Enemy Agents (10 page)

Hall poked up from the ditch to see that Quarrel had drawn the enemy’s fire. He aimed quickly and shot a grenade straight into the van’s open windshield. It hit the back wall of the cab with a thunk, and a split second later the cab exploded. A second after that, the gas tank went and a ten-metre-high gasoline explosion spat heat at Quarrel.

Quarrel watched the flames roll upward, thought of his mission with Shark, and wondered if giant fireballs were typical for CIB agents. Quarrel had fired on the thieves but knowing that Hall had killed them was somehow a relief. Killing a man was a step Quarrel hadn’t been prepared for; a realization that only occurred to him now that he was face-to-face with it. While Quarrel was still awed by the fireball, Hall flanked around the back of the burning van and waited for the rear doors to open. They stayed shut. Quarrel joined Hall at the back of the burning van. After a minute of the fire heating the van, Hall shot out the locks and pulled open the doors. Black smoke poured out, but nobody attacked.

There were two men in the back, both lying face-down.

“They weren’t in there long enough to die from smoke inhalation,” said Quarrel.

“The force of the grenade probably got them. It’s like dynamite fishing.”

Hall dug through the rubble of the van until he found a black steel case. There was one-half of a set of handcuffs still attached to the handle.

“Probably cut it off the guard with the same thing they used to break into the armoured truck.” He gave the case to Quarrel. “Take it to the chopper. If any of them are following, you take off and leave me. I’m going to search these guys and see what they’ve got on them.”

Quarrel nodded. He did as he was told. The pilot had already called in their location, so it was just a matter of waiting for the CIA to show up. The first responders were the state police, followed closely by field teams from both the FBI and CIA. The media were on-site within twenty minutes. As soon as Hall saw the first TV crew setting up, he climbed into the helicopter and ordered the pilot to take them home.

“We don’t need to be on camera,” he said through the headset.

“Shouldn’t the CIB have a presence down there?” asked Quarrel.

“Who do think those FBI guys were?”

“Oh.”

Five minutes later, Harry Milton messaged Hall with the code to open the case. The inside of the case was hard foam, with six slots cut into it to hold the six control computers. The computers looked like a combination of a remote control and an old stereo, with two connector wires hanging from one end. They were each the size of a 1980s cell phone, with a twelve-button pad and a rudimentary digital screen like on a graphing calculator. While there were six slots in the case, there were only five computers.

“They got one,” said Hall.

“What good is a thirty-year-old tracking computer?”

“Don’t know,” said Jack Hall, staring at the sun-drenched landscape below. “We only know two things. The first is that whoever it is, they have highest-level intel on us. They knew when the components were moving, and they even knew which truck to hit.”

“And the second thing?” Quarrel asked, knowing the answer already.

“The second thing is that they just stole something whose only purpose is to set off a nuclear bomb.”

13

It was May 1
st
, a chilly night in the Arizona desert, where a long, white bungalow housed three federal agents and one amnesiac prisoner. Khalid Saleb, as usual, was watching TV. He had no access to a computer, but the agents who guarded him let him watch TV—which he kept tuned to the news channels. Maybe he was filling in the gaps in his memory, or hoping to see something that sparked a recollection.

Saleb’s room looked like a normal bedroom inside the ranch house. He had a large window, with no metal bars to show that this was actually a prison cell. The window was actually shatter-resistant, bulletproof glass, with two three-quarter-inch panes providing redundant security. The walls, ordinary drywall painted a pale blue, covered cement-filled cinderblock. The fire-rated door was made of oak heavy enough that you wouldn’t notice that it contained an inch of plate steel.

Jessica Swift knew all of this as she watched Saleb through that window. She had been watching them for two days now, at a distance, through a telescope.

Finding out where he was being held wasn’t hard; she needed only to break into a field office of the United States Marshals Service, which was the agency assigning the guards who watched Saleb.

She had also located plans for the building itself, which was much more than a simple house. There were security cameras watching every direction outside the house, and every square foot of the inside. Cameras mounted on posts north and south of the house watched the road, which was usually empty in this barren piece of desert. This security video played in a room of the house, where one of the three guards-on-duty was always stationed. The other guards intermittently watched Saleb and took breaks. They rotated every two hours, until the end of the twelve-hour shift, when a new set of agents took over. The agents on the night crew were two women and a man. Whenever the man was on video duty, the women would sit down in the living room and play cards. Jessica was waiting for tonight’s game to start.

She pulled out a piece of blank white paper and wrote on it in big letters, then flipped it over and wrote on the back. She folded the paper and tucked it into her pocket. Everything else she needed was on her tool belt, except for the bikes that were lying in a ditch, covered with a brown blanket for camouflage. She had come here on one of the bikes. The second—a folding bike—had been strapped to her back. It was already unfolded and ready to ride, under the blanket.

Through the eyepiece, she saw the guards pull out a card table, and she took a deep breath. She was about to commit to a course of action that could be called treason. She set the telescope down and started walking toward the house.

She knew the exact spot where she would become visible on the cameras. Dressed all in black, she crouched beside a large saguaro cactus and crawled toward the house, keeping herself hidden in the cactus’s shadow. Once she ran out of shadow, she would be visible on the camera.

Jessica pulled out a small air-powered handgun and took aim at the one camera that could see her. She fired a small dart that stuck into the panelling an inch below the camera. The dart would give off magnetic pulses for eight seconds, causing interference with the camera signal, so there would be waves of static on the screen.

The moment she heard the dart hit and stick, she was sprinting for the house. It was a bungalow, so she was able to run up the wall, jump, and pull herself onto the roof without any tools to help. Once she was on the roof, it was easy. First, she waited to hear if the guard would come investigate the staticky camera. After a couple minutes, she decided she was in the clear and moved to Saleb’s window. After tying off a rope on a pipe sticking out of the roof, she lowered herself down to the window and pressed her piece of paper against the glass. It took Saleb a moment to notice, but then he walked over.

The paper said: YOU WERE SET UP.

She turned the page over: I WILL GET YOU FREE.

After Saleb nodded a baffled ‘OK,’ she raised what looked like a large laser pointer or a small flashlight. It didn’t make a sound, just clicked on and started shining a red light on the glass. As the light cut through the glass, she slowly and methodically shifted the beam in a two-foot-wide circle. With her other hand, she attached a heavy duty suction cup to the inside of the circle. Once the beam had gone all the way around, she flicked off the light, removed the large circle of glass, and gently dropped it to the ground. Then she set in on the second window, which was already scored by light that had gotten through the first pane. Half-way through cutting the second pane, she saw that the laser was leaving a brown circle on the opposite wall, and if she continued cutting, the beam would slice Saleb. She waved him to the side. He was confused until he saw the line on the wall, then got out of the way. Once she finished the second cut and removed the glass circle, Saleb’s escape hatch was complete. Saleb moved to climb through, but she held up a hand to block him and waited a few seconds. After a while, she gently tapped the edge of the glass to see how hot it was, and then waved him through. It was awkward for him to climb through a hole that far off the floor, but he managed to pass through using the armchair as a step. For the first time in months, Saleb was outside.

Jessica held a finger to her lips. Amnesia erases personal memories, but not basics of communication. Even Saleb would understand she wanted him to be quiet.

Jessica held his hand and walked him along the wall toward the back corner of the house. She stopped there. She leaned in and whispered into Saleb’s ear.

“We have to sprint. Hard and fast and don’t stop until I do.”

He nodded.

They both took a few deep breaths, and then she started to run.

They were fifty feet out before the male guard saw them on his screen and hit the panic button.

A quarter-mile away, at the spot where her telescope still lay on the ground, Jessica pointed to the blanket on the ground. She picked up her backpack and stuffed the telescope into it before swinging it onto her shoulders. Meanwhile, Saleb had pulled back the blanket to discover the pair of bicycles. Swift looked over her shoulder—there were flashlights outside the house. The Marshals were coming.

“Don’t stop. Don’t look back. Just follow me as fast as you can.”

The guards would eventually find the tire tracks, but it would be too late to follow them. Five miles away, Jessica’s rented Jeep was waiting.

#

In a small apartment that Swift had rented in Tucson, Swift handed Saleb a bottle of water before sitting down at the table. The furnishing was thrift-store: A table, two chairs, and two sleeping bags. But it wasn’t a hotel because Swift was worried the authorities would be watching every hotel in the state.

“Who are you?” asked Saleb.

“My name’s Jessica Swift. We’re in the same line of work.”

“Are we friends?”

“We’ve never met. Don’t worry. You’re not forgetting me.”

“Then why would you come for me?”

“Because last week I was sent on a mission to destroy some files. Specifically your file. This file.” She pushed the stack of pages across the table. “You were ordered to go to Lyon the night your partner was killed. They wanted you apart so you’d both be easier to kill.”

Saleb stared at the documents, confused. “Who ordered . . . ?”

“I don’t know. Someone above you. Above us. Probably the same person who ordered me to destroy the evidence. But someone in the CIB wanted her dead. They might have wanted you dead too, or maybe this frame was planned. But the point is: you did not murder Jessica Jordan.”

“What’s it to you?”

Swift sighed. “Let’s just say I don’t like having my strings pulled, either. If I did my job and burned this file, you would have been executed for murder and treason. I just can’t be a part of that. I have a conscience, even if nobody else does.”

“So what now?” Saleb was still so overwhelmed, he couldn’t think.

“Now,” she said, “you disappear. Go off and build a new life. Escape from this. And someday I’m going to find the assholes pulling our strings and I’m gonna get myself free, too.”

“You just want me to walk away? You tell me that someone else killed Jessica, and framed me for it, and you expect me to just let it go?”

“Why not? You have amnesia, right? You probably don’t even remember your Jessica. So why bother looking for revenge?” She reached across the table to put her small hand on Saleb’s larger one. “I don’t want all this effort I put into setting you free to go to waste. Just get out of here, Khalid. Live a happier life than me.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“You don’t know? About Jessica?”

“What about her?”

“Jessica Jordan wasn’t just my partner. She was my wife.”

Swift’s shoulders dropped as her eyebrows spiked upwards. “She was your wife?”

“They’ve been telling me I killed her, but . . . ”

“But you didn’t.”

“I know this is crazy. I don’t remember her at all. But something always felt wrong about their version of events. Like a gut feeling I couldn’t express. Like I could never . . . like I’m not even capable of . . . ”

“Killing someone.”

“Killin
g
her
.
They tell me I killed other people and I believe them. But not my own wife. How could I possibly do that? It always felt wrong. I might not remember who I was, but I know myself, you know?”

“You were right.”

“Someone did this to her, to us, and they got away with it. If I really loved this woman, if we were happy . . . ” Saleb was struggling to say whatever he was feeling. Swift couldn’t imagine what the man was going through. It must be like having your entire love life on the tip of your tongue; like searching for loved ones in the dark and never finding them. “I owe her. I know that’s stupid, and she’s like a stranger to me now, but I can’t walk away. I have to find out who did this.”

Swift rubbed her face, momentarily hiding behind her hands. “My life is very . . . supervised. I’m kept on a leash. They won’t let me disappear. If you hang around, they’ll know I’m with you and then we’re both on death row.”

Saleb nodded. “I’m not asking you to—”

“I’m in,” said Swift. “Your wife deserves justice. Let’s bring the bastards down.”