“What the hell happened?”
Shaw filled him in, told him about being called before the Senate Intelligence Committee, his sparring match with Senator Miles, and his subsequent “meeting” with Carpenter.
“Mike Carpenter?” he asked. “What the hell does the deputy director have to do with any of this?”
“Listen, son, things are happening around here. Things I can’t control . . .”
“Care to elaborate, old man?”
“Open your eyes, son. We are at war, and right now, Miles and Carpenter think you are the enemy.”
“What else is new?”
“This time, they are not playing around. If I can’t get you to come in on your own, Carpenter will send a team to hunt you down, and if you are lucky, they will put a bullet in the back of your head.”
“Why the hell do they care?”
“Because you are a killer, son, and like it or not, that’s all they are ever going to let you be.”
“You got a pen?” Hayes asked.
“A pen? Yeah, I’ve got a pen,” Shaw frowned. “What for?”
“Because I’ve got a message for that dumb son of a bitch, and I want to make sure you get it right. You ready to copy?” Hayes asked.
“Yeah, go ahead.”
“Tell Carpenter that whoever comes after me better bring their own postage.”
“Postage . . . what for?”
“Because whoever he sends over here is coming back in a box.”
“Adam, for once in your life can you please listen to—”
“I’ll catch you later, Levi,” Hayes said, and then the line went dead.
* * *
—
Two hundred miles west, in West Virginia, Skyler Harris was at the tail end of a ten-hour shift when she cracked a fresh Red Bull in preparation for the task at hand.
“Freaking dailies, what a joke,” she muttered, before taking a long gulp.
Skyler had been working at Site Tango for three years and was tired of pulling the graveyard shift in the CIA’s Signals Intercept and Analysis Lab. She’d already put in three requests for transfer to the day shift, but each time her supervisor’s response was the same.
“You know how it works around here,” he patiently explained, “all moves are based off seniority, and since you’re just a GS-11 . . .”
“I’m stuck,” she finished for him.
“It sucks, but that’s the way it is,” he shrugged.
“C’mon, Carl, there has to be a way,” she’d pleaded.
“You can do it the old-fashioned way—mine the dailies, try to find something that will impress the bosses upstairs.”
“Be serious, Carl, nobody looks at the dailies,” she said. “They’re garbage.”
“You know what they say, one man’s trash—”
“Yeah, yeah.”
Back at her workstation, Skyler waited until she felt the flutter of the Red Bull taking effect, and after pulling on a pair of Bose headphones opened the task bar. She double-clicked the icon, typed today’s date into the search bar, and hit the enter key.
Here we go again.
The dailies were the slush pile of the intercept community—steaming piles of raw intel and uncategorized audio intercepts that the spy satellites dumped onto Site Tango’s servers every morning, where they sat until a system administrator decided they were taking up too much space and finally deleted them.
Skyler opened the most recent file, grabbed the half-filled legal pad and a pen from the holder, and hit the play button. The audio started with a rush of static; she was reaching for the volume knob when she heard a voice.
She closed her eyes, focused her attention on the voice, ready to record anything of note, but the audio was so distorted she couldn’t understand what the man was saying. Then it went silent.
Great start, she thought, hitting the delete button and moving on.
The next hour and fifty minutes was more of the same, and with ten minutes left on her shift, Skyler was tempted to call it a day.
Just one more.
She hit the play button and was about to close the pad and return to the pen to its holder when she heard it.
“Mike Carpenter?” he asked. “What the hell does the deputy director have to do with any of this?”
“Listen, son, things are happening around here. Things I can’t control . . .”
“Care to elaborate, old man?”
“Open your eyes, son. We are at war, and right now, Miles and Carpenter think you are the enemy.”
“Holy shit,” Skyler said, reaching for the phone.
16
ESSAOUIRA, MOROCCO
Hayes slammed the phone into the cradle and crossed to the plane where Vlad stood at the ramp, the red-and-black box of Prima cigarettes in his hand. He stuck one between his lips, scratched a match against the skin of the plane, and lit the smoke before looking up and hitting Hayes with a sardonic smile.
“Problems?” he asked.
Just one, Hayes thought, stopping in front of the man. “Do you ever buy cigarettes that don’t smell like a barrel of assholes?”
“That’s fine Russian tobacco you are talking about.”
“Why don’t you take your fine Russian tobacco up to the cockpit so we can get the hell out of here?” he demanded.
“Mudak,” Vlad muttered before turning on his heel and stomping off. Asshole.
Once he was gone, Hayes turned his attention back to the plane, and started his preflight checks. He methodically inspected the control surfaces, checking the tail rudder, flaps, ailerons. By the time he made it to the cockpit and dropped into the pilot’s chair, his mood had regulated—the morning’s aggravations fading beneath the smell of jet fuel, burnt oil, and canvas that permeated the cockpit.
He pulled the headset over his ears while his copilot sat stoically, a fresh smoke clutched between his lips, content to let Hayes handle the preflight.
Vlad tuned the radio to 118.25, waiting until Hayes stopped at the edge of the runway before contacting the tower in French.
“Mogador Tower, this is Pilgrim three-niner x-ray holding short of runway sixteen.”
“Pilgrim three-niner x-ray, you are cleared for takeoff runway sixteen at one-five-seven degrees.”
Hayes taxied to the end of the strip and went through the takeoff checklist in his head—locking the rear wheel straight and opening the cowl flaps.