Thin Line (35 page)

"How long ago was that?"

"Sixteen months."

When it came to the FBI, I had no contacts other than my new friend Joe Dunne, and I wasn't going to call him for information on Vogel. They hated the
power given to the SIS in the wake of 9/11. Outside of SIS and the CIA, I had to rely on Brandon for intelligence. And it appeared that was the case once
again.

"OK, Brandon. Keep digging on him. Find out what his parents did. What his siblings do. If he remarried. Who his last boss was."

"Yeah, yeah. I got it, Jack."

"Any luck on that trace yet?"

"Looks like it dead ends in Northern Virginia."

"Where?"

"I've got three locations."

"Gonna make me guess?"

"Yeah. No. Sorry. Was looking at something else." He muttered something I couldn't comprehend. "OK, forget that. These are the locations. Remember that
server on Capitol Hill?"

"You're kidding."

"Nope. That's location numero uno. Next up is the walled fortress we call CIA located in beautiful, and heavily bugged, Langley, Virginia."

"And three?"

"Quantico."

"Shit."

"You can say that again."

"What are the chances this call is bouncing between all three places?"

"I don't like dealing in chances, man. When I get the spaghetti tangle figured out, you'll be the first to know."

"We definitely need more about Vogel's time in the FBI. Focus on cases he worked and people he brought down. And detail his movements from the past sixteen
months."

"I'm on it."

"All right, sounds good. I'm making my way south. Might come by there this evening."

"Yeah, get down here and collect Bear. He's getting restless, man. And I ain't got enough food in this house for him."

I pictured the big man limping around the house, raiding the fridge, feeling like he wasn't doing anything to help. It would be driving him crazy.

"OK. I'll call in a few hours." I pulled the phone away, then stopped myself from shutting it. "Brandon, you still there?"

"What's up, boss?"

"See what you can find on a Special Agent Dunne, maybe out of the D.C. office. All the same stuff you're looking for with Vogel."

"He's got some connection with that detective, right?"

"Yeah."

If he even existed.

AN HOUR INTO the drive, I rolled down the front windows. I'd never been able to just have one open. Wreaks havoc on my ears. Something about the pressure
makes me dizzy. The cold air, laden with gas fumes, acted like a jolt of mainlined caffeine, only with a pungent aftertaste. It cleared my head, and I
began the process of sorting everything that had happened since we took Brett at the back of that new development.

The waters were muddied. More so than ever.

Why had an ex-SEAL, ex-FBI Special Agent, been hiding across the street from the skeletal remains of the brownstone? Who fled when he saw me. Could've
stayed holed up in a room. Instead, he attempted to take me out. There was no doubt in my mind that Vogel knew my identity. Otherwise, he'd have let me
walk and gone on to live another day.

That meant he'd had a standing order to kill me, or had received an order from whoever was on the other end of the line. This added some validity to the
Old Man's claims that I was now the target.

Presumably, if I had carried on down the sidewalk, he would have radioed in my position and either followed me or another team would have picked me up. The
fact that no one else showed up in the beginning, to my knowledge at least, meant there'd been no other team nearby. Or Vogel had broken protocol and
failed to notify his local team. Of course, it could also have been perfect timing on my part. Maybe they'd been running up the other stairwell, or stuck
in the elevator.

What he'd failed to do and where they were didn't matter anymore. Vogel died. No one had come to his rescue.

A car horn blast snapped me back to the moment. I'd drifted halfway into another lane without realizing it and had come close to taking away an elderly
woman's front fender. I figured it was a good time to get off the road for a bit. At the next opportunity, I exited, hung a right, and drove until I found
a place where I could buy a cheap disposable cell. Ten minutes later, with the phone connected to the cigarette lighter so I could keep the device powered
on, I called Frank.

As expected, he didn't answer. I left a message informing him my next call would be in fifteen minutes.

Instead of jumping back on the interstate, I continued driving further into a residential area. An empty parking lot at the community park looked like an
inviting place to conduct matters of espionage, so I turned into the gravel lot and backed into a space. Crushed rock gave way beneath the weight of the
vehicle with the sounds of small waves breaking.

Seated in the vehicle, facing the road, my stomach tightened with every car that passed. None turned in. They all kept going, on their way home, back to
work, to get the kids from school.

Things I didn't understand.

Fifteen minutes had passed. I dialed Frank's number again. This time he answered.

"What do you want, Noble?"

"Noble? What happened to Jack? Two of us no longer friends?"

"Friends don't try to kill each other over a shared target. They don't kill each other's associates either. C'mon, Jack, those guys left Bear alive."

"They left him to die. We left your guys missing a fingertip and with holes in their knees. Someone else did them."

He responded with silence. For a moment I thought he might have disconnected the line. A cough let me know he hadn't.

"Look, Frank, we did what we did to get answers. Plain and simple. No different than some of the things you and I did together."

"Why, though, Jack? You had an assignment, an order. A goddamn executive order and you didn't follow through. Christ, you went so far as to help the guy.
And you went rogue on me. And being the one who issued the assignment to you, it falls upon my shoulders to clean this whole mess up. That meant taking
Brett in myself. I should've had a bullet put in his brain the moment they found him hiding in a field a mile from that diner. Bear's, too. But, no, I
figured if you had a reason to pause, maybe I should as well. So I wanted to question him."

That explained why Frank had taken Brett to SIS, but not Capitol Hill. Had the man done enough to convince Frank the way he had me?

"So we chatted, a bit. He said little. Wouldn't mention names, anything like that. It was the setting, I'm sure of it. You know how it is in the bowels of
that building. But by that point I decided I didn't need to hear anymore of his BS. We were going to take him out, finish the job, and I was going to let
you decide whether you and your overgrown friend lived or died."

"The sniper in the field, he was there for Brett."

"Yeah." Frank paused. It sounded like he took a drink. "Anyway, I wanted it to be a little dramatic, and it was. Things got out of hand. The plan was to
turn him over, believe it or not. Create some plausible deniability on my part, if need be. Then, after I'd left, boom, down goes Taylor. We're all
national heroes." He paused, and then added, "I didn't plan on us trading shots like that. Anyway, where is he now?"

I said nothing.

"Doesn't matter. The job was called off."

I didn't bother to feign surprise. Nor did I mention the second party. "Where's that leave us?"

"I don't know, Jack. I honestly don't. At the moment, I can't imagine the two of us working together again. Word'll get out what happened. It always does,
and you know that. Chances are, you're going to be blackballed in the community. Probably need to watch your back for a long while."

I debated telling him about my experience in the building across from the brownstone. That was the thing about Frank; it didn't matter if we were at odds
with one another. Despite his ruthless approach to life, the guy had something about him that I trusted. That created a problem. I put it at a thirty
percent chance he was in on the attempt at the brownstone. If anyone out there figured I'd return to the scene, it'd be Frank. Maybe he didn't plan the
hit, but he could've given input.

So I had to keep the information to myself. For now.

Frank continued. "If I hear anything, specific or otherwise, I'll let you know, Jack."

He was feeling remorse over the situation too. Understandable, considering the things the two of us had been through together as partners in the SIS. I
hadn't gone out to that development with plans on shooting him. Only if he left me with no choice. Had it really come to that?

"Appreciate that, Frank." The words were sincere. I meant it. And at the same time, my gaze darted left and right on the lookout for someone Frank might've
sent. "One more thing."

"What?"

"Who do you know at the Cannon House Office Building?"

I expected he would deny knowing anyone there. Instead, he laughed.

"You serious? Christ, Jack, I deal with about three dozen people there. I spend a good amount of time there each week these days, meeting with those
political dicks. That's management for you." He paused, then added, "Why?"

"Got a source that puts you there same day, an hour or so after you acquired Brett."

"Who?"

I said nothing.

"Doubt it was who I went to see, otherwise you wouldn't be asking what I was doing there. Tell me who it was."

I still said nothing.

"That meeting was classified and has nothing to do with you. In light of what had happened that day, I didn't want to go, but had no choice in the matter.
Can we leave it at that?"

We couldn't, but I agreed anyway, and we hung up. It'd help if I could nail down who he'd gone to speak with. Instinct told me all of this would come to a
screeching halt if I managed that. Logic told me instinct had a fatal flaw.

A car finally pulled into the lot, continued past me, and parked at the other end. I watched, waited. A woman, probably in her late thirties, stepped out.
Her foot sank in the gravel. She opened the back door and a young boy and girl both climbed down. The girl waited by the woman. The boy sprinted across the
lot and climbed the split-rail wooden fence.

I found my way back to I-95, then detoured north of Philly on I-76 toward Harrisburg. The path to Brandon's house was different from this direction. Here,
the roads were clear, most of the snow having melted. Until I got to Brandon's street.

But I didn't notice the snow and ice and slush, or the car sliding and veering to the right and nearly coming to rest in a snowbank.

I was too busy focusing on the plume of smoke rising from within the woods.

THE SMOKE WAS thick and gray and rapidly overtaking the blue sky. Though some distance away, I had a sudden acrid taste in my mouth, and a strong, pungent
odor filled the car.

A map formed in my head. My location. The road. Brandon's house. And that was roughly the fire's position.

I fought back the instinct to race forward in the car. This was no coincidence. If I was right, and that was Brandon's house, someone had set the fire
deliberately. Pulling the car to the side of the road, I called Bear. There was no answer. I tried Brandon next. No answer.

I exited the vehicle and raced through the woods. The snow was deep, affecting my speed. The odor grew stronger. Though I couldn't see the smoke, I could
taste it. My eyes stung, and my throat tightened. Eventually, the view grew hazy. By the time I reached the clearing surrounding Brandon's home, it was
like I was standing in the middle of a storm cloud.

My breaths were short and wheezy now. Oxygen was hard to come by; the raging fire was consuming it faster than I could. The heat two hundred feet away from
the blaze was intense. The roar of the fire and the crackling of wood consumed by flame drowned out all other sounds.

I pulled my shirt over my nose. I had no idea if it would help, but it produced a feeling of calmness. And that was how I would survive the situation.

The adrenaline coursing through me began to wane, a byproduct of reality setting in. Staring at the rising flames, I felt the first pangs of doubt that I'd
find Bear and Brandon alive. There was no way I could get into the house. Fire jutted from every window. The roof had dissolved. I expected the place to
collapse at any minute.

Hunched over, I scanned the front lot and saw no signs of movement. If the two of them had been in the kitchen, a rear escape would have been likely. So I
made my way along the edge of the clearing to the back of the house. As it came into view, there was an explosion, similar to what I'd experienced in Iraq
five years prior.

And like then, I dove to the ground, covered my head while debris rained down all around me. After a few seconds, I looked over and saw the shell of an oil
tank consumed with fire. Flames danced along the grass.

Past the spreading blaze and rising smoke, I saw two forms on the ground. Lifeless shapes. One large, one small.

I raced toward the bodies, shirt covering my mouth and nose, angling away from the growing fire. The wail of sirens approached. Could've been the ringing
in my ears matrixing into a sound I hoped to hear. I didn't veer from my path to the bodies.

The way they were lying before me, Bear face down, Brandon a few feet away from Bear's head, perpendicular to the big man and facing the trees, it looked
as though the big man had carried Brandon out of the house.

I knelt next to Bear. As I felt along his neck for a pulse, my eyes scanned the thick woods. After a short distance, it all looked the same: skeletal trees
intertwined into a tangled mess. Bear's heart beat fast and strong, but he was unconscious. I checked his body, found no wound. Moving to Brandon, I once
again scanned the area and saw no one.

The wailing in the distance was definitively sirens, about a mile away. Not close enough for their strobes to be visible.

I dropped to one knee next to Brandon. My head spun. Oxygen was in short supply. I had to be careful, or I'd be on the ground next to the two of them. If
there was another explosion, that could spell death for all three of us.