“I warned you Honest Abe was a protected asset, told you to stay away from him. Woulda saved a lot of trouble if you’d taken my advice. Like I said, he was valuable to us.”
“Understandable. After they picked the shrapnel out of my leg, I began to wonder how he knew we were coming.”
“Hard to keep a secret in these parts.”
“You’re the only one outside my superior officer who knew that I was contemplating a mission. You set us up, Murphy.”
“I warned the bastard to get out of town. He’s the one who decided to leave an IED.”
“Maybe you didn’t know Abe’s plans, but you told him we were coming and that’s just as bad.”
“Chrissakes, Hawk, that’s ancient history. Go home and stay there.”
“You’re starting to annoy me. I’m so annoyed that my finger might accidentally press the trigger. When I tried to find out how Abe knew I was coming, I ran into a brick wall. Tell me about the cover up.”
Murphy’s well-honed survival instincts told him that Hawkins was serious. The air seemed to go out of his body.
“You gotta go back to 9/11. Bin Laden’s bragging on TV after he knocked the towers down, mocking us, saying America was filled with fear. And he was right! Everybody was scared. We had to hit back in a hurry. You know how it is. The wolves respect a winner. If you’re seen as weak, it’s all over.”
“I was with a SEAL team that dispelled that notion,” Hawkins said.
“Damn straight! We really kicked ass. Invaded Afghan land and pushed out the Taliban. Took a while to catch up with Bin Laden, and there was a slight detour through Iraq, but that’s the stuff people knew about. There was a whole other war going on behind the scenes. Our guys decided that we had to fight dirty. Assassinations. Special rendition. Kidnapping.”
“Enhanced interrogation,” Hawkins added.
“I’m not afraid to call it what it was. Torture. But all the people wringing their hands don’t get the point. Water-boarding someone wasn’t expected to extract information. Anyone with half a brain knows you get more out of a source by giving him Twinkies and ice cream. It never was about intel.”
“So what was it about?”
“Revenge, Hawk. We wanted to send those bastards a message. You sucker punched us, but we’ve tossed out the Marquis de Queensbury rules. Mess around with the U.S.A. and we won’t just kill you, we’ll catch you and make you wish that you had never been born. You think they went after Bin Laden so they could bring him back and put him on trial? Hell no. He had a big fat bull’s-eye on his head.”
“So far, you haven’t told me anything new.”
“Try this on for size. The stuff that went public was only the tip of the iceberg. That was a CIA-contractor op that used legalese to back it up, but they couldn’t outright ignore the law. That was the job of a small sub-group within the larger operation.”
“What could this group do that the others couldn’t?”
“Pretty much anything they wanted to do.”
“Oversight?”
“Open-end approval at the highest level with minimal oversight. Deniability was important. If they got caught, they’d say it was a rogue operation.”
“Risky. With no control, it could very well go rogue.”
“It was a risk the top level was willing to take. They wanted the bad guys to know that there were things worse than death.”
“How big was the group?”
“Maybe six core people with on-call access to support. They called themselves Archer. Codeword for the guy who calls me is Arrowsmith.”
“Archer. Arrowhead. Arrowsmith. Cute.”
“Arrowhead was both the cover and the contractor. They set up an entity to take care of logistics, payroll and all that.
“The Arrowhead kids’ program.”
“That’s right. Very impressive, Hawk. No one would suspect an outfit that helped kids.”
“Where was Trask in all of this?”
“The unit needed a resident shrink with no scruples.”
“He fits the bill. Tell me about Captain McCormick. Where does he fit in?”
“He was with the original black ops team and moved over to the unit.”
“Did he have a role in getting me kicked out of the SEALs?”
“Probably. He was navy intel, but still attached to Archer. When the torture story went public, everyone went to the mattresses. CIA burned the videos of the torture sessions. Records were destroyed. The spin-masters came out and started spreading disinformation. Meanwhile, the Archer unit scattered to the four winds.”
“Trask was on the government payroll when he saw me.”
“He was in a holding pattern. A shrink in Oklahoma had dug up some stuff on Trask about his involvement with torture and tried to get him hauled up on professional misconduct. The charges were dropped when his accuser died in a house fire.”
“Of suspicious origin, no doubt.”
“Yeah, shit happens, Hawk. One more shrink won’t be missed.”
“What was your role, Murphy?”
“Arrowhead sub-contracted out my services. You don’t want to know the details. Water-boarding and sexual humiliation was for amateurs. Some stuff was real medieval. All that was missing was a black hood. I’ve got a strong stomach, but I had to get out. They got me a job with the DEA as a reward for my work. And here I am.”
Murphy took Hawkins’ silence as a signal that the conversation was over.
“That sums it up, Hawk. Can I go back to the bar now?”
“Shut up.” He prodded Murphy with the pen gun. “Why was Trask picked to process my psychiatric discharge?”
“Ambushing you and your guys was never in the works. Honest Abe pulled that stunt on his own to protect a stash of opium. But once you started asking questions that could have exposed the connection to Archer, you had to be stopped.”
“So they decided that the best way to stop me was to say I was crazy.”
“Hell, we’re all crazy in this business. I was just a hired goon. I haven’t heard from them in years until last week when they called. I was surprised as hell that you were coming back.”
“It sounds as if Archer is still in business and calling the shots.”
“It’s been reconstituted to deal with an evolving threat.”
“Talk English, Murphy.”
“We’ve hurt the bad guys. Drone attacks have kicked the crap out of the hierarchy. Killing Bin Laden was the icing on the cake, but we’ve had to contend with a new reality. The leadership is more diffused, with splinter groups showing their muscle.”
“Groups like the Shadows?”
“Don’t know why I’m talking, Hawk. You already know everything.”
“What makes the Shadows so dangerous?”
“No one knows who they are, for one thing. They’ve been hurt real bad and they want to hurt us. They think if they can do that it’ll give the radicals a leg up in some of the Arab countries that are torn between democracy and extremism. Security made it harder to get men into the States, so they started looking for other ways to cause problems at home and in Europe. Real whack-a-mole. We had to come up with new ways to deal with their evolving tactics.”
“Start bringing me home, Murphy. My hand is getting real tired.”
“Patience, man. We heard chatter about the Shadows growing, getting stronger. Archer was brought together again and expanded. It’s got some of the same people, but it’s more like a think tank with muscle.”
“Arrowhead still provides the brawn?”
“That’s my understanding.”
“Who provides the brains?”