The snow was turning to slush as the sun rose higher in the sky, beating down on the backs of the two men.
“If you were Harry, what would be your next move?”
Tex lowered the high-powered binoculars and handed them over. “Hard to say.”
Thomas clicked a button on the side of the binoculars to turn on thermal imaging and aimed them through the trees down the hill toward the section of road cordoned off by crime scene tape.
“Are we certain Harry was even involved in this incident?”
“His fingerprints are all over it,” Tex replied, raising himself up on his elbows. “Certain? No.”
“Not having proper intel is a pain in the butt,” Thomas observed. There were still three FBI agents down there, having fun with their forensics equipment. Playing in the snow. That was the Bureau for you.
A nod this time. “Welcome to life in the cold.”
Cold. Yeah, that was true. Thomas grimaced as he rose to a crouch. Water from the melting slush had seeped through the outer layer of his parka.
“Where do we go from here?”
“Harry’s always been partial to mountains,” came Tex’s laconic observation as he gazed westward, into West Virginia.
Their eyes met and something clicked inside Thomas. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
“Probably. Do we have a location?”
“Negative. But I know how we can get one…”
Having one’s face plastered across every TV in three hundred miles made even getting gas awkward. Fortunately, the mountain wind was cold enough to make the black and red checkered scarf wrapped around the lower half of Harry’s face seem perfectly natural.
“Armoring up an SUV is a tree-hugger’s nightmare,” he said, glancing at the fuel gauge as he climbed back in the Excursion. “Sends your fuel economy plunging right through the floor. My estimate is we’ll reach our destination in another thirty, forty minutes.”
“And then what?”
Harry looked over at her as he put the Excursion in drive. “What do you mean, then what?”
“I want to find them, Harry.”
“Yeah. Well, right now the important thing is that they don’t find you first. Sammy’s cabin is the safest place for you right now. Those were my orders.”
“I don’t think you heard me,” she retorted, a brittle calm in her voice. “I’m going to find the men who murdered my father. And I’m going to see them die.”
“Hand me the maps,” Harry instructed quietly. It took him a moment to locate the road he was looking for. His estimate was pretty close. He looked both ways and pulled out onto the road. “I don’t think you know what you’re talking about.”
He could see the bitterness written across her face, the angry retort forming on her lips. He held up a hand.
“Taking a human life…you cross a bridge in your soul. There’s no going back, no matter how much you may want to — and trust me, you will.”
He paused before going on, his voice trembling with emotion. “I was twenty-three when I first killed a man. It’s been fifteen years and I can still see his face, the look in his eyes as he died. God knows how I’ve tried to forget.”
She remained silent and Harry glanced over at her. “He may have been the first, but he was far from the last. All of them the same. I’m never alone, Carol. The ghost of every man I’ve ever killed walks beside me.”
“I don’t see how I can help you.” Ron Carter’s windbreaker was zipped tight to his neck, against the cold wind blowing across the CIA campus. He glanced around, toward the nearest security guard fifty yards away across the parking lot, then tucked his legs closer together underneath the bench.
“You do realize this call is being monitored, don’t you?” Carter asked in exasperation, turning his attention from his cellphone to the lit cigarette in his left hand. He was supposed to be on his smoke break.
As he watched, the wind extinguished the burning ember. He swore.
“I’ll do what I can,” he said finally. “Give me five minutes to access my workstation. I’ll get back to you from a clean line.”
Abnormal and often-missed meal times were about the only reason for his still-trim waistline, Carter thought. At any normal workplace, the office would have been shut down for lunch.
Not the op-center. Still, a few had cleared out — enough to give him some privacy. He accessed his workstation before opening his desk and reached for what he had styled his “emergency” phone. It was a prepaid cell, technically untraceable. That wasn’t the same as saying Fort Meade couldn’t listen in.
“Listen,” he said when Thomas’s voice answered the other end of the line. “When Samuel Han left Langley, he became a caretaker of government property.”
“A caretaker?”
“Yeah. A decommissioned bunker on a mountaintop in West Virginia, codename CHRYSALIS. Back in the early ‘50s, it was intended as a shelter for top Pentagon brass. A place from which the lucky chosen could ride out the apocalypse. Helicopters were still in their infancy, but some progressive thinking architect put in a helipad so that they could reach the shelter in a hurry.”
“So — what happened?”
Carter let out a sharp laugh. “The H-bomb happened. The bunker had only been designed for bombs the size of the Fat Man, so it was finally decommissioned as an emergency shelter in 1957. Government efficiency being what it is, taxpayers kept footing the bill until 2012.”
“And Han is there now — can you get me an address?”
“Just give me a moment,” the analyst replied. “That type of stuff will be on the DoD servers.”
A few keystrokes and a password request came flashing on-screen. Carter entered his CIA log-in and the database opened.
“Doing a search now,” he announced, providing a running commentary as his fingers worked their magic on the keyboard. What on earth? No freakin’ way…
“Thomas, we’ve got a problem.”
“I’m listening.”
“It looks like the CHRYSALIS file was one of the ones pillaged in the Anonymous attack on the Pentagon. It’s gone.”
“Don’t you guys keep back-ups? Redundancies for just such an emergency?”
“Listen,” Carter retorted, an offended look crossing his face. “I am not a DoD track toad, so don’t give me that ‘you guys’ crap. If I recall correctly, the dweebs over at the Puzzle Palace moved a bunch of obsolete files to a vulnerable server just a month before a hacker styling himself Legion1337 launched his attack. Anonymous took responsibility, but Legion1337 was never located or identified and with only old Cold War files out in the open, the DoD decided to cut its losses. If there’s a back-up for the CHRYSALIS file, I can’t find it.”
“Then we’re back to square one.”
“Looks like it…wait a minute.” Carter minimized the DoD database and brought up a background window, his eyes running down the screen. “There’s something odd going on here. The Pentagon files were published through Wikileaks — all except one. The file on the CHRYSALIS bunker. And that’s not all. The cyber attack took place within five weeks of Han’s departure from the CIA…”
Thomas let out a low whistle. “What are you trying to tell me?”
“It’s what they teach you at the Farm, isn’t it?” Carter asked, rubbing a hand over his forehead. “Cover your tracks?”
Han was out for nearly five hours every morning — a routine he varied just enough to keep it from being predictable.
It was probably senseless, but the morning patrol of his property was near the only thing keeping him sane.
He shook his head as he made his way up the low rise toward the ridge that overlooked the cabin. Then again, what sane man spends five hours of every day wandering through the woods with a loaded battle rifle?
Han reached the top of the ridge and looked west, his eyes opening wide in surprise.
It was a moment of pure, blinding instinct. He threw himself prone, his hands unslinging the SCAR and bringing it to bear.
There was an SUV sitting in his driveway, a blacked-out Ford Excursion. Low to the ground, probably armored.
The type of vehicle executive protection companies used. The type the government used.
He took a deep breath and steadied the gun, glassing the vehicle through the SCAR’s scope. Sixty yards. It was an easy shot.
“You think driving right up is a good idea?” Carol asked, looking through the front windshield of the Excursion at the hunting cabin.
They were the first words she had spoken since the gas station. Harry shook his head. “It’s not, but trying to sneak up on Sammy is a good way to get killed. That’s why I didn’t try to get here last night.”
“There’s something you’re not telling me.”
He sighed. “Yeah. Sammy’s last psych eval before leaving Langley diagnosed him with ‘acute workplace stress’.”
A mirthless chuckle escaped Harry’s lips. “That’s what PTSD is for a spy…workplace stress. It’s a cute way for the bureaucrats to shrug it off. So let me do the talking, if you will.”
He paused long enough to see her nod before he shoved open the door of the Excursion and stepped out into fresh-fallen snow.
The wind was blowing wild and raw through the leafless trees, and Harry reached down to zip up his jacket.
His fingers froze in place. There, dancing over the fabric of his shirt. The luminescent red dot of a laser.
Time itself seemed to slow down. The sound of Carol’s door shutting reached his ears, but it seemed distant and faraway. He felt preternaturally aware in this moment, sensing every breath. Every movement. The awareness of death.
His hand came up, moving slowly, deliberately. “Don’t move,” he ordered, looking back over his shoulder at Carol.
“What’s going on?”
“Just stay behind the vehicle and don’t move.” He took a half-step forward, his eyes scanning the ridgeline. Judging from the angle…
“That you, Sammy?” It sounded lame, but it was as good as anything.
No response. The laser dot remained focused on his chest, unwavering now.
With the same methodical motion, Harry pulled his jacket open, shrugging it off his shoulders. He tossed the jacket on the hood of the Excursion before reaching for his holstered Colt with his left hand.
The gun was of no use to him. Not now. He pulled it out with his fingertips and dropped it in the snow. Backed away.
A voice rang out over the mountaintop, strangely disembodied but familiar, despite the three years that had passed since the last time he’d heard it.
“That’s a good start.”