“Okay. Drop ‘em.”
Gaffan squeezed the trigger of his carbine. The first guerrilla twitched spasmodically and collapsed face-first. The second man stood and turned toward them, raising his arms blindly, in defiance, or surrender. Gaffan didn’t wait to find out. He fired again. The man pressed a hand to his robe, twisted, and fell.
“Looks like we got the dumb ones,” Gaffan said. Behind the boulder, the desperate coughing continued. At least two men left back there, Wells thought. No point in waiting any longer. CS was nasty, but its effects wore off fast. “Cover me,” he said to Gaffan. “On three.”
“I’ll go, John.” Gaffan started to stand.
Wells shoved him down. “You cover.” Wells crouched in the shadow of the rock. It was 250 feet to the boulders in a straight line, though he would be zigzagging to keep the guerrillas from getting a clean shot. He wasn’t as fast as he’d once been, but he was fast enough. He held up three fingers to Gaffan, two, one. He took off.
And as his legs pumped over the plateau’s broken rocks, the mania of hand-to-hand combat filled him. He knew he would survive. God, Allah — whatever He was called, whatever He was—wouldn’t let him die out here. He was invincible. Indestructible.
Wells sprinted, the M4 cradled across his chest, hurdling a low rock, always moving, cutting over the field like a running back who’d made the safety miss and knew the end zone wasn’t far off. When he was a hundred feet away, a man stepped from the shadows of the boulders, white, holding an AK in both hands, wearing a jean jacket—
And a gas mask like Wells.
Agas mask. Choose now or never choose anything again. No point in trying to shoot. He was running too fast to have a chance of hitting the guy. Instead Wells pulled the second trigger on the carbine, launching his high-explosive grenade. Maybe he’d be close enough at least to rattle the man in the mask—
Thata-thata-thata.The guerrilla’s AK exploded with a staccato burst.
Wells dove to his right. He landed hard on his shoulder and rolled, reaching for his carbine.
The grenade blew in an enormous white flash. Wells ducked his head as shrapnel rained around him. When he looked up, the man in the jean jacket no longer existed.
Wells sat up. He didn’t think he’d been hit, but his right arm hung out of its socket and his shoulder felt as though it were on fire. Wells reached across his body and cradled the shoulder in his left hand. He grabbed his right biceps and tugged his arm forward, trying to pop the joint into place. The pain was the worst he’d ever felt. A river of agony flooded through his chest. Tears flooded his eyes and filled his gas mask. Wells dropped his arm.
He caught his breath and again wrapped his left hand around the top of his right biceps. In one convulsive movement he jerked his arm forward. The world spun. He pulled even harder. He could feel the joint give. The stars merged and the sky glowed a chunky white. Wells didn’t stop pulling. Then the joint popped back into place and the pain lessened. Wells tried to lift his arm and was amazed to find he could. Then he picked himself up and ran for the rocks, to see if anyone else was still back there.
BUT WHEN WELLS FINALLY ENDED his 250-foot marathon and reached the mouth of the cave, he didn’t find anyone. Anyone alive, anyway. The grenade had slammed into the chest of the man in the jean jacket, a one-in-a-million shot that had blown him apart. His headless torso lay in a thick pool of blood. The head, still covered with the gas mask, lay ten feet from his body. Through the clear plastic mask its eyes watched Wells, promising to visit him while he slept. “Asshole,” Wells said aloud, unsure if he was talking to himself or the man he had killed.
And he wasn’t finished yet. There was another one. Somewhere in that cave, there was another one.
14
SHAFER WALKED INTO EXLEY’S OFFICE IN LANGLEY, folder in hand. “Mis-ter Mole. Oh Mis-ter Mole. Where are you?”
Exley looked up from the papers she was pretending to read. “Cute, Ellis.”
“How’s the hunt? We any closer to whack-whack-whacking this mole?” Shafer stood in front of Exley’s desk and battered imaginary moles with an imaginary mallet. “Never was any good at that game.”
“Ellis, are you stupid? Did you forget what’s happening rightnow? While you stand in my office with your tongue hanging out like an escapee from Sesame Street?”
“Of course I know. He’s gonna be fine, Jennifer. You said it yourself. He was born for this.”
“He’s in trouble. I know it.” She did, too. She didn’t believe in extrasensory perception or astrology or any of that voodoo. But she knew Wells was in trouble, bad trouble, at this moment.
“You’re just nervous.”
“And you’re just a bureaucrat whose idea of living on the edge is extra-spicy taco sauce. You don’t get what it’s like, having a gun in your hand, killing them before they kill you.” And I do, Exley didn’t say. I’ve only done it once, but once was enough.
“Jennifer—”
“So don’t patronize me, Ellis. Yeah I’m nervous. Until I hear from him, that’s not going to change. Now, can we do some work?”
Without another word, Shafer pulled up a chair. Together they looked at the list Exley had been trying to focus on all morning:
TOP SECRET/SCI/EPSILON
RED — ACCESS WORK GROUP — UPDATE 2B
Abellin, Paul
Balmour, Victoria
Baluchi, Hala
Bright, Jerry
The list consisted of everyone who knew the Drafter’s name or enough details about his identity to compromise him. Already it was fifty-three names long, and despite its length, it still wasn’t finished. Tyson had told Exley and Shafer to expect several more names before the updates stopped.
The length of the list testified to Langley’s screwed-up priorities, Exley thought. The agency jealously guarded the information the Drafter provided, while treating his name with a carelessness bordering on negligence. The data was valuable, the source worthless.
After just a couple of weeks working this case, Exley had gained new respect for Tyson’s job. Even under ideal circumstances, when the agency had been tipped to the exact identity of a spy in its ranks, counterespionage was tough. Just showing that a CIA employee had hidden income or had failed a polygraph wasn’t enough. To build ironclad cases, Tyson’s teams needed to catch moles in the act of turning over classified information to their handlers.
Meanwhile, as they investigated, they had to be sure they weren’t following false leads from foreign spy agencies. During the Cold War, the KGB had more than once sent Langley down dead-end paths. The sad truth was that without a tip, discovering who had betrayed the Drafter would be incredibly difficult, Exley thought. At this point they had no suspects. And the North Koreans had made sure that the Drafter wouldn’t be able to help.
For now, Tyson’s work group had put together basic bureaucratic details for each of the fifty-three people on the list: Date of Hire, Pay, Career History/Evaluations, Marital and Family Status, and — maybe most important — Date of Last Polygraph.
No bank records. They would need subpoenas for those. Tyson’s group had run the names through the FBI’s criminal records database, checked for felony arrests or convictions. No one had any, though Virginia and D.C. police records showed two misde meanors. Edmund Cerys, a case officer who’d spent time in Hong Kong in the 1990s, had been caught urinating in public after a Redskins game. And Herb Dubroff, deputy director for the East Asia Division, had gotten himself busted for setting off fireworks on the Fourth of July. Neither arrest exactly screamed double agent.