Betrayal (12 page)

“You know what I’m supposed to do now, right Sal? You’ve seen the cop shows. I’m supposed to tell you that you that you can’t take the kids. Make you release one now. Tire you out. But I can tell that you’re too smart for that. So here’s what I’m going to do … Oh, hold on a second, I almost forgot. You said you have a bomb, right? What kind is it?”

“What’s it matter?”

I want to make sure that it won’t go off when we shoot you, she thought. “I need to make sure there are no electronics around that might accidentally trigger it.”

“It’s plastique—not military grade, the homemade stuff. X sent it to me in case the drill wasn’t enough for the wall or I couldn’t crack the restorer’s safe.”

“How much?”

“Enough to do the kids is all you need to know.”

“Don’t talk like that, Sal. Don’t blow it now. I can tell that you’re a reasonable man at heart, not some violent psychopath. I am prepared to get you what you want. I’m going to call for your helicopter now. All you have to do for me is put the kids in the bathroom to keep them quiet and out of the way while we wait.”

“These kids are staying right next to me. If you’re worried about them, you’ll get the helicopter here that much faster. Meanwhile they’re going to make sure that you don’t get any bright ideas. I do like the idea of keeping them quiet though. Hold on a minute.”

Cassi felt spiders in her stomach as she heard the screech-rip sound of duct tape. Once. Twice. Then the soprano sobbing peaked and stopped. Her nerves began to kick in, yanking her out of The Zone. Suddenly she was acutely aware that two beautiful kids, her unborn child, and her career were riding on the next sixty seconds of her performance.

“Okay, Sal. I’ve put in the request for the helicopter. It won’t be long. Now, convince me that you’re not going to harm those kids.”

“What can I say? I was just trying to steal a painting. That’s just larceny, not a violent crime. It ain’t a big deal to have me out on the streets. I’m a teddy bear. And like any bear, I’m no threat if nobody spooks or threatens me.”

Cassi noted that a desperate twang had crept into Sal’s voice. She kept quiet, pressuring him to continue.

 
He did. “I don’t want to harm these kids. But if you threaten me, then that’s what I’m going to do. I’m sure you agree it would be much better to let me fly out of here than to let it come down to that.”

“Absolutely, I see your point. Oh, hold on ... It’s here, Sal. Your helicopter is here.”

“In the yard?”

“No, there wasn’t room with the telephone wires and the jungle gyms. It’s up on the roof. You’re going to have to use the fire escape.” This was all bullshit, of course. As soon as Sal put his head above the roof he would get a bullet between the eyes. Cassi could not let herself think about that, however. She could not let treachery tweak her voice.

“Okay, here’s the deal,” Sal commanded. “Everybody clears out. Everybody but you. Nobody is in the yard. Nobody but the pilot is on the roof. When you’ve made it that way, you let me know.”

Cassi felt the warm glow of approaching victory when her ears seemed to erupt inside her head. Before the sound could register she found herself flying backwards through the air, borne toward the bricks with great force by a giant bubble of heat.

Chapter 19

Lake Maroo, Virginia

O
DI
BOLTED
UP
in bed, awakened by chirping birds. He had slept well, even with his ears perked like a German Shepard’s.

Two weeks had passed since his auspicious awakening in the Iranian hospital ward, and in that time his outlook on life had swung one-hundred-and-eighty degrees. Betrayal changes a man. Betrayal makes him worry about things he never worried about before. It makes him worry about things like self-preservation. Ponder motives. And plan his revenge.

Realizing that going public with their knowledge would put them squarely in the assassins’ sights, he and Ayden had inevitably settled on the only course of action that was both honorable and expedient. They had chosen to hunt the killers down. Actually “they” was a generous term. Odi was the soldier. He was going after them alone.

He had entered the US using Ayden’s passport in order to preserve his greatest tactical advantage: the fact that everyone still believed him dead. He had used discretion and disguise to keep it that way, and he would continue to do so for as long as it took to neutralize all the people who conspired to murder his team. Once his mission was complete, he would just wake up in Iran. A coma was an airtight alibi. And he had a credible doctor to corroborate.

Slipping out of bed fully dressed, he pulled on his hiking boots and looked out the bedroom window. Dawn’s first light was just breaking over the lake. The water took on a golden shimmer and seemed to summon all living creatures to come forth for a dip. Lake Maroo was a pristine paradise. He could see why Commander Potchak spent virtually every weekend here in his cabin. It was just what one needed to balance out a Quantico workweek. At least it would have been for Odi. Obviously Maroo’s charms were insufficient to stifle Potchak’s ravenous greed.

Odi emerged from the cabin’s only bedroom to inspect the status of his project. Potchak was still there, of course. He was standing exactly as Odi had left him eight hours earlier—suspended on his tiptoes by the noose around his neck.
 

Odi walked to the center of the room to appraise the condemned man. The fact that this was the traditional time for military hangings had not been lost on his prisoner. Potchak’s face was beaded with sweat despite the morning chill and he had dark bags beneath his bloodshot eyes. Physically, Odi thought, he looked just about right.

Odi stretched his arms over his head and let out a contented yawn as he studied Potchak’s eyes. It was a tactical ploy, designed to stress the contrast of their relative positions while simultaneously giving Odi time to evaluate his opponent. Odi liked what he saw. He could begin—but he wouldn’t. Not just yet.

Odi had not said a word to his former boss since capturing him at dusk. He would say nothing now. Better to let him stew a few minutes more. He took a moment to reflect on the events that had transpired, letting tension mount.

Capturing Potchak had been surprisingly easy. When the commander returned to the rustic cabin from a day of bow hunting, Odi was waiting, hidden behind the dense foliage of a Fraser Fir. The moment his boss turned his back to un-strap the buck from the hood of his Jeep, Odi Tasered him in the back. As Adam would have said, it was a piece of pumpkin pie.

~ ~ ~

When Potchak awoke to a choking sensation his first crazy thought was that the deer had somehow turned the tables on him, for he was the one who had been strung up. He had no idea how he had gotten there, but there he was, hanging by his neck at the end of a rope in the main room of his cabin. He reached for the noose around his throat as his feet sought the floor but found his arms bound tightly behind his back. His toes made blessed contact and he pressed down vigorously and managed to ease some tension out of the rope. Potchak gasped a few breaths and sought to maintain his balance. A few seconds in that position were all it took to realize that remaining elevated and balanced enough to breathe was going to inflict a constant mental and physical strain.

He immediately recognized this as a stress position. The kind often used in interrogations. But his mind did not dwell on that. For as surprising as his new predicament was, the next sight that met his eyes as he glanced around was even more so. He found himself looking at a ghost.
 

Odysseus Carr was dead. Yet there Odi was, sitting beside him in an armchair, casually reading a book. Was this hell? Was this to be his special torment? Was he doomed to spend eternity struggling to breath while his victims looked on in peace?

Potchak groaned through the duct-tape that gagged his mouth.

Odi continued to read in silence without looking up.

~ ~ ~

After finishing Follett’s latest thriller and breaking for a dinner he did not share—fresh venison steak—Odi retired to Potchak’s bedroom without a word. He was anxious to get started but knew that the interrogation was more likely to succeed if he gave his captive’s fears a chance to percolate. He wanted Potchak to contemplate the reversal of their positions as his terror fermented and his physical strength dwindled away.

Appraising the situation anew that morning, Odi found himself intrigued by the thoughts that must be going through Potchak’s mind. He reasoned that his boss must have spent much of his tiptoe time trying to guess the angle that would give him the best chance of saving his own neck—praying all the while that Odi would give him a chance to speak before he hoisted him up that last lethal inch. Odi was curious to learn what strategy Potchak chose, what ploy he would invoke. Potchak’s choice would tell Odi a lot about how he was perceived.

Would Potchak attempt to sway him through pity, through fear, or through greed? Would he offer Odi money? Apologies? Information? Sex? Would he try a power play and issue threats? Would he claim to be a victim himself? Or would he just beg?

Appraising his captive, Odi decided that it was time to find out. He grasped the rope that ran upwards from Potchak’s neck over the central rafter and down to a cleat that Odi had screwed to the far wall. He twanged it as though the rope were the string of a giant guitar. Potchak’s heels lifted further off the floor. Twelve hours of stretching had made no difference to the rope. It was still taut as a Sumo’s loincloth.

Odi walked over to the cleat and partially unwrapped the end—just enough for it to slip. He added enough slack to let Potchak slump from his tiptoes onto the balls of his feet and then re-secured the rope. Satisfied that Potchak remained utterly helpless but would now have the mental bandwidth to focus on something other than balance, he spoke for the first time since the capture. “Lest you get any bright ideas, the noose is tied so that it cannot be loosened or removed.”

Potchak grunted. Odi took this as a submissive sign. He untied Potchak’s left hand and used the extra rope to secure his right hand to the back of his leather belt. Then he ripped the duct tape from Potchak’s mouth in one swift move. It left a nasty red rash, but Potchak still looked relieved. Odi smiled with satisfaction. Then he walked behind Potchak and into the kitchen without another word, no doubt leaving his prisoner even further confused.
 

He watched Potchak through the doorway as he brewed a pot of strong coffee. Potchak did not try to turn around or speak. The former did not surprise Odi. His prisoner had no doubt suffered from a misstep or two during the night and learned to leave well-enough alone, even now that he was down on the balls of his feet. As for the latter, the silence, that, Odi was sure, was about to change.

When he returned with two large steaming mugs, Odi found Potchak looking much better. The smell of fresh brew, the glimmer of hope, the setting and the free hand were all having their effect—exactly as planned. He handed Potchak a mug and said “Lots of milk, lots of sugar.”
 

Odi’s knowledge of how the commander liked his coffee was a poignant reminder that, according to the soldiers’ code, Potchak was guilty of worse than murder. He was guilty of betrayal.

Odi thought he saw a streak of guilt cross Potchak’s face as he mumbled “Thanks.” But before he could be sure Potchak dove into his mug. Odi positioned a worn old leather armchair to Potchak’s left and plopped down, sending stuffing sprouting out a slit in the side like hair from an old man’s ear. After settling in comfortably, he took a sip of his own black brew and began. “So, after eighteen years with the FBI you suddenly quit to work for Armed Services Industrial Supply. What was that I read in the paper, you start Monday as Vice President of Government Relations? That plum assignment must be worth quite a bump in pay. I’m curious, what were the lives of my team worth? Three-hundred grand? Half a mil?”

“I didn’t know anyone was going to get killed,” Potchak said.

As an opening line, Odi thought it wasn’t bad, but he was still ready with a retort. “Other than the doctors, nurses, and patients at the hospital, of course. But they were Iranian civilians, so I suppose they don’t count. We killed more people liberating Iraq than we lost in Vietnam, and nobody seemed to notice, so you figured, what the hell…”

Potchak closed his eyes for a long second, then continued. “When they gave me the headsets, they said they were just so they could listen in, so they’d know if you suspected anything and could decide if it was necessary to pull the plug.”

“And once we were all dead, well, you were already in too deep.”

“Exactly,” Potchak said. Then he finished off his coffee as though the meeting were over.
 

Odi looked at him and thought, if you only knew … He took back the mug and grew a broad smile for what must have appeared to be no apparent reason. Potchak smiled back, trying to act chummy—for the first time in two years. He did not even resist when Odi rebound his hand.