Hunter: A Thriller (3 page)

CIA SAFE HOUSE,
LINDEN
,
VIRGINIA
Tuesday, March 18, 10:15 a.m.

They turned off 66 at exit 13, just west of the small rural community of
Linden
,
Virginia
. Their limo followed close behind the lead car—a Grand Cherokee loaded with a security team and communications gear—onto Route 55, running parallel to 66. A short distance past the volunteer fire department and a bottling plant, they turned south onto a narrow side road posted “No Trespassing—U.S. Government Property.”

The road took them into the wooded hills. Within a couple hundred yards, they approached a guy standing at the roadside in jeans and a denim jacket. He spoke into a walkie-talkie as they passed. After about a mile, the road curved left into a tiny valley—a flat depression, really, between a couple of thousand-foot-high hills.

It dead-ended at the gate to a driveway that looped in front of a modern, three-story house. The gate was part of a white rail fence that surrounded the property, which looked to be about three or four acres. The house had multiple gables and was wrapped by a broad porch filled with scattered white wicker tables and chairs. A young woman in a green windbreaker and brown slacks sat in a rocker near the front door, a magazine on her lap. Not far from the house, a man in a plaid shirt was raking a patch of bare earth. Several smaller wooden structures stood not far from the main building. A gravel parking area held three vehicles; next to it rose a two-story, four-car garage.

Fearing that the Russians might now come after him to shut him up, Muller had insisted that his debriefing take place somewhere both secret and secure, but also away from
Langley
. When told about the
Linden
site, he quickly agreed. Garrett explained to Annie that the Agency had established this covert safe house four years earlier, after left-wing “journalists”—he pronounced the word with disdain—had blown the locations of other CIA facilities much closer to HQ, even posting detailed satellite photos on the Internet. But this one remained secret. Any lost tourist or deer hunter who wandered near the property would see little to arouse his suspicions before politely being sent on his way. There were no signs of security obvious to an untrained observer, but Annie knew better. The innocuous rustic rail fence would be loaded with sensors. She also noticed small communications antennae and multiple satellite dishes on the house and garage roofs.

Because of today’s special guest, security would be much tighter than usual. The woman on the porch and the man in the garden would be part of a detail of about twenty armed, highly trained members of the Office of Security. Most would remain hidden in the house, in the garage, and on the road leading to the residence. A sniper team would be perched on one of the hills overlooking the property. And their arriving convoy would add eight more officers to the protective detail.

As their lead car pulled up to the gate, the young woman on the porch stood and moved her hand onto the porch railing. The gate section blocking the driveway slid aside electronically, allowing them to enter. The Cherokee and their chase car peeled off toward the parking area, while their driver pulled their limo around to the front door.

“This,” said Grant Garrett, unfastening his seat belt, “should be interesting.”

*

“Why us?”

At the question, James Muller looked up from his cup of coffee, which was steaming in the surprisingly chilly room. His soft, almost cherubic features flowed into a smile. His hands were no longer cuffed, but a security officer stood nearby.

“Why me, anyway?” Garrett continued. “I know you’ve worked before with Ms. Woods. But you and I have never met. So, why do you want to talk only to her and me?”

They sat on sofas and stuffed chairs in the spacious, maple-paneled den of the safe house. In addition to the cool temperature, the room seemed dreary and impersonal, as if the home’s occupants had not yet fully moved in. Annie noticed that the big stone fireplace was unused; no metal tools around it that might be employed as weapons. Nor were there candy dishes, ashtrays, photos on the walls. Even the built-in bookcases were empty. Thick, bark-colored curtains were drawn over what she knew would be bullet-resistant, laminated windows.

Muller chuckled. “Why you? Because I want to tell my story to
the best—
that’s why. And you’re
The Man
. Nobody at
Langley
holds a candle to the great Grant Garrett.”

“So, do you want to talk, or do you want to be president of my fan club?”

Muller roared with laughter, sloshing coffee into the tan, high-pile carpet. “Sure, I’ll talk. I just figured it was only proper to tell my tale to the only people at
Langley
still worth a damn. You and Annie. You—because you’re the guy holding operations together. Annie—well, because fair’s fair. She’s the one who caught me.” He looked her up and down, grinning. “And because she’s hotter than hell.”

Annie had long ago pegged Muller as a narcissist, if not a sociopath. He loved every minute of the grandstanding and attention. She sighed, put down her cup, leaned forward.

“Think you’re flattering us?” she said quietly. “You sold out your country. You ended the careers and lives of some great people. So before we get down to specifics, you mind telling us why?”

He lost the grin. His pale blue eyes blinked rapidly. Narrowed into slits.

“Why. You want to know
why.
Well, maybe because after thirty years in the Company, doing
damned
good work, my pay still sucks. And maybe because that
—
plus all the nights and weekends, year after year—cost me my marriage. But hey, at least I could always take solace in the complete
lack of recognition.
Did you know I was security admin for the CI team that nailed Nicholson? That’s right,
Nicholson
. How could anyone do better than that? But what the hell did it get me?”

He began to rise from his sofa, but sat back down when the security officer stepped forward. He took a long breath. When he spoke again, he was subdued.

“Look at me. I’m fifty-three. And what do I have to show for it? My whole life is
crap.
I would’ve retired in a few more years. But to what? I’m alone. She took the kids, even the dog. I’m broke from the alimony. Where could I go? What could I do? Be a security guard at Wal-Mart?”

“So—you approached the Russians, not the other way around?”

Muller looked at Garrett and nodded. He tilted his cup to his lips and drained the last of the coffee.

“How long ago?” she asked.

“Three years, January.”

“Where? In D.C.?”

Muller nodded, put down his cup. “Okay, I’ll get into all of that. But look, I haven’t had a smoke for over twenty-four hours. I was so goddamn jittery last night I couldn’t even sleep.”

“You can’t smoke in here.”

“Come on, man, give me a break. Can’t we go outside?”

Garrett looked at Annie. “I could use one myself. Okay. Out on the porch.”

*

They went through the kitchen and out the back door, led by the security officer, who slipped on mirrored sunglasses and stepped down into the yard. Two more members of the detail followed, then fanned out to flank them. Annie donned her own sunglasses—a spare pair she kept in her car—before stepping out into the dazzling morning sun.

Garrett fished a pack of cigarettes from his suit jacket, flipped it open. Thumbed one out and between his lips. Then offered the pack to Muller.

The traitor held it up, displaying the familiar red bulls-eye label.

“Ha. Look at that.
Luckies
. Ironic, isn’t it?”

He shook out a cigarette and returned the pack.

The spy chief drew out a silver lighter. Fired up the other’s cigarette, then his own.

Muller stepped to the porch rail. She and Garrett moved to either side of him. She watched the prisoner take a deep drag. Hold it. Slowly release a white cloud from between his lips. It coiled and drifted off, then was torn away by a sudden gust. He leaned forward to catch the sun on his face. Braced his arms on the rail, the butt dangling from his lips.

“Damn, that’s good.... Thanks. I was dying for a smoke.”

He squinted, looking up at the forested hillside rising before them.

“Pretty out here. I—”

A bee sound and hollow
smackkk
—
an explosion of red mist and his face gone and warm spray hitting her face and hands—his body jerking back, legs buckling—a distant echoing
crack—

“Down!”

Garrett diving over Muller’s collapsing body, slamming into her, knocking her down, sprawling across her—gasping, crushed under his weight—muffled shouts—pounding steps vibrating through floorboards pressed painfully against her skull—twisting her face under Garrett’s shielding arm—

Muller’s body. A few feet away. On its back. Face toward her, what was left of it, barely half of it, one wide pale blue eye staring at her, the other somewhere inside a ragged crater of crimson pulp.

Blood streaming from his mouth around the smoking cigarette, still clinging to his lower lip....

CIA HEADQUARTERS,
LANGLEY
,
VIRGINIA
Wednesday, March 19, 4:30 p.m.

They gathered again around the table in the director’s conference room, at the end of a painfully long day that had begun the night before. Their purpose: to assess the magnitude of the national-security catastrophe.

Annie, arms crossed, shifted in one of the chairs against the wall. Feeling like hell, despite all the ibuprofen. Pulsing pain behind her right eye. Ribs aching when she breathed. Stiff left knee. Sore purple bruises on her right shoulder, forearm, both legs. She reflected that in the past two days, she’d tackled a guy, been slammed into by another, then knocked down by a third.

Most action I’ve had with men in almost a year.

She wished she felt like laughing about it.

Nobody in the room knew how the Kremlin had found out about the safe house.

“Maybe Muller learned about it somehow, then told them during the past year or so,” the FBI director ventured.

At the head of the table, the CIA boss rocked back in his gray leather chair. “Or maybe they trailed the transport team out to the site. We can’t be sure about anything right now.” He took off his rimless glasses, rubbed his eyes. “What have your people found out about the sniper or snipers?”

“I’ll let our special agent in charge, Steve Sully, fill you in on what we know so far.”

The red-haired, middle-aged man seated next to the FBI director took a sip from his water bottle, then spoke.

“Our investigators talked to the CIA’s protective sniper team, situated on the opposite hillside. Those guys never saw the shooter. He had set up to the southeast, almost directly into the morning sun from their position. The rest of the detail at the house couldn’t tell the precise direction of the sniper either. Not that it would have mattered. Our people triangulated from the witness reports, then did a grid search to determine his exact location. It was behind a fallen log up in the trees near the ridge line, over twelve hundred yards from the house. That’s over two-thirds of a mile.”

Somebody whistled. Sully nodded.

“Yes. And the shooter didn’t even take the safer shot and go for center-mass. I don’t know why, but he went for the head. You don’t have to be a marksman to know that a head shot at that range is one hell of a shot. There was some wind gusting around out there, and the bullet hit Muller’s face off-center, on its right, blowing away half his skull. If it had hit dead center, it would’ve probably exploded the whole head. Decapitated him.”

Annie stared at a pattern on her sleeve to block the image in her memory. She heard people stirring uncomfortably.

“Ballistics retrieved a piece of the bullet from inside the house.
Way
inside. After going through Muller’s skull, it passed through the outside wall, a kitchen cabinet, a coffee pot on the table, a hallway door, a sofa back, and another interior wall before lodging near the bottom of a bedroom wall. We were lucky to get a big fragment. We figured it had to be a .50 caliber. But the lab determined it came from a Barrett .416 cartridge. That particular cartridge propels a high-velocity, 400-grain, solid-brass,
boattail
spitzer
bullet.” He noticed blank looks and smiled sheepishly. “Okay, sorry, that’s a sniper round, fairly new and relatively rare. It was designed by the Barrett Firearms Company in 2005. Currently, the only sniper rifle chambered to handle it is the Barrett Model 99.”

This was all Greek to her, but she noticed that Grant Garrett leaned forward.

The SAC flipped through the papers spread on the table before him. “Forensics found no shell casing. Obviously, he took it with him. No footprints worth a damn, either. It looks like he had some kind of covering, maybe canvas or plastic, over his shoes or boots. And no hairs or fibers. Probably wore a coverall, probably
camo
. From his stride and foot impressions, we guess medium-to-tallish—six feet, maybe a little more—weight not more than one-ninety, max. But those are just rough guesses, given the terrain. In sum, about as clean a crime scene as you could find—unfortunately.”

The CIA director shook his head slowly. “Great.”

Sully nodded and glanced down at his papers again. “Reconstructing the sequence of events, it appears he left his vehicle a short way down the far side of that hill. There’s a paved road up there, running in from Route 55. It leads south to some summer homes a couple of miles back in the hills. They’re vacant this time of year, so no traffic. Being a pro, our shooter no doubt
reconned
the area and knew that. He probably left his car or truck right on the pavement, knowing it wouldn’t be bothered by anybody. In any case, we found no tire tracks. So we have nothing to go on for a vehicle, either.”

He took another sip of water. “From where he set up, we figure that after taking the shot, he trotted down the slope to his vehicle. We clocked it and estimate he could’ve made it in less than three minutes—then be back on 55, or more likely 66, within another minute or two.”

“You keep saying ‘he,’” Garrett broke in. “A single sniper? Not a team?”

The agent shook his head. “One set of footprints, in and out.”

Garrett grunted.

“Anything else?” the CIA director prompted.

“Our theory is that after the
Russkies
heard about Muller’s capture early yesterday afternoon, they guessed—or were told, or watched—where he’d be taken. Then they dispatched their shooter to the area. This guy could have set up and stayed in place overnight. Except then, his parked car might have been spotted by patrolling cops or neighbors. More importantly, we don’t think he would’ve wanted to risk a long-distance night shoot using an infrared scope, because he needed to positively I.D. his target.”

The FBI director interrupted. “So instead of staking out the safe house overnight, our guess is he waited to take position sometime before dawn. Which means he might have stayed somewhere nearby last night. On that theory, we checked local hotels and motels for anyone suspicious. Almost all the names checked out. We got two dead ends, though.” He nodded at Sully to continue from there.

“Unlike the rest, both of these men paid cash,” the agent continued. “One guy signed in as ‘R. Lasher’ at a cheap motel about ten miles east. The other guy registered in the Hampton Inn right off 66 near Front Royal, under the name ‘B.J. Stoddard.’ We ran both names through the databases. Nothing.”

“Annie—did you want to say something?”

Garrett, looking at her; he must have seen her react. Everyone else turned to her.

“I—I’m not sure. Something in what Agent Sully said. But I can’t put my finger on it.... Let me think about it.”

“Maybe these were just guys cheating on their wives,” the FBI boss interjected. “Maybe not. We’re interviewing the hotel night staffs to see if we can get useful descriptions or leads.”

The meeting didn’t last long after that. After agreeing on an action plan and defining responsibilities, everyone got up and began to filter out.

Garrett caught up with Annie. “Let’s talk,” he said.

*

In his spacious seventh-floor office, they sat in big club chairs around a small mahogany coffee table, sipping from water bottles they’d brought back from the conference room. She detected the faint aroma of cigarettes—a
Langley
no-no.

“This stinks,” Garrett said eventually, staring at the carpet.

“Sure does,” she said, suppressing a smile.

“I don’t mean Muller selling us out. Or even getting whacked before he talked to us. I mean,
how
he was killed. It doesn’t add up.” He glanced up at her. “Look—would you rat me out if I smoked?”

She laughed and shook her head.

“Thanks.” He went to his desk, fetched a blockish, battery-operated ventilation gadget from a drawer, got it purring, set it on the coffee table. Then fired up one of his
Luckies
. The smoke drifted toward the contraption. He looked at her. “A toymaker buddy down in DS&T put this thing together for me.”

“Nice to know the right people.”

He sat back. “Let’s start with the gun.”

“What about it?”

“The Barrett 99 is American manufacture. So is the .416 ammo. More significantly, that cartridge is uniquely suitable for very-long-distance sniping—I think even better than the .50 caliber.” He flicked a look at her. “Don’t ask me how I know this.”

“I won’t. But what’s the significance?”

“One: The Barrett isn’t the Kremlin’s sniper weapon of choice. It’s only been around three years—not enough time for the
Russkies
to become really proficient with it, anyway. They train their people on the
Dragunov
SVD and the SV-98. Good enough weapons out to about six hundred meters or so. But our shooter nailed Muller through the face at twice that distance.”

He inhaled, leaned forward, blew a stream of smoke toward his humming little machine.

“Two: Russian snipers also tend to operate in teams, not as lone shooters. Almost everybody else does these days, too. The idea of a lone-wolf sniper, especially on an op this important, bothers me.

“Three: There’s the business of knowing where
we’d be taking Muller. Annie, let me tell you, we’ve worked damned hard to keep the
Linden
site secret. Only a few people in the Agency, top people, and a handful of case officers and interrogators, knew about it. If Muller
did
find out about it and told
Moscow
its location, then it isn’t logical that he showed no hesitation about going there. Knowing they’d want to silence him, wouldn’t he have insisted on going someplace else?”

“Makes sense.”

“So we can probably rule that out. Four, and finally: I have to disagree with The Boss. I just can’t imagine our people could have been tailed transporting Muller there, not without picking up the surveillance.”

“You’re right. OS protective teams are just too good for that.” She paused a moment. “So then, exactly what are you saying?”

He leaned forward, tapped some ashes into a navy-blue Agency mug.

“I’m not entirely sure. Except that this just doesn’t smell like a Russian hit.”

She put down her water bottle. “Then who?”

“Damned if I know. Because the only other possibilities I can think of are insane. And scarier. Such as: Maybe there’s
another
mole here who tipped off the Russians about where Muller was being held. Or, even crazier: Maybe the
hitter
himself
is somebody inside
Langley
. Maybe somebody from the Special Activities Division, who might have turned—”

She smacked her forehead. “I just remembered.”

“What?”

“Something that FBI guy, Sully, said. Remember those guest names from the hotels? A man registered as ‘R. Lasher,’ another guy as ‘B.J. Stoddard’?”

“What about them?”

“That second name. Grant, do you read thrillers?”

He scowled. “Little lady, I
live
thrillers. Why would I need to read them?”

“Well, I do. Love them, actually. And one of my favorite series is about this guy from
Arkansas
, named Billy Joe Stoddard.”

“Okay. B.J. Stoddard—Billy Joe Stoddard. I see it. But so what?”

She leaned forward, hands on knees, holding his eyes.

“Billy Joe Stoddard is a former
American military
sniper.”

He stared back at her. “Jesus Christ.”