FIFTY-SIX
Jack parked almost a block away in a spot at the end of a side street where he would be able to keep an eye on the small, local federal building. There were a half dozen black SUVs parked on the street. Since there was underground parking, there were likely more he didn’t see. They all had government tags but no agency identification. He hoped those vehicles meant that Angela was still in there.
He hoped, too, that he could find a way to get her out. They would never in a million years understand her and what she had done for the country. That was irrelevant to them. Otherwise they wouldn’t have picked her up and treated her like they had just captured Osama Bin Laden. They had their own agenda.
They’d had her in there for fifteen hours. He knew she wouldn’t be sleeping in a cell. These people had no intention of letting her sleep. They would be hammering away at her in a relentless interrogation. He didn’t know for certain why they had her, but he had his suspicions.
If they got her back to Washington she would vanish in a maze of bureaucratic organizations and secret locations. She would be at the mercy of elements of intel agencies and a justice department that were above the law or accountability. Because he had worked with some of those people he knew that this was his best chance to intercede before they took her to Washington.
There weren’t many cars parked on the street at the late hour. That made Jack uncomfortable, because he stood out like a sore thumb.
He knew that if he was going to accomplish anything, he was going to have to come out of the shadows. He had stayed off the grid for years. Now, if he was going to help Angela, he had no choice but to surface.
Jack checked his watch. It was 3:00 a.m., so that made it 10:00 a.m. in Israel. He pressed the speed dial.
Once he had coded in, Dvora immediately picked up.
“Dvora, I’ve got a problem.”
“What is it?”
“Federal agents snatched Angela. I don’t know who or why.”
“I can at least help with the ‘why,’ ” Dvora said. “We’ve been monitoring some of the deep chatter. We believe they think she was involved with the terrorists.”
“What? That’s bullshit. She’s the one who stopped them!”
“What do you want me to do?”
Jack’s grip on the steering wheel tightened. “I’m going to have to contact some people who think I’m dead. They may decide to make sure I stay dead this time. I need you to initiate our fail-safe protocol should anything happen to me.”
“Are you sure it’s that serious?”
“I have at least a half dozen snipers on rooftops zeroed in on me as we speak.”
Dvora paused for a moment. “All right, I’m patching it in now.” There was another pause. “Okay, it’s set. If you fail to check in every twenty-four hours, the packet will be released to all the places listed. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. When do you want the clock to start ticking?”
Jack checked his watch again. “I don’t know if I’m going to be able to get the person I need to speak with to answer his phone in the middle of the night. Let’s make it eight a.m.”
“You got it. At eight a.m. where you are, three p.m. here, the clock starts. You will need to call in by eight a.m. every day until you abort, or the packet will automatically go out.”
“Understood. Thank you, Dvora.”
She paused a moment. “Is this subject worth the risk, Jack?”
“I couldn’t even begin to explain to you how important she is, except to say that because of her alone, New York City won’t vanish under a mushroom cloud.”
Dvora let out a low whistle. “Wow. Okay, Jack, we have your back. Do what you need to do to get her out of there.”
When she hung up, Jack dialed another number. There was no answer. He hadn’t expected there would be. He dialed the number every fifteen minutes throughout the night.
It was seven thirty in the morning before a man answered. “This had better be important.” He sounded more than a little grumpy.
“It is, Angus,” Jack said.
“Who is this?”
“Jack Raines.”
There was a long pause. “Jack Raines is dead.”
“I regret to inform you I’m still alive and kicking.”
“How the hell do I know this is really Jack Raines?”
“Because I called you on this number.”
“That doesn’t prove anything. You could have stolen it or taken it off a dead man—a dead Jack Raines.”
“You mean like you took that dead man’s little black book in Cincinnati? I was there, remember? I watched you take it out of his breast pocket after your man, Sam, if memory serves, garroted the guy.”
“Jack … good god … it really is you?”
“Afraid so, Angus.”
“We thought you were dead. Everyone thought you were dead.”
“I know. I wanted to be dead. Now, I need to be alive.”
“What’s this about?”
“This is about something I need you to do.”
“Well, I’m not sure I would still be able to—”
“Or else, among other things, I expose your agency’s existence and where it is in the black budget.”
“That could get you killed.”
“Maybe. I need something and you are going to help me.”
“I don’t think I can, Jack. We don’t have a working agreement with you anymore.”
“That’s a really shitty attitude, Angus, considering everything I’ve done for you.”
“And we appreciate it. You saved our asses any number of times. But I must advise you not to start getting troublesome. You could find yourself dead again, only this time it would be permanent. Then what you know gets buried with you.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, Angus. You see, if I don’t report in on a regular basis, everything I know about the entire alphabet soup of agencies, including yours, along with various operations that would cause an uproar if it were to be divulged, is going to be revealed in detail to Congress, the Senate, the Justice Department, the media, and posted online for everyone to see in black and white.”
There was a long silence.
“I think you should be careful making threats, Jack.”
“Here’s the deal, Angus. I’m not fucking around. Either you help me and do what I need done, or a whole lot of people are going to find a noose around their necks. Yours may be one of those necks.”
His resistance finally broke down a little. “All right, Jack, I’ll hear you out. I owe you that much. You’ve done a lot of good things for us. Maybe I can help. What do you need?”
Jack decided to let him pretend he was doing the right thing for the right reasons.
“I’m in a city called Milford Falls, New York. I’m parked outside the federal building there. The first thing I want is for the snipers on rooftops to point their weapons elsewhere.”
“Okay. I don’t know why they would be doing such a thing, but I’ll put an end to it. No problem. Is that it?”
“You heard about the atom bomb that was assembled here and just about to head into New York City?”
“Jesus Christ, Jack, that’s classified at the highest level. How the hell did you find out about that?”
“I’m the one who called it in. I’m the one who provided the coordinates so a team could get in there and stop it.”
“That was you?”
“That was me.”
Angus let out an audible sigh. “Okay, you have my attention. What’s your problem?”
“Black ops of some kind swooped in here and took my asset.”
There was a long pause before the man finally spoke. “Your asset? All I’m at liberty to say is that our people followed some terrorists in a sedan and a pickup on satellite imagery as they were speeding away from the scene. Before the team could stop them, the sedan crashed and four men were killed. They traced the pickup to a bar and picked a woman up later.”
Jack took a breath to calm himself. “Angus, my asset and I went in there and found the bomb. I provided the coordinates. As we were getting out of there four terrorist lookouts chased us. That’s why we were going fast. They crashed. We didn’t.”
“The car crashed, she didn’t. That doesn’t prove she isn’t one of the terrorists.”
“There is a cistern out there. You will find the bodies of two men down inside. One has a piece of rebar through his skull. The other one is missing his left eye. My asset did that to them to find out where the bomb was. She is the one who got that information and saved your ass, along with the lives of hundreds of thousands of people.”
“We don’t approve of torture.”
“Ah, okay, thanks for letting me know. The next time I’ll just let the nuke go off. Is that the way you want it, Angus?”
“Look Jack, this is a messy situation. Politicians are involved now.”
“I don’t see it as messy at all. My asset stopped a nuclear attack. She is on our side. I want her back. What’s messy about that?”
Angus let out a deep breath into the receiver. “Can I be completely honest with you?”
“I wish you would.”
“Those terrorist attacks all over the country have everyone screaming for blood. The Russian hack has us on the brink of war.”
“It wasn’t a Russian hack. It was the terrorists making everyone think it was the Russians as a diversion. Are all your people stupid enough to fall for that remote-server trick? Do I need to explain to you how it works?”
“No, of course not. But that’s what was leaked to the press. Perception is reality. It doesn’t matter if it’s true or not. Everyone wants blood. The government has to be seen as delivering it. With such fragmented attacks involving so many groups, no one knows where to strike back, so the Russians have become the target of everyone’s anger. We have our nukes on alert.”
“What the hell does that have to do with you people snatching my asset?”
“Those attacks caught every agency with their pants down. Most of those terrorists were on watch lists. You and I both know that watch lists are largely propaganda to satisfy the public. The lists don’t mean squat if the people on them weren’t stopped before they launch attacks. They weren’t. Everyone from the FBI to the NSA to Justice dropped the ball.”
“That’s because they’re all too busy spying on Americans instead of doing their job,” Jack said. “There are a lot of dedicated people there—or at least there used to be—”
“You’re right, Jack, but look, the agencies need to shift public anger from them by putting the blame on something other than radical Islamic terrorism. They needed a sacrificial lamb.
“That girl is a nobody. She’s just a bartender who grew up in a trailer park. It’s easy for them to paint her as a right-wing terrorist. That fits the narrative they want to push—a white female terrorist who isn’t Muslim. That fits their political agenda perfectly, so they’ve latched on to her with their claws and they aren’t going to let go.
“They caught her with a knife, an unregistered gun, no permit to carry it, and an unlicensed suppressor. That’s a federal offense in and of itself. That fits the picture they intend to paint. Once they get a confession out of her, that will redirect everyone’s anger to her, rather than Islam. If they hang her as a traitor and terrorist that will cement public opinion that it’s right-wing terrorism, and not Islamic radicalism that’s to blame. That’s what they want to push to the public.
“You know as well as I do, Jack, that sometimes sacrifices have to be made to keep the public happy. She’s the sacrifice. You need to let it go. The public perception is more important.”
Jack was so angry he could hardly speak. “So you want to fry the very person who saved the country from a nuclear attack? Are you fucking kidding me!”
“Calm down, Jack. It’s necessary for the good of—”
“That girl is my asset,” Jack said in a menacing voice. “Not yours, mine. What would your life be like right now had the nuke gone off in New York City?”
“Well, I—”
“I’m done fucking around, here, Angus. Here is what you’re going to do. You’re going to get the people who have her to release her. I don’t give a fuck which agency has her. You are going to get them to let her go. At the same time, you are going to bless her so that she is never touched again. Do you hear me?”
“You expect her to be blessed? I don’t know that I can—”
“You can and you will. You’re also going to have the feds issue her a license to carry any goddamn weapon she wants to. Got that? She uses those weapons to fight for us.”
“All I can do, Jack, is see if—”
“I don’t think you understand, Angus. I’m not asking, I’m telling. Your ass, and the asses of a lot of people above your pay grade, are on the line right here, right now, and my finger is on the trigger.
“There are a lot of brave, unsung heroes working in those agencies. You used to be one of them. But there are also a lot of fucking assholes shifting the priorities of those intel agencies to their political schemes. Those rotten apples don’t give a goddamn about the country, they only care about political ends. If I pull the trigger a lot of those agencies are going to come crashing down. Including yours. Maybe it’s time that happens—”
“All right, Jack, calm down, calm down. There is no reason to get crazy. I’ll see what I can do.”
“You’re not going to ‘see what you can do,’ Angus, you’re going to fucking do it, period. I’m not playing games here.
“I want Angela Constantine released. I want her name cleared. I want her blessed. I want her licensed to carry anything, including a goddamn rocket launcher if she wants one so that no one can pull this crap again. And I want everyone—everyone—to leave her the hell alone from now on. Make one misstep here, Angus, and it’s all over for you and a lot of other people. Is that clear?”
“Yes, all right, that’s clear. Let me go and get to work on this. But Jack, my people aren’t the ones who have her. I’m not running this show. I’ll need to drill down and find out exactly who is involved, what their game is, and then pull rank where I can and where I can’t, I’ll have to make some serious threats to get everyone marching to the same drum.”
Jack switched to a calm, quiet tone. “All right, Angus. You do that. I’m going to sit right here with eyes on that building. If one of those snipers pulls a trigger on me, or if anyone lays a finger on my asset, or they try to run to ground with her, or you don’t get her out of this exactly as I say—and right bloody now—you are going down, your agency is going down, and a whole lot of other people and agencies are going to find themselves in the middle of a wildfire they can’t control.
“I came back from the dead to save Angela Constantine. That should tell you how serious I am. I’ve never threatened you before, Angus—you know that—but I’m threatening you now. I think you know I’m not bluffing.”
“No, Jack, if there’s the one thing I know about you it’s that you don’t bluff. But please, this is going to take me some time to unwind.”
“Do you have the number of this phone?”
“Yes.”
“You go unwind it and then call me. I’m not going anywhere until this is resolved. And Angus, the longer I sit here, the itchier my trigger finger is going to get.”
He hung up without waiting for a response.
As Jack sat in his car, watching the federal building, he fumed as he thought about what they were putting Angela through. It was Saturday, so no one went into the federal building, but there were other businesses open. All day long people came and went. The snipers on top of the federal building had vanished shortly after Jack’s call with Angus ended.
But still, Angela didn’t come out. He knew how terrifying those people could be in an interrogation. He had to smile to himself. He guessed they couldn’t hold a candle to how terrifying Angela was at running an interrogation.
Angus called every few hours to assure Jack that he was working on it. Gradually, over the course of those calls, the man warmed up to Jack and little by little came to realize he wanted to be working on the same side as Jack—the right side. Jack thought it sounded like Angus gradually came to remember the kind of man he used to be, and why he had wanted his job.
Politics were a plague to dedicated agents like Angus, but he had to play the game. Over time it was corrosive. What was going on with Angela Constantine for political reasons was more than wrong and had nothing to do with legitimate national security. Throughout the day, Angus became ever more intolerant of it. Jack assumed that part of the reason was that Angus was encountering resistance, and Angus didn’t appreciate resistance. He expected his calls to be taken and his orders to be followed.
In early evening, Angus called again.
“I’m still working on it, Jack. Sit tight. I’m going to get this straightened out, I swear. I’m on your side, here.”
“Right now, I’m on Angela’s side. I want this ended.”
“I know, I know. Please understand, it’s more complicated than you realize. I’m dealing with a lot of hotheads who think that executing her as a traitor will make their careers. They’re still interrogating her. They want a quick conviction and execution.”
“She’s innocent. What could they possibly get out of her?”
“Honestly? They are pushing her to sign a confession. So far, they haven’t let her rest or have any water. So far, though, they’ve only gotten three words out of her.”
“What three words?”
“The only thing she’s said to them—the only thing—is ‘Go fuck yourself.’ That is one tough girl.”
Jack had to smile. “I know. Get her out of there, Angus.”
“I’ll call back as soon as I’ve cracked this nut and gotten everyone down on the carpet at my feet.”
After he hung up, Jack rubbed his eyes as he slid down in his seat a little and then folded his arms. He was tired, worried, angry, and frustrated. He knew that he had to rely on Angus’s sense of self-preservation.
Sometime in the late evening, Dvora called. She told him that they were picking up a lot of internal friction between agencies. She said that whatever was going on behind the scenes, it was big.
“They want a scapegoat,” he told her. “Now that they have a rope around her neck they don’t want to let go.”
“Let me know as soon as you get her out.”
Jack promised he would, and then went back to waiting.
A little after midnight, his phone rang again.
He answered it immediately.