Left for Dead Read online

  Variations on this theme carried on for another five hours. None of the candidates broke or offered more than phony cartoon character names, though they were clearly spent. As dawn was breaking, Steele told McMahon and Flatley to cut them down, toss in some dry towels, and deliver the first one to him in the interrogation room. It was a battleship-gray space, with a metal table in the center below one bare lightbulb, a single chair, a surveillance camera high in one corner, and nothing else.

  Steele waited there until Flatley delivered Slick. She had a big towel around her shoulders, her wrists were bloody raw, she was trembling from the cold, lack of nourishment, and the pain racking her body, yet her posture was defiant. He noted her thick, short blond hair, stubborn nose, and hard green eyes. An experienced keeper could turn this girl into an Alpha, he thought. Dress her up right, and no one would have any idea.

  “Sit,” he said.

  She did, in the chair facing the table, but she didn’t lean on the table or slump. She just looked up at him.

  “You did well, Slick. But I’m afraid you didn’t pass.”

  She didn’t react. Not a flinch.

  “It was the hotel phase, where you failed to recover the Novichok.” Steele leaned his hands on the table and looked down at her. “So, let’s do an after-action review. Tell me where you think you went wrong.”

  Slick took a breath and was about to speak. Then she hesitated, and smiled ever so slightly.

  “I am requesting Condition X, sir,” she said.

  Steele smiled as well.

  In the monitor room, where Shane Wiley was staring at the camera feed and listening to every word, his eyes glistened as he turned to Miles Turner and Dalton Goodhill and said, “She’s mine.”

  Chapter 19

  The White House, Washington, D.C.

  National Security Advisor Katie Garland hurried from the White House press room when an aide whispered in her ear.

  She was reluctant to leave because the press briefings were often the highlight of her high-stress days. The entertainment was the president’s press secretary, Stacy McAvoy, a slim blond young woman with a Shirley Temple demeanor and a mind like a bear trap. A reporter from CNN had just asked Stacy, for the umpteenth time, why President Rockford insisted that the mullahs in Tehran were still a worldwide terrorist threat. In turn, with her kindergarten teacher smile, Stacy had asked him which Ivy League journalism school he’d failed to graduate from.

  Garland and her aide, Wesley Fenster, pushed through the press room door and into the West Wing, a warren of surprisingly small offices and cubicles, with cream-white walls displaying classic American artwork of tall ships and uniformed patriots, and polished doorways and moldings of dark chestnut. Everything from mouse pads to coffee mugs, pewter urns full of M&M’s and paper-wrapped snacks, was emblazoned with the presidential seal, and while the tops of the wooden desks were neatly ordered, they were covered with so many government reference books and stacks of paper the place looked like a printing company. Thick folders containing intelligence assessments, many stamped top secret, were closely guarded by busy hands, and the low-intensity atmosphere of telephone voices and primly suited personnel holding tȇte-à-tȇtes resembled a Wall Street trading floor, but with manners.

  “The president’s got an incoming call,” Wesley said to Garland as she clipped along on her modest heels and he tried to keep up. “They’re holding it in the Watch Room, NSA’s back tracing.”

  “Origin?” Garland said and then smiled at the president’s acting chief of staff, Tony Hinds, a tall handsome man, formerly the CIA’s chief of station in Kenya. “Hi, Tony.”

  “Katie.” Hinds nodded as he hustled by in the opposite direction.

  “China,” Wesley whispered.

  Garland stopped beside the double desk station just outside the oval office and looked at Wesley.

  “Is it that source?” She wasn’t about to say “Casino” out loud.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Garland turned to the president’s Oval Office gatekeeper, a twenty-seven-year-old baby-faced aide who was still getting carded at the local D.C. bars, though she rarely had time to go out.

  “Maggie, where’s the boss?”

  “Down in the Sit room, ma’am. Waiting for you.”

  “And where’s VPOTUS?” She meant the vice president.

  “He’s at the cave today,” Maggie said. The vice president sometimes worked out of a secret location in Washington, just to keep America’s enemies guessing.

  Garland touched Wesley’s suit jacket.

  “I’ll see you after, Wes. You know how the boss feels about tourists.”

  “You bet, ma’am.” Her aide took no offense. Rockford didn’t like a lot of onlookers around, probably a habit from his old days at Langley.

  Garland headed for the wide carpeted stairwell that led down to the Situation Room, taking the steps in long strides, with her action folder tucked under one arm. Jack, the president’s lead Secret Service agent, was manning the large mahogany door.

  “Where is he, Jack? Big tank, little tank?” She meant the large National Security Council conference room, or the smaller side conference office where the president took his most secure calls.

  “Not sure, ma’am,” Jack said as he pulled the door open. “But he’s not in a Superman tube, that’s for sure.”

  In addition to the larger secure conference centers, there were also circular glass individual tubes, like old-style phone booths, with encrypted handsets inside.

  “They should have made those damned things bigger,” Garland said. “Can’t put a whale in a tuna can.” She jabbed a finger at Jack’s face as she went on through. “Don’t tell him I said that.”

  The Situation Room, a full floor below the West Wing, was not a single boardroom-type space but a five-thousand-square-foot complex of ultra–high tech duty stations, secure computers, flat-screen monitors lining the walls, and encrypted communications modules, all manned and womaned by an around-the-clock staff of strictly apolitical officers, equally apportioned from the intelligence community, Homeland Security, and Department of Defense. Central to that were three large conference rooms, the walls lined with active countersurveillance equipment, with dual flat screens at the head of each long polished wooden table, surrounded by plush black leather chairs. From each of these rooms the president and his staff could reach out to nearly two thousand similar facilities worldwide, domestic or international, and from his CIC seat at the head, the president could carry on a friendly convo with the Italian PM about cuisine, or go full secure for a Fail Safe chat with the British PM about nuclear war.

  The original Situation Room had been installed on the orders of John F. Kennedy in 1961, just after the debacle of the Bay of Pigs. In 2007, President Bush had commenced four months of new construction, resulting in the most sophisticated such facility anywhere on earth. The times they were a changin’.

  Garland turned her cell phone over to a duty officer—even the national security advisor had to follow the rules—then she stopped in the master conference suite and looked around. Tony Hinds had taken his reserved seat near the head of the table, but the only other person there was a uniformed naval aide, a female lieutenant commander. Hinds looked up from his thick briefing folder, shrugged, and shot a thumb toward the side door, which led to the “little tank” deeper inside.

  Garland walked over. It was strange that the president hadn’t wanted his own chief of staff in attendance, but his quirks were usually for a reason. She passed into a small hallway, took an immediate right, and found the president sitting at the small desk inside the square room, before a circular table with only four chairs. It was no more impressive than the office of a midlevel corporation’s head of HR, except for the gleaming bank of secure communications gear that faced the president like a jet cockpit display. Rockford’s suit jacket was slung across the back of his chair. His blue tie was perfectly knotted, but his cuffs were rolled up and his blond hair looked finger comb
ed.

  At the table sat Tina Harcourt, director of CIA. She had curly shoulder-length brown hair, glasses that looked like fashion rejects from 1965, thin eyebrows, a thin nose, thin lips, and no makeup, giving her the aura of a Missouri small-town librarian. That physical impression had stood her well as a field agent, first in Islamabad, then Ankara and later, Mosul, where her nonofficial cover was as a USAID distributions clerk. No one had doubted her. She looked far too cold and prim to be anything else.

  “Hi, Katie.” Harcourt smiled, which raised her demeanor from frosty to lukewarm.

  “Director.” Garland nodded.

  “Get in here, Katie.” The president flapped his hand at her. “We don’t want to lose this guy.”

  Garland shut the door behind her back and remained standing, though she propped her action folder open on her hip and clicked a pen.

  “You ready?” President Rockford said to Harcourt.

  “Yes, sir.” The director had a pen poised as well.

  “Stroke of luck,” Rockford said to Garland. “Tina was down here on another matter.”

  Then he glanced over at the left-hand wall, which was mostly taken up by a large square window that looked out onto the master conference suite. Tony Hinds was in there, along with the naval officer and some other folks who were gathering for a security update on Southeast Asia, which was going to be chaired by Harcourt. The president spun around, pressed a button on a rear console, and the window instantly fogged over, like frosted glass. Garland had never seen that before. She pulled her chin in and blinked.

  “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,” the president quoted with an impish grin.

  “Arthur C. Clarke,” Garland said. “But it’s still weird.”

  “Here we go.” Rockford punched a speaker button on his yellow-framed encrypted handset. The sound of static filled the room. “This is President Rockford.”

  “Mr. President.” It was the same thin voice and Hong Kong accent that he’d heard at Camp David, or at least seemed to be. NSA would run a voice print on both versions and compare. “I am thankful for your courtesy.”

  “We are thankful for your information, mister . . .”

  “Casino.”

  “Yes.” Rockford looked at Tina Harcourt. Her expression gave away nothing. “So, where are we?”

  “We are at a critical juncture, Mr. President. I will need, as we discussed, protection and shelter now.”

  “I understood that the last time. . . . But in exchange for something a bit more substantial, my friend.”

  “First, I will give you my coordinates.” The man calling himself Casino read off two sets of numbers, latitudes and longitudes. Garland jotted them down.

  “We’ve got that, Mr. Casino,” the president said.

  “I have, in my possession,” the thin voice went on, “a classified cable from the Chinese Communist Party containing two crucial bits of intelligence. One is that the CCP has already tested a new extremely deadly biowarfare weapon, somewhere in the world, and found it to be one hundred percent effective.”

  He said nothing else for a moment. Tina Harcourt shrugged at Rockford. If any such thing had happened, she was pretty damn sure she’d know about it.

  “And the other bit?” Rockford said.

  “Two, that the CCP will employ this weapon against large American naval assets, perhaps in multiple locations around the world, their objective being to render Taiwan unprotected against invasion. I suggest that you do not leave these assets vulnerable. I will reveal further details to you, along with this cable for verification, when I am in your hands.” He paused to take a breath, but it sounded almost like a tremor. “Find me. I am waiting.”

  The line went dead. No more static. Garland immediately tore off a page of her action notebook, left the room, and came back without it. She found the president on his feet and stomping around behind his too-small desk like an angry cat with its spine curled.

  “So now we’re playing friggin’ hide and go seek? The CCP’s supposedly worked up a super biowarfare weapon, because their Covid-19 disaster wasn’t fucked-up enough. . . . Apologies for my language, ladies . . . And they’ve tested it somewhere, but that hasn’t popped up on anyone’s radar? Really?”

  “We’ve had absolutely nothing about any biowarfare incident, sir,” Harcourt said. “I’d know if we did.”

  “And I would too,” Rockford sputtered. “Would’ve been in the PDB.” He meant the presidential daily briefing. “And now this cat’s claiming they’re ready to go to war over Taiwan, and they’re going to use their super-duper killer bug to take out our naval defense line? Christ, it sounds like some spoof on Austin Powers.”

  Katie Garland wanted to say, That would make it a spoof on a spoof, sir, but she didn’t.

  “The only thing this guy didn’t claim,” Rockford added, “was that Xi Jinping’s demanding one billion dollars.” He said that last part like Doctor Evil, then shook his big head and jammed his hands in his pants pockets.

  “Do you think this Casino’s legitimate, Director?” Katie Garland asked Harcourt.

  “No. That asset was run long ago by one of our senior handlers, who’s now retired,” Harcourt said. “From what we know, the real Casino’s cover was blown and he was executed. Beijing doesn’t take kindly to moles.”

  “Yeah? Who says, Tina?” Rockford posed. “Could’ve been an old-school deception op, right? Suppose Casino was actually a double agent, feeding us tailored intel. Then they faked blowing his cover, and faked taking him out of the game. So, we think he’s dead, but in fact he’s a secret Chinese national hero, ’cause he plied us with bullshit for years. Meanwhile, he’s still deep inside the committee, but this time he’s turned for real.”

  “Jesus.” Tina Harcourt blinked at the president. “You’re still better at this than I am.”

  “I’m just older and cynical and twisted is all,” Rockford said.

  There was a knock on the door. Garland opened it and the navy lieutenant commander was standing there with a secure tablet in a yellow frame. Rockford waved her inside.

  “Spill it, Commander.”

  “Mr. President,” she said. “Those coordinates are two hundred kilometers east of Taiwan, at a small atoll off of Miyako-jima.”

  “What’s on that atoll?”

  “Nothing that we know of, sir.”

  “See, Tina? Hide and go seek!” Rockford jammed a big finger at Harcourt, as if the whole thing was CIA’s fault. He turned back to the naval officer. “Where’s the Roosevelt strike group currently?”

  “Hawaii, Mr. President. At Pearl.”

  Rockford chewed his lip while he considered that for a moment and said, “Get me CINCPAC.” He meant the commander of the Pacific fleet. “And tell Tony Hinds out there to call a Joint Chiefs conference for nine tonight, right here.”

  “Yes, Mr. President.” The officer closed the door.

  Rockford crashed back down in his chair. Tina Harcourt rose from hers.

  “Mr. President, I’d like to postpone this Southeast Asia review and get back over to Langley. I want to poll station chiefs for anything on this alleged bio incident.”

  “Good idea,” he said. “Come back here tonight for the Joint Chiefs thing.”

  “Will do.”

  Harcourt nodded at Katie Garland and went out. Katie closed the door again behind her. She could never tell if Harcourt didn’t like her, or just didn’t care for humans in general.

  “Katie, when we’re done here in a moment,” Rockford said, “use one of the tubes and brief that kid from the kitchen.”

  “Yes, sir.” She knew he meant Eric Steele, but he wasn’t going to make any overt reference to the Program or Alphas, even in the most secure bunker on earth. “You’re thinking about moving all of our heavy assets out of Pearl, aren’t you?”

  “That’s right,” he said.

  “I agree.” Garland nodded. “They’ll be safer in open water.”

  “M
aybe.” Rockford picked up a dark blue pencil embossed with the presidential seal, tapped the eraser against his teeth, and exhaled a long sigh. “But remember the USS Lexington, Katie. She survived the attack on Pearl Harbor, and was sunk at the Battle of the Coral Sea.”

  Chapter 20

  Ulaanbadrakh, Mongolia

  Colonel Doctor Ai Liang awakened from her third straight night without fevered dreams or delirium, and was somewhat amazed to be still alive.

  She knew that she’d dipped her toes in the River of Styx, and it was only because of the unselfish ministrations of Gengi Phon and Mistra, his wife, that she lived at all. Mistra had patiently fed her ramen, with a spoon carved from camel bone, and had broken her fever by swathing her in piles of suffocating furs until the sweat burst from her brow, at which point Mistra had cooled her again with finger strokes of snow, scooped from a ceramic bowl. How the woman had healed her bullet wound, Ai Liang had no idea, but when at last the slimy pȃté was peeled from her waist, the flesh underneath was pink, and closed up, and sealed.

  The Chinese had some magical medicines, but apparently whatever the Mongols had was from another world.

  Gengi Phon himself was one of the most frightening characters Ai Liang had ever seen. He was enormous, with eyes like burning stones, a great drooping mustache, and a bun of thick black hair like a Japanese sumo wrestler. She had no idea why he’d bothered to rescue her at the border, until she’d eased from her fevers and began to know Mistra. Though the woman had skin like leather, eyes like a leopardess, and gold-rimmed teeth, Gengi’s wife was so kind and tender that she could not have been with a man who did not have a generous heart. That’s how Ai Liang knew that Gengi Phon was good.

  Over the past few days, she’d risen from her bed in the ger, was able to dress in Mongol burlap and boots, and had actually been outside. The fresh air was marvelous, despite the cold, and the landscape swathed in white was magnificent. She’d looked at her PLA uniform, where Mistra had hung it outside on a line after mending the bullet holes and washing away the blood. She had the fleeting thought that maybe she should burn that camouflaged costume of her dreaded past in Gengi’s fire, and be done with all of that forever.