The Detachment (21 page)

“It’s not that he’s gay,” I said. “It’s that he’s closeted. That’s the exploitable aspect. Although I agree it’s a shame.”

Larison and Treven hadn’t said anything yet. I was surprised they were being so quiet.

“Anyway,” Dox said, “I’m not exactly okay with euthanizing a little old lady. But even more than that…damn, a Supreme Court Justice? I mean, we’re already practically making history here with some of the targets we just took down. But being the first to rack up a Supreme? I’m starting to feel like we might be growing bullseyes on our backs, and I don’t think I like it.”

“I don’t care one way or the other,” Larison said. “You know why I’m in this. But if you feel like we’re growing targets on our backs, congratulations, it means you’re starting to wake up.”

I looked at Treven. “You want this?” I said. “Do it yourself and it’s a two-million dollar payday.”

“Don’t be an idiot,” Larison said, looking at Treven. “It’s a setup. This whole fucking thing is a setup. Go out on your own and you’ll be the first one to get picked off.”

A long moment went by. Treven said, “Whether you’re in this for the money, or whether it’s because you want to save a lot of lives, the calculus is the same. A false flag terror attack is still a terror attack. Innocent people die either way. If removing one more player makes the difference, I’ll do it, with or without the rest of you.”

“A player?” Dox said. “Have you ever seen a picture of this woman? She looks like my grandma. I’m not holding a damn pillow over her face, no sir. Give me nightmares for the rest of my life.”

I didn’t like Treven’s response. It struck me as the product of bluster, not of thought. I wondered why he’d be so touchy. Had he been feeling left out? Jealous that he hadn’t been at the center of things with Shorrock and Finch? It seemed silly that someone so capable and experienced could also be so adolescent. If I could have been paid either way and stayed at the periphery, I would have been glad to.

But it was all the same to me. “Here,” I said, firing up the iPad and accessing the secure site. I input my pass code, then saw a message from Kanezaki:
Call me ASAP.

I deleted the message and handed the iPad to Treven. “Hold on,” I said. “Looks like we might have some new information about Horton.” I popped the batteries in my phone, turned it on, and called Kanezaki.

He picked up instantly. “Did you do Jack Finch?” he said.

I was taken aback but didn’t show it. “What are you talking about?” I saw the others glance over.

“Stop playing with me. The president is about to announce his replacement. Colonel Horton.”

My stomach lurched. “Finch’s replacement is…Horton?” I said. Larison was nodding as though he already knew.

“That’s not all. Shorrock, the guy you say died in Las Vegas because of an ironic act of God? He was giving secret testimony to Congress about abuses within the National Counterterrorism Center. He was just a civilian manager, he wouldn’t know an op if one snuck up and bit him on the ass, the last guy in the world to want to run, or to be able to run, a false flag attack. But you know who’s replacing him?”

I felt sick. “No.”

“The number two guy there, Dan Gillmor. And Gillmor’s no civilian appointee. He’s former JSOC, one of Horton’s guys. Been part of the military/intelligence/corporate/security complex his entire life. And he’s a fanatic. Knights of Malta like James Jesus Angleton and William Casey, crusader challenge coins—”

“Crusader challenge coins?”

“Some of these guys, like Erik Prince, think what we’re doing in the Middle East is a holy war, a new Crusades. It’s a network of zealots. And this one is now perfectly positioned to run the groups Horton told you were being used for these impending false flag attacks. Now his interfering boss is out of the way, and he’s number one. He can do anything he wants without having to explain himself to some meddling civilian.”

I didn’t say anything. There was so much to process, I couldn’t sort it all through.

Dox, Larison, and Treven were all watching me, their sandwiches forgotten. I’d said little, but my expression and posture must have told them everything.

“Did you do it?” Kanezaki said. “Shorrock? Finch? Was it you?”

I didn’t answer.

“Jesus Christ, John. You’re not preventing a coup. You just cleared the way to one.”

Still I didn’t answer. I was struggling to connect the dots. Larison was right. I’d been an idiot. An idiot.

“Do you get it?” Kanezaki said. “Horton isn’t trying to stop this thing. He’s one of the plotters. He mixed a lot of truth into his lies just to—”

“Stop,” I said. “Let me think.”

Dox said, “What’s going on?”

I held up a hand, palm out, and said to Kanezaki, “This announcement about Horton’s new position. When is it scheduled to happen?”

“I don’t know. But the word is, soon.”

“What about Gillmor? When will that be announced?”

“The same.”

I put my thumb over the phone’s microphone and looked over at the others. My mind was racing but I kept my voice calm. “Schmalz is a setup. We need to get out of here. Get ready. Just trying to learn a little more, then I’ll fill you in and we’ll talk about how to bug out.”

The three of them stood. There was an electric feeling building in the room that I didn’t like.

I moved my thumb and said to Kanezaki, “Anything else?”

“Yes. Why are you asking about the timing? Of the announcement about Horton and Gillmor.”

“If the announcements are any time soon, Horton didn’t care that I could hear of them before doing the third target. That means the third target was a setup.”

“Third target…there’s another? Who?”

“Diane Schmalz.”

“The Supreme Court Justice? Are you fucking insane?”

“Relax. I was already going to turn it down. But he never expected me to do it in the first place. It was just a ploy to get me to Washington.”

“Shit. You’re in Washington now?”

“Yes.”

“You need to get out of the city. D.C. is the last place you want Horton hunting for you. Especially now, he has local resources that can lock down that place like he’s closing the door on a closet.”

“Thanks for the information,” I said, preparing to click off. “I’ll call you when I’m somewhere safe.”

“Wait,” he said. “Hold on. Just got something on my screen. It’s…oh, fuck.”

“What?”

“Terror alert. Goes out to everyone in the intelligence and law enforcement communities. CIA, FBI, local and state police, everyone. It says…hang on, okay, Shorrock and Finch didn’t die, they were murdered. According to toxicology tests, with cyanide. And that you were involved. You, the two ISA operators you asked me about, and Dox. And that you’re all armed, special-ops trained, and believed to be in the Washington metro area right now, planning another terror attack.”

It had to be Horton. No one else knew about the cyanide. And Horton didn’t know that I hadn’t even used it.

“You can’t get out of there now,” Kanezaki said. “Every airport, every train station, every bus station, they’ll be crawling with personnel. Every surveillance camera in the city will be looking for you.”

“Do they have photographs?”

“Grainy in the alert. Like blow-ups from surveillance cameras.”

Las Vegas, I guessed. Our best bet would be cabs, at least to start with. The farther we got from the city center, the less concentrated the opposition would be. But we had to move fast.

“All right, at least they’re grainy,” I said. “I doubt the average cop—”

“You don’t get it. You’re not going to be arrested. The president has an assassination list, don’t you know that? There’s a NOFORN addendum to this alert that says you’re on it. All four of you. They’ll shoot you on sight. And if you do wind up captured, there’s Guantanamo, Bagram, Camp No, the Salt Pit…and those are just the ones that have been disclosed. There are others they can put you in the Red Cross has never heard of, let alone visited, you understand? You’ll have a number, that’s it. No one will know your name. John, some of these places, you might as well be on another planet, or in another dimension. You get there, you’re just—”

“I need to go. I’ll call you.”

“Wait. Let me help you.”

“Why would you do that?”

“Because you’re the only ones who can stop this thing now.”

“Bullshit. Spill it to the media. Don’t you have contacts at the New York Times?”

He laughed. “You think the Times would do anything with this, even if I had proof? They sat on Bush’s illegal domestic surveillance program until after he was safely reelected. Their editor-in-chief asks the White House for permission to publish, for God’s sake, and is proud of it, too.”

“Then one of the networks. ABC, CNN, whatever.”

He laughed again. “Did you catch Jeremy Scahill’s report about the Agency’s secret prison in Somalia? The seventh floor had apoplexy, it was so dead-on accurate. They used Barbara Starr and Luis Martinez to discredit it. ABC and CNN, the watchdog media.”

“Then call Scahill.”

“The people we’re up against will just instruct the networks to ignore or discredit him. The networks work for us, John. Which I admit is mostly useful and I’ve taken advantage of it many times myself. But it’s working against us right now.”

“Wikileaks, then.”

“Now you’re making sense. But I don’t have any proof. Get me some.”

“No. I don’t want to get further into this. I want to get out.”

“You’re telling me you’re not going to make Horton pay for setting you up?”

I didn’t answer.

“You think he’s going to stop coming after you? You know as well as I do that he’ll be more motivated now than ever.”

Again I said nothing.

“Damn it, John, let me help you.”

I was in a box and I couldn’t see a way out of it. “Goddamn it. How?”

“I’ll come to you. Put you in the trunk of my car and drive you out of the city.”

“The trunk? There are four of us. What kind of car do you have?”

“Honda.”

“What model?”

There was a pause. “Civic.”

I looked over at the collective mass of Larison, Treven, and Dox. “No way,” I said.

“You’d be amazed what you can fit into a tight space with a little Crisco,” Dox offered, apparently having intuited what we were talking about.

“You have a better idea?” Kanezaki said.

“We’re talking about eight hundred, maybe nine hundred pounds. You couldn’t get us all in there with a chainsaw and a blender. And even if you could, the back of the car would be riding suspiciously low.”

“I’ll borrow my sister’s minivan. You can all hunker down. As long as no one stops me, no one will see you. It’s built to hold seven, the shocks won’t even be noticeably compressed.”

That sounded more promising. “When can you be here?”

“Where are you?”

If it had been anyone but Kanezaki, I would have been suspicious of a setup. But I trusted him as much as I did anyone other than Dox. Plus, I had no choice.

“Capital Hilton,” I said.

“She lives in Chevy Chase. It’s not that far, but we’re getting into rush hour now.”

“Can you have her meet you someplace in between and swap cars there?”

“That’s a good idea. I’ll be there in an hour. Maybe less. If there’s a problem, I can’t reach her or she’s out with her kids somewhere, or whatever, I’ll call you.”

“Leave a message on the secure site. My phone will be out of commission.”

“Right, okay.”

“We’ll meet you in the lowest level of the parking garage. Away from the elevators.”

“Got it. See you soon.”

I clicked off and disabled and pocketed the phone. Larison, Treven, and Dox had moved out from between the beds and away from each other. Everyone’s arms were loose and their hands open. They looked liked gunslingers in a western a half-second away from drawing.

“What the fuck is going on?” Treven said.

I didn’t like the accusatory tone I heard in the question, and reminded myself to be extra calm in my response. Four armed, dangerous, and suddenly distrustful men in a small room…if things got out of hand, it was going to be very bad.

“You were right,” I said, looking at Larison. “Horton set us up. Shorrock has been replaced by one of Horton’s guys, and Finch is about to be replaced by Horton himself. The government just issued some kind of all-points terror alert saying the four of us killed both of them with cyanide. We were just put on the presidents’ kill list. And they know we’re in D.C.”

“Horton and that damn cyanide,” Dox said. “So that was just supposed to incriminate us and sound scary to the public, too?”

I nodded. “Yeah. And the hell of it is, I never even used it. And no one else…”

I stopped, realizing I’d missed something obvious. Dangerously obvious.

Treven’s eyes narrowed. “What?”

I didn’t answer. I realized there were three people who thought I’d used cyanide on Shorrock: not just Horton, but also Larison and Treven. Either one of them, or both, could have mistakenly told Horton that I’d used the cyanide. That would have given him additional confidence to order the faked toxicology reports. He would have believed there really would be evidence of cyanide if anyone examined the corpses more thoroughly.

“Then how did you do Shorrock?” Larison said. “The way you did Finch?”

I was struck that despite the tension in the room, he could remain so detached and professionally curious.

“Doesn’t matter,” I said. But if Larison and Treven were working for Horton, they wouldn’t be on that terror alert, right? Unless the idea were to make it look like we were all in the same boat, when in fact…

Treven tensed. In my peripheral vision, I saw Dox spot it, too.

There was a blur of movement, and an instant later all four of us had our guns out. Treven and I were pointing at each other. Dox was aiming at Treven. Larison had the muzzle of his angled toward the floor, but his head and eyes tracked from Treven to Dox to me and back again.

“You think I had something to do with this?” Treven said. “I’m as fucked as you are.”

I saw his hands were as steady as mine. “Put your gun down if you want to get unfucked,” I said.