Isabel looked at her hands forming the scale. Joe up high, Isabel down low.
“So, ladies, if anything, Joe is out of my league. A strong and vibrant man, attractive and with a good job waiting for him. Surrounded by loving friends. And me. Alone and broke and not in good health. I wonder what he wants with me? Because he could sure do better.”
Lauren and Felicity exchanged somber glances. “You’re not alone, Isabel,” Lauren said.
Felicity lowered Isabel’s right hand, tipped up her left, until the scales were even. “You’re surrounded by friends, too. And Joe’s a really lucky guy.”
* * *
Joe tried to keep an ear out to hear what the women were saying in the kitchen, but their voices were too low. At first he’d heard Felicity and Lauren gushing about whatever miracles Isabel had baked. And then they started talking and he couldn’t make anything out.
He also had to pay some attention to the game. He had a natural bent for card games and enjoyed the strategy and dealing with the element of chance. He could also count cards in his head.
He’d have gladly sacrificed a few hands to be able to listen in on the conversation in the kitchen but pride kept him in his seat.
One thing for sure, there was a friendly atmosphere.
Bless Lauren and Felicity. And bless Suzanne. He knew for a fact that once Isabel met Allegra and Claire, the wife of their homicide detective buddy, they’d become friends too.
She was lonely. He could read it in her face. She’d been through something so horrendous it was hard to fathom. Joe had been in battle, but he was trained and prepared. The Massacre had been horrible beyond belief, and Isabel had lost her entire family.
Joe knew that he was there for her. She was the one, the one he didn’t know he’d been waiting for. But friends were important, too, and now Isabel was going to be surrounded by the finest women Joe had ever met.
She deserved it.
“Fuck, man.” Jacko threw his cards down in disgust. “Who the hell are you bribing?”
“That’s why they call it the luck of the draw.” Joe gave a quick check of his chips. He’d won two hundred and twenty dollars. Jacko wasn’t complaining about the money—he had plenty of money. He was complaining about losing, which he didn’t do gracefully.
Tough shit. Joe smiled to himself but he knew absolutely nothing showed.
Time to make up for the losses. “I bought myself a sweet karambit. Wanna see it?”
It was a peace offering. Metal grinned. “How long?”
“Five inches. So, it’s over at my place if you want to see it.”
The two men were getting up. “Okay. The least you can do after taking all our money,” Metal said.
Joe went into the kitchen, stopped at the threshold.
Isabel, Felicity, Lauren. Three beautiful women, smiling at each other. But though both Felicity and Lauren were good-looking women, they couldn’t hold a candle to Isabel. It was like she had a special aura around her.
Felicity and Lauren stopped talking and Isabel turned around and saw him. And she smiled at him. It was almost staggering. Joe rubbed at his chest where his heart had thumped—hard—inside his rib cage.
He swallowed, hooked a thumb. “Going over to my place to show the guys something. We’ll be back soon.”
Lauren cocked her head. “I’m glad you’re quitting early. Jacko and I want to take a vacation to Europe next summer and we won’t if he keeps losing money to you.”
Felicity, who understood her man, said, “What you’re going to show the guys. How many bullets does it shoot?”
Joe smiled. “None.”
“A knife, then. Don’t be gone long, we have to stop by the Apple store on our way back home.” Felicity often stopped by the Apple store where she had nerd friends who could use her help. Felicity was persona very grata there.
“You got it.”
“Fixed or folding?” Jacko asked as Joe pressed his thumb to his front door. He’d seen a movie where the security depended on the DNA contained in a drop of blood. Very cool. But not practical. The door gave a discreet click and he pushed it open. He would need to program it to recognize Metal, Jacko, maybe Midnight and the Senior. It already recognized Isabel.
They walked in. Joe had a really weird sensation walking into his own home. It felt...odd. Cold. It was clean because he was clean and neat—you couldn’t be anything else in the navy—but there were no nice smells, just bleach and detergent. He hadn’t paid any attention to decor, just shoved the pieces of furniture he needed against the walls. Unlike Isabel’s house that smelled of spices and flowers, full of colors and pleasing shapes.
“Folding. Make yourselves at home. I’ll go get it.”
He’d left the karambit in its box, in the closet. He opened the closet door, pulled out the box, placed it on his desk—and froze.
“Guys.” He kept his voice steady. “Get in here.”
Metal and Jacko came. Whatever they’d heard in his voice made them move fast.
They both held weapons in their hands, coming in high low, Metal to the right, Jacko to the left, as if they’d rehearsed it. Which, of course, they had, in the Teams. Thousands of times.
When they saw what he was pointing to, both of them holstered their Glocks and came closer to his monitor.
Do you know anyone in the FBI you trust absolutely?
“Same guy?” Metal asked quietly.
“Yeah. I think so. But this is new. He just took over my computer. Letters that appear on my desktop. Which means he really knows what he’s doing.”
Jacko was studying the monitor but beyond the words in caps, Arial 40, there was nothing to see. “We don’t know when he sent this.”
“Or she,” Joe answered. “But no. I was at Isabel’s all night. I came over at about nine to grab some fresh clothes and it wasn’t here. It’s seventeen hundred hours. It could have arrived at any time over the past eight hours.”
“He didn’t ping your cell. If he can do this, he can find your cell phone number.”
“Absolutely.” Joe nodded. “So I gotta go with the idea that he wants to communicate this way instead of texting me.”
Metal cocked his head. “If you let me, I’ll ask Felicity. But I get the sense that this is more private and less traceable than sending a text.”
Joe grunted. This was someone who was connected to Isabel in some way. The first message had been to protect her. And now this.
“Dude.” Jacko elbowed him. “You gonna answer?”
Joe sat down and typed:
Yes. Nick Mancino. Former SEAL. Now FBI HRT.
An old buddy and a real stand-up guy. He’d helped find and rescue Felicity’s old mentor, retired FBI Special Agent Al Goodkind.
“He’s answering.” Metal’s voice was quiet. He knew he owed Nick Mancino, big-time. They all did. Was Joe getting Nick into trouble?
Can’t be bought off?
Whoa. Joe sat still. After a moment, he typed:
No. And neither can I.
A couple of minutes passed. None of them spoke. Whoever was at the other end had his own agenda. Joe had no idea whether he was a good guy or a bad guy. All he could do was wait and gather more intel.
Finally, words appeared on the screen.
Good. Call Nick and tell him to meet you in Portland.
Fuck this. Joe’s answer was swift.
Why should I?
And the answer, when it came, was like a punch to the stomach.
The Washington Massacre was homegrown terrorism, directed by someone in the CIA. Our guys. They are going to strike again. We need to stop them.
“Fuck,” Joe breathed.
“Can I talk to Felicity?” Metal asked. “She’s got a higher clearance than any of us have anyway.”
Felicity had done work for the FBI before joining ASI. And Felicity was of Russian blood and had grown up in the WITSEC program. She knew how to keep secrets.
“Yeah, man. Absolutely. We need all the help we c
an get.”
This was serious stuff. If the Washington Massacre had really been carried out by CIA guys, and Isabel was one of the very few survivors, then she was an eyewitness to one of the greatest crimes in the country’s history. And a real threat to the perpetrators. She didn’t remember anything but memories were notoriously unstable.
Was there an immediate threat to her? Because that was the point of the first message from Mystery Man. PROTECT ISABEL. Had this guy been tipped off somehow that the Massacre wasn’t carried out by jihadists?
Because, if the Massacre was organized by the CIA they were all in real trouble. Joe found it hard to believe it, but he knew that rogue elements existed everywhere. If there was a rogue team within the CIA’s Clandestine Service, the country was in a shitload of trouble, because the Clandestine Service operated almost without oversight.
And they had sneak and peek powers jihadists didn’t have.
“From now on we operate under opsec,” Joe said.
Metal and Jacko nodded.
If this was a conspiracy run by people with access to NSA and Homeland Security assets, every word they spoke on the phone, every email they sent, could be tracked.
“Metal, buy us some burner phones. If this thing is true and it goes to the top, we need to be untraceable.”
“Uh, Joe?”
“Yeah?”
Metal was looking uncomfortable.
“Felicity has, um, about two hundred untraceable burners, and they all have military-grade encryption and voice alteration software.”
“Wow. I don’t dare ask how she got them.”
“Birthday present. From a hacker friend she, um, helped.”
Joe did not want to know what Felicity did to help the hacker friend. He was just grateful that she’d done it and that they had access to those phones. “Great. I’ll make sure Isabel has one too.”
“Isabel...” Jacko said.
“Yeah.” Joe met his sober dark eyes. “She’s right in the crosshairs.”
Chapter Eight
Washington, DC
The plan. Phase two started.
Now phase three. And then four and five.
Hector Blake read the file on his computer avidly. It would erase itself in fifteen minutes but as a lawyer he was used to absorbing large amounts of data in short amounts of time. Here, he didn’t have to memorize the details because he wasn’t involved in three of the major events.
For the moment, he was just involved in the Washington Massacre and making sure an obedient weakling became the next president. Considering the target, it made sense to have him in the loop. The other events were described in general terms.
Someone in some ministry somewhere—he suspected China—had a very strong grasp of economics and mass psychology. Five events, maybe more that he wasn’t privy to, guaranteed to bring the behemoth to its knees. The shadowy forces pushing the events were using America’s strength against it, like a jujitsu master fighting a bloated overweight monster. Because many of America’s strengths became weaknesses if you looked at them the right way.
America had very efficient, very fast financial markets and stock markets. They were able to squeeze value from stones, thanks to the quants. But by the same token, when overwhelmed, the system ate itself. The Massacre had tanked the economy, sucking several trillion dollars out of the system. On his way home from his office, Blake counted several soup kitchens, more appearing every week.
His own money was safely abroad. Two billion dollars that no one would ever see but him. He could even access some of it legally since he had an “advance” from a small publishing house no one had ever heard of for his memoirs. And then several million sales of the book would be arranged.
He was thinking of doing that again, just so he could have capital in-country he didn’t have to account for. He’d already made discreet inquiries for a good ghostwriter.
Being rich while everyone else was poor was delicious. Power lay in contrasts. Poor people were obedient, subservient, biddable. Particularly those who had come down in the world. They were so desperate to come back up they never questioned why they’d fallen in the first place.
So step one—impoverish everyone—was done. Trillions of dollars had been sucked out of the economy and sent elsewhere. Blake imagined that there would be a couple of other economic shocks coming down the pipeline.
Then London as president. He’d do anything Blake told him to do.
The step after that, ah. Pure genius. The next step was blinding America and he now understood exactly what he’d been told to do while on the Senate Intelligence Committee and why. He now understood the value of the people he’d placed in strategic positions. He knew there were others, in the NSA, in the DIA, at the Pentagon. Not the FBI, though. The FBI was proving impenetrable and incorruptible.
It was something Blake couldn’t understand. The base salary of a newly minted Special Agent was a little under forty-four thousand dollars. Peanuts. It topped out at about a hundred and thirty thousand for the Director. What some people spent on clothes. How could it be so hard to recruit FBI Special Agents?
But the plan could go forward even without the FBI, who weren’t tasked with foreign intel anyway. By the time anything came to the attention of the FBI, the US would be a giant on its knees. The FBI could even be disbanded. There was Homeland Security anyway—the FBI was a drain on resources America didn’t have.
The file winked off and he knew he would never be able to find it again. But no matter. Blake understood that immensely resourceful and smart people were behind the project and that in five years’ time, maybe less, the United States as he knew it would be gone.
Portland
They Skyped Nick. They could do that safely. Joe wasn’t going to say anything overt anyway. Nick was a smart guy, he’d catch on fast.
There he was. Walking along a street in DC. Nick was dressed in civilian clothes, wasn’t on duty. Not decked out in MultiCam camouflage, Kevlar helmet, armed with an HK416 assault rifle.
Metal took point. The two had recently worked together on an op that involved backpack nukes.
Nick smiled. His cell’s camera caught him from below, showing a jutting jaw with a dark five o’clock shadow though it was only fourteen hundred in DC. “Metal! My man! Wassup? How’s Felicity? She hacked into the NSA yet?”
“Nah. She’s working for us now and we keep her in check. Listen, Nick, we need your help.” Metal turned Joe’s monitor around so Nick could see Jacko and Joe.
“Jacko, Metal,” Nick said nodding. He brought the cell closer to his face. “Is that Joe Harris? Hey, man.”
Joe nodded his head and didn’t smile. Nick was no dummy. His smile dropped off his face, too. “Sitrep,” he said quietly.
“Not over an open line.” Joe looked at the camera directly. “It would be nice—it would be really nice if you could make it to Portland.”
Nick’s black eyebrows drew together. “Soon?”
“Now.”
Joe shifted the monitor so Nick could see both Metal and Jacko in close-up. He was glad he’d Skyped because the seriousness of the situation could be read in their faces.
“Now?”
“Now.”
Both Metal and Jacko nodded.
Joe turned the monitor back. “Can you do it?”
Nick was checking his cell phone. “There’s a flight leaving in five hours. A red-eye. I’ll be there tomorrow morning.”
“Come to the office,” Joe said. “We’ll have a briefing.”
“I’ll be there,” Nick said and killed the connection.
“We need to tell Mystery Man.” Metal and Jacko nodded.
Mystery Man seemed to be keyed into Joe’s computer. Probably by malware. He’d been meaning to have Felicity secure his computer but hadn’t managed to get around to it yet. That was good news and bad news. If bad guys had access, he was in a shitload of trouble. However—if Mystery Man had access, presumably he’d gone through his hard disk for signs o
f other intruders.
Taking a deep breath, Joe keyboarded:
Tomorrow we’ll all be at ASI. Including FBI
After two seconds, words formed on his monitor.
Mancino?
Joe looked at Metal and Jacko. Metal gave a thumbs-up. Okay, they were going all-in with this guy.
Yes.
He checks out.
Yeah, by any measure Nick Mancino checked out.
Yes.
Give me number of encrypted satphone.
Joe sat back while Metal input a number he took from his cell. Felicity would have made the number untraceable and she would make sure the encryption was strong.
Four bells.
Four bells was 10 a.m. nautical time. A reference to the fact that he knew Joe was navy. Was this guy navy? Former navy? What the hell was he?
Four bells.
Joe confirmed and sat back in his chair.
* * *
Something happened when Joe and the guys went back to his house. They’d been laughing and teasing Joe about taking all their money when they left. When they came back, they were sober and quiet.
Felicity and Lauren picked up on it right away. The three of them had been laughing over the plot of the latest lame romcom, scarfing down the squares of double chocolate fudge Isabel had pulled from the freezer, when the guys walked in. Felicity and Lauren immediately quieted, watching their guys carefully. It was amazing to see. It wasn’t as if they were watching Metal and Jacko out of fear of a mood change. No, it was more as if whatever their guys felt, they felt.
Nothing showed Isabel more than this that they were couples. Teams. Jacko walked directly up to Lauren and whispered in her ear and Metal made a beeline for Felicity and put his arms around her.
Couples.
She was contemplating that when Joe walked in a minute or two later, carrying a duffel bag. He walked straight to her, eyes glued to hers, as if there was nobody else in the room. He opened his arms and she walked straight into them.