Cloudburst (21 page)

“Thank God this is the right time for blue jeans,” Frankie said. She had ‘graduated’ out of business suits three years before and now wore casual street clothes nine days out of ten. Court days were different. She hated them. “Can you chew quieter?” she asked her partner, rubbing her foot through the Reeboks.

Thom swung the car around the comer. There was another motel down the street. “Sorry. I’ll smack softer.”

*  *  *

Talk about vague…
So the director wanted answers fast. No, the wording was needed. There was no elaboration. Art found that puzzling. The director was pushing him from three thousand miles away. Someone had to be pushing hard. The boss was a decent guy. His message said more than its wording implied. Something was up.

The seventy agents had so far struck out, even looking for just a sighting of any one of the three men. It was early still, though, Art kept reminding himself.

He looked around his office, forgetting the investigation for a moment. In a way he wanted to be out of there. Back at the Hilton there was activity, decreasing though it was, and thus more to occupy his body. He could
do
things there. That would occupy his mind. The latter rarely came alone for Art. Lately he had had to keep his body busy to check the endless wandering his mind wanted to do.

But self-discipline was a goal of Art’s, as suggested by his shrink. He straightened up in the chair to focus on the matters at hand. Eddie could handle things at the Hilton. Art was going to review all that was known…from the top.

Rome

Dick Logan, the economic liaison officer at the United States embassy in Rome, was packed in under ten minutes. As a habit he kept a bag packed except for his everyday essentials. What he felt would be best described as overwhelming apprehension. He didn’t consider himself a chicken, but on his best day he knew that he was basically a paper-pushing case officer with a standard cover assignment. He had all the training: surveillance, counter surveillance, personal combat (hah!), and all the other skills, whose mastery was supposed to keep him alive.

Behind a desk
. The pay was good and the job was interesting. Those were pluses, he told himself. And DONNER.
His
agent. His man, insofar as one man could control another. As scared as he was about choppering into a hostile country—scenes from
Apocalypse Now
kept flashing through his mind—he was more excited that he was finally going to meet the agent face-to-face. Only the chief of station years ago had met the man. It would be an honor. DONNER was not the mystical agent of spy novels; he didn’t reveal top government or military secrets, or give any high-technology items over for security. His traitorous deeds were simple, yet hundreds, perhaps thousands of people, mostly Americans, owed their lives to this man.

And all he did was give us pictures
. Logan knew it wasn’t as cut and dry as that. There had been a long road, one that DONNER had traveled alone. He wondered what gave a man the strength to live day after day with the knowledge that death at the hands of his countrymen was but a slip of the tongue away. Men, and women, of all nationalities were spies, all with their own reasons. Some were motivated by financial considerations, pure and simple. Others wanted to fight conflicting ideologies and feel the power that came from never being known to those they betrayed. Logan believed that a good number of spies were motivated by a sense of vengeance. He wondered often what motivated DONNER, trying not to classify him in any of the molds. The best he could do was try to keep an open mind, being aware that his agent’s motives might be less than honorable. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know that

Logan plopped the native fedora on his head before leaving the office. He left the key with the desk officer before exiting the embassy. His car was in the courtyard and he would drive himself to the airfield. On the way he planned to think through all the questions he would ask DONNER, sure that some would seem rather strange to him. Maybe not. After all, he was a human being, not just a code name, and Logan couldn’t care less about the debriefing the agent would surely go through in the months to come. The Agency diehards could handle that. Logan wanted to know the man.

The White House

There are three distinct sections of the White House. What tourists see, at least partly, is the center section, where official receptions and dinners take place. The private living quarters of the first family are also located there, on a higher floor. The west wing houses the power center of the executive branch, namely, the Oval Office. Offices and working spaces for the president’s advisers are also in this wing, along with the Cabinet room. At the opposite end, just past the president’s private theater, lies the east wing. Here his military advisers maintain offices and a pseudo command post.

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff kept a desk there, though he felt more at home in the Pentagon. General Granger found it an inconvenience at times that he was tied so closely with the 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue address. He was a soldier, and the nation’s top military commander, which complemented and conflicted with each other. In his heart he longed for his turf: the battlefield, or at least where soldiers were. Like most professional soldiers he found the thought of war infuriating. To prevent war was the military’s premiere reason for existence. It was that that gave him purpose in the midst of politicians.

His phone buzzed. “Granger.. Sure, come on over.”

Bud walked through the general’s door a few minutes later. He sat in one of the high-back colonials that Granger had ‘transferred’ from his old Colorado Springs office, but he couldn’t get comfortable and ended up standing behind it.

“I spoke with the president a few minutes ago,” Bud said.

“I recommended that we begin the necessary preparations for any military operation that might come. The aircraft’s been on the ground for nine hours now. Something’s going to happen. Who knows what? It’s best that we’re ready.”

“You’re old Air Force, Bud,” the general reminded him, aware of the unenthusiastic ring of the NSA’s announcement.

Bud brought a hand back over his head, momentarily flattening the gray locks. “That does not exclude me from being damn worried about escalating this.”

“We can handle them—conventionally,” Granger pointed out calmly. Letting emotion into his words was not an option.

“I have no doubt about that. It doesn’t mean it’s the best option.” Bud finally sat. “My misgivings aside, can you have a report ready by…say, seven.”

Granger took his pen in hand. The light from the desk lamp shone off his smooth forehead. “The objectives?”

“Ending the Libyan terrorist threat.”

“Uh-huh. Minimum collateral damage,” the general assumed, correctly.

Bud nodded. His eyes added the emphasis. “And there’s something else. I didn’t discuss this with the president, but any order to carry it out would come from him. I do want the necessary personnel and equipment in place, ready to go.”

Granger’s expression asked the next question.

Bud went on. “If there is a nuclear weapon on that 747, we can’t allow it… I mean, there’s no way that—”

“I know,” Granger interrupted. “I know.”

Somehow it was easier not to verbalize what he was thinking. “It has to be certain. There can’t be a mess.” Bud let the words sink in for a moment. “Get it moving.”

After the NSA was gone Granger called his chief of operations at the Pentagon. The National Military Command Center—the War Room—was now operative. A planning group of senior officers and their deputies would begin work on the contingency plans, sets of which would be modified to fit the situation.

With that done he asked the Pentagon operator to connect him with the commanding officer of the Louisiana Air National Guard. Granger knew the Air Force—‘things with wings are my life,’ he would say—and where certain special abilities could be obtained. The Louisiana ANG had some F-106s left, and if the worst-case scenario happened, at least one would be needed.

Pope AFB

Even military pilots had to defer to the mighty power of thunderstorms. This front of them had delayed Joe’s departure from Andrews by thirty minutes and kept the twin- engine executive jet, in which he was the only passenger, circling west of the air base for over an hour. Finally the clearance to land came, without the announcing lighted signs that Joe was accustomed to. The pilot had simply poked his head back, instructing Joe to buckle up. He cinched the belt snug. On his lap was a small, hard case with all the instruments he would need…hopefully. Joe held it tight. Inside were sensitive measuring devices so miniature that the fact that they were even built was amazing. There was an easy $2 million worth of gear in the case, something that worried Joe not at all. It could be replaced: The people who might die if the instruments failed could not.

A screech and a thud beneath signaled the landing. When the small jet stopped, Joe emerged to a windy tarmac. The afternoon sun illuminated the cloud bottoms above as they sped across the sky from the south. The ground was wet and slick beneath his feet on this part of the tarmac, and looking around he saw that it must have rained recently. From the look of the clouds more was on the way.

A car approached the jet, whose engines still whined. It stopped a few yards from the left wingtip. In the near distance bright perimeter lights outlined a low row of buildings and several large ones. Joe noticed several soldiers bathed in the light.

“Captain Anderson.” The soldier saluted instinctively.

“Mr. Anderson,” Joe corrected the soldier. He was a corporal. “Save your salutes for non civilians. I assume you’re taking me somewhere.”

“Yes, Mr. Anderson.”
Asshole.

Joe walked around the car to the passenger door as the jet throttled its engine slightly, pushing it forward and kicking up a spray from the wet ground. The drive was short, only a few hundred yards at best, ending outside a hangar opposite the one he could see from the aircraft.

“Wait here,” the corporal said curtly. He jumped out and double-timed to a building connected to the hangar, obviously an afterthought addition.

Something struck Joe as strange.
A corporal? This is an Air Force base. What’s Army doing here?
The unmistakable sound of boots—more than one pair—came toward the car. A figure stood in front of the car, aglow in the headlights. The driver opened the passenger door for Mr. Anderson.

“Anderson,” the voice drawled. Joe could almost smell the cow pies. “I am Colonel William Cadler. Nichols tells me you can be quite an ass.” Joe eyed the corporal, who stared back without a flinch. “Well so can I. Understood? Good. Get your gear inside…now that we’re done with the introductions.”

Eight

A SOUL FOR THE TAKING

Al-‘Adiyat

His life was one of routine. It was both a reminder of his dark side, and a way of retreat from the everyday realities that he had let himself become master of. Only by carving each day up into manageable portions could he hope to make it through, from sunrise when he would run, to sunset when he would finish up his duties as commanding officer of the 3rd Training Battalion. Then he would sleep.

Muhadesh Algar was a man of inward contradictions. To those around him he was a strong, confident leader, a man able to turn idealistic, trigger-happy teenagers into efficient killers in a short time. He was a revolutionary brother, one who would willingly give his own life in battle against those who would destroy his country. Never would a man who knew him question his bravery, or his skill, or his authority.

All those things he was. He was also a man who felt weak and small. Of course those who knew him would attest to his bravery, though few had seen him exhibit it, but he was painfully aware that he had failed the truest test possible of his will. He had once been afraid many years before, and that lapse of inner strength had set his life on a course that outwardly he thrived on, but was, day by day, tearing his soul from the very foundation of his being.

He held the rank of captain in the Libyan Peoples Army, a title that, at times, was passed out as a ceremonial reward. Muhadesh, however, had earned his. At twenty-three, after several years studying medicine in Italy, he was commissioned a lieutenant in the army of King Idris, Libya’s pre-Qaddafi ruler. It was a good time in his life. His uncle, who raised him after his parents’ death, saw to his nephew’s education, sending him away to learn to be a doctor. At the time the medical profession was, perhaps, the highest symbol of status in the small North African nation, one that Surtan Algar was determined to give to his brother’s only child. The pride Muhadesh felt when he was assigned to a military hospital was matched only by the sadness he felt when his uncle passed away. He vowed to make his uncle proud.

It was then that his life forever changed. The government of King Idris was overthrown by Colonel Muhammar al-Qaddafi, who ordered all of the young officers in the military to undergo reeducation and swear allegiance to the country’s new leader. Being a smart young lieutenant, one who was unaware of the enormity of the changes soon to be, Muhadesh did just that.

The hospital near Benghazi to which he was assigned resembled little of the medical facilities he remembered. It had been converted into a facility for the administration of pain. Qaddafi knew that the easiest way to silence any opponents was with a swift and brutal campaign of ‘eliminations.’ But the mere execution of someone was not always enough of a deterrent. Muhadesh became one of those who would use his medical expertise to torture those sentenced to that fate, and more often than not he would have an audience.

Mostly they were officers of the military wishing to watch their enemies die a horrifying death. Occasionally the family of the condemned would be forced to watch as their loved one was disemboweled, or tortured in any of the many other ways Muhadesh had mastered.