foreign lands. A condom-like device pinched on his penis, a motorman’s friend that would let him urinate into a tube. Some thin wires touched his skin. Electrodes for heart and pulse monitors.
For a few moments on first awakening, he had thought terrorists might have snatched him, which would have meant some pretty uncomfortable times ahead. As he lay there on the soft mattress without moving, he could hear muffled voices from a nearby compartment: English. Kyle concluded that he was a prisoner of the United States government. They weren’t going to kill him, so there was nothing else he could do at present. There was an almost inaudible click, and another dose of the drug flowed through the IV and into his veins. He controlled his breathing and let it tug him back to sleep.
“This guy is a damned ghost,” said FBI Special Agent David Hunt, the man who had watched Swanson through his binoculars back in Paris. He removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes. DHS Agent Carolyn Walker was seated across from him in the Gulfstream, studying some papers on the table between them. More than four hours had passed since they had grabbed the assassin, and there was still nothing in the way of a solid identification.
The man who was drugged and strapped down in the rear cabin had carried no credit cards in his old black wallet, just some five hundred dollars in cash and an Arizona driver’s license that was a phony. There was no Social Security number. Empty pockets. They had photographed the face, full on and both profiles, digitally enhanced it, and transmitted it to Washington along with the fingerprints to be run through the government’s entire computer base. So far, the computers were throwing up blanks. Nothing.
Walker spread out the digital photographs that had been taken of the suspect while he slept. “His body gives us the only real information we have. No tattoos or other identifying marks, but those scars are from bullet holes, knife wounds, and medical operations. Battle wounds.”
“Which means military.” Hunt started pacing. “Okay. Active or ex? A merc? Damn, Carolyn, we don’t even know if he’s American.”
She chewed a fingernail. “My gut feeling is that he’s one of ours, because nobody has the ability to scrub an identity from U.S. databases so thoroughly without help from the inside, and that presents the real problem. We have pictures of him shooting Saladin in the head with a pistol, which indicates he also was the one who fired the kill shot with the rifle. He assassinated the man, and that is not sanctioned by our country. That’s why we are hauling his ass back home. That’s where the answer is.”
“Doesn’t make sense,” Hunt said. “Even if he was on the inside, we should have known about him snooping around in Paris. He is as sterile as they come. That’s no accident.”
ANOTHER GOVERNMENT GULFSTREAM WAS also streaking back to Washington that evening, and its only passengers were Captain Sybelle Summers and Lieutenant Commander Benton Freedman. Both were worried. Swanson had not turned up at the designated rally point, and according to protocol, they abandoned the plan after waiting fifteen minutes.
They saw the smoke plume and drove toward it, viewing the destruction of the house with a fear that Kyle might have been buried inside. The debris was mostly confined inside the grounds, as the building had been brought straight down, one floor pancaking upon another, but damage was visible on surrounding buildings, too. Windows were shattered, and bricks littered the sidewalks.
Sybelle had hopped out of the car and moved to the Peugeot, then dropped into the open manhole. No one in the gathering crowd had paid her any attention because the main attraction was across the street. She walked a hundred meters in each direction down the tunnel. No Kyle.
Their orders were to bail out if the mission was compromised, rather than risk getting caught on foreign soil, which would only make things worse. They hated to obey, but they had no idea where Swanson was or what had happened to him.
The Lizard took them to a military airport, where their Gulfstream was being readied. Once they had taken off, he filed a brief report in code to General Middleton in Washington. There was an acknowledgment that the message had been received, but there was no other reply.
All they could do now was get back home as fast as possible.
18
MARYLAND
AN AMBULANCE WAS WAITING at Andrews Air Force Base when the FBI Gulfstream landed and taxied over to a distant hangar. The unconscious patient was transferred to the vehicle, and it drove away at a normal speed, inconspicuous in the morning traffic around Washington. Special Agents Hunt and Walker followed in a black SUV.
The ambulance stayed on the Beltway, then broke away onto less busy highways and finally onto the streets of a town and an even narrower road that led to a Coast Guard station on a rocky promontory that jutted out into the Atlantic Ocean. A storm front was moving in, and rain drummed heavily on the roof of the SUV. Dave Hunt had the wipers on high but still had to lean forward as he drove slowly along a narrow road that was bordered by a mosaic of waist-high walls of rocks.
Both vehicles pulled into the parking area of a weathered old building that was two stories tall, its bare concrete walls dingy from the gravel, grit, and saltwater that had scoured it for half a century. The masts and aerials mounted on the roof were pegged tight on the surrounding rock but strained against the tension of the support wires as the wind whistled around the big masts. The building had been abandoned by the Coast Guard in the 1960s for improved quarters nearby and was now a safe house shared by several government agencies.
Hunt and Walker parked and hurried through the rain into the house, where a team of CIA agents was taking charge of the sleeping man delivered by the medics.
“What do you think, Carolyn? Should we go wake him up and have a talk?”
Agent Walker shook her head. “Not yet. We’re exhausted and need some rest. Let him be for now so he can wake up in there and wonder what has happened to his little life.” She gave instructions to one of the other agents. “Turn off the air-conditioning and switch on the heater. Have the urine analyzed. In three hours, hit him with the lights and the a/c again, only put it two degrees lower. Alternate that about every hour, and then start the noise about two o’clock, off and on. Give him water only during a dark phase. We want him disoriented, hungry, and thirsty.” She stretched. “He can sit there and stew while we get some sleep upstairs and come back in, fresh as daisies, and hammer him. By then, the identification will probably have popped out of the computers, and that will make our job a lot easier.”
ST. PETERSBURG, FLORIDA
That afternoon, Juba attended a baseball game between the Tampa Bay Rays and the Toronto Blue Jays at Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, Florida. The weather was hot, but a breeze from the Gulf of Mexico kept it from being scorching and it was easy to understand why retirees flocked to the place after spending their lives in cold climates. It never snowed in St. Pete, and the locals called the city “God’s waiting room.”
Despite the kind weather, the stadium was an old domed arena that was home to a poor team, and the relatively few fans attending that day’s game were mostly older men and women. Most of the seats were empty. Thinking tactically, Juba decided this was not the kind of crowd, nor a suitable place, that would gain the attention he wanted with the attack. In fact, Tropicana would be a waste of time and energy. Don’t kill the wrong people.
That evening, he flew out of Florida, and as he crossed the Great Plains Juba’s thoughts again turned to Swanson, who was supposed to be dead and buried at Arlington. Juba had been in the military long enough to realize that the entire burial, posthumous Medal of Honor and all, could have been just a charade, a staged black operation event. So, Swanson was actually alive and totally undercover. Was there a possibility that Juba might find a bonus in this situation by having another chance to prove who was superior? After all, Swanson had tarnished the reputation of Color Sergeant Osmand, back in the day. Juba would like to serve a dish of cold revenge to the man.
