Alpha (24 page)

THE MAN
who received half a billion dollars to plan and execute the events at WilsonVille, the man whom no one will or can name, stares at the Uzbek’s image on his monitor, and considers all things. What the news has reported around the world, and more, what it has not. What the Uzbek has told him and what, he suspects, the Uzbek has not. As objectively as he can, the man no one can name considers the events of the last day, and views them in an ever-expanding context.

Mistakes were made. The Uzbek has acknowledged as much. The basic, fundamental miscalculation in regard to Gabriel Fuller, that he had been allowed to go native, though the man who refuses to be named wonders if that could have been prevented. It is the risk with all long-term sleepers, that they will become who they pretend to be so thoroughly that, when the time comes for them to awaken, they will do so without their full measure. This is not a new problem, but it is one to which he feels closer attention should have been given.

So much time, so much patience, so much effort, all to waste.

The sleepers will have to be monitored much more closely, the man decides. Wherever they are, they will now be subjected to closer surveillance, and perhaps occasional in-person meetings with their handlers. So they do not forget whom they work for. So they do not forget their purpose. So they do not forget who owns them.

In that, then, the operation was a failure. Gabriel Fuller and all that he was—and, more, what he would have been—are lost.

The man no one can name types:

Can he damage us?

On the monitor, the Uzbek shakes his head. “There should be no means of connecting him with me or with any of our other assets. Any investigation into his life will reach a dead end. We are secure.”

The man sits back in his chair, reaches for a glass of very hot, very sweet, very strong tea, and sips at it. He likes how the glass burns against his palm, grips it tighter while thinking past the pain, now considering the success they have achieved.

They are half a billion dollars richer. They have made a mark, and shown exactly the extent of their reach, their power, their cunning. There are those who will notice. There are those who will seek them, and seek their services.

He sets the glass down again, carefully and slowly, forces his fingers open. He types again.

Confirm contact with client remains sterile.

The Uzbek gives this due consideration before saying, “Yes. He is arrogant, and spoke with arrogance, but we knew this about him from the start, his bluster. He is an ideologue, with an ideologue’s ego. But I was never anything less than absolutely cautious, and even, in the worst-case scenario, if he should somehow find his way back to me, it is impossible that he would then find his way back to you.”

The man types immediately, quickly.

Nothing is impossible.

He pauses, then adds:

Vosil.

Watches as the Uzbek reacts to the use of his name. Watches as the Uzbek shakes his head.

“I would die first.”

Yes. You would.

The Uzbek shifts, repositioning himself in his chair perhaps. He opens his mouth to speak, then stops. Removes his glasses, and sets them carefully aside, out of the view of the monitor, the camera. He looks directly at the man no one can name.

“What would you have me do?”

This is a very good question, and the man in front of the keyboard has given it much thought already. He has thought about eliminating Mr. Money, though that seems like an excessive gesture at this time, for two reasons. The first is that doing so would not guarantee their security, and, in fact, could quite possibly compromise it further. There is no way to know what Mr. Money has on them. Killing him will silence the man, but there is no telling what traces or trails he may have left behind. The man no one can name must trust that the fear they have engendered will preserve silence.

So that is the first reason. The second is more pragmatic. Just as the Uzbek represented the man who sits at the keyboard now, he knows that Mr. Money represented others. Men of like mind, and like money, and like power. They have seen what was accomplished, and the man no one can name is certain they will be back, asking for more, and willing to pay.

Your work is finished for now. Return home. New orders await you there.

The Uzbek leans forward slightly, reading the words on his monitor, squinting slightly without the aid of his glasses.

“You may rely on me,” the Uzbek says.

I have,
the man at the keyboard thinks.
I have, and you have succeeded, and yet you have failed. You are not a pawn, but you are not the king, or even the queen.

The man at the keyboard kills their connection, takes up his too hot, too strong, too sweet tea once again. There was one thing he and the Uzbek did not discuss. One thing that the man now sipping his tea has been considering among all other matters.

This man who was in the park.

He sips at his tea, and wonders how best to make an example of Jad Bell.

YOU CAN
get an awful lot of intelligence from a cell phone.

The following day, WilsonVille opened at its regular time. Almost all rides resumed operation, with the notable exception of Pooch Pursuit, now closed for maintenance. Attendance was, as expected, poor, with just under three thousand day passes sold.

“It’s three thousand more than I thought we’d sell,” Marcelin tells Ruiz. “It’ll come back. People have short attention spans, and technically, Bell was working for us.”

“So when you tell the media that WilsonVille security played a crucial role in retaking the park and rescuing the hostages, you’re telling the truth.”

“My understanding is that your people don’t want me to tell the truth.”

“That is correct.”

Marcelin nods slowly. “Bell.”

“What about him?”

“I’d like to thank him. Him and the rest of your men.”

“I’m afraid that’s not possible,” Ruiz tells him. “He’s on a new assignment. But I’ll be sure to pass it along.”

When Wallford offers to shake Bell’s hand, Bell grins and holds up his right, showing the bandaged palm.

“Ready for this?” Wallford asks.

Bell nods, the grin fading. He aches—his back, his face, his arm, his hand, all of him. When he fell, he’s certain he tore muscles in his shoulder and arm catching himself. Physical pain, and it rides a dull shotgun with the emotional pain, with the way Athena looks at him now and the way Amy won’t. With Dana Kincaid’s broken heart and broken life, and with Angel, which everyone tells him wasn’t his fault, none of whom he believes.

Wallford pushes open the door to Eric Porter’s office, where the man is seated at his desk, staring vacantly out the window. He turns in his chair, registers surprise as he sees Bell entering behind Wallford. Starts to rise.

“Jerry,” Porter says. “I was about to call you. Mr. Bell.”

Bell says nothing, fixing Porter with a stare.

“You were about to call me?” Wallford says. “That is remarkably ironic, Eric. Let me show you why.”

From his pocket, Wallford produces a cell phone, and sets it on Porter’s desk.

“Know what that is?” he asks.

Porter looks from one man to the other, bemused if not puzzled. “There’s a lot to do today, Jerry. Playing games isn’t one of them.”

“That is the cell phone that Master Sergeant Bell here recovered from Gabriel Fuller,” Wallford says. “Mr. Fuller discarded the phone after killing Shoshana Nuri, but before moving to arm and detonate the device.”

Porter says nothing.

“We got the prelim back on the device, as far as that goes.” Wallford flops into one of the two chairs facing Porter’s desk, throws his feet up on the edge. He’s wearing a suit and a tie, but the shoes, Bell notes, are Adidas. “Couple interesting things about that device. Want to hear them?”

“I’m sure you’ll share them even if I don’t.” Porter’s response is dry, or starts that way, but he looks at Bell halfway through it, and the sarcasm fades.

Bell just stares back.

“Had a timer, set to read sixty minutes from arming. But the timer was bullshit, it was to detonate immediately. Would’ve killed whoever set it off, blown them to pieces even before the radiation did its number. But the radioactive material? That’s very interesting. That radioactive material came out of Iran, the facility at Chalus, we think.”

Porter tears himself away from Bell’s stare. “Iran? Jesus Christ. That’s…that’s huge, Jerry, that’s a fucking act of war.”

“Sure looks that way.” Wallford moves his right foot, nudges the phone. “Gabriel Fuller didn’t have a lot of calls on this thing. Received one or two from a location within the park, one of his compatriots. Received a couple from a dead-end disposable, some guy in Los Angeles. That one was interesting, that took heavy lifting, but we were able to zero the location of origin on those calls, the L.A. calls.”

“You know who made them, then?”

“We do not.” Wallford looks at Porter, gives it a moment, then adds, “But there were other calls from that location, and those calls were to a man in Texas. A man in Texas who called
you,
Eric. A man in Texas who, it turns out, you’ve been talking with at least once a week for the last three months, and who you talked to three times yesterday. You want to tell us what you and he talked about?

“I—”

“I would think very carefully about how you answer this,” Wallford says. He leans back in the chair, craning his head to look pointedly at Bell, then to Porter.

“Jerry—”

Bell says, “We have a code. One of ours dies, someone answers.”

“One of yours? None of yours died.”

Bell takes three steps forward and grabs Eric Porter by his silk necktie, wraps it once around his fist, and yanks. Porter falls forward onto his desk, a strangled cry, and Bell puts his other hand to the back of the man’s head, pushing down, hard, so that Porter’s neck is caught at the edge.

“Angel was one of mine,” Bell says. “And I think you’re responsible for her death. Tell me how I’m wrong.”

Porter gags.

Then Porter talks.

The planning is completed quickly, in the passenger compartment of a chartered Learjet, with Chaindragger assigned to back Bell on the ground, Cardboard on overwatch. Bonebreaker is still out on medical, two broken ribs needing time to heal, though he was adamant that he wanted to Charlie Mike.

“You are continuing mission,” Bell told him. “You’re just doing it on medical leave.”

“Fuck you, Top.”

“Not with a stolen dick.”

“When you deliver, make sure a stamp comes from me,” Jorge said.

“To be paid in full,” Bell agreed.

Doctrine varies on the best time to make a night raid, but when Bell has the luxury of making the call himself, he prefers to roll between three and four in the morning. This time, Ruiz has given him the reins, and it’s 0340 when he and Chain begin the breach of the big house overlooking the lake outside Austin, Texas. Their target is a very, very rich man, who can pay for very, very good security, but what he cannot pay for is absolute privacy, and with the right floor plans and the right tools, nothing is impossible.

With the right plans and the right tools, sometimes it’s even easy.

By 0344, Bell and Chain are inside the big house, with the security guards outside still believing everything their cameras are telling them, and the alarm system on the house still believing it works properly. Floor plan memorized, it’s seventy seconds later before Bell is silently pushing open the door to the master bedroom. Chain follows him inside.

Night vision gives them two figures in the bed, one old man and one young woman, and Chain moves to the latter while Bell moves to the former. Bell waits while Chain puts the woman under, gets the nod, and then brings his gloved left hand to the mouth of Lee Jamieson. With his right, he puts the silencer on his pistol against the man’s forehead.

Eyes snap open in sudden terror.

“Eric Porter gave you up,” Bell says. “Eric Porter says you bought the hit on WilsonVille. What Eric Porter doesn’t know is who you bought the hit from. Give me a name.”

Bell lifts his hand from the old man’s mouth, moves the silencer a fraction away from the old man’s forehead. Lee Jamieson coughs softly, looks to his side, sees the woman asleep, and Chaindragger, a black silhouette that mirrors Bell’s, standing silently by. He looks up at Bell.

“You’re a soldier,” Jamieson says. “You should applaud what I tried to do.”

“I don’t care. I want a name.”

“But you should care. Everyone should care. We’re at war, you know that. What are you? SEAL? Delta? A soldier, a warrior; you know the stakes.”

“Name.”

Jamieson chuckles, sitting up more fully, adjusting the pillows at his back, and Bell has to admit he recovers himself quickly. “Now, let’s be reasonable. I know many people, and I have more money than you can imagine.”

“You have five hundred million less than you should,” Bell says. “Which seems to me a bit steep for faking a terrorist incident, but I don’t normally buy such things, so I may not be equipped to judge.”

“They fucked me, you understand that, don’t you?” Jamieson squints up at him. “Nobody was ever supposed to die. The device was never supposed to be operational, it was just there to lay the blame at the feet of the Revolutionary Guard. To push us, to speed us along.”

Bell stares at the man, thinks it must be appalling arrogance rather than incredible naïveté that allows him to imagine that no lives would be lost. In a park filled with fifty thousand people, the fact that so few died was a miracle, one achieved only by the presence of himself, Chain, and Angel at the start.

He cannot help but wonder if his presence in the park was coincidence, or something more. If those whispers that put him into play didn’t start from this man here, or others connected to him. Or if those whispers were started from the inside, by this man’s associates, by others who share his agenda.

He doesn’t like thinking that. It would mean a betrayal of trust at the highest levels. It would mean that what this man before him put in motion was done with someone’s tacit consent.

“Name,” Bell says again. “You are running out of time.”

“These are the end times, son.” Jamieson leans forward. “This is the end of an ideological war. We’re fighting savages, they know nothing of civilized society, of the rule of law, of peace, they have no faith in God. We’ve got a president who gets down on his hands and knees in front of these people, their religion, we’ve got a populace who thinks that’s appropriate. They’re ‘war-weary,’ but they don’t even know where we’re fighting, let alone what we’re fighting for. You know this! You know they’ve forgotten. They make movies about the day the towers fell, in the name of Christ!

“We have to send a wake-up call!” Jamieson is warming to his words, more confident, defiant before Bell. “We have to bring this country back together, we have to reunite, focus ourselves on our common foe! This is the
end,
you’ve got to see it! They’re fighting a holy war?
We’re
fighting a holy war! You think I could do this alone? There are others like me, others who know what happens if we do not recover our will to fight. Others who share with me the understanding that we cannot falter. If that means showing America what these people are capable of, then I’m proud to have done it.”

Bell nods. Then he puts his hand over the old man’s mouth, and shoots him in the knee. The scream is muffled, dies against his glove, and Bell keeps his hand there for almost thirty seconds longer, watching as Jamieson’s eyes go from wide to half lidded before releasing his hold.

“Give me the name of the man you paid,” Bell says. “Or I shoot you in the other leg.”

“You fucking son of a whore,” the old man gasps.

Bell raises the pistol, sighting the other leg.

Jamieson’s hands fly out, tears of pain shining in the night of the room. “He tried to keep it from me, he tried to keep it all anonymous! But I was careful, I was…I was careful, I did a lot of checking before we moved the money. I don’t know if it’s a real name, I don’t, but it’s the name I found. He’s some Uzbek bastard, lives in Tashkent.”

“Name.”

“Tohir! Vosil Tohir!”

Bell moves a hand to his ear. “Get that?”

“Got it,” Ruiz says. “Finish and go home.”

“You go after him,” Jamieson says. “You go after him, you let him know it’s from me. Son of a bitch double-crossed me, tried to take me for a billion dollars. You go after him, you tell him you came from me.”

“I don’t work for you,” Bell says, and shoots the man twice in the head.

He and Chain leave as silently as they arrived.

By the time they’re wheels-down and have their gear stowed, Ruiz is ready to brief them for Tashkent.