The Hidden Vector: A Spy Thriller Page 3

  Ethan called into his radio. “What the hell are you doing? Hold fire!”

  Wade’s voice crackled a reply in Ethan’s earpiece. “Negative. Wasn’t me. We got another shooter, long way off southeast. I can’t spot him. Looking …”

  In the dim light he saw the outline of the old man slumped in the yard. Beside him, Marcus leaned against the Mercedes with his hands clutching his left side.

  “Marcus,” Ethan yelled at his comrade. “Marcus!”

  Marcus stayed silent. It wasn’t panic in his eyes. It was disbelief. In the waning light, the blood on Marcus’ hands looked like black oil. The blood consumed light, ever expanding in a dark pool on the ground around him.

  “Marcus, listen to me,” Ethan said. “You’re going to make it. Hold on, chief.”

  He wasn’t so sure. Marcus didn’t need to hear that now. Blood pumped out of his side, spilling on the ground. Ethan tore off his own shirt and balled it up to staunch the flow. He pressed it into Marcus’ side.

  “Oh shit …” Marcus moaned.

  “Easy, chief. Hang on.” He tapped his transmitter again. “Marcus is down. Repeat, man down.”

  Again, Marcus tried to speak. “It’s not Jamal …” His words fell away.

  A grinding noise came from the farm shack where an old engine roared to life. Headlights streamed between the sagging doors’ planks. Ethan looked up just as a car burst through the doors and launched into the yard. It swerved to miss the old man’s body. Ethan piled on top of Marcus to get out of the way. He caught a glimpse of the driver, a slight silhouette covered with a patterned scarf. The car spat gravel and dust into the air, then raced toward the lane.

  Wade’s voice filled his earpiece. “I’m taking the shot.”

  Wade fired from his position, but the round flew high. The car kept moving, veering for the lane. Another shot punched a hole just rear of the driver’s side, and the car bounced down the lane.

  “Damn it!” Wade shouted over the radio.

  Ethan focused on Marcus. The young man’s eyes drooped, light fading from them rapidly. He coughed. It was a sputtering, useless thing to do. Ethan stared into his eyes thinking all the while how miserable it would be to drown in one’s own blood. He fought a wellspring of rage that came up from his stomach into the back of his throat. This was his op, ending in disaster before it started. The thought took over his mind. He glanced at the dead old man, then at a far hillside where the killing shot came from. He turned to spot the car down the lane. Marcus had tried to tell him. This op wasn’t over. It was getting away from them.

  He settled Marcus to the ground. The makeshift bandage soaked through with blood and seeped onto Ethan’s hands. He leaned over, his ear close to Marcus’ mouth. Only short breaths teased his ear. Ethan pressed Marcus’ own hands to hold the shirt to his wounded side. There was little strength left in them, but it would have to do.

  “Get down here,” he told Wade over the radio. “Al Jamal’s getting away from us.”

  Wade replied between breaths. “Already moving.”

  Marcus’ chest seized in short gasps. His eyes widened in desperation. Ethan mumbled something to comfort him. What could he say? He hardly knew the man. Where he was born, who his parents were. If he had a wife somewhere. But he could see something of himself in Marcus then and the eagerness of his younger days. Behind him, Ethan heard the car racing down the rocky lane, and he made the calculation to leave the dying man alone.

  “He’s fading. I’ve got to leave him. I have to do this.”

  “Do it. I got this,” Wade said. “Go.”

  He climbed in the car, stepping over Marcus’ shivering body. The engine sputtered, then howled defiantly as he put the car in gear. As he closed the door, Ethan saw Marcus staring up at the twilit sky in a strange country. He sped away from the yard with Marcus’ face burned in his mind’s eye.

  The car whined and roared as he hit uneven mounds along the lane. The motion tossed him high in the seat. He shifted gear. His eyes darted for sign of the other car, but he saw no lights or movement. Past the yew trees he spied a fading wink of red to his north. Ethan dimmed the headlights, hoping he could close the distance with Al Jamal unaware of his pursuit. He veered onto the road and accelerated.

  A half mile ahead, the taillights turned toward Birkiani, the nearby village. Once there, his quarry was lost. Ethan knew he’d turn to allies to hide. Even if he did overtake Al Jamal there, he could do nothing alone with hostile witnesses all around.

  He pressed the wailing car, ever closer to the target. Now he could see the other car’s silhouette. It was one of the old Fiat-based models from Soviet days. At this distance, there was no point in hiding. The noise from the Mercedes’ grinding belts would give him away from a hundred meters or more. He flipped on the lights and kicked the dimmer switch. Ahead, the car swerved, and the driver spun around to spot him.

  The faded yellow lights of the village shone barely a kilometer away. Ethan pulled within a car length. He veered right. Just a little more to nudge the back wheel. He clenched his teeth anticipating the collision.

  Al Jamal veered hard left. Tires skidded across the broken asphalt. The little car bounced into a shallow ditch, then mounted over it again onto a barren field. Ethan turned hard on the wheel to follow when his headlights passed a painted sign. A skull and bones in a red triangle flashed in front of him.

  “Oh shit,” he said aloud.

  Land mines—no doubt part of Al Jamal’s contingency plan. Maybe the field was a bluff, a smuggler’s trick to shake Georgian authorities. Either Al Jamal knew the course through the field, or there were no mines at all. There was one way to find out and avoid letting Marcus die for nothing. Ethan shifted to reverse. Gears ground in the bowels of the Mercedes, and the car shuddered. He steered the car at the gouges in the roadside where Al Jamal had entered.

  He found the taillights again, moving almost leisurely through the field. He drove toward the lights directly, with no other option and bare hints of tire tracks to trail. It was reckless, and he knew it. The night had run far past reckless. This was stupid. Only Corso could approve.

  The little car kept rolling, but Ethan gained. He downshifted as the engine protested again. Ethan rammed straight into the car, shoving it forward slightly. His head snapped back. Steel hammered on steel. Ethan bit his tongue and tasted copper.

  The front car shook from the impact, and both vehicles twisted to a halt in the desolate middle of the field. The Mercedes creaked, and the engine finally died. Ethan gripped the wheel with one hand and stared at the driver. He felt for his sidearm, then climbed out of the car, one cautious foot at a time. Ahead, the driver door opened, and a slim figure emerged, still covered with the scarf.

  Ethan raised his Beretta and shouted in broken Arabic, a phrase he’d memorized more than understood. “Don’t move. Show me your hands!”

  The driver raised a pair of delicate hands that reflected bright white from the Mercedes’ headlights. A high voice tinged with anger called out. “Is that how you treat women in America?”

  Before him stood a woman. She spoke English well enough. She was a slender thing with an oval face and pouting lips. Her eyes squinted in the light as she wrinkled her nose—at him or from the glare, he wasn’t sure. Her lips parted as she stared. She wore snug, black pants and a plain, collared shirt. The scarf covered much of her head, but strands of a pair of dark brown hair dropped down the left side of her face. He stared at the face of an exquisite doll, the most remarkable phantom he’d tracked in nine years.

  “You’re Al Jamal?”

  “Jamal? Jamal is camel. I am Jamila,” she said, pointing at herself. “It means beauty. Now, please, put your gun away and we go out the way we came in. Then we discuss a deal, yes?”

  Chapter 2: Tidal Echo

  McLean, Virginia

  6:48 p.m., Wednesday, May 8

  Over the course of eighteen years, Paul Corso kept track of time in his head out of habit. Even a glimpse of dayl
ight through a courtyard window had less effect on his mind than a glance at his watch’s minute hand and an instinctive adjustment for time zones halfway around the world. Seven hours ago, it was sundown in Pankisi Gorge. Six hours ago, he lost an officer.

  The light inside Langley never changed. A permanent fluorescence filled the labyrinthine halls and glinted off rows of closed doors. He stood at the door of his supervisor, Suzanne Tasker. When they spoke on the phone earlier about Marcus Eldridge, she had asked two questions. Does the operation still have cover? And did Eldridge have a family? More questions awaited him. He had some of his own, and he wasn’t going to get many answered from Georgia where it was almost 3:00 a.m.

  Suzanne’s assistant smiled meekly when Paul looked her way. Twelve minutes ago, she had greeted him with a quiet hello. “She’s on the phone with Director Drummond,” she had said.

  She went back to her screen, and the faint hum of white noise filled the empty distance between them. He couldn’t recall her name. Like everyone, Corso had acclimated to seeing strangers in the hall over and over again. He recognized most people by their habits and hairstyles, left to wonder about their names. They were younger and younger. Some barely older than his boys. They didn’t speak much in the halls, and over the years the distance between personal and professional lengthened.

  The door opened, and he met Suzanne face to face. She looked as freshly made up as she had at the 7:00 a.m. meeting, a mask that never faltered and never revealed its secrets.

  “Paul, come in.”

  She waved at her assistant, who gathered her things to leave while there was still daylight left. The same languid fluorescence filled her office, which occupied an ample space in the middle of the old building, insulated from the luxury—and intolerable risk for the Director of the National Clandestine Service—of windows. Paul slumped in one of the cushioned chairs positioned in front of her desk.

  “What’s the latest?” she said.

  Too impatient for pleasantries, he noted. The door closed.

  Paul shared what he knew. His voice rasped, though he hadn’t had a smoke in two years. Somewhere in the base of his brain the urge lurked. He fought it back amid the noise in his head and kept talking.

  “Alan Sanger managed to get our embassy to step in. They’ve got a consular officer escorting Eldridge’s body to a Tbilisi hospital. We fly him home in a few days, God willing. It’s going to take some work to keep a lid on a murder investigation, so Sanger’s pushing the cover a little farther in hopes it will stick.”

  “Which is?”

  “Officially? Marcus Eldridge was a young engineering student who took a little evening trip to score some recreational drugs. The deal went south, and he got shot by dealers.”

  She narrowed her gaze in thought. “That’s not going to do it.”

  “No. It’s pretty thin. We’ve got a dead local and an empty house. We’re going to have to lean on the Georgians to keep their eyes on the prize.”

  “We don’t have much of a prize, Paul. I have to tell you, it’s three days out. I just got off the phone with the Director. You’ve got four teams running around, and everyone in HUMINT is knocking on doors. Your crew here looks like amateur hour. Now we’re spending time covering their tracks and wasting valuable time in getting to the bottom of this Chechen group.”

  Her ability to keep calm astounded him. Yelling he could handle. All of her predecessors were yellers. She seethed, and he loathed the tightened look on her face. He tugged at his collar. He had removed his tie around noon when Pierce updated him on Eldridge.

  “Suzanne, with respect, it’s not amateur hour,” he said.

  “Really? I expect better of you. I mean it. I understand you want to defend your guys, but this is … this is unacceptable, honestly.”

  Her rebuke stung, and for what seemed like the hundredth time he thought about losing Eldridge. What the hell happened? Something wasn’t right.

  “There is some good news,” he said. “Pierce pursued the asset. Picked her up in a mine field.”

  “Her?”

  He fought back a smile. “That’s the part that surprises you about what I just said?”

  She waved his comment off with a flick of her hand. “Anything from her yet?”

  “Not much. They’re moving her to a house for now. One of ours. She had a nickname that covered her identity pretty well.” Corso didn’t share that the intel got the Arabic wrong. “She’s from Chechnya. That’s pretty clear. Pierce thinks her name is …” Paul fetched a pair of half-rimmed glasses from his breast pocket and glanced at his notebook. “Seda Alaskhanova. But she had three passports.”

  Suzanne nodded. “That’s fine, but we need leads on our perps, not her. Pierce is with her now?”

  “Yes. And Wade Dixon.”

  “Anyone else?” she asked.

  “Sanger’s got an operations officer on the way.”

  With her elbows propped on the desk and her hands folded, Suzanne leaned in intently.

  “Drummond seems to think we have more to gain cooperating with the Georgians. Hand her over to GIS. They’ll cooperate on our little situation here, and we can pick up the pace. This op is over, Paul. Focus on your other teams.”

  “Christ, Suzanne, that’s a fantastic way to avoid amateur hour. Are you kidding me? Oh yes, the almighty has spoken, and we need results. Does anyone honestly think we’re going to move faster now with this brilliant stratagem? Do you? We’ve been on the ground three days, have a target in custody, and we’re not moving quickly enough? And now with the best lead … no, the only lead we’ve got, Drummond tells you to pull the plug and hand her over to the Georgians? Push back, damn it.”

  “Save it,” she said. “Get it done.”

  Paul stomped out of the office without another word. He paced down the halls, retracing his steps to his teams’ operations center. He had to give her credit. She didn’t lose her cool. She was dead wrong, but at least she didn’t take his bait to argue. Some day he might like that about her. For the moment, he hated every well-creased bone in her body.

  The operations center filled a large room on the third floor of the old headquarters building. It was his own domain where he tugged on the strings of clandestine teams across the world. His days in the field were in the last century, though the places and faces remained vivid memories. But here in the air-conditioned room he accomplished more than he had ever thought possible in the back roads and alleyways of Colombia and Venezuela.

  The place had calmed since midday, when four staff operations officers and their analyst counterparts had hovered around an island desk in the center of the room. Each officer sat transfixed by twin monitors, enrapt by their headsets. Now, three of them lounged in their chairs, hair tousled by hours on the headset. Half a world away, Georgia slept. Little activity buzzed across their stations. A pair of analysts sat at desks around the perimeter mining for details that someone might have overlooked.

  Paul curled a finger at Kay Linh. She coordinated Pierce’s op, and she had been on duty since early morning. She wore a pair of stylish thick rimmed glasses that perched atop her button nose. The lenses reflected the glare from her computer screens. She stood up and walked over to him with a confused and exhausted stare.

  “They made it to the house,” she said as she yawned. Her voice was almost a whisper.

  “We’ve got a problem,” he replied. “How long until Sanger’s people get there?”

  “Two or three hours, maybe. Why? What’s wrong?”

  “Call Pierce. I need to talk to him directly.”

  “I think he’s asleep.”

  “Now.”

  She shuffled back to her desk and tapped in Pierce’s number. A muffled voice responded into her earpiece. “Dodger, this is Hourglass. Stand by,” she said and handed the headset to Paul.

  He held the tiny wire mic close to his chin, his voice grating as he spoke too loudly. “Wake up call, Dodger.”

  Pierce’s voice became alert. “Wha
t’s wrong?”

  Good boy. He knows something’s up, Paul thought.

  “Home office says we give the asset to GIS. Got it?”

  There was a pause and a breath of exasperation. “Understood.”

  “Dodger?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You’ve got two hours to consider options.”

  The line clicked, and Paul handed the headset back over to Kay. She looked up at him with her head tilted.

  “Are we coordinating with the Georgians, then?” she asked.

  “Not exactly.”

  “But we need this woman’s intel. We need it,” she said through clenched teeth.

  “This one comes from on high.”

  Kay chewed her manicured thumbnail in frustration. The ruby enamel had chipped and worn throughout the day as the operation unraveled. She was a perfectionist, a trait she claimed to inherit from her Vietnamese mother. He needed her perfection right now. Pierce needed her even more.

  “Where are the pics from the airport?” Paul asked. He fumbled around on her desk where she had neat stacks of thin folders marked in her own delicate handwriting and a fresh label that read TOP SECRET // SAR-TIDAL ECHO.

  “Please, I have these there for a reason.”

  Kay pushed his hands away from the printed files and nodded at the screen. Resigned, he raised his hands and backed away. Kay opened several images on one screen, each virtual snapshot stacked on another.

  “Does Pierce have these?”

  “Yes, they’re on his phone. Sanger has them, too.”

  “Good.”

  She paged through the images. He’d seen them at least a dozen times since Sunday. The photos were stills captured from security cameras at Tbilisi Airport. One angle recorded from the building showed each man, some in pairs, as they crossed the pavement from the BTR to the gangway. The camera was high up and several yards away. Their bodies blurred in motion, their faces inscrutable shades of black and brown. The whole world had seen the photos every ten minutes on news cycles since Monday afternoon.