After a moment, he smiled and said, “How about this? How about we skip the paperwork, get the CIA chief of base and some marines, then get the hell back into that building?”
45
Although the metal walls were bare and painted the traditional federal dove gray like those of bigger-ticket sensitive compartmented information facilities Thornton had seen, Firstbrook’s SCIF was impressive, and not just because the base chief had done the work himself. Unlike in most SCIFs, the ventilation was fantastic. Enjoying the cool air blowing across the room, Thornton sat at a small conference table, his back to the door. In the chair across from him, Mallery shifted with the excitement and apprehension of a player whose side has just seized the lead in a tight game. At the end of the table, Lamont jotted notes on the top sheet of his stationery — the four places at the table had been set with sheets of thick linen Department of State eagle stationery and the classic Parker stainless steel ballpoint pens standard to U.S. embassies.
Firstbrook made his way through the entrance and to the empty chair at the head of the table. He carried a tray with four eagle-embossed cups of hot coffee, a small pitcher of cream, and a container of sugar. In the open doorway, one of the pair of marine guards said, “I can serve that for you, Mr. Firstbrook.” Hardly characteristic of the usual relationship between soldiers and bureaucrats, Thornton thought; it spoke well of Firstbrook.
“I would take you up on that, Cap,” the base chief told the marine, a baby-faced southerner who looked like he could bench-press a tractor, “but I’m worried this tray’s too heavy for you.”
Laughing, “Yes, sir,” the captain stepped out, closing the heavy door behind him.
To get back to SofTec that much faster, Thornton raced through an account of what he and Mallery had seen there. As he touched on the implications of an eavesdropping device implanted in Bella Sokolova, Lamont’s head sagged, as though he were on the verge of nodding off. The strong gusts of air-conditioning alone should make it impossible for anyone to fall asleep here, Thornton thought.
Lamont backed away from the table, as though preparing to stand. He teetered, the motion fanning his stationery across the table. A moment later he collapsed to the floor and lay motionless.
Mallery raced toward him. Thornton suspected the worst even before she pressed her fingers against the side of the agent’s neck and said, “His heart’s stopped.” She looked to Firstbrook. “Do you have a defibrillator?”
“No point,” the base chief said. “He’s gone.”
His apathy, in combination with Lamont’s emptied holster, led Thornton to a sickening conclusion. Turning to Firstbrook, he asked, “Did you poison him?”
“No, you did, using chloral hydrate.” The base chief sat back. “Your disguise was good — good enough to defeat principal component analysis software in the Pine Street Pharmacy’s security system, but not good enough to fool Langley’s facial recognition system. In the video we have, you’re shown purchasing Benaxona, an insomnia remedy packed with chloral hydrate. The autopsy will show that’s what killed Agent Lamont.”
Mallery glared at Firstbrook. “You really think you can pin this on us?”
“I do, but the collateral damage from your defense would be too great.” Firstbrook drew a pistol Thornton recognized as a Sig Sauer P229. “The marines won’t be able to hear you shout, but they will hear the shots when I prevent you from fleeing.”
“Now we know why you’re so gung ho about your Barbados posting,” Thornton said, trying to buy time.
Firstbrook snapped. “You think I had a choice?”
“You’re choosing to break the law,” Thornton said, thinking over a possible plan.
“Fortunately, the record will say otherwise.” Firstbrook turned the gun on Mallery.
“The issue,” Thornton said, “is that this is a crime scene.” He waved a hand at Lamont.
Firstbrook glanced at the body — as Thornton had hoped he would. In that fraction of a second, Thornton snatched the top sheet of Lamont’s stationery and dropped it to the floor, where the air-conditioning current sent the paper hydroplaning. The paper-thin gap between the door and jamb stopped it, but a corner poked through to the other side. With some luck, the marines would notice it.
“What was that?” Firstbrook asked.
“Evidence.” Thornton directed a righteous stare at the base chief. “Lamont’s warning to me that you’d poisoned the coffee.”
Firstbrook turned to the door and snapped up the piece of paper. It just noted the purpose of the meeting along with the place, time, and attendees.
Scanning it, Firstbrook scoffed, but Thornton used this distraction to grip the thick steel Parker pen like a dagger and spring from his chair, intent on Firstbrook’s atlantoaxial joint, the fibrous sheet between the top two cervical vertebrae. When Thornton wrote the post-9/11 story titled “What to Do If You Find Yourself on a Plane with an Armed Hijacker,” it hadn’t crossed his mind that he would ever try this himself.
Firstbrook whirled around, leading with his gun, as the stout ballpoint pierced the nape of his neck. Thornton kept up the pressure, driving the pen through the base chief’s rigid atlantoaxial interspace and into the rubbery medulla oblongata, the lower half of the brain stem. Firstbrook spun away, aimed his gun, and pulled the trigger. Then he seized up like he’d been struck by a freeze ray. The gun still fired, the steel compartment around them amplifying the report into the level of a bomb blast. The bullet hit the ceiling over Thornton’s head, ricocheted, and burrowed into the conference table. Unable to breathe, Firstbrook keeled face-first into the top rail of his chair. The impact cracked the wood or his jaw or both, causing his gun to jump from his hand and skate across the table to Mallery, who snared it. Firstbrook looked up at her from the floor as he died — evidently.
Taking no chances, Thornton pressed his fingers against the base chief’s carotid artery. Finding no pulse, he struggled to keep from throwing up.
“I wish it hadn’t come to that,” he said.
Although she too looked sick, Mallery shook her head. “It was better than the other choice,” she said.
“What other choice?”
“That’s my point.”
The door wrenched outward. Two M16 barrels preceded the marines into the SCIF. This wouldn’t look good, Thornton thought. Lamont and Firstbrook both dead on the floor with he and Mallery standing over them, a gun in her hand.
The captain ordered Mallery to drop the weapon and instructed her and Thornton to turn and face the wall. As he and the other marine patted them down, the captain added, “I’ll be volunteering to be on y’all’s firing squad.”
Thornton doubted that a firing squad would come into play, based on his knowledge that Utah was the only state still practicing that form of execution. That knowledge offered him no consolation.
46
Rapada was worried.
“The kid put the cell phone in nearly two weeks ago,” explained Canning, hunched over the petroleum hydrocarbon detector — as he’d been calling the device Eppley had assembled here in South Atlantic’s back office, and which Rapada suspected was actually some sort of illicit weapon. “The problem is, a cell battery doesn’t last that long, especially on crap disposable phones like the ones he used.”
Canning flipped open a hatch in the middle of the device, which looked like a giant spark plug. He unscrewed and extracted a small plywood panel adhered to which was a cell phone minus its faceplate. Setting the panel on the desk, he studied the phone’s LED. “Yep, this baby needs charging.”
He drew a six-foot-long white cable from his toolbox and clicked the USB connector at one end into a slot in the phone’s base.