Clear by Fire (13 page)

Fear had erased the carefully plotted story he’d come up with, and he confessed everything in a torrent of tears and pitiful gasps. Barnes didn’t flinch during the beating and once his father’s arm got tired, he handed the young boy a knife.

“Put her out of her misery,” he’d told him.

The same fear was now in the Arab’s eyes as Colonel Barnes leaned forward and held the blade of the knife inches from the man’s face.

“You have a choice to make,” he began, placing the blade on the man’s face and slowly dragging it down his cheek. The razor-sharp edge split the man’s skin easily, leaving a trail of fresh blood behind. “You can either sit here until I bleed you out, or”—Barnes pulled the knife away from the quivering man’s face as one of his men appeared with a satellite phone—“you can call your brother and find out where the president’s convoy is.”

The blood from the cut began dripping onto the man’s shirt.
Barnes had to reach forward with his free hand and slap him across the face to snap him out of his daze. The man jumped and greedily reached for the phone.

“Before you make the call,” Barnes said, grabbing the man by the hair and twisting his neck around, “I want you to know that if you fuck this up, I am going to kill you, very slowly.”

The Arab’s face paled, and there was a rushing sound. Barnes looked down at the wet stain on the man’s crotch before letting go of his hair, and he smiled broadly.

“C
an anyone tell me what the heck is going on?” the president demanded from behind his desk.

NSA Cage stood just on the edge of the tan carpet and watched as Secretary Collins stared down at the presidential seal embossed on the floor. Instead of waiting for the rest of his cabinet, the president had jumped on Collins’s ass as soon as the two men came through the door. Cage knew that he was next, and the only intel he had was from an encrypted text from his aide, informing him that the DIA had decided against a warrant and instead launched a daylight raid against the doctor’s house.

The agents had gotten their asses handed to them, and it was all because Decklin couldn’t follow fucking instructions. The operation had resulted in a burned-down house and more than a handful of dead agents, and right now the media was having a field day.

Instead of feeling dread, Cage was suddenly optimistic. His instincts were telling him that there was an advantage to be had, if he could only figure it out in the next few seconds. He knew he had the space he needed to distance himself from the fallout and was in the midst of taking a deep breath when he noticed a man looking at him from the edge of the room.

“I don’t want your excuse, I want to know what happened,” the president yelled, slamming his open hand on the desk.

Cage would have loved nothing more than to watch his boss continue to savage Collins, but he was focused on trying to place the face at the other end of the searching gaze. He felt he could safely infer that he worked for the CIA, due to the fact that he was standing next to the director of the CIA, but anything more than that would have been speculation.

The man in question was dressed like a lawyer, with his gold-rimmed glasses and carefully pressed suit. Once the man looked away, Duke pulled out his cell phone and flipped on the camera. Ensuring that the phone was on silent, and the flash turned off, he shot a furtive glance around the room. Once he was sure no one was looking, he snapped a quick picture.

SecDef Collins stammered under the president’s verbal onslaught, giving Duke time to attach the picture to an e-mail and send it to Jacob.

“Identify this man,” he typed with his thumb before sending the text.

A few seconds passed before the phone vibrated in his hand, and he quickly read his aide’s reply.

“Stand by,” it read.

“So what you are saying is that your people thought it was a good idea to run an operation in broad daylight, inside the United States? Am I hearing you correctly, Mr. Secretary?”

“Sir, m-my people are looking into the circumstances right now,” Collins stuttered, drawing Cage’s attention back to the matter at hand.

“What kind of sideshow nonsense are you running here? I do not need this right now. I thought I made myself perfectly clear when I picked you for this job.”

“Y-yes, sir, you—” Collins stammered, but was cut off by the president’s open palm.

“Duke, what’s your take on this?”

“Sir, I was totally in the dark on this one,” he lied as Collins turned toward him, the fight gone from his eyes.

The SecDef was woefully out of his depth, and he knew it. If only Cage could figure out how to exploit the situation, he might be able to get the leverage he needed.

He knew that if he hit him too hard it would look petty, but Duke had never suffered fools lightly, and he realized that the president was expecting him to live up to his fearsome reputation. After all, eight months prior he had marched into this very office and called the last man sitting behind the massive desk a “fucking idiot.”

He decided at that moment to use the CIA as his ally. It was no secret that the two agencies were engaged in a bitter battle over available funding, and if he could be seen as sympathetic to the Agency, he might be able to sink Collins.

“Sir, I believe the director of the CIA will agree with me that whoever authorized this operation went beyond whatever authority was given to him.”

Director Hollis nodded his head in agreement as the bespectacled man to his left turned his searching gaze on the national security advisor. “I agree, and I would like to add that if there was any intelligence linking the targets to any terrorist organizations, my agency should have been read in before it got to this point.”

Secretary Collins took a visible step back and brought his hands up in an effort to shield himself from the two-pronged attack. “If either of you are insinuating that I had any knowledge of this operation beforehand, then you are crazy. My sources on the ground had no idea that this was going to happen,” he squeaked.

“So you do have sources that you’re not sharing? I thought we were on the same team, Secretary Collins,” Cage said calmly.

“Why you . . . ,” the man spat, his face red with anger. “Who do you think you are, standing there—?”

“Enough,” the president yelled, jumping to his feet. “You screwed
this up, and you have until the end of the day to fix it. Do you hear me?” he said, rounding his desk and pointing at Collins.

“Mr. President, please—”

“No, that’s the end of it. I’m not going to stand here and listen to this . . .
shit
. Either you get control of your people and start sharing intel with the team, or pack your bags.”

It was the first time the men had heard the president curse, and for a man famous for his aversion to profanity, it spoke volumes. The room fell silent as they waited to hear what was to follow, but President Bradley had gotten control of himself, and after a short pause said, “That will be all. I want a full brief by the end of the day. Everyone out.”

Cage felt the phone in his pocket vibrate and was turning toward the door when the president said, “Duke, you stay.”

Cage turned back toward his boss and cast a quick glance at the man in the gold glasses as he walked past him. He was sure he knew that man and wanted nothing more than to check his phone, but he restrained the impulse and moved to the head of the room.

President Bradley looked tired as he moved back to his chair, digging into his pocket as he took a seat. His hand emerged with a wad of bills, and after selecting one off the top, he leaned forward and stuffed it into the open mouth of a jar hidden behind a picture of his wife.

He moved the jar to the middle of his desk, and Cage noticed that it was more than halfway full of random bills.

“My daughter, Layla, and her mother made this for me,” he said, turning the jar so that Cage could see a note taped to the front. The makeshift label read, “Daddy’s swear jar.”

Cage couldn’t help but smile as the commander in chief slid the jar back and forth between his hands. The most powerful man in the free world took it as a personal loss that he had to put money in the jar, and his irritation was evident as he finally leaned back in his chair and placed his hands on the top of his head.

He looked tired, and his first week in office wasn’t even halfway over.

“Did you really tell the vice president that you were going to rip his face off and wear it as a mask?” President Bradley said after a moment.

Cage was caught flatfooted by the question, and his mind raced back to the fateful day eight months prior.

“Uh, yes, sir, it wasn’t my proudest moment.”

“Aww, cut the ‘sir’ crud, Duke. My dad told me that you were the best officer he’d ever served under and a man I could trust.”

“Your father was a fine soldier, sir. I wished more than once that I was more like him.”

“He used to tell me stories about the two of you in Somalia. Y’all really got after it, didn’t you?” he asked, letting his famous Southern drawl slip into the conversation.

“It was an experience,” Duke replied honestly.

“My dad told me that bringing Collins on was a mistake, but obviously I didn’t listen. He told me that no matter how many good things I do, I will always be judged by the bad. He said you were a perfect example of that.”

“Your father was a fine man. I was sorry to hear about his passing.”

“I tell you what, that cancer, it doesn’t care who you are or what you’ve done. When it gets its claws into you, it’s over.”

“Yes, sir. You know my wife, Connie, she . . .”

“It’s been a rough year for you, hasn’t it, Duke?”

Cage nodded, feeling a knot forming in his throat. In the past eight months he had lost the two constants in his life. He’d lost his career and the one person who kept him balanced. Leaving the army had been hard, but losing Connie had changed him, made him harder. “It hasn’t been easy, sir.”

Cage looked at the man seated before him and felt a tiny jolt of guilt rise up. There was a time when that little pinprick would have made its way to his heart and found fertile ground for it to grow, but
that was a long time ago. Cage knew the cancer hadn’t killed his wife. She had given up the moment their son’s body came back from Iraq, and when she got sick, there was nothing left for her to fight for.

The day he’d put his beloved soul mate in the ground, Cage had stood at the edge of the hole, staring down at the coffin lying amid the freshly turned earth. The tears had refused to come, until the soldiers and men he’d bled with filed by and in a silent gesture of respect tossed handfuls of dirt onto the lid of the casket.

The simple, unprovoked gesture opened the floodgate for tears that had been bottled up for so long, and he wept uncontrollably before God and everyone. After the procession had filed by, Cage grabbed a final handful of the cold earth in his hands and, sealing a promise he’d made on her deathbed, tossed it down into the hole.

Looking up at the president, he felt the guilt fizzle out in his chest as he steeled himself for what was ahead. If the man looking up at him had any idea of what was coming over the horizon, he would have put Cage in the darkest hole on earth, but he didn’t. All he saw was the patriot who had fought with his father, a scarred warrior who’d spent his life fighting for a country that was unaware of the cost.

•  •  •

Ten minutes later, Cage finally freed himself from the president, and once he was clear of any prying eyes, he pulled out his phone. He clicked on the text message and felt a chill creep up his spine as he looked at the man staring up at him.

“Shit,” he cursed as he called Simmons.

“Yes, sir?”

“How bad is it?”

“Sir, it’s not good. The picture you sent to me is of David Castleman, and he runs some kind of counterterror apprehension team called Task Force II. All I could find out was that they are working in Africa right now.”

“So, why the fuck is he here?”

“Sir, according to General Nantz, they are tracking Mason Kane, and I assume they think he’s somehow connected to this.”

“Shit, is this going to come back on us?”

“Sir, I’m trying to find out everything I can without going through official channels. I’ve already talked to General Swift and he swears that Decklin was not told to leave any stay-behind force when he left.”

“You tell Swift that if he doesn’t handle this in the next forty-eight hours, then he’s a dead man.”

“Yes, sir,” his aide replied.

Duke hung up the phone and walked over to the window, his mind racing to connect the dots. Things were getting out of control, and if his men didn’t get a grip, he was going to start putting bodies in the ground.

M
ason stood on the outskirts of the bazaar, taking in the smells of the dirty bodies filling the enclosed area. Smoke from charcoal braziers drifted in the gentle breeze and mixed with the smell of meats being grilled. The market was packed with wide-eyed tourists enthusiastically bartering for anything they could take home and display over their suburban mantels. Locals scowled at fat Europeans and fatter Americans whose pale skin and expensive cameras annoyed the shopkeepers. The city had been founded on trade and the modern generation held true to their forefathers’ innate ability to separate a foreigner from his money.

But he wasn’t here for trinkets. He needed to find Ahmed, his contact, the one man besides Zeus whom he could actually trust.

Ahmed had schooled him in the art of tradecraft and taught him that it was the subtle cultural differences that could blow your cover and label you as a foreigner in North Africa. He snapped to when he spotted a sleek Mercedes stop by one of the tea merchants. Ahmed had arrived.

Mason moved into the crowd, dodging the packs of sweaty Westerners who were blissfully unaware of the world that turned around them. Ahead of him, Ahmed was swearing loudly at the merchant’s overpriced tea.

“That price is ridiculous for these dried leaves. They aren’t fit for my bathwater, much less to drink.” Ahmed waved his hand dismissively in the air, while the wizened Algerian stood with crossed arms and a look of total disinterest.