Camille waited. “So? Are you in?”
GENGHIS nodded.
“Cam, can I talk to you alone?” Iggy said.
“Sure. Pete, set GENGHIS up with some quarters.” Camille turned to GENGHIS. “Be ready to deploy on five minutes’ notice.”
“Yes, ma’am.” GENGHIS 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? GENGHIS 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 BALI HAI. 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.”