Day of Reckoning (Shadow Warriors) Read online

  Tarik nodded. “That would be best.”

  “Then I’ll get you there, brother.”

  Brother. Tarik returned his focus to the traffic outside the window. Perhaps…

  10:03 A.M.

  The highway

  Virginia

  The shooter was dead, his neck snapped by the force of the impact. He’d probably never seen it coming.

  Harry rose from where the assassin lay like a broken doll on the asphalt and turned toward his partner.

  The driver had been thrown clear of the Suzuki and lay roughly fifteen feet away. He was moaning, his helmet ripped half off to reveal a distinctly Slavic face. His right leg was twisted below the knee, sticking out at right angles from his body.

  “Who sent you?” Harry asked in Russian, dropping to one knee beside the driver.

  The man’s cough was the only response, blood flecking the pavement. Defiance glinted in his eyes. Harry sighed, looking around him. Traffic was stopping. The police would arrive within minutes.

  And he was a wanted man himself. After a moment’s pause he reached down, applying pressure to the Russian’s injured leg and twisting it sideways.

  “I want a name,” Harry whispered, his lips only inches away from the prostrate man’s ear. “Just a name and the pain will stop.”

  Sweat streamed down the Russian’s face, drops of perspiration crystallizing in the cold winter’s air. His face was twisted in agony, but his mouth never opened, teeth grinding together.

  “A name, that’s all. Who sent you to kill me?”

  Still silence, not even a moan escaping the driver’s lips. Another moment passed, then Harry released his pressure on the leg and stood.

  “Have it your way,” Harry announced, checking the chamber of his 1911 as if to make sure it was loaded. “I’ll have you deliver a message to Sergei Ivanovich.”

  And he saw it, there in the final moment just before he put the suppressor of the Colt between the Russian’s eyes and squeezed the trigger. The recognition. The realization of having died for nothing.

  Korsakov was behind the hits.

  10:06 A.M.

  CIA Headquarters

  Langley, Virginia

  “We’re moving strike teams into place—all we need is your signature on the authorization,” Kranemeyer announced, laying a folder on Shapiro’s desk.

  The DD(I) put on his glasses and opened the dossier, scrutinizing the files. “This doesn’t just need my signature, Barney. An operation of this nature needs the President to issue cross-border authority.”

  “I’m aware of standard protocols, director,” Kranemeyer replied, leaning forward until his palms rested on the smooth glass of Shapiro’s desktop. “The fact remains that the President is in Paris for the G-8 summit. His attention is currently divided between the precarious financial state of the EU and the latest argument made on the behalf of his campaign before the Supreme Court.”

  “Your point, Barney?”

  Kranemeyer let out a long sigh. “My point is that if the DCIA has been compromised, we have only hours to act. The President isn’t going to make the decision fast enough, not with everything else he’s got on his plate.”

  Shapiro seemed to consider the argument for a long moment, then he closed the dossier. “I’ll consider it, Barney. I’ve got a teleconference with Director Haskel and the Bureau in five. Would you care to join me?”

  10:07 A.M.

  The highway

  Virginia

  “You killed him.” It was more of a statement than a question, but there was doubt in the voice.

  Harry looked over, his eyes meeting with Carol’s. Her face was ashen pale, her eyes regarding him as though she was seeing him for the first time.

  “You shouldn’t have watched,” he responded, turning his attention back to the road as the Tahoe continued to speed toward Culpeper. “It’s never pretty.”

  “Pretty?” she asked in disbelief, her voice trembling. “How did you get to be so cold? For God’s sake, Harry…you blew his brains out.”

  “That’s not important right now,” he retorted, his words clipped. He couldn’t allow himself to think about it. Too many variables still in play.

  “What’s important is how they found us,” Harry continued without giving her time to think about it. “They were on top of us way too fast. Is there anything you have on you frequently?”

  His question seemed to jar Carol from her thoughts. “What?”

  “Shoes, a purse, anything—something they could roll the dice on you wearing.”

  The light of realization spread across her face. “I don’t know—not really.”

  “Think,” Harry urged. “Ten to one you’re wearing a tracker.”

  He glanced over, his gaze sweeping her body from the tip of her shoes to her head. “Those earrings look familiar.”

  “They were my mother’s,” she responded, her tone defensive.

  “And you wear them nearly every day, don’t you?”

  10:12 A.M.

  CIA Headquarters

  Langley, Virginia

  The teleconference room was not overly warm, Kranemeyer realized as he took his seat to one side of the table. President Hancock may not have yet responded to the economic situation by wearing a sweater in the grand tradition of Jimmy Carter, but it seemed that other governmental employees were expected to.

  “Director Haskel,” Michael Shapiro began, initiating the conference, “I’m here with the Director of the Clandestine Service, Bernard Kranemeyer, along with his head analyst, Ron Carter. Go ahead.”

  “Thanks, Mike,” Eric Haskel responded over the video uplink, “I’m sure you gentlemen are very busy, so I’ll keep this brief. In short, we have identified the driver of the sedan that crashed into Director Lay’s SUV this morning, and our findings seem to rule out the Russian Mafia connection which was initially suggested by your people.”

  A file photo came flashing up on screen as the FBI director continued to narrate. “Michael Fedorenko, a naturalized US citizen, formerly Mikhail Fedorenko of the USSR. Forty-five years of age, he came to this country following the fall of the Soviet Union. A former demolitions specialist in the Red Army, Fedorenko made considerable money in construction through the late ‘90s, most of it coming from private development in northern Virginia.”

  More files came across the screen, mostly financial reports. “Then the economic crisis struck in 2008 and his construction company went down the tubes. Out of work and running low on funds, Fedorenko seems to have become increasingly disenchanted with his lot in this country. In the spring of 2009 he became affiliated with a TEA Party group in the Alexandria area, and launched an unsuccessful bid for county supervisor.”

  Shapiro nodded. “And how did this man go from TEA Party candidate to bomber?”

  “We’re investigating the connection,” Haskel replied, his voice tight. “We’re also investigating any possible connection between Fedorenko and your rogue agent. This is what is clear.”

  More images on the screen, this time showing a SWAT team executing an assault. “Thirty minutes ago, I authorized a SWAT team to search Fedorenko’s farm outside Manassas. The farm was deserted, but in the barn they found blasting caps, dynamite and three hundred pounds of ammonium nitrate.”

  Shapiro blinked, adjusting his glasses as he refocused on the screen. “Any electronic records?”

  At that moment, Ron Carter’s phone went off with the annoying jangle of an incoming text.

  Kranemeyer shot him a dark look of disapproval.

  “That’s a negative,” Haskel replied, not seeming to notice the disruption. “Following his connection with the TEA Party, Fedorenko seemed to have become obsessed with the notion of going ‘off-grid’. It appears that he didn’t own so much as a cellphone.”

  “Except for the one that was used to detonate the bomb,” Kranemeyer interjected.

  “That’s correct, probably one purchased for the purpose. It seems to have been a small operation�
�I am optimistic that, providing he is still alive, we’ll find both Lay and his daughter very shortly.”

  Carter looked up from his phone. “I don’t know if I share your optimism, director. I was just notified by a source that Virginia state troopers responded in the last ten minutes to a double homicide on Route 211 near Warrenton. Both victims appear to be Russian. Perhaps we should reexamine that mafiya connection.”

  10:31 A.M.

  Culpeper, Virginia

  Harry had always liked farms. Rural, out of the way places. Minimum people, maximum line of sight. Fewer people to ask questions, less collateral damage if things went south.

  The only downside was, what people there were all knew each other.

  Which was why the safehouse was located well off the road, a long driveway shielded by eighty-year-old pines.

  Harry pushed open his door and stepped out of the idling Tahoe, his eyes scanning the surrounding territory as he moved to the newspaper tube that stood there by the entrance to the drive.

  There was nothing in the tube. That was to be expected—they had never subscribed to a paper. He allowed his hand to drag across the side of the tube and then climbed back into the SUV.

  “What’s with the chalk?” he heard Carol ask. He allowed himself a grim smile, glancing back at the thin line of yellow chalk across the side of the newspaper tube. She may never have been in the field, but she didn’t miss much.

  “It’s for the caretaker,” he explained, putting the Tahoe in drive. “So he knows not to come home.”

  The pearl earrings lay on the dashboard, smashed into a thousand pieces by the butt of Harry’s Colt. The GPS tracker that had been embedded in the left earring was still headed south, in the saddlebags of a Harley Davidson where Harry had dumped it when they had stopped at a gas station.

  The biker had looked capable of taking care of himself.

  “I’m sorry they had to be destroyed,” Harry said gently as the SUV continued down the drive.

  She didn’t look at him. “Don’t be,” she responded, her voice infused with an artificial calm. “There wasn’t any other way. Sometimes even memories have to die…”

  10:39 A.M.

  CIA Headquarters

  Langley, Virginia

  Free Fall. The DCS closed the door to his office, reflecting once more upon Nichols’ final words.

  There was a message there, of that he was certain. Despite his statement to Carter and Lasker, Free Fall was more than just a distress code. That code had been used.

  Phantom pain shot through Kranemeyer’s nonexistent right leg as he limped to his desk.

  There was a photo on the desk, of him in the Chesapeake 5K. Running for charity just nine months ago. Oh, well…that was nine months ago. Before his own world had been turned upside down by the defection of an agent.

  The DCS gritted his teeth against pain as he lowered himself into the desk chair. On this day, he couldn’t have run a 5K to save his own life.

  Quite possibly the worse thing about a traitor like Hamid Zakiri was that their defection caused you to start seeing traitors in every shadow. Paranoia was an important skillset for any spook—the trick was to keep it from pulling you over the edge. Devilishly hard.

  Kranemeyer buried his head in his hands, striving to remember. There was something there, an elusive memory from the past. But Nichols wasn’t a traitor.

  He pulled his cellphone from his pocket and gazed at it a moment in contemplation before dialing in a number.

  “Marcia,” he began when the line was picked up, “I need you to retrieve a dossier from Archives. I want everything we have on a CIA black-op run in the West Bank in 2000. Operation RUMBLEWAY, to be exact. Yes, Marcia, I know it’s eyes-only access. That’s why I’m asking…”

  10:41 A.M.

  The safehouse

  Culpeper, Virginia

  “You’ll have to forgive the interior decorator.” Standing in the entrance hall of the safehouse, Harry motioned toward the faded wallpaper and chipped paint. “We don’t do a lot of entertaining.”

  Carol shook her head. The safehouse was a small rancher, built in a style dating back to the ‘50s. Which was probably the last time it had been decorated.

  “Who owns this place?” she asked, looking around. “Langley?”

  Harry cleared his throat. “Not exactly. We do, actually.”

  “Your strike team?”

  “Yeah,,” he replied, unzipping his jacket as he moved into the next room. The Colt remained holstered, only inches away from his fingers. “We just moved in, actually…had to move the safehouse after—well, after Zakiri.”

  Even now, he felt his chest tighten painfully at the mention of the name, anger and hatred boiling deep inside him. At the betrayal.

  At a dead man.

  “Why run your own safehouse?”

  “Because of days like today,” he replied, grateful for her question. The distraction. “Have a plan for every contingency—isn’t that what they tell you in training?”

  A nod.

  “This was our plan for the contingency of our own government being unable to protect us—or coming after us itself,” Harry continued, checking his watch. “We’ll be here two hours, no longer.”

  She turned to face him, surprise written in her eyes. “We’re not staying?”

  “No. This was never designed as a permanent refuge, just a place to store supplies. I’m headed out to the barn to fuel up our new vehicle,” he said, his hand on the door. “Get a shower.”

  “Why?”

  “Might be your last chance in awhile. And I’m going to need to search your clothes for any more trackers. You’d probably find it more comfortable if you weren’t in them.”

  10:52 A.M.

  U.S. Route 211

  Virginia

  The bodies had been taken away, but the police remained, flashing lights filling the highway as far as the eye could see, the wail of sirens piercing the chill morning air. Chalk outlines marked the positions of the bodies on the freezing asphalt, the agents in FBI overcoats standing over them caught up in a futile endeavor to stay warm.

  Sergei Korsakov stayed at a distance, losing himself in the crowd that had gathered despite the attempts of the Virginia State Police to keep them back. It wasn’t every day that a double homicide happened in this part of Virginia.

  The CIA officer hadn’t been part of the plan—their intel had been flawed. Fatally so. Everything had pointed toward the man accompanying Carol Chambers having just been a friend. Another analyst. A desk jockey.

  Korsakov looked down at the CIA dossier, scrolling across the screen of his PDA. Harold Nichols.

  Desk jockey? Right.

  The former Spetsnaz sergeant rubbed a hand through his two-day-old beard. Know thine enemy.

  If he had known, he would have never sent a two-man team after Chambers, not even with a man as good as Pavel Nevaschkin heading it.

  Korsakov turned away, sighing heavily as he made his way toward his SUV. It had been the early winter of 1997, a dark night in Dagestan when he and Pavel had met, both of them part of a Spetsnaz team assigned to a tank base at Buinask.

  Led by foreign mujahideen, the Chechens had struck without warning, small-arms fire and RPGs coming through the wire.

  He’d lost friends that night—would have died himself, if not for Pavel coming to his aid when his AK-74 jammed.

  He closed his eyes for a brief moment, feeling once again the ice-cold fear of those hours. And now Pavel was dead.

  Korsakov put out a hand and pulled open the door of the rented SUV.The hit on David Lay had started out as business, pure and simple, but he had read Nichols’ message clear in the bullet hole between his friend’s eyes.

  Now this was personal. It was war. And it would only end in death.

  11:03 A.M.

  CIA Headquarters

  Langley, Virginia

  “The Bureau just sent over the pictures of the two dead men found on Route 211,” Daniel Lasker anno
unced as Ron Carter walked by his workstation.

  “Just in time for lunch,” was Carter’s sardonic response. “Run them through the database and send the results to my terminal. There you are, Ames, just looking for you.”

  A young man at the espresso machine looked up at Carter’s hail. At twenty-two, Luke Ames was one of the youngest analysts on the NCS staff, and arguably one of the best-looking—at least among the men. He was also new, having been brought into the fold only days before the Iranian crisis of September.

  “Catch,” Ron warned, tossing a set of keys underhand across the op-center.

  Luke smiled easily, holding his espresso in one hand while plucking the keys out of mid-air with the other.

  “Real simple job, Ames,” Carter continued, forcing a tone of light banter into his voice. Anything to distract himself from what the morning had become. “I need you to go down to the parking garage and open up Chambers’ car so that the boys from the Security Directorate can work their magic. A job even a batboy can handle.”

  “Right.” He’d been in the NCS long enough to know that being the new guy meant being the go-fer. As he swiped his access card to leave the op-center, he tossed one back over his shoulder, “Just for the record, Ron, I was an outfielder, not a batboy. Not that you’d know the difference.”

  Lasker watched him go. “Gotta say, the kid’s got potential.”

  Ron looked over at his comm chief and couldn’t suppress a smile. Coming from the cherub-faced Lasker, that was quite a statement. “Yeah, you’re right. Now where were we?”

  “Dead Russians.”

  “I knew it was somewhere pleasant.”

  11:16 A.M.

  The safehouse

  Culpeper, Virginia

  The shower was probably as old as the house itself, a shade of avocado green roughly the color of vomit. He hadn’t been kidding about the decorator.

  But the water was hot. Carol leaned back against the tiles and closed her eyes, letting the water wash over her body, steam billowing from the shower stall to fill the bathroom.

  Four hours.

  It seemed impossible that one’s world could change so drastically in such a short time. Yet it had.

  She turned off the water and stumbled out of the shower, brushing wet strands of golden hair away from her eyes. A man’s housecoat hung from the peg on the back of the door and Carol wrapped it about her body, noticing absently that it came to her ankles.