"Just close the door, and sit down. I"m in no mood for the theatrics this morning."
"Theatrics," she yelled. "You want to see some real theatrics, keep doing what you"re doing. He gets wind of this and he"ll eat you for lunch."
Ross grinned. It appeared they had stepped in to the middle of a disagreement. The three secretaries were looking back and forth between the next vice president of the United States of America and the leggy blond deputy attorney general in the doorway. The leggy blond was Peggy Stealey. Ross knew her by reputation more than anything else. She was an intense lawyer who did not suffer fools lightly.
"Peggy, I"m serious," Stokes said raising his voice. "Get back in here. We need to finish discussing this."
"Marty, did I somehow give you the impression that I wasn"t taking this seriously? Because if I did, I would like to set the record straight. Where Mitch Rapp is concerned, I take things very seriously." She folded her arms across her chest. "If you want to continue down this path, which I am advising against, that"s your prerogative. Just go find someone else, because I"m telling you I want nothing to do with it."
"You"re the deputy a.s.sistant attorney general in charge of counterterrorism. This case is yours whether you like it or not."
"I never said I wouldn"t handle the case. I"m just not going to investigate Mitch Rapp, and that"s final."
Stealey turned to leave but after a step she noticed the group of men standing in the doorway and she stopped dead in her tracks. Before she could speak the attorney general yelled from the conference room, "Times are changing, Peggy. Rapp and his boss have made a lot of enemies in this town, and this mess he created isn"t going to win him any friends."
Ross looked at the blue-eyed woman standing before him. With her high cheekbones and strong jaw, she looked decidedly Scandinavian. Ross extended his hand. "Ms. Stealey."
Stealey hesitated for a second, unsure of which t.i.tle to use. "Mr. Vice President."
Ross clasped her right hand firmly, took a step closer and then placed his left hand on her shoulder. Smiling warmly he whispered, "He"s right, you know."
"Excuse me?" Stealey was taken slightly aback.
"Times, they are a-changing."
"That tends to happen around here every four years or so."
Ross studied her. She was nearing forty and her skin was still flawless. Ross leaned forward placing his mouth within inches of Stealey"s right ear. "Don"t worry about Mitch Rapp. You won"t recognize the CIA a year from now."
Stealey"s blue eyes narrowed into an a.n.a.lytical stare. "I don"t make mistakes very often, but when I do, I learn from them."
Ross nodded and smiled. He thought of something Stokes had once told him about Peggy Stealey. He had compared her to a thunderstorm. The antic.i.p.ation of her arrival was made up of equal amounts of fear and excitement over the awesome spectacle that was about to commence. If she blew through quickly it made for a rather enjoyable watching. But if she hovered or stalled, she could cause serious damage.
"And what am I supposed to glean from that comment?" Ross asked.
Stealey pulled Ross closer and in a soft voice said, "Don"t f.u.c.k with Mitch Rapp." And with that she was gone.
Ross stood motionless for a few seconds, his perma-smile plastered across his face. Slowly he turned and watched his entourage move out of the way for Stealey. Ross kept smiling even though, inside, his temper was raging. Stokes may have found the woman"s outspokenness refreshing, but Ross found it downright disrespectful.
Garret came forward and in a quiet voice asked, "What did she say?"
Ross, smiling like a ventriloquist"s dummy, said, "I"ll tell you later." He turned and walked into the conference room, finding the attorney general and two of his deputies sitting at the far end of a ma.s.sive conference table. Stokes and the other two men quickly got to their feet when they saw Ross.
"No...no," said Ross after they were well out of their chairs. "Don"t bother getting up." He gestured in a downward motion with his hands. "I just wanted to drop in and congratulate you on your victory. Presidentelect Alexander asked me to personally thank you for catching the man responsible for his wife"s death."
Attorney General Stokes looked awkwardly to his left and then his right. The three men all shared an uncomfortable look.
"The case might not be as strong as we were originally led to believe."
Ross swore rumors spread quicker in Washington, DC, than any other city in the world. There were so many reporters, so many political hacks on both sides of the aisle and far too many people who strived to prove their self-worth by acting like they were in the know. The news of the arrest sent shock waves through DC. The story was simply too big to keep a lid on. President Hayes made it clear that he wanted Langley to finally get some credit. The DOJ and FBI could ride the CIA"s coattails, but Langley deserved the lion"s share. People at the three agencies began leaking almost immediately. By the time the press conference took place on Monday morning half the town knew what was going on. It all sounded like a major victory for the CIA.
By mid-afternoon, though, the rumor mill began churning out a different story. It started as a whisper. There were some problems with the case. By evening the whisper had grown into a murmur. Suddenly, the three agencies were tight-lipped again, which was always a sign that something was wrong. Now this morning, the press was on the offensive, burning up the phones trying to get sources to confirm the worst-case scenario, which was that the CIA had grabbed the wrong guy. Garret, never one to miss an opportunity, went into full spin mode. He quickly drafted a battle plan, but cautioned Ross that they needed to go over to Justice and find out what was fact and what was fiction before they took a hard position.
So Ross found himself playing dumb and looking to an old colleague from the Senate for confirmation. "What"s wrong?"
"Ah..." Stokes sighed, "I"m not even sure I know where to begin."
"I"m a little miffed here, Martin. Last I heard, this thing was a slam dunk."
"That"s what I was told as well, but now some problems have popped up. Some potentially embarra.s.sing problems."
"Such as?"
"Such as...the man we have in custody might not be the right guy."
"Excuse me?" Ross"s eyes got wide and he thrust his chin out.
"The man in question is a Greek citizen. He has proclaimed his innocence since the moment he was handed over to the FBI on Sunday afternoon."
"This wouldn"t be the first time a criminal claimed he was innocent."
"Tell me about it. If it was just that I wouldn"t give it a second thought, but there"s more, or should I say less." Stokes shared an uncomfortable look with his two deputies. "For starters the Greek amba.s.sador is filing an official letter of protest that I"m told will be delivered to the State Department this afternoon."
"Why?"
"They are claiming that the CIA kidnapped this man."
"Who really cares?" Ross had thought this one through. "If this is the man who attacked the motorcade, the Greeks can file all the d.a.m.n letters of protest they want."
"The problem is, we"re not sure this is the right guy."
"What do you mean, you"re not sure?"
"We were told this is the guy. We were told there was hard evidence against him."
"And?"
"We"ve seen nothing."
"What do you mean, you"ve seen nothing?"
Stokes let out a frustrated sigh. "On Sunday afternoon we received a prisoner. The prisoner was wounded. He"d been shot four times. Once in each knee and once in each hand."
"Tortured?" Ross asked.
"I"d say so." Stokes looked to his deputies for a consensus and both men nodded.
"Has the man admitted to anything?"
"Not to us, but the CIA claims he confessed during transit from Cyprus back to the States."
"While he was being tortured," Ross said with his best, you"ve got to be kidding me look.
"That is what he"s claiming."
"The suspect?"
"Yes."
"s.h.i.t. Do you have a tape of the confession?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"We"ve been asking the CIA for over a day, and have gotten nowhere."
Ross c.o.c.ked his head to the side. "Excuse me?"
"I a.s.sume you"ve heard it was Rapp who found this guy."
"I have heard that rumor."
"Well, it"s true. The problem is no one knows where he is. This was his op. He was the one who found him."
"So what"s the problem?"
"We don"t have a single shred of evidence in our possession that can connect this guy to the crime. The prisoner has submitted to and pa.s.sed a lie detector test, and the Greek government has no record of him leaving Cyprus during the time of the attack. The suspect claims to have witnesses that will swear to the fact he was at home, on Cyprus the day of the attack."
Ross turned to look at Garret who in his typical unvarnished manner blurted out, "It sounds like Rapp grabbed the wrong guy."
The three men from the Justice Department all shared uncomfortable looks and then Stokes said, "No one is willing to say it yet, but that"s our worst fear."
"For Christ"s sake," Ross swore. "Have you told the president any of this?"
"I"m heading over to the White House for lunch. I"ll break it to him then."
"What about Josh?"
Stokes shook his head. "Maybe you could break the news to him."
Ross acted like he didn"t want to, but he did. It was an opportunity to prove to his running mate how well connected he was. "I"m having lunch with him today. I"ll tell him then. In the meantime, you"d better find Rapp. We don"t want our new administration to start out under the cloud of scandal."
Ross had intentionally used the first person plural possessive our. our. Stokes was a useful man in that he was both politically hungry and well liked. For months they"d been dangling the possibility of carrying him over into the next administration. They"d even hinted that there might be something bigger on his horizon. Stokes was a useful man in that he was both politically hungry and well liked. For months they"d been dangling the possibility of carrying him over into the next administration. They"d even hinted that there might be something bigger on his horizon.
35.
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND.
The warehouse was old. Built during the early days of WWII, it housed crucial supplies for Britain. It was all part of the Lend-Lease program that FDR had fought so hard for. Once the United States entered the war, the brick building doubled in size and became a beehive of activity until the n.a.z.is surrendered. After the war U.S. Steel moved in and the Marshall Plan kept things busy as the U.S. continued to ship supplies to help rebuild Western Europe. Business remained good for U.S. Steel until the mid-seventies, and then things really slowed down. The entire area fell into a long cycle of neglect and disrepair.
When Scott Coleman first looked at the place, there wasn"t a window that wasn"t broken, the roof leaked, and a series of bad tenants had come and gone without bothering to take their junk with them. For most people the smell of urine and years of neglect was hard to get past, but Coleman, who had traveled the world with the U.S. Navy, was used to such things. Where others saw nothing but neglect, Coleman saw an opportunity. As a friend in the Navy used to say, "They aren"t building oceanfront property anymore."
The place was out on Sparrows Point, just south of Baltimore on the Patapsco River. The SEAL Demolition and Salvage Corporation was Coleman"s brainchild. He"d seen too many of his fellow special forces operators leave the military and grow miserable living the civilian life. Coleman himself used to have nightmares that one day he"d be forced to take a job as a greeter at Wal-Mart. During long deployments, he began to flush out the idea for his own company. Going to work for someone else didn"t seem very appealing. Not after taking orders from others for so long. He asked himself one simple question. What skills had the navy taught him? There were many, but some of the more unique ones were diving, shooting, and blowing things up. Legally speaking, the first and last skills were more transferable than one might think. Ports and shipyards all over the world were in need of expert divers who knew how to get rid of debris.
SEAL Demolition and Salvage Corporation started with that express purpose, and their very first job ill.u.s.trated the need for such special talents. British Petroleum had a problem brewing that needed to be solved before it became an international issue. They had quietly contracted to have one of their abandoned oil rigs in the North Atlantic demolished. Somehow, word had leaked out, and Greenpeace was mobilizing a group of protesters to occupy the rig and prevent the demolition. They wanted BP to dismantle the rig girder by girder. To the executives at BP the decision was simple: demolish the rig at a cost of two hundred thousand dollars or dismantle it piece by piece at an estimated cost of five million.
BP scrambled to get its people together and blow the rig before Greenpeace could mobilize. BP"s best estimate was that they could have all of the charges in place and ready to go within forty-eight hours. They found out that a boat loaded with Greenpeace activists was docked in Reykjavik, Iceland, and set to leave port the following morning. The activists would arrive at the rig by noon the next day and storm the platform, creating an international media event that would bring public and political pressure on BP to dismantle it piece by piece. BP needed to slow the protesters down so that the company would have enough time to blow the rig.
The vice president of operations at BP was told to find a way to stop the activists from reaching the rig, and to make sure BP was insulated from any fallout. The executive made several calls to his contacts in America and Britain and found out that there was a new upstart company in Maryland that might be perfect for the job. The man called Coleman and explained the situation to him. He had twenty hours to get to Reykjavik and stop the boat from leaving the harbor. He didn"t care how it was done, just so long as no one was hurt.
Coleman had a rough idea of how much it would cost BP if they had to dismantle the rig, so he said he"d do the job for $300,000. The BP exec agreed, and Coleman, Stroble, and Hacket were on the next flight out of Dulles with their diving gear. They landed in Reykjavik just before sundown and were down at the pier by 11:00 that evening. Thanks to years of training by the United States Navy, they knew exactly what to do. During their tenure as SEALs, they had spent countless hours swimming around dirty harbors attaching explosives to hulls and disabling propellers and rudders.
The only difficult aspect of this specific mission was the water temperature. Even with their cold-water gear they could stay in the water for no more than fifteen minutes at a time. They took turns swimming over to the ship from a berth about two hundred feet away. Using an acetylene torch, they cut away at the U-joints where the drive shafts met the propellers. The boat would be able to maintain steerage and prop speed up to maybe ten knots for a limited period of time. Anything more than that and the laws of physics would take effect. The increased torque on the propellers would cause the sabotaged joints to snap and the boat would be dead in the water.
They sat at a cafe the next morning and wagered as to whether or not the ship would make it out of the harbor. Coleman didn"t feel guilty about the job. He"d been around the ocean his whole life and had a deep respect and healthy fear of it. Sending a couple thousand tons of steel to the ocean floor wouldn"t harm it a bit. As they drank coffee and waited for their 8:00 a.m. flight back to Washington, a tug moved in and towed the ship out to the main channel. The lines were released and the ship was under way. A white froth churned up behind the stern of the boat as it headed for the open sea. It had just cleared the seawall when the frothy wake subsided and the ship stalled, turning sideways in the middle of the channel. An hour later Coleman, Stroble, and Hacket were on their way back to Washington.
That little company that Coleman had started before the terrorist attacks of 9/11 now had annual revenues of over twenty-five million dollars a year, and had grown to over 20 full-time employees with another 100-plus independent contractors under employment. Those 100-plus employees were all former special forces operators, men who used to make $30,000 to $40,000 a year who were now making a quarter of a million dollars and up.
Coleman moved the growing company to new digs in a more business friendly area midway between DC and Baltimore, but hung on to the old warehouse. Through an off sh.o.r.e company he had an attorney approach the owner and acquire the building. The place was simply too private to part ways with, and in Coleman"s line of work privacy was paramount.
Two large cargo doors and one service door faced the street. There was no signage, only a street address painted in white above the service door and the faded remnants of the U.S. Steel logo. Inside the warehouse, the old cracked and chipped floor had been acid washed, patched, and painted. Along the left side was a mix of storage lockers, racks, and large metal tables. Lined up on the right side were two motorcycles and a car, all three under gray tarps, and a twenty-eight-foot Boston Whaler with two Merc 150 HP outboards. A black Chevy pickup and a big Ford Excursion were both backed in and parked in the middle. At the back of the building were the offices, bathroom, and workout area. A metal staircase led to the second floor. There were two offices and a conference room, all with large gla.s.s windows that looked out onto the floor.
Coleman was in the right corner office sitting behind a large gray metal desk. It was military surplus. St.u.r.dy, cheap, and functional. He was working on clearing his e-mails. He received on average a hundred per day, and they came at all hours. He had men in Iraq, Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Jordan, Qatar, Kuwait, and Indonesia, and those were only the places he could admit to. A beeping noise caused him to turn around. He ran a hand through his sandy blond hair and looked at the two twenty-eight-inch flat-screen monitors. The one on the left showed a man lying on a bed in a cement-walled room. The room was the building"s WWII bomb shelter that they had converted into a cell several years before. The man on the cot was the mystery Russian whom they had brought with them from Cyprus. The screen on the right was split into four separate pictures. One of the stairs leading down to the bomb shelter, the back door to the warehouse, the front door, and the fourth and final frame rotated between shots of the roof and the sides of the building.
Two cars were lined up in front of the main cargo door waiting to be let in. One was a silver Audi A8, and the other was a blue Toyota Land Cruiser. Coleman knew both vehicles, and he was expecting them. He turned back to his computer, grabbed the mouse with his right hand, and clicked on a security icon at the bottom of the screen. A menu popped up listing the building"s doors and their status. Coleman maneuvered the mouse"s arrow to the main cargo door and clicked on the Open tab. Coleman watched the vehicles roll in and then closed the big door. He pushed himself away from his desk and walked out onto the catwalk. Coleman put both hands on the top railing and watched Rapp climb out of the Audi and Dumond the Toyota.
"Irene wants you to call her," Coleman said to Rapp.
Rapp looked up at Coleman. "Yeah, I know. Everyone"s looking for me. I"m sure I"ll be threatened with arrest if I don"t turn myself in."
Coleman started down the stairs. "How much longer are you going to keep this up?"
"This afternoon maybe. Tomorrow morning at the latest."
"And why are you doing this again?" Coleman reached the bottom and turned left into a hallway instead of heading the other way to meet Rapp.
"You don"t want to know." Rapp followed Coleman, and Dumond followed Rapp.
"You"d better not push them so far that they actually end up trying to arrest you. I don"t need the FBI poking around here looking for you." Coleman entered a small break room with a table for four, a coffee machine, a microwave, and a refrigerator. Someone had hung a Marine Corps recruiting poster on the wall and written some not-so-flattering comments on the Semper Fi slogan. Coleman poured two cups of black coffee, handing one to Rapp and keeping the other for himself.
"Marcus, what can I get you?"