The Patriot Attack (2 page)

When he couldn’t go on anymore, the lights from shore had disappeared—either turned off or lost in the swells. He floated on his back, feeling the crossbow bolt being tugged by the current. The pain had faded. Like everything else. Blood loss, most likely. His head felt like it was full of gauze, and he was having a hard time remembering where he was. In the ocean, but which one? Or was it a sea? What was the difference between the two again?

A sudden burst of light appeared in front of him and he squinted into it. Not particularly bright, but startling in the complete darkness. Voices. The lapping of water against a wooden hull.

A final, weak burst of adrenaline brought him momentarily back to the present. The contents of the briefcase were still in his pocket and he had no idea what they were or of their importance. No idea what kind of threat they could pose in the wrong hands. But the fact that he’d been sent, that Klein was involved, suggested that capture wasn’t an option.

He had no strength left to escape the boat or to fight the men in it. And that left him very few alternatives.

Smith exhaled, reducing his buoyancy, and felt the water close in on top of him.

One mission too many.

al Qababt
Egypt

T
he street market was packed with people, jostling, laughing, and haggling for everything from rugs to Tupperware to stuffed animals. It was late morning and the heat of the day was already descending, mixing the stench of sweat with the aroma of spices and cooking meat to create an atmosphere that felt oddly comfortable to Randi Russell.

It was ironic that Muslim countries had become the easiest environments for her to operate in. Covered head to toe in a hijab, surrounded by the constant roar of Middle Eastern life, she could move around with almost ghostlike anonymity. For all the chauvinistic morons looking right through her knew, she could have a rocket launcher strapped to her back. But why would they worry? What could they possibly have to fear from a woman?

“Okay, Randi. He’s right in front of you. No more than four or five yards.”

She acknowledged the voice in her earpiece with a short nod, though she wasn’t sure it would be visible from her teammates’ position in a multistory hotel to the east.

She felt sweat break across her forehead, but it wasn’t from the sun beating on her black headgear. It was a mouth-drying, heart-pounding sense of childlike excitement. Four or five yards. She’d started to doubt whether she’d ever get this close.

Charles Hashem had grown into a top al-Qaeda operative whose evil was matched only by his infuriating competence. It had taken the CIA two years even to place him in Egypt and her another five grueling months to find her way to this particular market on this particular morning.

“Got him.”

His gray shirt, sunglasses, and average-length black hair didn’t provide much to differentiate him from any other man in the street, but she’d had every existing photo of him stuck to her wall for the last year and a half. Oddly similar to her bedroom as an early teenager except that fantasies of being whisked away by Luke Perry on horseback had been replaced with dreams of ending the life of the man hurrying toward a narrow souq in front of her.

It was a shame she didn’t actually have that rocket launcher. Seeing his burning body parts cartwheeling down the cobblestones would have been one of the happiest moments of her life. And she had her camera phone with her. Best CIA Christmas card photo ever.

“Can we get him to a viable extraction point?” the voice in her ear said. An unwelcome reminder that her mission was significantly different from her fantasy.

“Are you kidding?” Randi mumbled, counting on her throat mike to pick it up. “Look around me. Eight hundred people would see us toss him in the van and then where would we go? Traffic’s moving slower than I am.”

She lost sight of him and panicked for a moment, pushing ineffectually through the unbroken mass of people ahead. She was stronger and faster than most men, but her 125 pounds just didn’t provide sufficient inertia to penetrate.

A man whose coffee she jostled looked down at the stain on his shirt and grabbed her arm. A moment later he found himself falling backward over an enormous bag of pistachios with that hot coffee now in his face. She slipped away in the commotion, knowing that no one would ever think a woman could have done such a thing to a big strong Muslim man.

“Damn it! Where is he, Bill? Talk to me!”

“Don’t get your panties bunched up, Randi. He went under the awnings to your left while you were screwing around with that guy at the nut stand. We’re temporarily blind, so get your ass in there. If we lose him after getting this close,
we’re
going to be the ones getting water boarded.”

Again she felt the panic rising in her. Hashem was not only brilliant at staying out of America’s crosshairs, he had a master’s in biology from Stanford, where he’d graduated with a 3.95 average. Losing him was not an option.

A familiar profile flashed into view behind a pile of colorful scarves and she had her target again. “I see him. Moving in.”

“To do what?” The wariness was audible in Bill’s voice amid the static. “Like you said, we have no shot at an extraction here. You’re just going to have to stay with him until we get to a workable location.”

Despite the fact that there were numerous women on the street who were utterly indistinguishable from her, Hashem was eventually going to figure out that he was being followed. And when he did, his six-foot, two-hundred-pound frame was going to cut through the crowd at a speed she simply couldn’t match.

“Come on, Bill. You know as well—”

Randi fell silent when a powerful hand clamped onto her arm and spun her violently around. She went reflexively for a knife hidden beneath her hijab, but then recognized the coffee-stained shirt and burned cheeks. Pistachio man.

Normally she’d have used her considerable language skills and a little groveling to quietly extricate herself from the situation, but today she just didn’t have time to screw around.

In a smooth motion not quite fast enough to look unnatural, she grabbed one of the fingers wrapped around her upper arm and broke it. The man howled in pain and dropped to one knee, cradling his mangled digit.

“Someone help!” Randi shouted in Arabic. “I think he’s having a heart attack!”

People surged in, once again ignoring her and allowing her to back away.

“Where is he?” Randi said when she broke free. Ahead of her the souq split. “Which way?”

The fact that there was no immediate reply was understandable. An assassination had specifically not been authorized, for two reasons. The first was hard to argue with: an opportunity for an extended interrogation would likely turn up all kinds of interesting information. The second, though, was more bureaucratic. Charles Hashem was an American citizen.

And not just some disaffected naturalized immigrant. He’d been born in Cleveland to a nice Persian couple who were grateful as hell to America for giving them the opportunity to escape Iran. In fact they were the ones who had originally tipped off the government about their son’s increasingly radical political and religious leanings.

The next words she heard were muffled, as though Bill was talking to his partner. “No, no. About an hour from now.”

Randi smiled. An hour from now would be 11:00 a.m. Hashem was at her eleven o’clock.

She weaved gracefully, using skill to make up for her lack of heft, until she was right behind him. In place of the RPG she was sadly lacking, she retrieved a pen from her pocket and clicked the top, making sure to keep it pointed away from the innocent people jostling by.

Hashem jerked at the sudden sting in his lower back but by the time he looked back, Randi had put two people between them and was heading for a stand lined with barrels of olives.

The pain would subside in a few seconds and the tiny red mark in a few minutes. The microscopic pellet, though, would be slowly dissolving in his bloodstream. When it finally broke down it would release a poison that would cause what she had been assured was an extremely unpleasant death.

Word was that the whole thing was based on some kind of ocean-dwelling predatory snail. What would those guys at Langley think of next?

Northeastern Japan

W
hite.

The color of heaven, right?

If so, Jon Smith could come to only two possible conclusions: either he was still alive or God had made a serious clerical error.

His vision came into focus slowly, but it didn’t take him long to realize that the second hypothesis was correct. No angelic choirs. Just a ceiling.

Smith tried to sit up but the throb in his back became an excruciating dagger, forcing him to ease back onto the mattress. His torso seemed to move more or less the way it was supposed to, and after a quick evaluation he confirmed that his fingers and toes did the same. No paralysis. He carefully rotated his head through the few degrees it would move, taking in his surroundings and trying to get a read on his injuries from the nature and severity of the pain.

His new home wasn’t a hospital room. Too nice. Gracefully curved and scrupulously finished wood beams framed a modern take on Japanese paper screens, the expensive contemporary furniture was tastefully sparse, and the artwork was bright and incomprehensible. There were no windows to tell him if it was day or night and little sound but the humming of the machines to his left.

He squinted at the monitor next to his bed and noted the heart rate and blood pressure numbers. Neither was great, but neither suggested he was flirting with death.

Smith closed his eyes for a moment and then tried to take a deep breath, hardly getting any air in at all before the pain forced him to stop. So he could add a few shattered ribs and possibly a broken scapula to the crossbow-bolt-size puncture wound in his back.

As his mind continued to sharpen, he examined the IV running into his arm and tried unsuccessfully to read the label on the bag. Antibiotics, fluids, and probably an opiate-based painkiller judging from the familiar nausea he was feeling. More concerning was the tube inserted between his ribs and draining into a jar on the floor. Collapsed lung. Outstanding.

He reached weakly for a stethoscope hanging from the IV stand and put it in his ears. Steeling himself for the pain, he forced himself to take a moderate breath with the instrument pressed to his side. It sounded like the lung was inflating. Not exactly news worth celebrating, but better than the alternative.

He’d given up his job as a MASH doctor in favor of microbiology a long time ago, but they weren’t skills that faded easily. Given the facts, his prognosis was solid. With a lot of time, a lot of rest, and proper care, he could potentially make a full recovery. The fact that he wasn’t in a hospital, though, made him doubt he’d ever get those things.

There was a rustling on the other side of the only door to the room and Smith watched it slide open. He considered feigning unconsciousness, but it seemed likely that he was being monitored by video and that his mysterious benefactor wouldn’t be so easily fooled. Besides, what was the point? Daring escapes were pretty much off the table—he’d be lucky to crawl out of there in his condition. Better to figure out where he stood than to lie there and wonder.

The Japanese man who entered was in his midforties with a compact frame, intermittent gray hair, and a waistline barely being held in check. His suit and haircut were both extremely expensive but neither looked natural on him. Even through a morphine fog, Smith could see that this guy hadn’t been a beneficiary of the prep school and private university upbringing he was trying to project. More likely, he’d risen to the top the old-fashioned way: by killing his competitors.

“Who are you?” Smith said. His voice came out little more than a croak and the man picked up a cup, holding it while Smith sucked on the straw.

“I was going to ask you the same thing.”

His English was better than expected. Maybe he’d actually outsmarted a few of those competitors after all.

Smith eased himself back into the pillows, letting the pain play out on his face to provide an excuse not to volunteer information.

“You’re very interesting to me,” the man said, also declining to contribute an introduction. “My doctor says it would be virtually impossible for someone with a crossbow bolt in his back to swim as far out into the ocean as you did. And yet there you were.”

“High school breaststroke champion,” Smith managed to get out and then let out a weak cough. The pain that action unleashed would have been truly breathtaking if he could actually breathe.

“Indeed.”

Smith pointed to the cup and the man examined him for a moment before holding it up so he could get another drink. Likely less an act of kindness than an effort to get his guest’s voice working again.

“Even more fascinating to me were the men chasing you. They were quite motivated. Not a single one of them gave up the search until he drowned.”

Smith tried to get his hazy mind to focus. Could that be true? And if this man was making these kinds of observations, did it suggest that he wasn’t involved in the attack? The fancy house, the men floating off remote beaches in quiet boats. Some kind of smuggler? A simple drug runner?

“You’ll understand that I like to keep abreast of things that happen in my waters.”

Smith knew that he wasn’t in any condition to play cat and mouse with this man and was getting ready to fake losing consciousness, but it was a piece of theater that turned out to be unnecessary. His vision began to swim and his eyes fluttered uncontrollably. There was no reason to fight it so he just let the darkness come.

When the man spoke again, his voice sounded a thousand miles away. “Of course. You rest. We have all the time in the world to talk.”

Cairo
Egypt

R
andi Russell ran her fingers through her short hair, moving closer to the showerhead and watching the black dye swirl down the drain. The fake tanner darkening the skin visible from beneath her hijab would just have to wear off on its own.

When the water turned clear, she shut off the faucet and stepped out onto the tile floor. The mirror was fogged, displaying only a hazy image of her thin, toned body and dark eyes beneath a shock of blonde hair. Her athletic beauty had always been an asset—opening doors, keeping men off balance, causing people to dismiss her as a piece of arm candy.

The last few years had been a solid run, gaining her the gratitude of multiple heads of state and generating a serious legend at the CIA, MI6, and a few other acronyms. The problem was that the dead enemies and friends, the blur of missions, and the constant moving were starting to get a little depressing. It was something she once again promised herself that she’d work on when she got back to the States. And with Charles Hashem finally rotting in hell, maybe she’d actually do it this time.

She pulled on a pair of old sweats and a T-shirt with a giant smiley face and the slogan “Have a Nice Day.” A gift from a Mossad operative with a sense of humor.

All she needed now was a drink, a comfortable bed, and ten solid hours of unconsciousness. Tomorrow she’d mix in with the tourists and businesspeople for a midmorning flight to Reagan and then a hysterical reaming for killing an American who everyone agreed needed to be dead. In the end, though, it would be little more than a bunch of bureaucratic ass covering. Nothing she needed to worry about any more than last time or the time before that.

Sure, one day they’d throw her under the bus, but not yet. They’d wait until she slowed down and wasn’t as useful anymore. For now, though, she had the comfort of knowing they needed her to do the things that they didn’t have the skills for, or that they thought could come back to bite them at a confirmation hearing. People with her talents and track record were hard to replace.

Randi rubbed the towel over her head a few more times and then pushed through the bathroom door into her hotel suite.

One of the things that had kept her alive for so long was the fact that there was no loss in translation between what her mind commanded and what her body did. By the time the man sitting in the leather chair next to the bar looked up, she’d pulled a knife from the pocket in her sweats and drawn her hand back to throw it.

He just frowned disapprovingly and looked at her over his wire-rimmed glasses.

“Mr. Klein,” Randi said, not yet lowering the knife. “What are you doing here?”

Fred Klein was the mastermind behind a loose confederation of independent operators that went by the intentionally vague designation Covert-One. The president of the United States—a childhood friend of Klein’s—had quietly authorized the formation of the organization years ago in the face of the government’s increasing paralysis. Covert-One had become an organization of last resort, brought into play only when time had run out and the consequences of failure were too dire to contemplate.

Randi had been recruited only recently based on the recommendation of Jon Smith, but she still didn’t have a strong sense of what she’d gotten herself into. What she did know, though, was that when Fred Klein showed up unexpectedly in your hotel room, something hadn’t gone to plan. And that brought her own survival into question.

“I needed to talk to you,” Klein responded simply.

“That’s why they invented phones.” She moved subtly away from the windows. The curtains were drawn, but there were other ways for a sniper to line up a shot.

Klein wasn’t particularly impressive to look at. Thinning hair, mediocre suit, slightly jutting brow. But in the short time she’d known him, she’d developed a healthy respect for the man. He had a disconcerting way of thinking ten steps ahead and rarely made mistakes. Great if he was on your team, but in her business team affiliation tended to be hazy and subject to sudden changes.

“This is something I felt we should discuss face-to-face.” He wiped away some imaginary sweat from his upper lip. “We’ve lost contact with Jon.”

“Lost contact?”

“In a fishing village northeast of Toyama, Japan.”

“I know that area,” she said, finally lowering the knife. “I’ll go find him.”

Klein rose suddenly enough that her grip on the blade tightened involuntarily, but he just went to the bar and poured two scotches. After handing one to her, he returned to the chair.

“He was hit in the back with a crossbow bolt and was last seen swimming out to sea with at least three men pursuing. I’ve had people out there for two days looking for him and we’re continuing the effort…” His voice trailed off.

The implication was clear. She made her way a bit unsteadily to a small sofa across from him.

“I wanted to tell you before you heard somewhere else,” he said as she sat. “The story we’re going with is that he was cave diving off the coast of Okinawa. That there was an accident and he’s missing.”

Typically clever, Randi thought numbly. No one would expect to recover a body under those circumstances.

“My understanding is that your mission in Egypt is finished and you’re flying back to DC tomorrow.” He seemed a bit bowed when he stood again and started for the door. “We need to talk when you get back. About what Jon was working on.”

She watched him leave in silence and then just stared at the closed door. For a moment she thought she was going to throw up but then it passed, replaced by an unexpected sense of loneliness that was even worse.

No. Jon had been in tough scrapes before and he always made it out. Klein’s people just hadn’t found him yet. Or for that matter, the man could be lying. What did she really know about him?

Randi forced herself to her feet and picked up the phone on the nightstand. Scrolling through an encrypted list of contacts with a shaking finger, she finally came to the one she was looking for—an unattributed number with a Japanese prefix.