Middleton said, “So Jack coming to our rescue in the Harbor Court was all part of the plan.”
“Pretty much.”
“What the hell is going on?”
“I’m just a businessman, Colonel. The world of terrorism is different now. Too many watch lists, too much surveillance, too many computers. You have to outsource. I’ve been hired by people who are patriots, idealists, protecting their culture.”
“Is that how you describe ethnic cleansing?”
Faust frowned. “Protecting them from impurity is how they describe it. You meddled in their country. You’ll pay for that. A hundred thousand people will pay.”
“And you, Jack?” Middleton snapped.
The young man gave a grim laugh. “I have my own ideals. But they’ve got commas and a decimal point. I’m making ten million to keep an eye on you and help them out. Yeah, I went to law school and gave up the family business…And it was the worst mistake of my life. Going legit? Bullshit.” He gazed at his father-in-law contemptuously. “Look at you, Mr. Harry Middleton…The star of military intel, the musical genius…Faust led you all over the world like he had you on a leash.”
“Jack, we don’t have time,” Faust said. “I’ll try the adjustment to the formula. If it works and we don’t need him anymore, you can take care of him.”
Middleton said, “Jack, you’re willing to kill so many people?”
“I’ll donate some of the ten million to a relief fund…” A grin. “Or not.”
Then he stopped talking. Cocked his head.
Faust was looking up too.
“Helicopter,” the younger man muttered.
But Faust spat out, “No, it’s two. Wait, three.”
Faust ran to the window. “It’s a trap. Police. Soldiers.” He glared at Jack. “You led them here!”
“No, I did what we agreed.”
Middleton could hear diesels of Jeeps and personnel carriers in the distance, closing in fast. Spotlights shone from on high.
Faust slapped his hand on a button on the wall. The warehouse was plunged into darkness. Middleton lunged for Faust but saw the man’s vague form run to a corner of the warehouse, open a trap door and vanish. A few seconds later, a powerboat engine started up.
Hell! Middleton thought. He swept the light switch on. He ran to the trap door. Tried it, but Faust had locked it from below.
Sweating, frantic, Perez pointed his gun at Middleton. “Harry, don’t move. You’re my ticket out of here.”
Middleton ignored him and started for the front door of the warehouse.
“Harry!” Perez aimed at Middleton’s head. “I’m not telling you again!”
Their eyes met. Perez pulled the trigger.
Click.
Middleton pulled a handful of bullets from his pocket. He displayed them. When pretending to take just three or four bullets from the clip in the diner, he’d taken them all — and the one in the chamber too.
His eyes bored into the younger man’s. “That text message I got earlier? It wasn’t from Nora and Lespasse. It was from Charley. ‘Green Lantern.’ It’s our code for an emergency. And she text-messaged me who I was in danger from. You, Jack. I knew you’d lead me to Faust. So I text-messaged Lespasse and Nora and told them to follow me from the diner.”
Middleton leapt forward and slammed his fist into Perez’s jaw, then easily twisted the automatic away. He dropped a round into the chamber, locked the slide, aimed at his son-in-law.
“Harry, you don’t understand. I was just faking. Playing along to find out who was involved. I’m a patriot.”
“No. You’re a traitor who was willing to murder a hundred thousand citizens…” His eyelids lowered. “A hundred thousand and one.”
“One?”
“My grandchild. Charley told me what you did. How could you do something like that? How?”
Perez’s shoulders slumped. He looked down and gave up all pretense of lying. “A baby didn’t fit my new lifestyle.”
“And Charley didn’t either, did she? So after losing the baby, my daughter was, what? Going to kill herself in despair?”
He didn’t answer. He didn’t need to. Middleton grabbed him by the collar, forced the trembling man on his knees, touched his forehead with the muzzle. He felt the pressure closing on his index finger.
This man killed your grandchild, was going to kill your daughter. We’re in the middle of a takedown, he attacked you…
Nobody’ll care if you take him out.
Now, do it! Before anybody comes in.
Perez squinted, sealing his miserable eyes. “Please, Harry. Please.”
Green shirt, green shirt, green shirt…
Middleton lowered the gun. He shoved Perez to his belly on the floor.
The door burst open. A dozen soldiers and men in FBI jackets filed into the room. The agents cuffed Perez as a bio-weapon containment unit, looking like astronauts in their protective gear, headed straight to the gas tanks and equipment on the worktable, sweeping them with sensors. After a few minutes one of them announced, “Nothing’s been mixed yet. There’s no danger.”
A grizzled man in a uniform with major’s stripes strode into the room. Major Stanley Jenkins’s face was grim.
Oh, no…Middleton deduced what the man had just learned.
“Colonel, sorry. He got away.”
Middleton sighed.
Well, at least they’d secured the nerve gas. The city was safe.
And Faust would be the subject of one of the most massive manhunts in U.S. history. They’d find him. Middleton would make sure of that.
A half hour later, Jack Perez was in detention and Middleton was outside with Tesla, Lespasse and Jenkins — his former colleague from the Army. A car pulled up. Unmarked. Did the feds think people didn’t recognize wheels like that? It might as well have had We Serve and Protect in bold type on the side.
Two men climbed out. One was Dick Chambers, the Homeland Security man, and the other FBI Assistant Director Kalmbach.
“Emmett.”
“Colonel, I—”
Chambers interrupted. “I don’t know what to say, Harry. Your country owes you a huge debt. You saved thousands of lives.”
Middleton hoped Kalmbach was used to being snubbed. After stumbling and letting Vukasin and his boys into the country, Chambers was going to milk the win for everything he could.
He added, “We have to debrief you now. We’d like—”
“No,” Middleton said firmly. “Now I have to go see my daughter.”
“But, Colonel, I have to talk to the director and the White House.”
But all that Chambers was talking to at the moment was Harry Middleton’s back.
She would be fine.
Physically, at least. The mental battering from losing her child and the betrayal of her husband was taking its toll, though, and Middleton had whisked her away to the lake house.
They spent a lot of time in front of the TV, watching the news. As he’d predicted, Dick Chambers and other officials from Homeland Security took most of the credit for stopping the nerve-gas attack and finding the terrorists who’d slipped into the country—“owing to extremely well-done forged papers,” he pointedly added. The FBI got credited in a footnote.
Harry Middleton was mentioned not at all.
Which was, of course, how this game worked.
The post-mortem of the case suggested that Faust was in charge of the plot to seek revenge against America for the peace-keeping operation. Rugova worked for him but got tired of prison and was going to bribe his way out with loot stolen to support the terrorists.
That’s why he was eliminated by Vukasin. Stefan Andrzej, the tattooed man, who’d killed Val Brocco, was probably a traitor, and murdered for that reason — and for his incompetence.