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Camp Tsunami, Abu Ghraib Prison

“L
IONS, TIGERS AND BEARS
.” Iggy's abort command echoed inside Camille's head. She doubled over and let out a loud moan to distract the guards, hating herself for what she was about to do. All that mattered now was getting her team out alive. She twisted her wrists and spread her ankles apart. The zip cuffs broke away. She reached for her USP Tactical, slapped the trigger twice and fired two rounds into the middle of Bobby's forehead at the same moment G
ENGHIS
did the same. Blood splattered onto the stained walls, the freshest strokes on the Abu Ghraib mural.

G
ENGHIS
glanced at Camille, “Sorry. Didn't think you had it in you.”

“I wish,” she whispered.

The other guards died before they could discharge their weapons. The inmates erupted in cheers just as the power went out, courtesy of their advance team. Darkness was a relief. With their night vision equipment, they had the advantage.

G
ENGHIS
yanked at Bobby's keychain, but couldn't get it off his belt. He unbuckled it and tugged, struggling to harvest keys from the corpse.

Camille turned away. She pulled the dishdashah over her head and tossed the man-dress aside. She was scared Iggy had ordered the abort because he had received intel that Hunter was dead. He would never say it over the comm for fear it would shake her up too much to operate. He was right.

It was pitch dark and she smelled death. Every muscle in her body tensed up and the animal in her told her to run. Breathing hard, she reached around and removed the night vision goggles from where they were taped at the small of her back. She put the NVGs on her head, turned them on and could see again—sort of. The place was so dark, there wasn't much light for them to magnify and everything seemed to be closing in on her. She knew she had to forget Hunter, pull herself together and concentrate on the egress, so she took a deep breath, forced herself to calm down and focus, but the surging adrenaline made her feel like a frantic beast.

An operator grabbed her arm and tugged. “Move.”

She went with him. They met the team at the slider to the cell block and waited for too many seconds until G
ENGHIS
and C
OPPERHEAD
pushed through them with Bobby's keys. G
ENGHIS
unlocked it and slid the bars aside. The roar of hopeful prisoners grew louder, wrestling sounds echoing in her head.

The team rushed to the steel door to the outside. C
OPPERHEAD
shoved keys into the lock, but there were too many to try them all. Her breath was fast and shallow. She had to get out. Now. She wanted to body-slam the door and she realized she was losing it. She closed her eyes for a second and imagined she was with her father.

She knew what to do.

“Stand aside. We're blowing the door.” Camille said as her training took over and she drew her knife from a thigh holster. She sliced off the block of C-4 duct-taped and contoured to her stomach along with a packet containing a set of four electronic blasting caps and a remote detonator, then cut the C-4 brick in two and gave the other half to G
ENGHIS
. She pinched off a chunk of C-4 the size of a golf ball and ripped a strip of duct tape from her stomach. Pushing the C-4 against the lock, she shoved a cap inside, then slapped the tape on to hold it in place.

In less than ten seconds, she and G
ENGHIS
finished setting charges on the lock and hinges.

“Get back and look away!” Camille said as she raced back through the slider onto Broadway and out of the blast range. “Fire in the hole.” She pressed the remote. The explosion thundered through the cell block and inmates screamed.

She dashed through the open doorway, gasping for fresh air.

Camp Raven, The Green Zone, Baghdad

In the past hour Camille had killed an innocent man, busted out of Abu Ghraib and torched a stolen Rubicon vehicle in the desert. Having to perch on G
ENGHIS
' lap for most of the ride back to Camp Raven didn't put her in any better mood and she still had no information on why they had had to abort. Even though the radio was encrypted, Iggy didn't want to use it. It had to mean that Hunter was dead. Iggy just didn't want to tell her over the air-waves. She absolutely knew it was true when she saw Iggy, Pete and Virgil were waiting on them at the entrance to the ops center.

Camille climbed from the Black Management Navigator and made eye contact with Iggy, but couldn't read him.

“He's dead, isn't he?”

“I don't think so.” Iggy shook his head. “Your bounty worked a little too well. Some Rubicon guards tried to spring him on their own a few minutes before you got there.”

“They get him?” Camille stretched. The other operators stood around, listening. “Is he here?”

“They fucked it up. They're dead.”

“Hunter?”

He put his prosthetic hand on Camille's back. “Let's go talk inside—in private.”

G
ENGHIS
and Pete followed Camille and Iggy into the operations center. Most of Black Management's business happened at night and the place was buzzing even more than usual. Oversized LCD monitors showed live feeds from unmanned aerial vehicles, helicopters and ground troops, all in the green tones of night vision. Like a television producer of a live event, supervisors with cordless headsets studied the screens, giving directions as they toggled between images.

“Just tell me. Is Hunter alive?”

“Best we can tell.”

“Syria?” Camille watched fast moving terrain on one of the monitors, then saw the bright trail of a missile flying away from the Super Cobra helicopter. G
ENGHIS
and Pete stood a few feet away, still within earshot, as they followed the live action on the screens.

“Over there,” Iggy pointed across the room. “That's Iran you're looking at. It's really hopping tonight. Some recon Marines got into a little trouble. We're keeping the Revolutionary Guard busy while their comrades yank them out.” He turned toward Camille. “I'm afraid we've lost our chance to grab Stone. They're moving him, probably out of the country.”

Camille kept her eyes on the monitor, waiting for the flash as the Hellfire hit its target. It gave her a few moments to sort through a jumble of emotions. She was relieved that he was alive, but frustrated that they had lost their chance to rescue him by only minutes. “We need to find him before that happens. But I'll go wherever it takes—let's just hope it's Afghanistan where we have the infrastructure.”

“Not much chance of that.” Iggy laughed.

“What's your source?”

“The Brits at AegeanA came through with sigint. Some idiot in the prison made a frantic call to a Rubicon oil exec at home on an unsecured line.”

“So Rubicon is giving its own operatives covers in their petroleum division. Pretty sloppy,” Camille said.

“What makes you think he's one of Rubicon's?”

She shot Iggy a worried glance. “You're not thinking the Agency? But I don't care who's involved, I'm going after him as soon as we pick up a trail. Black Management can't get pulled in any deeper—we have too many Agency contracts. We can't risk it. This is going to take a very light footprint.”

“Back up a minute,” Iggy said. “You can't seriously be thinking of going after him on your own?”

“I'll take G
ENGHIS
.”

G
ENGHIS
was watching the action in Iran. He swung his head around, opened his mouth, then shut it. He paused, then decided to speak. “You surprised me tonight. I didn't think you had it in you to do what you had to do.”

Camille waited. “So? Are you in?”

G
ENGHIS
nodded.

“Cam, can I talk to you alone?” Iggy said.

“Sure. Pete, set G
ENGHIS
up with some quarters.” Camille turned to G
ENGHIS
. “Be ready to deploy on five minutes' notice.”

“Yes, ma'am.” G
ENGHIS
saluted her and she knew he meant it.

 

Camille sat alone in the war room with Iggy, yawning and rubbing her eyes. “We don't even know at this point if we're going anywhere to rescue him, but I'll be honest with you. You'd be my first choice, but I need you here running things and planning the op to come bail me out if it goes south.” She couldn't bring herself to tell him the other part of the truth—that she was afraid his prosthetic arm and leg made him too easy to spot. Artificial limbs were too noticeable if they had to slip through borders and maneuver undetected.

“Understood.” Iggy sighed. “It's about my new gear, isn't it?”

“Don't make me go there.”

“The truth.”

“Iggy…”

“You don't want to rely on a guy who has to change his batteries every two days.”

“I'd trust you with my life any day. You know that. We've been in the field together after you lost them. But…” Her voice trailed off as she grappled for the words.

“But what?”

“You're not one of the little gray men anymore. You can't slip around under the radar. You've got a signature.” Camille felt her stomach knot. “I'm sorry.”

Iggy looked at her for a few moments before speaking. His dark brown eyes were sad, his demeanor deflated. “Don't be. All I wanted was your truth. And you know, you're right. I don't like to think I have any limits, then I get some goddamn sores on one of these stumps that make me so mad, I'll run an extra mile just to spite them.”

Camille put her elbows on the table and supported her head with her hands. “I hit some limits tonight, too, but I didn't run any extra miles. You know that scenario we ran through before you cleared me to the team?”

“Yeah.”

“His name was Bobby.” She stared into the ops center through the window that covered most of one wall of the war room. The image of her bullets blasting the holes in Bobby's head wouldn't leave her.

“You froze?”

“Perfect shot.” She touched her index finger to the middle of Iggy's forehead. Fighting tears, she turned away. “Just like my Daddy taught me.”

“Was he armed?”

“A shorty AK.”

Iggy took a deep breath and held her gaze. “You had a responsibility to your men. You did what you had to do.”

“Bobby wouldn't have hurt us. I know he wouldn't have.” She closed her eyes.

“He could've. That's all that matters. The risk wasn't acceptable.”

“It's not like I haven't killed before. I have no problem eliminating the enemy. I've done wet jobs, black jobs and I've been in combat, but tonight I killed some poor slob who probably didn't even know how to get the safety off his weapon.”

“Look at me, Cam.” Iggy reached over to her with his birth hand and took hers. “We've all been there. We've all made that call—the car coming up on us to too fast, the kid waving what turns out to be a goddamn toy gun, the guy holding an AK trying to protect his family.”

From the way Iggy looked her in the eyes she got the feeling he wanted to hold her. She would've liked that, but she'd shown too much vulnerability already.

Iggy continued, “I'll give you the same talk that I always give my boys in a debriefing after something like this. We all loathe ourselves afterwards because we all want to do the right thing and sometimes the right thing is wrong. But you know what I do then? I look at the guys I made it back alive with and remind myself that I did it for them, for their wives and kids back home because, sometimes, Bobby gets scared and squeezes the goddamn trigger.”

“This isn't the first time,” Camille said, her voice flat. “Or even the second.”

“Not the last, either.” He squeezed her hand. “You know why? G
ENGHIS
was right about something for once—you are one of us.”

All of her life Camille had strived to be one of them, the elite shadow warriors. She had been part of operations with them dozens of times and together they had pulled off the impossible, but they'd never accepted her as their own. No matter how hard she trained, no matter how good she became, no matter that she was in charge of all of them, she was first a woman in their eyes. Now she finally had made it into the club, not because she had endured and achieved, but because she put a bullet through the forehead of a fat man named Bobby.

 

Camille and Iggy sat together in silence for several minutes, nodding to one another from time to time. Iggy understood and that helped take the edge off. She took a deep breath and exhaled loudly. She motioned with her head to the ops center. “It's getting late and they probably need you in there.”

Iggy let go of her hand. “There was more in the intercept I need to talk to you about. I don't have all the pieces, but the way I see it, it could be one of two things. Either Stone's stumbled over an Agency black op that could compromise them so badly that they'll take out one of the Pentagon's men to protect it or someone in the Agency is planning on retiring to a cushy Rubicon position soon and is already doing his new employer some favors.” Iggy turned on his laptop.

“That's the norm in government now, isn't it? Throw favors and contracts at a company before you retire, then go collect the fat paycheck. Any idea who it could be?”

“Sure do. That Rubicon exec whose phone call we intercepted. His name is Brian Nelson.”

Camille looked up. “Jackie Nelson's husband? The geologist Hunter rescued?”

“The very one. Kind of makes you wonder if the whole hostage thing was a way to get some insurance money and get rid of the need for a nasty, public divorce. Nothing spooks hate more than having their personal life dragged out of the shadows by a divorce court.” Iggy waved his artificial hand. “But that's not where I'm going with this. AegeanA called me as soon as they picked it up; that's when I ordered the abort. A little later they e-mailed me the recording.” Iggy launched the Windows media player on his laptop. “Listen and tell me if you hear what I do.”

The voice came over the computer speakers. “Aw, fuck. I told you dickheads to start a guard rotation using your top operators. I wouldn't trust those jerk-off jailors to work night shift at a 7-Eleven. I want him transferred to B
ALI
H
AI
. I want him where no one can interfere.”

“Oh, my god,” Camille said.

“You heard it, too, didn't you?” Iggy crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair.

The voice continued, but Camille quit listening. “You know, last time I saw him, he said something about retiring as soon as he wrapped up a big project, but he's such an old-school spook, I can't see him selling out to Rubicon. Not Joe Chronister.”

“He sold you out, didn't he?”

“Yeah, but not the Agency. It's his life.” She took a deep breath.

“Times change and people change.”

“I should've told you earlier. The night everything blew up with Hunter at Tornado Point, Joe recruited me for a contract on Hunter. That's when the whole Julia Lewis story started. It was his. He tried to screw me one last time before retirement.”

“You're going to have to put the personal stuff aside.” Iggy scooted his chair a few more inches away from her. “Cam, with that info, I'd say it's getting pretty clear that the Agency wanted you to take out Stone so Zulu would believe it was a domestic and not tie them to it.”

“Maybe. But it could be Joe working on his own.” She nodded without smiling.

“He could be, but if he didn't go feral, then Black Management's been sucked into the cold war between the Pentagon and the OGA. We don't want to get involved in a proxy war.” Iggy lowered his voice out of old habit, even though the war room was swept for bugs several times a day. “There's no love lost between the Agency and the Pentagon's Force Zulu. If a Zulu operator like Stone was caught spying on the Agency—even if he's spying on a CIA project run through Rubicon—you bet they'd take him to their blackest hole for a nice little chat. The CIA got caught with their pants down on 9/11 and they've been fighting the Pentagon for their existence ever since. Right now with Zulu's recent successes, the future's not looking too good for our old friends at Langley.”

“Yeah, but it still could be Joe freelancing for Rubicon and the Agency has nothing to do with this. He is getting ready to retire and it makes perfect sense if he's using Agency resources while he can to set himself up with Rubicon. Talk to your friend who used to be Baghdad's CIA station chief—the one who's working for that private spook agency—and see what he can tell you about the Agency's ties to Rubicon.”