The Tenth Circle (21 page)

Washington, DC

“Well, well, well, look who it is,” H. J. Belgrade said, looking up from the bench placed amid the spacious grounds of the Armed Forces Retirement Home.

McCracken straightened the dark-blue scrubs he’d dressed in to look like an orderly. “Surprised to see me?”

“Surprised it took so long, given that the country’s gone to hell.”

“It’s worse than you think.”

Belgrade fed a handful of bread crumbs from the bag in his lap to birds that weren’t there. “Then you’d better sit down. They always sit down when they’re babysitting me. And they call me H. J. here, short for Henry John.”

“Except John isn’t your middle name.”

“Adds to the mystique.”

“And the fact that you want them to believe you’re crazy.”

“Helps keep the real crazies away.”

“You mean like me, H. J.?”

Washington’s Armed Forces Retirement Home was housed on three hundred acres in the very center of the nation’s capitol­, among the city’s richest and most lush grounds within minutes­ of every seat of power the the city offered. This in addition­ to a nine-hole golf course, driving range, walking trails, fishing ponds, a computer center, and six-lane bowling alley. The AFRH-W­, as it was generally called, was far more than just a senior-living residence; instead, it was essentially a self-contained­ and self-sufficient village where many of those who’d once fought the nation’s wars, both known and unknown, lived within clear view of a majestic tower made of the same limestone as the Washington Monument.

“I was thinking more along the lines of my last visitor, just yesterday.”

“And who was that?”

“Bastard by the name of Robert Carroll. Took over the Gap after I was deemed unfit for service. Not sure if they dumped me ’cause I knew where too many bodies were buried, or ’cause I’d forgotten.”

Much of Belgrade’s “deterioration” may have been a ruse, but age had not been especially kind to him either. McCracken’s memories of him were of a raw-boned, thick-bodied, no-bullshit man with a set of shoulders as wide as a Cadillac. Big everywhere, especially through the neck and head, and bull-shaped. An imposing figure, to say the least, the perfect appearance to suit his ill-defined role in government. That role tended to be whatever he wanted to make it, but was normally confined to dealing with the dirtiest of the dirty work that tended to slip into the “gaps” between the more traditional organizations.

In contrast to all that, the Belgrade of today was a wizened figure with knobby bones poking through what had once been muscle. He’d cut his teeth as a mere boy in the wake of World War II with the likes of Bull Donovan and Allen Dulles, the true giants of the early intelligence apparatus. That would put him well into his eighties now, a far cry from the troubleshooter Blaine recalled from fifteen years ago when they used to meet regularly at the Lincoln Memorial.

“I assume Robert Carroll came looking for me.”

“Right as rain, McCracken, and I’m guessing the reason he’s after you is what brought you here.”

“We’re up against it this time, H. J.,” McCracken told him.

“Aren’t we always?” Belgrade asked him, stringy hair blowing in Brylcreem-dappled clumps from one side of his head to the other.

“This is different.”

“Why?”

“Because someone’s going to hit the country hard,” McCracken told him. “The hardest we’ve ever been hit. The attack’s coming from the inside, and you’re the best hope I’ve got to help me stop it.”

Belgrade smiled halfheartedly. “Maybe you should take a better look at who you’re sitting with here. A broken-down, old man feeding invisible pigeons,” he said, tossing more bread crumbs to the sidewalk before him.

“Who still has everyone’s number in his Rolodex.”

“I lost my Rolodex a long time ago. Replaced it with a cell phone, and then I lost that too.” The old man looked at Blaine closer, as if seeing him for the first time. “And I heard you got your own problems.”

“That explains why I’m here. I can’t trust anyone else to do the right thing.”

“Well, I still have the phone numbers, McCracken, but that doesn’t mean the people on the other ends will pick up.”

“You’ll find a way to make them.”

“I appreciate your faith.”

“You may not feel that way when you hear the full story.”

“Who’s our opposition this time?”

“Ever heard of the Reverend Jeremiah Rule?”

“A little. Not much. Cult figures who like instigating turmoil don’t always make my radar.”

“This one should, because he’s involved in a big way.”

“Wait a minute, is this the nutcase who started out burning Korans?”

McCracken nodded. “And now he’s intent on burning down the whole country.”

“The wave of terrorist attacks?”

“Supposedly launched in response to his rants.”

“Supposedly?”

“There are no terrorists, H. J.—just our own outcast soldiers following somebody’s orders in carrying out the atrocities the Islamic radical groups are getting blamed for.”

“Oh boy … Sounds like something they picked up from those Truthers who believe we were the ones who toppled the Twin Towers, not Al Qaeda.”

“Only it
is
the truth this time.”

“On
whose
orders exactly?”

“That’s what I need you to help me figure out. I was working with a contact at Homeland before somebody slipped him off the grid when I started getting too close.”

“Ah, your specialty …”

“These attacks are just the preliminaries, H. J. Something big and bad is coming, something we’re not likely to recover from for a long time.”

“Need one hell of a weapon to pull that off.”

“The bad guys have one,” Blaine told him, “believe me.”

Belgrade turned away to spread some more bread crumbs for his imaginary flock. His gaze looked distant, dreamy, the harshness and power that had briefly flickered in his eyes vanquished again.

“We have to sing now.”

“Huh?”

“I always sing with my gatekeepers. If I don’t do it with you, whoever’s watching will start to get suspicious.”

McCracken glanced around subtly.

“Don’t bother,” Belgrade warned. “You won’t see them or their damn cameras but they’re sure as shit there. I can smell the bastards and I truly mean that. I spend the whole day watching Elmer Fudd and Daffy Duck cartoons to keep them from becoming any the wiser. Do you know ‘The Wheels on the Bus’?”

“Not anymore.”

“Words are sure to come back to you. Come on, just sing along.
The wheels on the bus go round and round, round and round, round and round
.”

And then McCracken joined in, the two of them singing together. Badly.

“
The wheels on the bus go round and round, all through the town
.”

“See,” Belgrade said, pulling another handful of bread crumbs from his bag, “that wasn’t too hard, was it?”

“The Viet Cong had worse tortures than listening to us sing.” McCracken touched his old friend’s shoulder lightly. “Your condition’s not all a ruse, is it?”

Belgrade shrugged shoulders that had once been big and broad. “Not all of it, no. Not even most, some days.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. I had my run.”

“And right now you’re the only man I trust in this city.”

Belgrade smiled at that and took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. “So what do you need?”

“For starters, recon on the Reverend Jeremiah Rule.”

“Satellite?”

McCracken nodded. “Archival as well as present. I’ve got the specs.”

A single pigeon landed and began pecking at the bread crumbs scattered across the walkway.

“Hey, look at that.” Then Belgrade’s eyes strayed suddenly to nurse’s aide walking across the grounds in the narrowing distance, seeming to appear out of nowhere. “He’s new.”

“You don’t recognize him?”

“Never saw him before in my life.”

McCracken turned his gaze to follow Belgrade’s, just as the man dressed as a nurse’s aide raised his hand to speak into a wrist-mounted microphone. The coiled thin cord of an earpiece was tucked under his collar.

“We need to get inside,” he said to Belgrade.

“What? You need to speak up.”

“Inside, H. J.,” Blaine said, helping him up. “Now.”

Washington, DC

The receptionist at the front desk looked up at McCracken, returning a phone receiver to its hook. “The phones aren’t working,” she said, mystified.

“I can’t get any service on my cell either,” said a second woman from nearby, holding up her Android phone.

Belgrade laid a knobby, arthritic hand on Blaine’s shoulder. “How much time do we have?”

“Ten minutes tops,” McCracken said, taking out his SIG Sauer.

“Must be coming for me. You can still get out,” Belgrade told him. “There are no armed guards here, no guns. You can’t fight them alone.”

“I’m not going anywhere. And I’m not alone,” Blaine added, with his eyes on the nearby rec room.

The men dressed as nurse’s aides moved up to flanking positions across the shaded entryway of the building. Moments later a trio of ambulances streamed onto the grounds, with no sirens or flashing lights. They stopped immediately before the glass entry, their rear doors bursting open to allow black-clad commandos armed to the teeth to spill out and take up positions on either side of the door. The last group to exit was the first to enter, storming inside to find the reception desk empty and no one to be seen anywhere in the lobby.

All eleven fanned out immediately to secure the area, with four making straight for the third floor and H. J. Belgrade’s room. Another trio remained in the lobby, aware something was clearly awry amid the empty silence, but sticking to the plan and their orders, while the remaining four headed off to secure the common areas and exits. All were attuned to the slightest sound or movement when the black eight ball rolled slowly across the pool table in the adjoining recreation room. The three commandos padded that way, M1A4 special-ops versions of the M16 held before them. Two twisted inside from either side of the open entrance.

And were met by the weighted end of pool cues slamming across their faces. Bones gave, noses bursting blood as the men sank to their knees, a pair of ex-marines joined by a pair of former navy men in lurching outward to attack the third man, unleashing a flurry of wild blows that left him toppled in a heap on the floor.

The four retirees, all battle tested many years before, looked at one another and exchanged a salute.

“Guess you navy boys ain’t so bad, after all,” said one of the marines.

Another pair of commandos reached the cafeteria, their orders to keep it secure it until the mission was complete.

But only a single table was occupied by a pair of World War II army veterans playing checkers in uniforms that sagged badly on them.

“King me,” one said, reaching the other side of the game board.

“What?”

“I said,
king me
!”

“What?”

“Where is everyone?” one of the commandos asked, reaching the table.

“Who?” the old soldier waiting to be kinged asked him.

“The other residents.”

“What’d he say?” the soldier across the table asked.

“He wants to know where everyone else is.”

“Who?”

The commandos looked at each other, then toward the kitchen where a woman who’d served as a nurse in Vietnam emerged with a glass coffeepot in either hand. She looked unsteady on her feet, legs growing wobbly by the time she reached the one occupied table.

“Who wanted decaf?” she asked.

“What’d she say?” the hard-of-hearing veteran wondered.

The eyes of the commandos were still on him when Nurse Jacqueline French hurled the contents of both pots into their faces, driving both men to the floor screaming.

An old man wearing an American Legion ball cap wheeled himself feebly toward the commando posted at a first-floor exit at the other end of the hall. His wheelchair was vintage, as was everything else about him, including the tattered blanket covering legs he’d lost the use of thanks to arthritis instead of shrapnel.

“Hey, sonny, can you tie my shoes?”

The commando had crouched over to oblige when he noticed the man was wearing slip-ons and looked up just as the miniature baseball bat cracked him in the top of the skull. The bat, a souvenir from a Yankee–Red Sox game from sometime in the seventies, struck him two more times before he got a hand up to ward it off. And by that time he was already woozy, consciousness slipping away when a fourth blow slammed across his brow stole it altogether.

A commando watching the building’s rear exit found an old man wearing pajamas collapsed in the middle of the floor.

“Mister? Hey, mister …”

He lowered a hand to rouse him and was met by a stiff, knobby hand brandishing a can of pepper spray the old man carried on his walks for fear of coyotes and cougars he was convinced were roaming the retirement home’s grounds. Blinded, the commando lurched back to his feet and wheeled about wildly between two other old men lobbing lightweight bocce balls at him. One of the throws caught him in the groin and another square in the throat, doubling him over so the three Korean War veterans could pounce.

The final four commandos stepped out of the elevator on the third floor, one remaining just outside it with a foot planted over the sill to make sure the compartment remained in place. The duty desk up here was abandoned as well, no one and nothing to be seen save for empty wheelchairs and unoccupied walkers strewn about the hallway. The other three commandos continued on, leery of each open doorway they passed en route to the room occupied by H. J. Belgrade.

The fourth watched until they turned a corner and drifted out of sight, hearing the chime of the elevator alongside the one he was guarding sound. He slid sideways and positioned himself before the door to be ready when it opened, weapon raised just in case.

The doors started to part, a loud wail sounding from inside before they’d separated all the way. The commando saw the wheelchair barreling toward him too late to do anything but feel its impact stagger him backwards, as two more wheelchair-bound veterans rolled out behind the first. The commando saw they both held something in their grasps, not identifying the objects as fire extinguishers until the twin sprays hit him broadside.

In that moment, the remaining commandos eased Hank Belgrade’s door open with a creak and approached the bed where his shrunken form was tucked under the covers.

“Rise and shine, Mr. Belgrade,” the leader said. “This is your wake-up call.”

He flipped the light switch to no effect, the shades drawn to shroud most of the room in semi-darkness save for the light spilling in from the hallway.

The leader reached the bed and tried to rouse the old man’s sleeping form.

“Let’s go, Mr. Belgrade. Duty calls.”

The shape finally stirred, turning over to reveal a much younger man.

“Sorry, wrong room,” McCracken said as he drove himself upward, lunging at the speaker.

The leader crumpled under the force of a series of pummeling blows before the other two men could respond. And by the time they did, McCracken was ready, using the instant they’d wasted in trying for their weapons to his advantage. The man closest to Blaine was first in getting his pistol around until a strike to the windpipe sent him careening backward, both hands raised now instinctively in comfort before he passed out. The second man actually managed to find the trigger before McCracken got two fingers of his own wedged into the tight gap to prevent him from firing. He used a foot to take one of the man’s knees out and then employed the butt of the man’s own rifle to hammer him into unconsciousness.

Blaine then eased open the bathroom door to find H. J. Belgrade seated atop the closed toilet, snoring.

“Yo, H. J.,” he called.

Belgrade came alert with a start, nearly toppling over to the bathroom floor. “Is it over? What’d I miss?”

“The good guys won.”

Belgrade looked beyond McCracken toward the three bodies lying on the floor beyond. He flashed a grin, shaking his head.

“McCrackenballs … Some things never change.”

“Like us, old friend.”

“I’ll bet you dollars to doughnuts those were Robert Carroll’s men coming to pay their respects.”

“And I’ll keep that in mind when our paths eventually cross.”

“Do that, please.” Belgrade’s eyes turned glassy, a whimsical smile spreading across his face. “You wanna sing with me again?”

McCracken had just left the grounds when his phone rang, a blocked number appearing in the caller ID window.

“Yeah?”

“You remember my voice?”

“Not off the top of my head.”

“Maybe this will help: we met at the Daniel Boone Bridge a few days back. You remember me now?”

“I do.”

“Five survivors of the bombing washed up on shore this morning. One of them’s a teenage boy. I thought you should know.”

Andrew Ericson,
Blaine thought, recognizing the voice as that of the ex–Special Forces operative who was standing off to the side by himself when Blaine arrived, working out of Homeland Security now. The two of them viewing each other as kindred spirits.

“They were all taken to CenterPointe Hospital in Saint Charles,” the man continued.

“Condition?”

“Alive. But I’d hurry if I were you.”