“Consider it done, sir.”
“That’s what I like to hear.”
Contrary to the senator’s presumptions, Carpenter didn’t have any qualms about killing Shaw. For him the man was just another speed bump—a minor obstacle to be hurdled on his way to the top of the CIA.
But while the acceptance of the order had been easy, the execution was proving to be a different story.
When he first came to the Directorate of Operations in the early ’80s, Carpenter had a Rolodex full of former Cold Warriors. Meat eaters who’d mastered their dark arts in the back alleys and shadowy streets of Soviet Europe.
Back then he could have revoked Shaw’s birth certificate with a single phone call.
But September 11 had fundamentally changed the way America prosecuted a war. If Shaw had been a Muslim extremist hiding out in the windswept mountains of Yemen, or a cave in Afghanistan, Carpenter could have sent a Hellfire down his chimney. Or sent a JSOC kill team to blow down his door and smoke him in his bed. But this was the United States and killing a man like Levi Shaw was going to require a deft touch.
The only problem was the CIA wasn’t exactly known for its finesse.
It’s got to look like an accident.
The first option was to hit him at home. Carpenter wondered how difficult it would be to hack into the smart meter outside of Shaw’s Alexandria residence and fill the house full of gas—blow his ass up while he was sleeping in his La-Z-Boy.
But he abandoned the idea, knowing that no matter how skilled the hacker, it was impossible not to leave fingerprints.
No, he needed to do it the old-fashioned way. In public, with plenty of witnesses to describe the scene to the local police.
But how?
Sitting in the back of the Suburban at five-thirty that night, Carpenter still didn’t have an answer.
The hell with it, he thought, turning his attention to the line of brake lights he saw through the windshield.
“What’s going on?” he asked his driver.
“Damn DDOT, tearing up the beltway again,” he said, double-checking the sideview mirror in preparation for merging to the outside lane.
As the SUV shifted left, Carpenter found himself instinctively looking over his shoulder, and he was about to tell his driver that he was clear to come over when a Porsche came racing up from behind, its driver rapidly blinking the headlights as he cut across two lanes of traffic.
“Surely this asshole isn’t about to—” he began.
But before the words were out of his mouth, the German sports car was slashing past the Suburban, narrowly missing the bumper.
“Damn, that was close,” he said, turning back to the front.
“It was safer driving in Iraq,” his driver said, flashing him a smile in the rearview. “At least over there you could actually shoot back.”
How did I not see it before?
Carpenter didn’t know, but he immediately pulled the Moleskine notebook from his coat pocket and got to work.
He spent the rest of the ride in silence—nurturing the ember of the plan forming in the dark recesses of his mind—working out the logistics: the time of day, how many men he would need, and where to set the kill zone.
Carpenter was firing on all cylinders, and by the time he climbed out of the Suburban and started for his front door, he knew that Shaw was as good as dead.
31
GRAND-BASSAM
While there were many villages along Ivory Coast’s southeastern shore with access to the ocean, it was Grand-Bassam’s strategic location at the mouth of the Comoé river that led the French to choose it as their colonial capital.
Within weeks of settling the area, French engineers were busy constructing the docks. Months later, the first merchant ships begun to arrive from Europe. The goods packed into their bulging hulls were immediately transferred into canoes and transported upriver.
This never-ending flow of goods going out and cash coming in soon transformed this once sleepy fishing village into the crown jewel of French colonial Africa.
Hayes had seen the pictures of the town in its prime—the white stucco villas the merchant princes built for themselves, the stately French Colonial government buildings, and the cobblestone promenades that lead to the town square.
But as they approached the outskirts of Grand-Bassam, it was immediately obvious that time had not been kind.
What had once been hailed as “little Paris” was gone. Its streets had been torn up, the bricks used to build houses in the northern section of town. The villas that were still standing were now cadaverous caricatures of their former selves, the shattered doorways and empty window casements yawning black as the eye sockets of a skull.
“You sure this is the place?” he asked.
“This is the old town,” Zoe said. “It was abandoned in 1896 during the yellow fever epidemic.”
“So, it gets better?”
“Much,” she said, motioning for him to take a right at the next intersection.
The road took them south and the ruins of the old town gave way to modern buildings and sidewalks full of pink-faced tourists.
“See,” Zoe said, pointing to a pair of blond-haired girls in bikinis walking arm in arm down the sidewalk. “Perfectly safe.”
“For them, maybe,” he muttered.
“What was that?”
“Never mind,” he said.
He parked in front of the Hôtel la Commanderie and hopped out, grabbing her bag from the back of the car.
Hayes wasn’t sure what it was about the girl that fired up the protector in him. Maybe it was the innocence he saw in her eyes, or the pained frown when she talked about her father, but whatever it was, he wasn’t leaving until he was sure that she was safe.
“Want to join me for lunch?” Zoe asked before climbing out.
“Not sure I can afford this place,” Hayes answered, eyeing the doorman.
“Daddy’s paying,” she said with a grin.
“In that case, lead on.”
Just as they finished a delicious meal, Zoe’s phone vibrated across the table, and Hayes glanced down, memorizing the number on the display before she scooped it up.
“It’s Jean Luc,” she said, picking up the phone.
“We are pulling up now,” a voice said in French, “you need to be ready to move.”
“I will meet you at the door,” Zoe said in French, ending the call. “I’ve got to go.”
Despite the previous ten years of practice, Hayes sucked at good-byes, mainly because he never knew what to say. Most of the time he went with the tried and true “have a safe trip,” followed by a handshake, but for some reason this time it didn’t seem to fit.