Carpathian Mountains, Romania
Billy Sievers waited for the artificial blizzard thrown up by the helicopter’s rotor-blades to dissipate before leaving the relative comfort of the converted shipping container. He let his AR15 hang from the sling draped over one shoulder and kept his hands buried in his pockets for warmth. As happy as he was to see the helicopter, with its cargo of food and sundry items to replenish their stores, he would have preferred it happen on somebody else’s shift.
He tried to be philosophical about it. The sooner the supplies were off-loaded and stowed, the sooner he could get out of the chilly night air, and back into the warmth of the ops shack where he could return to his Top Gear marathon.
As he trekked toward the now idle aircraft, the front door opened, and the passenger got out. Normally, that would have aroused Sievers’ suspicions. The guys from Air Services never got out of their birds, much less offered to help unload. But he had been told to expect a visitor, and this evidently was the guy.
Only it wasn’t a guy.
Although a heavy parka hid the passenger’s upper torso, the skin-tight thermal leggings below the hem left no doubt about the gender of the visitor. Sievers could see just enough to tell that the passenger was female, athletic and toned, but curvy in all the right places. His imagination took care of the rest.
He stood up a little straighter and slowed his pace to his best approximation of a saunter. “About damn time they sent us some entertainment,” he called out, flashing a lascivious grin.
The woman’s head turned in his direction, giving him a glimpse of the face beneath the fur-lined hood. He immediately noticed that the woman’s skin was the color of milk chocolate.
Sievers had zero problem with that.
Her dark eyes studied him for a moment, then she licked her full lips slowly and gave him a broad smile. “Oh, sugar, you have no idea.”
An electric tingle surged through his body. “I like the sound of that.”
She closed the remaining distance, stopping just a couple feet away, hands resting on hips that were cocked seductively to the side. “You got a name?”
“Billy...uh, Bill Sievers.”
“Well, Billy Boy, I’m actually here for a different kind of business, but maybe after I’ve taken care of that, I’ll show you my idea of a good time.”
Sievers definitely liked the sound of that. “So just what kind of business have you got here?”
The woman smiled again. “I’m here to see your ghost.”
Tamara Broderick savored the moment when Sievers realized that he had stepped in it. The look on the man’s face was almost worth the indignity of tolerating his lewd stares and heavy breathing.
Her declaration would probably be enough to cool his ardor, but behind her confident smile, she remained wary. EmergInt, the mercenary outfit—private security contractor, was the preferred euphemism, but Tam had no patience for political double-speak—that ran the site, employed only former spec-ops types, which meant that Sievers was not merely former military, tough and ruthless, but also very intelligent underneath his somewhat loutish exterior. If his hormones got the better of his good sense and he decided to try something, she would have to act quickly and decisively to end the threat.
Tam was no pushover. In her former role as a special agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, an undercover assignment working for a ruthless bio-engineering firm had culminated in a deadly confrontation in the Amazon rainforest. That had led to her current assignment, heading a special division of the Central Intelligence Agency, tasked with hunting down and destroying an international conspiracy known as the Dominion. Tam believed in leading from the front, so she trained hard and fought harder. Krav Maga, Jiu-Jitsu, Tae Kwon Do, and old-fashioned street brawling were only a few bullet points on her resumé, not to mention the many scrapes she had gotten into in the field. She probably had more combat experience than Sievers, but he was bigger and stronger. She hoped it wouldn’t come to a fight, but if it did, he wouldn’t be the first man to discover, to his chagrin, that she wasn’t defenseless.
Sievers stared at her for a moment, then adopted a more professional demeanor, albeit with more than a hint of underlying aggression. “I’ll need verification.”
Tam bit back a scathing retort. Funny how he was only now remembering to ask about that. The truth of the matter was that the mere fact of her presence was all the verification he needed, but strictly speaking, this was the procedure. She reached into the pocket of her parka and brought out a small square of pasteboard upon which the recognition code—a code that changed every twelve hours—was printed. She passed it over to Sievers, who inspected it with meticulous care, then took a similar card from his own pocket and compared the two.
He finally lowered the cards and with an almost disappointed sigh, gestured to the row of shipping containers behind him. “This way.”
The containers were arranged side by side with no gaps between them. At a glance, the only unusual thing about them was the mere fact that they were lined up in an alpine valley on the Transylvanian Plateau, hundreds of miles from the nearest port facility, but when Sievers guided her through a metal door set in the end of the nearest one, she saw that the exterior façade was just that—a façade. The shipping containers were actually modular suites, equipped with electricity and running water. Originally designed for use by the military, the temporary modules could be easily secured and transported almost anywhere in the world—either by truck or heavy-lift helicopter—making them ideal for forward operating bases, temporary housing for roughnecks working remote oil fields, or as was the case here, for operating an ultra-secret “black site.” This site was just one of nearly a hundred off-the-books, CIA-sanctioned, privately-operated detention facilities for “ghosts”—a catch-all term for suspected terrorists, enemy combatants, or anyone else deemed too dangerous to be allowed the due process of law.
The existence of black site facilities was one of the worst kept secrets in the intelligence community, but as was often the case, the leaked rumors were part of a disinformation campaign designed to mask the full extent of the program. In her role as a CIA staff operations officer, Tam was a member of that select group of people who did know the truth, and while she had serious reservations about the legality, not to mention morality, of the program, this was one instance where the system would work to her advantage.
Sievers led her into what looked like a police station interview room. The décor was strictly utilitarian—a table, a few flimsy looking folding chairs. Tam did not fail to notice a large dark stain on the plywood floor in one corner of the room.
Water damage, and not from a leaky roof.
“Wait here.” Sievers turned back through the door, leaving her alone in the room.
She drew back her hood and did a slow turn, noting the location of the surveillance cameras, then took a seat at the table. Sievers returned a few minutes later, accompanied by two other men. One of them appeared to have been cast from the same mold as Sievers: shaved head, muscle bound, with a holstered pistol on his belt. His bleary-eyed and slightly irritated expression led Tam to believe that Sievers had woken him up to provide additional security for the prisoner escort.
The other man was the prisoner himself, tall and thin almost to the point of gauntness, with an unruly mop of brown hair and an equally wild beard. His coveralls, which might once have been bright orange but were so grimy and threadbare that it was difficult to say what color they were, seemed to hang off his spare frame. Yet, despite the appearance of frailty, the man moved with a languid self-assurance that belied his frail state. When he saw Tam, he hesitated for a fraction of a second, eyebrows raised in a look of recognition. Sievers steered the prisoner into a chair on the opposite side of the table, and then stood directly behind him, poised to spring into action at the first sign of trouble.
Tam raised her eyes to meet the big man’s stare. “Can you give us some space?”
Sievers returned a perturbed frown but moved out from behind the table, taking a station near the door with the other mercenary. Although she knew there were probably microphones hidden in the room, she nevertheless waited until Sievers was out of earshot to address the prisoner.
“Been a while.”
Gavin Stone returned a wry smile. “Imagine my surprise at seeing you here.”
“I wish I could say the same thing.” She leaned forward and held up a pack of cigarettes. “You still smoke? I thought you might want these.”
“I never...” Stone’s look of confusion passed quickly, and he took an eager breath. “I never thought a pack of coffin nails would look so good.”
He reached out with both hands—Tam realized only now that his wrists were bound together with a plastic zip-tie—but Sievers rushed forward and snatched the pack from Tam’s grasp. He opened it, shook some of the cigarettes into his hand and then peered into the half-empty packet. When he found nothing amiss, he deposited everything on the tabletop in front of Stone, who had drawn his hands back, calmly folding them in his lap, and was regarding his captor with a bemused expression. As Sievers shuffled away, Stone turned his attention back to Tam.
“You didn’t come all this way to facilitate my bad habits.” He narrowed his eyes, as if by doing so, he might read her thoughts. “Last I heard, you were FBI.”
“I made a lateral career move. I’m with the Company now.”
Stone seemed genuinely surprised by this news and a little disappointed. “And given our prior relationship, they thought you might be able to convince me to cooperate.”
Tam shook her head. “Actually, I’m here about something else. I’d like to offer you a job.”
“A job? With the CIA?” Stone settled back in his chair. “This should be good.”
“I’m heading up a special operational task force called the Myrmidons.”
“That sounds impressive,” he replied, his tone indicating that he thought it was anything but.
She recalled now that, despite his extraordinary intelligence, Stone’s body of knowledge was surprisingly limited. “You always were terrible at Trivial Pursuit. The Myrmidons were legendary warriors who fought under Achilles during the Trojan War.”
“I suppose that makes you Achilles.” He smirked.
“Something like that, but my heels are stilettos. Feel free to take that as a double-entendre.” Her steely gaze told him she was not joking.
“And who are your Myrmidons at war with?”
“The Dominion.”
Stone’s manner became serious and just a little somber. “Ah, the white whale.”
“They’re real, Stone. No one doubts that anymore. You heard about what happened at Key West? Norfolk? That was the Dominion’s doing.”
He pondered this for a moment. “And what is it you think that I could do for you?”
Tam fixed him with a stern look. “Are we seriously going to have this conversation? I’m offering you a chance to do something meaningful with that brilliant mind God saw fit to give you. And a ticket out of this place. Unless you’re afraid you’ll get homesick if you leave.”
“Norfolk was... what, over a year ago? It’s so hard to keep track of time in here. I’m guessing this task force of yours has been around for a little while. Obviously I wasn’t your first round draft pick. What’s changed?”
Tam couldn’t help but smile. This was Stone’s gift, the ability to look beneath the surface. “There were some personnel issues. I had to let some people go.”
Stone nodded as if he understood, and Tam was grateful that he didn’t ask her to elaborate. “Good help is hard to find. But you didn’t answer my question. What’s changed?”
“Yesterday, a bus full of university students was hijacked in Juarez, Mexico. They were taken out into the boonies and killed...executed. Except for one student who escaped. He managed to make it across the Rio Grande where he was picked up by Border Patrol. Once they realized that, A—he wasn’t a run-of-the-mill illegal, and B—he was bleeding out, they were able to put together what had happened.”
“Drug cartels?”
“That’s what the survivor thought at first, but there was a discrepancy.”
“A discrepancy?”
“The survivor overheard one of the killers making a phone call. In English. He only remembered a few words, but it was enough for the NSA to isolate the call.” She gave Stone a sidelong glance. “You understand the intricacies of electronic eavesdropping, right?”
A faint smile. “I’m vaguely familiar.”
“The call was sent from a cloned cell phone, so there’s no way to know who was directly responsible for the killings, but the recipient was a suspected Dominion intermediary. That’s when I was called in.”
“The Dominion is working with Mexican drug cartels? Strange bedfellows.”
“There may not be a direct relationship. The Dominion may only be interested in causing instability. The fallout has already started. Mexico has been a powder keg for years. There are widespread protests and a lot of comms traffic among revolutionary groups. President Mendoza’s reaction has been....” She groped for a word.
“Half-assed?”
She frowned. “I’m trying to cut back on the vulgar language, but I suppose it’s as good a word as any.”
Stone considered this for a moment. “You don’t think this has anything to do with drug cartels.”
Tam nodded, once again impressed by his swift insight. “The call we intercepted included a message. ‘The time for destiny has come.’”
“Destiny?”
“The caller was very specific about that. Our best guess is that it’s the code name for a new Dominion operation, but that’s all we have to go on right now. That and one other thing. The caller said it was imperative to retrieve ‘the Patton item from Vienna.’”
“And do you know what that is?”
“My chief researcher, Avery Halsey, has an idea about that, but...” She rolled her eyes in the direction of the mercenaries. “I’ll give you the full briefing later. If you’re in, that is.”
Stone grinned. “Well, it’s an offer I can’t very well refuse.” He turned his gaze to the pair at the door. “Did you hear that, gents? I’ve got my walking papers.”
Sievers looked at his partner. “You know anything about that?”
The other man shrugged. “First I’ve heard of it.”
Sievers addressed Tam. “I guess you don’t know how this works, ma’am. We’ve got a contract. We don’t get paid until he gives up...information. Which means he’s not going anywhere until we get it. Period.”
Tam affected an indignant expression, although this wrinkle was not entirely unexpected. In order to maintain the illusion of deniability, the CIA had very little actual involvement with the black sites. In strictly legal terms, extraordinary rendition—the practice of arresting a suspect without cause, denying them their day in court, and spiriting them away to a secret prison on foreign soil—was not much different than kidnapping. Since the actual management of the black sites, from housing the ghost prisoners to conducting “enhanced interrogations”—another euphemism which turned Tam’s stomach—was controlled by EmergInt, any CIA officials called to testify before congressional committees could claim, without perjuring themselves, that the Agency had no knowledge of secret detention facilities or what went on in them. Unfortunately, that also meant that she had no real authority to effect Stone’s release. Even though her boss, the Deputy Director of the National Clandestine Service—for all intents and purposes, the number two guy at the Company—had given the go ahead to recruit Stone, that would mean little to these mercenaries.
There was only one way Stone was going to leave his prison.
She turned back to Stone. “Are you going to tell the nice men what they want to know?”
Stone raised his bound hands in a helpless gesture. “Sorry, Tam. It’s the principle of the thing. But I do appreciate you thinking of me. And the cancer sticks, too.”
He retrieved the pack from the tabletop and began sliding the loose cigarettes back inside, one at a time as if it was some kind of three-dimensional puzzle he was intent on solving. “Don’t suppose you brought matches?”
Tam took a disposable lighter from the pocket of her parka. She held it up for Sievers to inspect, but the mercenary merely waved indifferently, so she slid it across the table to him. He picked it up, brought one of the cigarettes to his mouth, and then holding the lighter awkwardly in both hands, lit up and blew out a large cloud of smoke. “Stop in again if you’re ever in the neighborhood.”
Tam studied his face for some hint of compromise. It wasn’t there. She shook her head sadly. “You and your principles. Fine. You’re on your own.”
He gave a rueful smile. “I always have been.”
She pushed away from the table, turned, and headed for the door without another word. Sievers opened it for her and followed her out into the darkness.
“Ex-boyfriend?”
“Just an old family friend,” Tam replied. It was more than she wanted to reveal to the mercenary, but now that the plan was in motion, she had to be very careful about what she did and did not say. “I thought I could convince him to talk, but...” She shrugged.
“You should stick around,” Sievers said. “Maybe he’ll come to his senses.”
“You’d love that,” she muttered, then in a more conversational tone, added, “That’s not likely to happen. He can be very stubborn, as I’m sure you’ve discovered. And I have other places I need to be.”