

So this is where it all started.
Less than a week ago, he had been living in another world. The bombing here started the chain of events that resulted in his sitting in the seat on the airplane, leaving Clark on the other side of the planet. It had also left innocents dead and missing, and Kevin Moncrief stuck in some RAF air base preparing to leave.

Parker felt a surge of anger rise inside him. He thought of Sadik Zabara, sitting in some safe house, and he wondered if Scott had had the guts to tell Zabara that he was a widower and now childless.

The man sitting next to him seemed to sense the sadness.

“I am sorry, brother.”

“Oh?” Parker acted ignorant. But the neighbor seemed to know more.

“We all have our losses.”

It was then that Parker realized his seatmate knew of Sadik's losses—thought he was, in fact, Sadik Zabara. Which meant that Yousef also thought so.

“Yes. It is Allah's will.” Parker spoke the words softly.

At that moment the PDA in his pocket buzzed.

Parker pulled it out, noticing the display on the front screen. He looked around, seeing several with their BlackBerrys activated as the airplane prepared to touch down. Even the man next to him had a cell phone and was using it. Parker turned in such a way to ensure that his seatmate could not see the screen of his phone, then opened his e-mail program.

Now Parker too could be outraged. The message went on.

He knew the last part meant that the landing zone of the team was marked in the classified Google Earth map he had in the cell phone. He would take a quick look at it and then flush the information. The cell phone pulled up what looked like Google Earth, but this one had a much sharper, clearer image. As he focused in on the ground, Parker could see several moving objects.

Cars. Damn!
The cell phone was pulling a direct satellite link in real time with the details of every car and truck on the roadways.

The area was marked to the north of Peshawar in a valley along the Afghan border. The small map could be focused in to the smallest detail. In testing the system, he pulled it down on one individual, a woman sitting on a curb on a street near a mud-walled hut that looked like the village's small store.

He was sitting in an airplane using a cell phone looking at a woman captured by a satellite several thousand miles in space, relayed several thousand miles back to Parker's phone, and shown in crisp, living color.

Parker zoomed the image out. The woman sat next to a road in a small village marked
Durba Khel
. He pulled out the image even farther. To the west of Durba Khel the mountains rose up out of the valley. Snowcapped mountains stretched both south and north. A finger of peaks stuck out to the east of the range and down into the valley. These mountains were lower and did not have the tracing of snow that capped the larger mountains to the west. A map line cut through the center of the mountains marking the Afghan and Pakistani border. Just to the north and west of the end of the finger the map was marked with
LZ-1
.

Parker understood the plan. The team would occupy the high ground at the end of the finger. It would give them a clear view of the entire valley. The tent would be just to the north of the finger tucked into the rocks and cliffs.

He could tell from the movement of the clouds and the snow that the ground would be brutally cold and windy. The advantage point of the finger location would give the team access to all of the potential hiding places north of Peshawar, but their roost would be both freezing and dangerous. Also, while the high spot might allow the team to see the valley, any visible movement in their camp would enable the valley residents to see the team.

Parker sent his own message in reply:

It would be some time before he got his response.

CHAPTER 45

 

“I
s that you, Billie?”

The room was pitch-dark, even though it was still light outside. Like a bottle of black ink spilled onto a desk, the darkness filled the room.

Maggie couldn't tolerate the light. The head injury was seemingly becoming the worst of her several injuries. It had robbed her of her appetite, her taste, and her hearing. There was a constant ringing in her right ear. Maggie was becoming painfully thin, with little desire for the food trays that they brought. The food technicians had tried to increase the calorie count by bringing several meals, which she hardly touched.

“No.”

The figure in the room was dressed in white scrubs.

“Okay. I'm going to just take a short nap.”

The figure had the shape of a man. The voice, even in the single word, was masculine, but many nurses seemed to come and go in Maggie's room.

In the low light, a syringe was barely visible in the visitor's hand. The nurse stuck the needle into the IV bag and squeezed the yellow-tinted liquid into the saline solution. He had on surgical gloves.

Maggie heard the glass door slide shut.

Her IV needle started to burn with increased intensity. The pain woke her from the drowsiness of her sleep as it increased, like a wave, pushing her down.

“Oh, God, oh, God. It burns. Please stop.”

She reached for the nurse button, trying to find it in the blanket that was wrapped up in a wad near her chest. Her hand searched frantically for the cord.

“Oh, God.”

Nausea surged through her body. Her stomach churned, causing her muscles to contract. Then it became difficult to breathe. Her lips started to turn black as her skin became a pale white.

“Daddy, please help me.”

 

 

“Good God!” Billie Cook put her hand to the pulse in Maggie's neck. The beat was pounding like a MRI machine at full force. “Hold on, kid.”

“I can't breathe, I can't breathe.”

The pain was now ripping her chest apart. Unspeakable pain stunned her like a child being electrified by a live wire.

“Code blue!” Billie shouted at the top of her lungs. She wrapped the plastic oxygen hose under Maggie's nose and turned the pure oxygen up. “Hold on, help is coming.”

“I can't breathe.”

“What's going on?” The resident for the afternoon shift was standing behind Billie.

“Three fifty-two over one sixty-six.” She looked at the monitor, which was beeping constantly now.

“Someone shut that beeper off. I'm giving her epi!”

The young doctor pulled out a syringe from the crash cart. It had a long needle that extended the length of his hand.

Billie Cook held on to Maggie's hand. The squeeze was cutting the circulation off in Billie's hand.

“No!”

The doctor gave her a look.

“No! No!” Billie repeated what she was saying. “She needs nitro, not epi.” Maggie's heart was already racing at a high rpm, like a race car at Daytona. The veins were already constricted, forcing blood through the pump at an increased speed. Nitroglycerin would relax the heart muscles. The nitric oxide would slow the beat down.

“Okay,
Doctor,
then give her nitro.” The resident's order was dripping with sarcasm. He knew after looking at the monitor, however, that it was the right thing to do.

Billie slipped a nitro pill into Maggie's mouth.

“Okay, honey, just let this melt.”

“Thank you, Billie.” Maggie's voice was barely audible. She had her eyes closed, locked in a grimace.

Billie watched the monitor, holding her hand, waiting for the numbers to start coming down.

“Come on.” Billie was waiting for the nitric oxide to reach the muscles.

Suddenly, the monitor alarm went off. A steady scream of a beep.

“Shit!” The monitor had gone flat. Maggie's grip became like a vise, and then it relaxed.

“Clear out,” the resident yelled as he tore Maggie's hospital gown open. He put the paddles to her chest. “
Clear!
” The limp body jumped. The line remained flat. “
Clear!
” Again, the limp body jumped. The line remained flat.

“Let's declare it.” The doctor looked up at the clock. “Four-oh-six.”

Billie stood back in shock. She had never lost one like this. Death was no stranger to the combat nurse. But not like this one.

“She probably threw a clot. With all of this.” He looked down at her wracked body.

Billie knew was he was thinking: Maggie was a double amputee with a head injury and multiple wounds. The only surprise was that she had lived this long.

“No.” Billie said it in a quiet voice. She pulled the saline bag off the hook, cut the tube, and then tied it off.

“What are you doing?”

By now the room was crowded with the resident and several of the floor nurses.

“I'll be right back.”

Billie Cook went down the several floors to the basement and the hospital's lab.

“Is Tommy here?”

The lab clerk looked up from her computer.

“Sure, Billie. Are you okay?”

“Yeah. I appreciate your getting Tommy.” She held the saline bag close to her chest.

It didn't take the lab technician long. The lab was ending the day shift and Tommy was heading out the door when the clerk stopped him.

“Hey, Nurse Cook. What's up?”

Tommy and Billie had this formal thing where they called each other “Nurse Cook” and “Mr. Carota.” A doctor had harassed them several months ago about being not professional enough for his liking, but as a team they always seemed to get things done. It had irritated the surgeon because, again, Billie's guess was right. He had refused to run a CBC, which, when Tommy ran it, showed sepsis and saved a young Marine's life.

“I need you to run this.” She held out the saline bag.

“Billie, it's after sixteen-hundred and that's saline. Can't it wait?”

“No.”

Tommy's expression changed. For a nurse to insist that a test be run on a saline bag and stay to do it after a shift change told the rest of the story. She was hugging the bag up against her chest. Her body language said that no one was touching this.

“Okay. Let's go.” He ran his card on the magnetic strip, unlocking the door to the lab. He paused just inside the lab. “Has it occurred to you that if we find anything that it may not be a good idea to do it this way?”

She shook her head. “I already know what's in it.”

CHAPTER 46

 

R
obert Tranthan reached into his coat pocket, pulling out the vibrating Sectéra cell phone. He looked up at the driver to ensure that his eyes remained focused on the highway. The cell phone was a top-secret SME PED. The screen had multiple choices, in color, to include one that was labeled
Sensa Secure Mail
. He opened the secret mailbox. The e-mail was simple.

The e-mail wasn't from Tranthan's office. The visitor to Maggie's room was telling him to expect a call.

“We need to go back.”

The driver had driven the deputy director since Tranthan was appointed to the office and authorized to receive the special security of an armored Yukon. He never asked questions.

“CIA?” The driver said, more as confirmation of an order than a question.

Tranthan paused, looking out of the window at the leafless winter trees, seeing glimpses of the Potomac River. A bundled-up runner was running on the path that paralleled the highway for a short distance, her breath visible and frigid.

“Yes.”

The trip didn't take long; the morning traffic had already thinned out. Fifteen minutes later Tranthan was picking up his messages at Laura's desk.

Laura looked up.

“Mr. Tranthan?”

“Yeah.” He had to act as if he didn't know.

“Nurse Cook at Bethesda called.” She handed him a telephone message.

“It's over, isn't it?”

“Yes.”

He showed what he thought was an appropriately solemn and sad expression to his secretary. “Hold my calls.”

Tranthan pulled the door closed and picked up his telephone. He held the receiver in the crook of his neck as he pulled out a cigarette and lit it up. At the same time, he opened his e-mail on his computer. Cook's cell phone only rang once.

“What happened?” It was Billie Cook who opened the conversation. Her voice was brooding and angry.

“What the hell do you mean?” Tranthan knew anything was possible now, including telephone conversations being recorded.

“She just didn't throw a clot.”

“What time did she die?” He made sure to modulate his voice, fainter, sadder.

“Thirty-five minutes ago.” Cook still seethed.

Tranthan followed suit, speaking with heat. “Listen, you little shithead: Don't forget who you work for. Period.”

“You're not stopping an autopsy.”

Tranthan didn't respond but slammed the telephone down.

He inhaled the cigarette, blowing the swirling smoke up into the air, as he leaned back in the chair. He looked at his hands, noting their softness. They didn't look like the hands that dug ditches in his little Chicago suburb of Burr Ridge. Throughout high school, Tranthan worked for the street and road department, digging ditches and throwing asphalt. He remembered coming home to the small house on Hamilton Avenue from a day of shoveling dirt to the sharp, antiseptic smell of vodka that hit him as soon as he stepped through the back door. The old man's voice always followed.

Robert Tranthan's father spent every extra cent he had ever earned in the glass factory on a stop he made every day coming home from work. The old man worked the night shift, getting off at seven. His breakfast was picked up around eight when the liquor store opened. A cheap fifth of vodka slowly worked its way through his father's liver.

A scholarship to a small college on the Susquehanna River deep in central Pennsylvania proved Tranthan's way out of that hell. He hadn't cared where he went. He left the old man at home and never looked back.

Tranthan knew the girl on sight when they met in class. The only daughter of the rookie senator from Pennsylvania. Robert could see the insecurity in her eyes. She carried the pain of never coming anywhere near the bra sizes or glamour of her sorority sisters, but she was the senator's daughter, so most people had enough sense to leave her alone. Tranthan talked her into eloping six months after their first date. He used the excuse of love, but it took two years before she ever traveled to the broken-down house on Hamilton Avenue in Burr Ridge. A new owner was gutting the small ranch. He explained that it was a different world, back when the nearby highway was Route 66, not the truck-clogged Interstate 55. Back when it was a house in the woods of suburban Chicago. She never met his father or his poor, pathetic mother, who had taken the old man's beatings in silence.

Tranthan picked up the telephone again.

“Laura, can you get me a sandwich and coffee?”

“Sure.”

He looked at his watch and waited for five minutes. The canteen was on the other side of the CIA campus. It would take her at least thirty minutes. He didn't need nearly half that time. He opened his side desk drawer, unlocked a metal lock box, and pulled a pad out from within. It had a series of numbers on one sheet of paper.

Tranthan walked out to Laura's desk, pausing to look down the hallway. Few people ventured into this floor and this end of the hallway. Most employees treated this part of headquarters as holy turf to be avoided.

Tranthan sat down at Laura's computer and went directly to the SMTP mail server. He had an idea as to what e-mail address to use and pulled out the sheet of paper, putting in the IP address:

He then opened up the computer's day, date, and time and wound it back.

Others would do the work, but James Scott and William Parker would soon be dead.

Tranthan's counterfeit e-mail was read on a BlackBerry just east of London. The recipient forwarded it to another BlackBerry at a train station near Madrid.

The first recipient handled the BlackBerry only with a glove and then placed it under the tire of his car parked at a meter on the street. The wheel crushed it as the car drove away.

The other BlackBerry rested on a train track seconds before the commuter train entered the station.

Another target was added to the list that Tranthan had originally sent: this one British.

 

 

As Tranthan sat behind her desk, he looked up to see a man standing there.

“Shit!” Tranthan yelled out.

No one ever came to his end of the hall.

“Yes?” He yelled it out loud.

“Sir, I'm sorry.” The computer technician, George, stood there sheepishly. “I didn't mean to surprise you.”

“Yes, what do you need?”

“I was able to save the flash drive.”

“It wasn't too damaged?”

“No, sir, and your password worked. I have the flash drive decoded.”