“Damn him,” Camille whispered to herself as she watched Hunter plow her Navigator through trash barrels, spare tires and anything else in his path as he tried to run down the shooters. She could never rely on him to cooperate with her. He was a team player with everyone else, but not with her.
Five of her men ran toward her from two different directions, their assault rifles pointing at her while two others remained with their backs to the nearest building, ready to eliminate any threats to their comrades. Stella threw her arms up and stood motionless, waiting until they were close enough to positively identify her.
Brakes screeched and she watched Hunter backing up into gunfire, redirecting the shooters away from her. The son of a bitch was on her side, at least. He just wasn’t on her team.
Hunter saw motion in the rearview mirror. Stomping the brakes and turning the wheel at high speed, he threw the SUV into a U-turn worthy of the Bat-mobile and backed the armored vehicle into the gunfire. He couldn’t see much, but kept steering the vehicle toward the muzzle flashes.
Several armed men ran toward Stella. He made a hard right and gunned it, barreling toward them. They didn’t fire on him, so he flashed on the lights for quick identification. At the last second, he recognized them as Stella’s troops and veered sharply left, then swerved right, weaving in between them at fifty miles an hour.
Hunter really wanted to take Stella up on the offer to help him, but he knew from his time at Rubicon that they had a man on the inside at Black Management, feeding them information about upcoming jobs. The mole was probably no threat to Stella, but he couldn’t trust her outfit to keep him safe.
Her men were protecting her and she didn’t need him, not that she ever needed him. And with her holding off Rubicon’s men, he was now free to head for the main gate. Any moment they would put the compound in lock-down and he would be trapped.
Camille heard the Navigator’s engine roar as Hunter peeled off toward the compound’s main gate, running away from her as fast as he could. Her chest tightened with each breath, but she was too angry to notice the hurt. He had used her for the last time.
GENGHIS jogged up to her. “Orders, ma’am?”
“Two Rubicon gunners were firing at me. Get them-alive, if you can.”
“What about the SUV?”
Camille shook her head. As much as she wanted to, it wasn’t right to send her troops to carry out her personal business. Hunter was her problem, one that she had to resolve herself. “Everyone knows Navigators are Black Management. He’ll dump it as fast as he can. Give him two hours, then go search Ramadi for the vehicle. I want it back before the Iraqis find it and decide to detail it.”
Chapter Four
The Pentagon, expanding into the CIA’s historic bailiwick, has created a new espionage arm and is reinterpreting U.S. law to give Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld broad authority over clandestine operations abroad.
The previously undisclosed organization, called the Strategic Support Branch, arose from Rumsfeld’s written order to end his “near total dependence on [the] CIA” for what is known as human intelligence.
– The Washington Post, January 23, 2005, as reported by Barton Gellman
Camp Tornado Point, Anbar Province
The stench of smoldering garbage and medical waste kept all but the rats and strays away from the burn pit. The dump was the best site for a private nighttime rendezvous on a base where there was very little privacy. Larry Ashland closed his cell phone and lurked in the shadows, wondering whatever had happened to the glamour of his profession. The collapse of the Berlin Wall had not been kind to spies.
Ashland clutched a thick brown flip chart his assistant Kyle had prepared months ago at his request when he had first suspected Force Zulu had a man on the inside at Rubicon. Greg Bolton, whoever he really was, was a risk that Ashland had anticipated. A single spy was not going to be allowed to destroy his progress, even if by accident. For two years Ashland had been working his way into a highly secretive project codenamed SHANGRI-LA and thus far knew only peripheral details, none of which added up. CIA funds were being dumped into Rubicon to run it, but he still couldn’t tell if the money was because it was a covert Agency project or because another rogue CIA case officer was setting up lucrative retirement plans with corporate America.
As Ashland worked his way deeper into SHANGRI-LA, he had studied Rubicon personnel files of its top operators in Iraq, searching for anyone who could blow his cover. He recognized the photo of a man whom he had first encountered in Afghanistan, an operator who had then been working with Force Zulu, the Pentagon’s new espionage and counterterrorism unit, the vanguard of the Pentagon’s push into the CIA’s realm. The man’s Rubicon personnel file had told a very different story, one that Ashland had no doubt had been professionally crafted by Force Zulu to cover for one of its spies.
A BMW SUV drove toward him with its lights off. It stopped and Ashland jumped inside.
“Jesus, that stinks. Shut the door fast,” Joe Chronister said as he held his hand over the dome light.
“Sorry to get you up at this hour, but we’ve got a situation.”
“It better be worth it. Security firm supervisors and oil company execs don’t generally meet in the middle of the night even if they do have the same parent company. Covers are wearing thin, even for around here.”
“Rubicon busted a small-time crook tonight. One of our team leaders got greedy and went into business for himself.”
“With the tangos?”
“Yeah and worse. With al-Zahrani’s faction.” Ashland handed Chronister a dossier.
“Crap. All it takes is one little guy to fuck up and someone thinks they’ve got something and they start pulling at threads. I assume you’ve taken care of him.”
Ashland took a deep breath and slowly exhaled before speaking. He was counting on the pause to add drama. He had to burn the Force Zulu operator so badly that not even his own guys would believe him, let alone help him. Even if Rubicon managed to eliminate the man tonight, Ashland had to make sure that Force Zulu would not come around to investigate the death of their man. They had to believe their own man had gone bad. Joe Chronister had the connections, credibility and creativity to make sure that happened. He’d see to it that every government and private operator on the planet believed the Force Zulu spy was radioactive.
Ashland cleared his throat. “We could use some help. He took out Kyle, my best man. We’re after him right now, but he’s good.”
“The way I see it, it’s a Rubicon personnel problem. Jesus, this smell is too much. The hospital must’ve tossed a bunch of body parts in there tonight.” Chronister turned up the air conditioner. Gunfire popped in the distance, but they ignored the typical sound of Iraqi nightlife.
“You’ve got to help us make sure he’s neutralized,” Ashland said. “Pull the right thread and you can unravel a whole sweater.”
“The Agency can’t be part of a manhunt. Too public. Eliminate him yourself. Jesus, you’ve got more hunters on the payroll here than we do. Tell the guy’s family he died killing terrorists and let them collect the death benefits. No one will think twice about it, let alone call for an investigation. The family will probably be happy not to have to deal with Rambo coming home and fighting the war at the local 7-Eleven. The guys who succeed over here make lousy civilians and families know that.”
Chronister wasn’t cooperating and Ashland had worked with him long enough to know that he was losing patience and any moment would cut off the conversation. He didn’t like giving away any more secrets than he had to, but he realized it would take the CIA’s fear of the Pentagon to get Chronister on board with his plan. He still hadn’t figured out the guy. Ashland knew that Chronister was CIA, but the deeper he got into the SHANGRI-LA project, the more he suspected that the Agency knew nothing about SHANGRI-LA, that Chronister had gone rogue and was using CIA resources to help the secret Rubicon project. The more he thought about it, the more Chronister disgusted him. But at the moment he needed Chronister and his contacts. Ashland took a deep breath and said, “There’s a little more to it. Bolton-or whoever he is-works for Force Zulu. They’ve infiltrated Rubicon.”