“Why would they do that?” Roberts responded in turn. “These guys don’t give a shit about anyone.”
Golden spoke up. “Do you?”
Roberts glared at her. “I dealt with the reality of the situation.”
“And now?” Golden pressed.
“I’m a dead man,” Roberts said.
“Oh, fuck you,” Gant said. “I don’t give a damn whether you live or die. What I do care about is the young girl who is chained up somewhere. If I thought our targets would give up the rest of the cache report if Cranston kills you assholes I’d hand him the gun. But you’re right. I don’t think even if Cranston does what they want, that they’ll give up the rest of the cache report.”
“Unless they want something else,” Neeley said.
Gant turned to her. “Such as?”
“The three CIA men that our friend here was supposed to take out. Finley would still want that.”
Gant nodded. “We could make a deal. But we have no way of communicating with the targets.”
“Cranston does,” Roberts said.
Everyone turned to him and waited.
“When they sent me the video of Caleigh,” Roberts said, “there was one of those disposable cell phones in the package. I was supposed to call them and tell them where and when I would do it. I think they wanted to watch to confirm.”
“What did you do with the phone?” Gant asked.
“We tried to call them to see if we could get an idea where they were. There was one number programmed into it. A cell number. Disposable, sold somewhere in Florida. We called, someone answered but didn’t speak. They stayed on the line for ten seconds, and then hung up. We weren’t able to track down the answering phone.”
Gant looked at Golden. “You know Colonel Cranston well, right?”
“Somewhat,” Golden said evasively.
“Would he kill those men to get Emily back?”
Golden was silent, then nodded. “Yes.”
Gant turned to Neeley. “I think it’s time we bring your partner, Ms. Masterson, in on this. We’re going to need some leverage of our own.”
Neeley nodded and turned on her Satphone. Gant grabbed a remote plug and slid it into the side of her phone so that he and Golden could listen in. He ignored Roberts. As far as he was concerned, the man was right: he was dead already. And Gant had a feeling quite a few more people were going to be joining Roberts shortly.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Gant let Golden do the summarizing of what they had just learned from Roberts and just figured out. Masterson had answered the call, but confirmed that Nero was listening in, which made Gant feel slightly better. This entire mission was turning into what his buddies back in the army would call a cluster-fuck.
It took Golden about five minutes to get the man and woman who ran the Cellar up to speed. During that time, Gant checked his GPS and noted that they were only twenty minutes out from Fort Meade.
There was a moment of silence when Golden was done, the only sound in the headsets the slight crackling noise made by the satellite feed going through several Milstar satellites and being scrambled, frequency hopped and then unscrambled.
“There is a piece missing,” Masterson finally said.
“Finley,” Golden said.
“No,” Masterson replied. “These men came to the United States on a mission. If it ends with Cranston killing the others, including Roberts, at the safe house, then they still will not have completed their mission.”
“The three other CIA men,” Gant said.
“Very good, Mister Gant,” Masterson said. “And Finley has yet to surface. Our three special operators have been targeting those who betrayed them. Finley’s focus is the four who betrayed him. He tried to get them through Roberts by caching his daughter and it failed. What would be his next move?”
Neeley spoke up. “We were wrong. Doctor Golden and I. Bringing the potential victims together played right into their hands. It’s what they wanted us to do”
“Correct,” Masterson said.
“But you let us do it?” Neeley protested, half a question, half a statement.
Gant was beginning to see the big picture and it wasn’t a pleasant one. But he kept his mouth shut. They were ten minutes out from Fort Meade according to his GPS.
“What exactly is the goal here?” Golden asked. She was staring at Gant, as if accusing him of something and he knew she thought he’d been in on this from start, not knowing he’d just figured it out himself.
“There was a reason Finley’s file didn’t have a tag,” Masterson said. “There never was one. But there should have been a flag on the DO, CDA, Roberts and his brother’s file.”
Gant, Neeley and Golden all turned and stared at Roberts in the dim light in the back of the chopper. He saw the looks and his head sunk down on his chest, his eyes closed.
“So they were the dirty ones,” Golden said, as if by saying it, she could comprehend it.
“Correct,” Neeley said.
“How long have you known this?” Gant asked.
“Mister Nero and I had our suspicions from the beginning,” Masterson said. “The entire cache angle seemed odd for a pure revenge mission.”
Gant didn’t feel too bad. He had figured out the cache anomaly on his own. “So Roberts, his brother, the DO and CDA never made an official search for Roberts’ daughter?”
“Correct,” Masterson said. “That was the key thing that got Mister Nero and I to truly suspect that we might be looking at this entirely the wrong way.”
Everyone on the radio was startled when Roberts suddenly spoke. Gant realized he must have switched frequencies on the intercom while they were discussing all this. “We did it to try to accomplish our mission.”
“Bullshit,” Gant snapped.
“No, really,” Roberts was almost begging to be believed. “When we realized we needed to really get the head of the Cartel to trust my brother, we knew we had to up the stakes.”
Nero’s metallic voice cut through his protests. “As Mister Gant just succinctly put it, bullshit, Mister Roberts. Because there is no explaining the five million dollars you and your brother have in an account in the Caymans. And the similar accounts the DO and CDA have.”
“You gave up your daughter for money?” Golden was even more incredulous than she had been.
“It all went wrong,” Roberts cried out. “We thought we could play both sides. Take the head of the Cartel’s money, find low level information and people, in order to get him to trust us, then turn on him and take him out when we were close enough.”
“But none of this was authorized,” Nero said. A statement, not a question.
Gant had his hand on the butt of his Glock, belatedly realizing they had failed to search Roberts before allowing him on the chopper. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Neeley had her hand inside her leather coat, also on alert.
Roberts head began shaking, back and forth very slowly, as if by the very act he could deny all that was being said and had happened. Suddenly he spun to his right and Gant drew his pistol. Gant was bringing it to bear as Roberts jerked open the handle on the cargo door and threw himself out of the helicopter into the night sky.
Gant slowly holstered his weapon, Neeley doing the same. He leaned across and slid the door shut.
“Mister Nero,” he said over the radio. “Ms. Masterson. Roberts just sanctioned himself. What now?”
“It’s time,” the Sniper said as he turned the van onto a dirt road.
The Spotter didn’t respond, sitting in the passenger seat, his clothes still wet from the river. They’d been driving for two hours straight since getting in their back-up vehicle. They were heading south through Maine. The two men had not talked much, the close call weighing on their minds. Or at least on the Sniper’s mind. He glanced over at his partner, uncertain what the man was thinking or feeling.