[Rogue Warrior 18] Curse of the Infidel (49 page)

“What are you doing in here?” thundered Veep as we followed him inside. “This is my office. Get out. Make an appointment.”

“I just came in to admire the view.”

It was quite impressive—half of Wall Street lay at my feet. And if I turned my head just right, I could see the top of WT1—also known as Freedom Tower—rising over the site of the World Trade Center.

I looked at Veep. “The amazing thing to me is how someone with this kind of view could encourage terrorists.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Veep’s voice choked as he finished the sentence—evidently he did have a bit of a conscience somewhere.

But just a bit.

“I have nothing to do with terrorists,” he added.

“Not Allah’s Rule on Earth? Not al Qaeda?”

“Al Qaeda doesn’t exist anymore,” said Veep quickly. “It’s like the boogeyman the government throws up to justify whatever it feels like doing. And your implication that I am somehow associated with terrorists is reprehensible.”

“That’s right.” I turned from the window. “What I really should be doing is accusing you of associating with the CIA. A renegade member of the CIA who’s even greedier and more ruthless than you. But you did know about Scorched Earth. Or what it would mean. Because you’re the one that kicked it off when you realized how close we were to you.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

I turned to Danny. He opened the briefcase he’d brought in with him and took out an eight-by-ten glossy of the photo Junior had snapped in the New York restaurant of the meeting between Magoo and Veep.

Veep frowned at it.

“The transfers are what’s really interesting, since they’re the money trail. We don’t have all of them,” I admitted as Danny took a thick ream of paper from the briefcase and put them on Veep’s desk, “but we have the important ones. Shunt managed to track down three of your accounts in the Austrian bank, but I’m sure you have a lot more. All of this would have hardly been worth it if you only cleared a few million dollars.”

Veep’s face had started to blanch. There was a slight commotion behind us. I turned and saw Barbara Freemason, one of the FBI’s supervisory agents, entering the room. About a dozen people were lined up behind her, including a member of the CIA internal affairs unit, a few bank examiners, a deputy U.S. attorney, and a lawyer representing the bank.

The U.S. marshals and the local NYPD liaisons and uniformed cops were out in the hall. The office was big, but not that big.

“Before you say anything else, Mr. Veep,” started Freemason, “I am going to read you your rights.”

*   *   *

I would have loved to have stuck around, but Danny and I had a plane to catch.

Magoo’s.

You know and I know that he planted that gun on the terrorist to make it look like he was justified in killing him. Junior knew that as well. But Junior wasn’t around to press the case, and even if he had been, few people would have been inclined to believe him. After all, Habib was definitely part of a plot to blow up the Supreme Court Building, and but for Junior’s pigheaded insubordination, he would have succeeded. So in a lot of minds, Magoo—a CIA officer on the fast track—had done the People a favor, sparing them the expense of a trial and, at least in his version of events, preventing the conspiracy from succeeding, since Magoo’s information implied that Habib was the one who was going to detonate the bombs.

That of course was Magoo’s interpretation of events. Mine was somewhat different.

Magoo’s plane for Europe was about ten minutes to boarding when Danny and I strolled up to him. He was sitting near the wall, reading a book.

Not one of mine, alas.

“Marcinko,” he said disgustedly as I approached. “Don’t tell me you’re on this flight.”

“Not this one,” I said. “Don’t you think it’s a little tacky for you to be going to France so soon after Scarface’s death?”

“What?” He made a face. I will give Magoo this: he makes very good shows of disgust; he’s practically a connoisseur of disdain. “Don’t talk in your usual riddles.”

“How long had you been grooming Scarface?” I asked. “Who was your cutout with the mosque? Is that who you’re going to meet?”

“Who’s Scarface?”

“Come on, Magoo. Tell me you didn’t celebrate when you heard I blew him through the window at the stern of
Bon Voyage
. Did you know he was going to blow that up? You must have, right?”

“You’re talking about Abdul Gharba, the terrorist? Okay, now I know who you’re talking about. Sure, I’d celebrate his death—even if you killed him.”

“Who are you going to get to run your drugs now?” I asked. “Is he already waiting, like Scarface was, for the bust on Allah’s Rule? You had your network completely in place, moved in on Shire Jama and al-Yasur, and the network never lost a beat. Taking over the operation from al Qaeda was clever, and having Scarface think that he was getting instructions from al Qaeda was genius. I assume that’s how you set it up.”

“What’s al Qaeda have to do with anything?”

“Nothing. You pushed them out so you could run the drug operation yourself. You set up the attack on the Supreme Court Building to divert attention from your operation as we closed in. I assume that was the deal with the
Bon Voyage
as well, though we haven’t found the messages yet. Maybe Scarface double-crossed you.”

Magoo gave me one of his nearsighted blinks. I assumed that he had primed Scarface for the operation through surrogates, then sent a message telling him to carry out the takeover of the ship, but Shunt hadn’t found the evidence yet. Truthfully, it could have played as a straight double-cross, with Scarface acting on his own.

“You were playing a pretty dangerous game,” I told Magoo. “But that’s how you rose so quickly through the ranks to begin with. You were capable of real work, good work—penetrating one of the cells of Allah’s Rule was really a coup. But why did you get so greedy?”

He pressed his lips together.

“You set up the bank explosions for Veep, didn’t you? Did you tip him off? I should have caught the connection right away.”

He didn’t say anything. Just to clarify—the hit on the bank was done by people
51
Magoo had hired through another cutout after the board of directors started asking questions and it looked like I might actually figure out what was going on. The attack was made to look like the terror groups. This gave Veep cover to change the computer records, losing the ones that would have revealed what was going on. It also gave Magoo another “case” he could solve at his leisure: bust some isolated tango, plant a modicum of evidence, and ship the bastard to Guantanamo for the rest of his natural-born days.

Not that I had a problem with the last part.

“In another year, you might have made deputy director,” I told Magoo. “Or at least been close. Then, who knows? Get the admiral’s job, maybe? Though I don’t know why anyone would want to be head of the CIA.”

“I earned my promotions.”

The gate attendant called for the first-class passengers to board.

“The irony is, killing Habib is what’s going to nail you, at least for now,” I told him. “Because the whole thing is on video tape. And it’s murder.”

“Right.” Magoo rose, retrieving his ticket from the papers in the back of his book. “I looked at the garage security cameras myself. Not one of them was pointed in the right place.”

“Lucky for you, huh?”

Magoo started past. I grabbed the sleeve of his jacket to stop him.

“The camera over the runway approach was working, though,” I said. “And it happens to have caught the entire transaction. There’s no sound track, unfortunately. But Habib definitely seems relieved to see you, walks up freely to the car when you get out, then quickly backs away when you shoot him. You walk over, take the gun out, and drop it down.”

“There’s no evidence of that.”

“We have a witness,” said Danny, opening his briefcase and pulling out a photo. “And this.” The image was extremely grainy, but you could just make out Magoo reaching for the pistol in his jacket.

“This could be anyone,” said Magoo. “I have a plane to catch.”

“Clayton Magoo?” said a plainclothes D.C. officer behind me. “I have a warrant for your arrest.”

Two TSA cops and a pair of New York City detectives had fanned out behind him. Magoo looked from one to the other, his expression growing more solemn.

I was hoping he’d run. That would have justified my jumping on him and kicking the crap out of him. I would have relished giving him a physical demonstration of what I think of greedy, avaricious traitors. I would have loved to have paid him back for every American he put into harm’s way, directly and indirectly. I don’t guess we could blame the deaths of the people on the
Bon Voyage
solely on him, but I would not have minded giving him a bit of retribution on their behalf.

Unfortunately, he didn’t run. So there was no way to justify my punching his lights out.

I did it anyway, with one punch, a solid smash to the side of the face as he looked away.

True, I’d cold-cocked him, but no worse than he’d done to the rest of us.

(II)

The charge of murder against Magoo wasn’t going to stick, because no jury, even in Washington, D.C., would convict a CIA officer of killing a terrorist, even if the evidence showed that that officer not only lured the man to his death but had masterminded the entire ill-fated bomb attempt to begin with. Magoo wasn’t in total control of Habib’s operation; he had recruited him through an American imam, and funded him without ever meeting him. But he had given him enough aid, including information on how to set the bombs, to make the attack on the Court possible.

The information on bomb-making he passed along included two flaws that made the bombs harmless, but Habib hadn’t known that. His operation existed solely to make Magoo look good.

“It was a brilliant setup in a lot of ways,” I told Danny over a pair of Sapphires that evening in New York. We were up at the Rock, a fancy-schmancy bar in the RCA Building with a view to die for, and waitresses who convinced you not to end it too soon.

“Here’s the thing I don’t get,” said Danny. “If you’re Scarface, why abandon a profitable drug-running operation to blow yourself up?”

“You’re thinking like a cop.”

“No, I’m thinking like the thugs I used to lock up eons ago.” He took another sip of his drink. “They all wanted to be rich. God knows what they would have done to get into Scarface’s position. And to stay there.”

“The drugs were not about making money for him. They were about funding jihad. Anything else would be a great sin—drug selling is one of those universal sins.”

“So is suicide.”

“It’s not suicide if it’s jihad. You don’t die—you end up in Paradise, where you live forever. He gave me a big lecture on it.”

Danny shook his head. He’s been through a lot of ops, but he still has the head of a policeman. The motivations he thinks about are greed and lust, not religion.

Magoo and Veep’s motivations, at least, were more in Danny’s line. There were still some loose ends that night—in fact, there are still a couple as I write this. Neither Veep nor Magoo has come to trial. The prosecution sounds confident of convictions of both; I’m not so sure.

But only two loose ends really bothered me as I drained my glass and asked for a refill: the pain in my knees, which the doctors insisted had to be corrected surgically, and Junior.

I reluctantly went under the knife to get my knees refurbished a few weeks later. As for Junior … his story will have to wait for another day. I will say, though, that he is definitely a chip off the old block. And like all clichés, that’s not necessarily a good thing.

ALSO BY RICHARD MARCINKO

FICTION

Violence of Action

With John Weisman

Red Cell

Green Team

Task Force Blue

Designation Gold

Seal Force Alpha

Option Delta

Echo Platoon

Detachment Bravo

With Jim DeFelice

Rogue Warrior
®
: Vengeance

Rogue Warrior
®
: Holy Terror

Rogue Warrior
®
: Dictator’s Ransom

Rogue Warrior
®
: Seize the Day

Rogue Warrior
®
: Domino Theory

Rogue Warrior
®
: Blood Lies

NONFICTION

The Real Team

Rogue Warrior
(with John Weisman)

Leadership Secrets of the Rogue Warrior: A Commando’s Guide to Success

The Rogue Warrior’s Strategy for Success

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Richard Marcinko is a living, breathing hero. He was honored with the silver star and
four
bronze stars for valor, along with two Navy Commendation medals and an assortment of other honors. After serving in Vietnam, he went on to start and command SEAL Team 6, the Navy’s antiterrorist group, and Red Cell, a high-level antiterrorist unit whose exploits, fictionalized for security and legal reasons, have formed the basis of his novels. Besides an active speaking and consulting calendar, Marcinko keeps his hand in the field as the president of a private international security company and now lives in Warrington, Virginia.

Jim DeFelice is the author of many military-based thriller novels and is a frequent collaborator with Stephen Coonts, Larry Bond, and Richard Marcinko, among other
New York Times
bestselling authors. His solo novels include
Leopards Kill, Threat Level Black, Coyote Bird, War Breaker,
and
Brother’s Keeper.
He lives in New York.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the authors’ imaginations or are used fictitiously.