All seemed clear as far as she could see. She reached down and gave Hannah a hand up.
They would follow the river line until they were able to skirt the swampy area that had hampered her progress on the trip in.
Rennie thought they could make better time this way. They set out at a good pace, moving through the fog.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN.
CT3 Command Center Quantico, Virginia Brian Ryder drove out of the security checkpoint at the Quantico Marine Base with a wave to the guards and headed toward I-95. He was exhausted. He had pulled night duty for five days and counting and dreaded his morning drive home to Alexandria. The engine of his brand-new Corvette was itching to unwind, but it was a little after seven a.m. and traffic had already been crawling for an hour. He usually went into his office on the FBI Academy campus early and left late. A perfect time to drive with the lights of the interstate illuminating the dark road that cut through darker fields. Tearing north toward the glow of the city, keeping an eye out for troopers, he could never keep the smirk off his face. It felt too good. But since CT3 had headed out to Central Asia, he had been coming to work in the evening to attend the final daily briefing before settling down for a long night manning communications in the command center. It was a grueling schedule.
But it had paid off. Ryder was at his post when the call they had been waiting for came in and he loved nothing more than being in the middle of the action. It had been four days since CT3"s GPS signal had gone dead, the blinking red light disappearing from the computer screen like a heartbeat flatlining. There had been a collective intake of breath in the command center and everyone knew it couldn"t be good news. And then the wait began.
Everyone suspected that something could have gone so awry that they were waiting in vain, that a call would never come.
Ryder had worked for years with the Hostage Rescue Team, as one of the many links between the team and the bra.s.s. But it was always reactive work, responding to crisis situations that could erupt at any time of day or night. He had jumped at the chance to continue his work with the new international team.
International counterterrorism was where it was all going to happen and he was glad the FBI was finally on board in a more proactive way. The CIA shouldn"t have all the fun. Ryder had been studying the subject for years, focusing on Islamic militant movements. This was where the real danger lay. No longer were nations the threat they once were. The U.S. was too powerful, the last big superpower, and no one was stupid enough to attack them openly. But the Islamists were another story. They had nothing to lose and didn"t care who got hurt in the process of furthering their agenda.
Ryder"s clearance for this a.s.signment had been raised, but it only went so far. Once, in an early meeting, he asked why they had chosen to go after Armin who seemed little more than a small-time crackpot. After all, there were other groups who were better organized and had more of a network. His question was ignored and Ryder was savvy enough to not bring it up again. He supposed they had their reasons and it wasn"t his job to question them. But he still knew more than the team. Keeping the team on a need-to-know basis might prove to have been their biggest mistake. The meeting of a few hours before, still fresh in his mind, only confirmed his suspicions.
Ryder had raised his hand the moment the call came in and the agent in charge of the mission, Will Jenkins, was at his side slipping on a headset before Vogel had even identified herself.
After the call, they had taken the long walk down the dim hallway to the a.s.sistant director"s office.
Tower Morgan, who at five-foot-nine never lived up to his mother"s hopes, was on the phone with his wife when Ryder and Jenkins walked in. The a.s.sistant director"s office, as usual, was suffused with the aroma of strong coffee. He motioned them to sit. They didn"t.
"What"s up?" he said, hanging up the phone and pinching the bridge of his nose, a gesture that indicated he was already stressed.
Jenkins took a deep breath and briefed him on the call from Tajikistan. When he concluded with the information about Hannah Marcus, Morgan pursed his lips and reached for his coffeepot.
"We fumbled this one."
Jenkins didn"t respond. He stood staring at a map of Central Asia on the wall, rubbing his hand over his face.
"Do we know how Vogel discovered the woman was alive?"
the director said.
"No." Jenkins looked at Ryder who confirmed with a shake of his head.
"The team should have been briefed that Marcus"s status was unknown and that they weren"t to concern themselves with her,"
Morgan said.
Jenkins nodded. Ryder could see that his boss was worried.
This was a big mistake and had already made the Bureau look like a bunch of amateurs.
"The likelihood that she was still alive was slim to none,"
Jenkins began, ready to make an argument for his decision.
Morgan waved him off. He had heard it all before.
"We"ll have to bring CIA in on this. With the Garrison angle.
We don"t know enough to go forward on our own."
Ryder could see Jenkins cringe at the thought. The CT3 a.s.signment was Jenkins"s baby and Ryder knew he felt like a fool having to call in the spies. Morgan picked up the phone without another word, waving Ryder and Jenkins out of his office.
Ryder braked as traffic suddenly slowed and for the first time since the call had come in he thought of the team. He didn"t know them well, hardly at all really. He had partic.i.p.ated in a few background briefings with the entire team a.s.sembled. And he would see them every once in a while on the Academy campus, heading out or coming in from training. But mostly he knew them from their files. His world was the realm of data, always one step removed from the real thing. He knew everything he needed to know about them to do his job and a lot about their personal lives that didn"t have any bearing on anything. And now they were dead. All but the woman. Ryder loved women, had faith in their abilities, but nevertheless firmly believed they had no place in combat. Yet Vogel had done something right. She was the only one still breathing.
With traffic finally moving, Ryder crossed the Fourteenth St. Bridge into the city instead of exiting into Alexandria. He was too pumped up from the events of the night to go home and go to bed. He felt like eating a greasy breakfast and knew the perfect place on Florida Avenue. Grits and sc.r.a.pple and fried apples always made him feel like he was sitting in his mother"s kitchen. After, he might take a little detour and let the "Vette stretch her legs. He knew the car was tacky. Not the usual choice for an African-American Yale grad who employed the diction of an evening news anchor, knowing his natural southern rhythms could put him in a box, one he would never allow himself to be trapped in. But sometimes the man had to satisfy the whims of the boy.
Martin Garrison sat in the small Shuroabad Cafe reading a week old copy of Le Monde and drinking a cup of desperately strong coffee. It matched his mood. Armin"s men had not arrived on time with their delivery and he was having second thoughts.
Something must have gone wrong. Armin was as anxious as Garrison to make the exchange.
Garrison had arrived in the Tajik capital, Dushanbe, two days earlier carrying the French pa.s.sport of a man named Claude Raffarin. He"d plucked the doc.u.ment off a dead Soviet spy he"d found garrotted in a fetid Paris alley years before. Garrison never knew the man"s real name, but he knew the quality of the doc.u.ment would not be questionedyou could count on the Russians for their thoroughness, especially when it came to espionage. Garrison had a box of such doc.u.ments in a small compartment at the back of a wardrobe in his home in McLean, Virginia, just a few miles from CIA headquarters. The doc.u.ments were his safety net, in case anything went wrong. And something had gone terribly wrong. Anyone who had been in as deep cover as Garrison knew there might come a time when he would need to get out. And he knew his employer would never find him, until he wanted to be found.
Garrison had taken a hired car to the little village of Shuroabad where he settled into a rented room. He had spent two days in the cafe waiting for Armin to send the promised information on his son.
Jonathan. A sensitive boy born of a sensitive woman.
Garrison"s wife had almost ruined his career with her trips in and out of psychiatric wards. But he"d loved her with an intensity he could never fully explain even to himself. She was his one point of weakness and when she died, finally, by her own hand, he promised himself never to come under the emotional sway of any human being again. But his son, so like her, seemed determined to bring him down. Jon had inherited his mother"s instability and her pa.s.sion for causes.
The cafe owner, a small grizzled man of about fifty, indicated to Garrison that he was closing up for the night. Garrison settled his tab and stepped into the street. It had rained most of the day, which had blessedly washed away some of the stench the neighborhood usually emitted.
Garrison decided to walk for a bit, taking the long way back to the boarding house. It was almost time for evening prayers and all the shops were closing for the night. He had never been drawn to religion or any form of organized philosophy. Except the CIA. As a young agent he had swallowed their message lock, stock and barrel. Time had tempered his enthusiasm. Once, Mormons had come to the door in their dark suits and name tags and bright white smiles and Jon seemed to swallow their entire dogma whole. For a few months he had gone twice a week to church and spoken of where he might be sent when he went on his mission. And then, just as fast, he was done with them. Their conservatism, well hidden under a mask of pseudotolerance, finally offended his democratic sensibilities. He was a good boy. Always siding with the underdog. That was the only way Garrison could explain this new fervor for Islamist causes. That and the touch of his mother"s madness.
Garrison walked more quickly than he intended and found himself at the back door of his lodging house. Old habits made him prefer this less direct entrance. One could never be too careful. He hoped the next day would offer up Armin"s men and the doc.u.ment that might save his son.
Hannah could barely lift her legs after walking all day with only short breaks. They had picked their way through the fog-blanketed woods all morning. The sun, emerging for a brief and blessed moment midday, had quickly given way to rain. The rain was welcome, washing away days of acc.u.mulated grime, but after the sun set, a chill sank into Hannah"s bones. Her clothes were no longer dripping, but were damp, like a clammy second skin. She still wore Rennie"s shirt, which left Rennie with just her tank top.
Hannah wondered if she was cold too.
It had been nearly twenty-four hours since they had seen any sign of Armin"s men and Hannah began to hope that they might have gotten away. Living for so long in the little stable, she"d had plenty of time to consider what it meant to be free.
Not the grand idea Americans spoke of, a concept bundled with rights and protections. Instead it was the simple idea of physical autonomy. The freedom to walk out your front door and take yourself wherever you pleased.
Being detained by force had been a horror. Penned in, she"d shrunk into herself and for the first time realized that before she was taken, moving freely through the world, her notion of herself as a physical being extended beyond the boundaries of her own skin. She was her own familiar network of streets, the corner grocery, the park. How far did it extend, she wondered.
The feeling that all is you. If you are safe, perhaps it is infinite.
And there is a comfort in that. Once she was taken, bolted in and confined by four walls that seemed to get closer and closer as the days wore on, she knew that all she was, in her entirety, was her own flesh and blood and bone and nothing beyond and she had never felt more alone. It was like waking up and realizing you have been buried alive or that you"re the last person on the face of the earth. But with time the horror had pa.s.sed and with it the feeling that she had touched madness.
Here in the woods, she felt herself begin to expand once again, beginning that communion with her surroundings that she had always taken for granted. Her instinct was to fight against it, to struggle against her pa.s.sage back into the world. It made her feel naked and raw.
"Let"s stop for a bit." She heard Rennie speak, her voice seemed to be far away, and Hannah realized that her pace had slowed to a shuffle, her legs no longer cooperating.
"Beef stew tonight," Rennie said, ripping open the package.
"Do you mind if we share?"
They must be low on food.
They ate together in silence, sitting against a tree, feeling the dampness of the ground seep into their pants and not caring because it felt so good just to rest. They sat shoulder to shoulder against the tree and Hannah thought of the morning, so long ago it seemed now, when she lay against Rennie, feeling her warmth.
How long had it been since she felt the touch of another person?
It had been divine, like slipping into a warm, enveloping bath.
She had enjoyed it for only the briefest moment before sleep 0.
had taken her. This was unusual for her, physical closeness with a stranger. She was never the type of woman others would touch spontaneously. She always had a barrier she kept in place. She watched Rennie"s hands as she ate. Strong hands with long, thin fingers. She felt safe with this woman and felt a sudden desire to slip her arms around her and rest her head on her shoulder. How strange.
Hannah shifted away slightly, creating a s.p.a.ce between them.
"Should we go?"
Rennie turned to her, surprised. They had finished eating.
Hannah felt restored by the food. It built a warmth in her that fought against the dampness of her clothes.
They stood, Rennie adjusting the pack and Hannah shifting the strap on her AK-47 away from her collarbone where it was beginning to chafe. The pill Rennie had given her was doing the trick and she was alert. The outlines of the landscape were crisp and distinct and the sky was clear, finally free of clouds.
Hannah seemed stronger after their meal and the few moments of rest. Rennie was thankful for it. She worried that Hannah"s strength might just give out. And then what? She couldn"t carry her out of these woods. She would have to leave her, go and get help. Or call on the sat-phone and be told that she would have to manage on her own. To have survived in the camp for so long, Hannah had to have determination and she hoped it would carry her through to the end.
It was a still night without the slightest breath of movement.
No breeze, no rain, even the animals seemed to have taken the night off. Rennie stretched out her arms as she walked, letting her MP5 hang at her side. She hadn"t worked out in almost a week, but it seemed much longer. Her routine had been so structured for so long, it was her nature to thrive on such regimentation. It was only when she discovered structure and discipline that she had been able to accomplish anything. In that way, the FBI was perfect for her.
The weekend before they were to leave for their mission, the team had run through a three-day practice scenario. They hiked all day, camped at night and made a shoot on the third day. It had gone well. The day was hot, but they had plenty of water and were all running on adrenaline. She could still see Brad"s smile as he turned to the team after a perfect head shot to the dummy that had been set up in the Virginia field. After months of regular workouts and course work, they felt they were ready to roll. They had spent the next few days doing light workouts and then were sent home for two days with instructions to do nothing but rest and let their bodies heal.
In her apartment again after so long, Rennie had fallen into a funk. She lay on her bed, feeling antsy, wanting nothing more than to slip on her New Balances and run. But she didn"t. She accepted the hierarchy of the life she had chosen and took her orders seriously, like a good soldier. So, she spent the two days puttering around the apartment, shuffling from room to room like an old woman, not knowing what to do with herself.
Here in the woods, she certainly wasn"t lacking for exercise, but it lacked the focus of her workouts. She remembered when she first discovered that she could transform her body. It was a revelation. She went from a slightly doughy girl to a woman she could hardly recognize. As the fat melted away, curves of muscle revealed themselves. Bone, too, seemed to be resurrected out of the ma.s.s of her flesh and she felt that she had the power to mold herself into whatever she wanted to be. As her body changed, so had her face. Cheekbones she never knew she had emerged along with a strong jawline. And women began to notice her. She enjoyed it at first, but the attention always seemed to be focused solely on the way she looked and she grew cautious.
Hannah was walking ahead of Rennie. She stopped and waited for her to catch up.
"How long do you think it will be before we"re back in the States? After we get to the village."
"It"s hard to say. It depends on whether they"ll want to debrief you here. Or at home."
"How long will it take?"
Rennie shook her head. "Could take days." She smiled at Hannah. "You"ve been gone a long time."
And then there was the problem of Hannah"s connection to Armin"s a.s.sa.s.sination. Rennie guessed the FBI would press her to say she had made it out on her own in the confusion. It was an unlikely scenario but they would have to feed something to the press. And the press would eat it up. It was a great story.
Now, more than twenty-four hours after Armin had fallen to the rough stage, his brain switched off by Rennie"s bullet, she knew his death had already hit the papers and that some poor Iranian who"d made a deal with the U.S. to act as scapegoat had been picked up by international forces. His family would reap the benefits of his sacrifice in cash, a deal negotiated long before Rennie and her team set foot on the plane that carried them to their mission.
Rennie wondered how cooperative Hannah would be when asked to partic.i.p.ate in this charade. She might balk, but the FBI knew how to apply pressure, suggesting that things would be made difficult for her if she didn"t go along. The whole thing was already beginning to smell of rot.
It struck Rennie then that she would probably never see Hannah again after she delivered her to the authorities. Any connection between them would be impossible. She felt a sudden rush of anger at this life she led, made up of violence and deceit.
She felt like a p.a.w.n in a sprawling game that would never resolve.
But why was she thinking these things now? Similar doubts had bubbled up before but never with such force. Why did the idea of not seeing Hannah again, a woman she didn"t even know, fill her with dread?
"What are you thinking about?" Hannah touched her lightly on the arm. "You look upset."
Rennie paused before answering. "I was just thinking about my own debriefing."
There was that. When she would have to explain herself. It wouldn"t take place here. It was too big for that. It would be in that big, black, foreboding building on Ninth St. in the city. FBI headquarters. Agents called it The Black Hole and she wondered if she"d be able to find her way out of it or forever be caught up in its swirling red tape. Nevertheless, she looked forward to going home. For better or for worse. Whatever fate awaited her. It was nearly September, when the heat would finally begin to break, ceding to the first bite of fall. It was the time of year she liked best. But she had no idea what she would be going back to. If her actions in these woods would bring punitive measures. She was still too close to it to see it clearly.
Rennie tramped on in the darkness. It was inevitable that they would pa.s.s near the ambush site before too long. They were already on a path that Rennie thought she recognized. It might well lead them right to it. She wasn"t sure how she felt about it.
How long had it been? It was hard to think. She had been awake for so long the days ran together. More than forty-eight hours.
Forty-eight hours in the heat and the rain. A finger of pain ran along her temple at the thought of seeing them. But she would.
If she had the chance.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN.
Kulyab, Tajikistan The tall blond woman knocked on the cab driver"s window just outside the airport terminal. It was late, she should have been there hours ago, but her plane had been delayed. The driver was dozing and didn"t seem interested in interrupting his nap. She barked out her destination as she tossed her bag in the backseat, speaking the language badly. The driver glared at her in his rearview mirror.
Margot Day settled into the seat and fitted a scarf over her head to cover her hair, to make herself less noticeable. She hadn"t had time to dye it. This entire venture had been unexpected. A call just as she was about to leave the office. She almost didn"t answer it, had stared at the phone, considering whether it could possibly be important before she plucked it off the cradle on the fourth ring. She had already shut down her computer and was thinking about a gla.s.s of Glenfiddich at the bar around the corner from her apartment. She knew something was wrong as soon as she heard the voice. Working so many years at the CIA, she could detect the slightest trace of anxiety in the most monotone voice.
And everyone at the CIA seemed to have a monotone voice. The voice told her she had to fly out of Dushanbe immediately and her first thought was of the sink full of dishes she had allowed to acc.u.mulate over the week and how vile they would be whenever she returned. The voice from Washingtona city she despised, a city that didn"t even know what to call itself: Washington, D.C., the District of Columbia, D.C., the District, the Nation"s Capital and her personal favorite, Warshington, courtesy of the locals said that she was to fly into Kulyab and take a car to the little town of Shuroabad. From there she was to find Martin Garrison and detain him.
She had never been in this part of the country, this far south, so close to the Afghan border. She knew that the farther you were from the capital the more lawless the country became, the reason it was desirable to terrorists looking for a place to set up shop and not be bothered.