Triangle of Terror Read online

  Locklin laughed. “There is no enemy, Dutton—other than the people you think you pledge allegiance to.”

  “I work for the United States government, Locklin.”

  “So do I. Listen up, here’s a lesson on the facts of life. I’m sure you’ve heard how the victors in any war write history, how the winners determine who the bad guys are, how those on the winning side can tell future generations how they wore the armor of righteousness and made the world a better place.”

  “That’s what this is about? Winning? Writing history?”

  “Not writing it—creating it, making the future happen. You’re a Storm Tracker, Dutton. You know something about predicting the future, how to look into the eyes of tomorrow’s incubating conflicts and figure out how it will turn out, more or less. All the future is, well, it’s just an extension of the past. Men making the same mistakes. I’m just an instrument of the future and the people you so naively pledged allegiance to—the CIA, your informants, hell, maybe even the President of the United States—they’re not going to be a part of the coming future.”

  The more his vision cleared, the more sickened Dutton felt at the face of pure evil looming over him. He knew he would never leave the garage breathing, the veil of darkness shadowing Locklin’s face warning him the killer’s blustering stance was over. The Beretta was rising.

  It was over.

  Dutton launched himself off the ground, hand streaking out for his weapon. He braced himself for the bullets to start tearing into him. It was either a miracle of speed and brazenness on his part or Locklin simply toying with him, but he had the Beretta in hand, heart pumping with lethal intent. Dutton wheeled, instinct shouting he wouldn’t make it. But a distant faint voice in his head told him that someone, somewhere would stand up to this monstrous evil before it unleashed its abomination on the world. At near point-blank range, he felt the cracking thunder lance his eardrums, a nanosecond before the 9 mm hammer drilled his forehead and doused the lights.

  1

  The blinding light usually broke them before he came in to close the game. Of course, he thought, there was prep work before the hardball questions were fired off, something extra for Task Force Talon’s time and trouble having to hunt some of them down in the first place. Plus, getting it straight up front, their will would be little more than wet dung to be molded in his hands. For instance, the detainee—or, in the private parlance of interrogators, the chum or the contaminants—seemed to always come to him requiring warm up where it hurt most—on the mug. A shot or two to the nose, squelching beak to crimson mash potatoes while pinballing those firewheels through the brain, was a decent jump start to poke a chink in defiant armor. It let them know right off whatever they’d heard about the Geneva Convention was simply the whiny nonsense of Western journalists who couldn’t fathom the real world. Naturally, before the festivities started, they were stripped naked, strapped to the cold steel chair, humiliation hard at work right away to rob the chum of any pride. He let them stew for, say, anywhere from thirty-six to forty-eight hours like that, no food or water, no sleep.

  Alone, seething, shamed and frightened, pinned by the light.

  The problem was, the white light could break a man down to a gibbering idiot. No longer, then, did he leave them with eyelids forced open by clamps. He needed hard intel from lucid tongues, not raving lunatics fit only for a straitjacket. Consider the murdering rabble he had to deal with and break, though, he figured it was forgiveable if they lost one or two along the way, learning from their own mistakes how far to push it as they went.

  The rock music and the air conditioner mounted on the white wall were the newest additions, both of them personal touches. Piped in at jumbojet decibels, the guard monitoring the 8x10 cell—the Conversion Room it was called—had the discretion to decide how long to blast the detainee with screeching guitar riffs and primal drumbeats. He could grant the prisoner whatever period of blessed silence he chose before blaring back the same godawful song. With the transfer complete, the worst of the worst militants from Guantanamo Bay found themselves in a remote jungle hellhole. Smack on the Brazil-Paraguay-Argentina border, few human beings knew it existed and even fewer wanted to know.

  It was his show.

  Zipping up the bomber jacket, he pulled the door shut behind him, then slipped on the leather gloves. Even with the black sunglasses he squinted, taking a few moments to adjust to the white glare. Two steps across the polyethylene tarp, the plastic crinkling beneath rubber-soled combat boots, and he saw the detainee flinch at the sound. Good, he thought, no permanent ear damage. If possible, he liked to keep his style of interrogation more low key, direct, friendly even, unlike the shouting and barking his two comrades enjoyed.

  He took a moment to inspect the damage his starter and middle relief had inflicted earlier, stepping into the halo, shielding the battered face with his shadow. The swollen eyelids fluttered open as best they could, then cracked to slits, the detainee groaning, shivering so hard in the restraints around his arms and legs it made him wonder if the bolts would hold down the chair. They’d done quite the hit parade on the ribs, he saw, both sides a quilt work pattern, layered in black and purple. And the strained wheezing told him every breath the Iraqi drew was like taking a hot knife through the torso.

  He fired up a cigarette, inhaled a healthy lungful through it and blew the cloud in the prisoner’s face, meshing smoke with pluming breath. Though he had his closing mentally scripted he still wondered where to start. Whether Kharballah al-Tikriti was the bastard son of the Burrowed Bearded Rat—as rumor indicated—was of minor importance, as long as that knowledge remained a secret shared only by those closest to him.

  “I am Colonel James Braden, commander of Task Force Talon,” he began, the detainee gagging and wincing as he shrouded him with another wave of smoke. “I am what is called a closer, but from where you sit, Kharballah, I am the alpha and the omega, I am the only friend in the world you have at this moment. I stand between you and death.”

  He thought he spotted the residue of defiant life still in the eyes, maybe a spark of hatred. Sliding to the side, blowing smoke, he watched al-Tikriti shut his eyes, then the Iraqi cut loose a stream of profanity mixing Arabic with English. Braden was more amazed than angry. None of the others had made it this far, but al-Tikriti was still going strong.

  “That is the only answer you will get from me,” the prisoner said finally.

  “Have it your way, by all means.” Braden freed the pliers from his coat pocket, clamped them on the Iraqi’s smashed nose, twisted. “Maybe I didn’t tell you, but I understand Arabic, Kharballah,” he growled in the prisoner’s native tongue, as al-Tikriti howled and fresh blood burst from the pulped beak.

  “Let’s try this again,” the American said, switching to English, releasing the pincers and stepping back as blood spattered on plastic. Braden began his slow shark circle around the prisoner. “What I’m looking for, Kharballah, is the golden tip that will lead me to the Holy Grail—the rest of what you and the others were smuggling into Turkey when you were picked up. How about it? Where’s the rest of it?”

  “What you took was all I know of.”

  Braden snapped the pliers. The lie he read in al-Tikriti’s eyes was swept away by fear. “That’s not what your fellow holy warriors told me. Yeah, Kharballah, they talked.”

  “Then what do you need me for?” the prisoner responded.

  “Before I get into all that, let me explain the facts of life as I know them. I am in personal possession of satellite imagery that details a lot of truck traffic. Hell, for a while there we tracked whole convoys of eighteen-wheelers all over the map. We’ve got Damascus, through Kirkuk, Tikrit to Damascus, they’re coming from Tehran even, all these eighteen-wheelers, SUVs, transport trucks heading straight for the Turk border. I’m thinking maybe we Americans ought to just build a few superfreeways while we’re putting your country back on its feet.” It was an exaggeration, but al-Tikriti didn’t know what Braden k
new.

  “Trouble is, satellites have a tough time seeing things through the clouds. We know you had contacts in the Kurd-controlled far east of Turkey, but we doubt you were doing business with a people the former regime wanted to gas to extinction. So, I’m thinking you found a spot to stash all or a large chunk of it, but you had help from militant Turks. How do I know they’re Turks, you ask? I can’t be positive, but you people often forget we have ways to intercept conversations over what you believe are secured lines. Then there’s e-mail, faxes, Internet chat rooms. We get hold of your computers. You think you’ve deleted your files, but we have guys who can bring up these things called ghosts on the hard drive.”

  “I know what you can do.”

  Braden smiled. “The wonders of technology. Maybe you see where I’m headed with this.”

  “How can I tell you what I do not know? I was simply what you might call a foot soldier.”

  Braden put an edge to his voice. “That’s not the way Abdullah and Dajul told it.”

  “Then they lied to you.”

  “I cut them a deal, Kharballah, the same one you can have. Hell, you put me on the scent, I might even give you back some of that five hundred thousand I relieved you of. Now, I need to know whatever rendezvous points you had in Turkey. I need to know the approximate numbers—a rough guess will do—and specifically what the ordnance is. And I need to know where it’s all squirreled away. Real simple equation here. Names, numbers and how to get hold of who you were off-loading the ordnance to. Talk and you walk to fight another day.”

  “I know nothing,” al-Tikriti said.

  Braden lit another smoke off his dying butt and bobbed his head at the detainee. Time to hit him in the pride, he decided. “Doesn’t it bother you, Kharballah?”

  “Does what bother me?”

  “How you gave up without a fight, left the dying to your brothers in jihad.” Braden saw he’d scored, figured the prisoner was still steaming at the memory of hacking on tear gas, stumbling around in the smoke, hurling his weapon away, hands up.

  “We had you figured for a lion sure to go out with a roar. Instead you whimpered, not one shot fired. Hell, I thought you were going to start crying like some old hag, the way I recall it. Threw away your AK so fast—”

  “You surprised me. You gassed us.”

  “That’s what separates the men from the boys and the bullies in a fight, Kharballah. Being able to adjust, take a few on the chin, but dig in and charge back, swinging. That’s the way of the warrior, Kharballah. He fights, even when the odds are stacked against him. He goes all the way, even if he’s looking at Goliath.” Braden smothered the scowl with a smoke cloud.

  “That’s right, honey, I’m calling you a coward. You scumbags run around, trying to make everybody think you’re mean as the day is long, that you’re willing to die for your twisted holy war. But the first sign somebody’s ready to fight back and wax your ass you cut and run. A few car bombs, killing unarmed women and children, sweetheart, hardly proves you have the biggest pair on the block.” Braden paused to let al-Tikriti eat his shame.

  “I want to know about Khirbul, and don’t tell me it’s a Kurd stronghold the Iranians run heroin through. Well, sweetheart, I’m waiting.”

  “And so you shall keep waiting. You can leave me here for a week, a month like this, I will tell you nothing.”

  Braden’s gut told him that was the only truth he would get out of al-Tikriti. He tossed the pliers, dropped the cigarette and ground it out on the plastic, then unzipped his jacket, displaying the shouldered Beretta. There were still other warm bodies to work with. “That your final answer?”

  The Iraqi chuckled. “What? You beat me, now you’re going to shoot me?”

  “You don’t believe I will?”

  “You’re an American. I am a prisoner of war. There’s such a thing, I believe, called the rights of prisoners as established by the Geneva Convention,” al-Tikriti stated.

  Braden unleathered the Beretta, drew a bead between al-Tikriti’s widening eyes and showed him just what he thought about the Geneva Convention.

  2

  John Brolinsky was worried about his job and reputation, wondering if he was being set up for public scandal and ridicule. Stranger—and worse—duplicity had happened over the years at the NSA. Those sharks on the man-eating end of the food chain were always looking for fresh guilty meat. If a man wasn’t as clean as a newborn, the conventional wisdom held he was ripe for blackmail—a definite liability when it came to guarding secrets or protecting national security.

  Without question, a gentleman’s club—the gentleman part the grossest of misnomers from where he sat—was the most unlikely and unprofessional of places to rendezvous with one of the most powerful men in the White House. But here he was, nursing a club soda that was dropped off without his ordering the drink. He claimed the deep back booth the man had told him would be empty. Just wait, the man had told him, relax, enjoy the ambience.

  As if I could, even if I was so inclined, the NSA man thought.

  Given what he’d learned and suspected was at stake, he decided he had no choice but to ride out this tawdry scenario, take his chances and hope the walls of his own world wouldn’t crash down.

  There had been directions into Washington, then down into the underground parking garage, Brolinsky wondering the whole drive in from Fort Meade if he was being followed. Rush hour waning to bring on the dinner crowd, he’d noticed the garage bowels were nearly empty. The attendant presented him a pass, no money up front. The same deal transpired at the club, he recalled. The bartender indicated his booth on the way in, waitresses and dancers steering clear of the table, as if they were on standing orders not to disturb.

  Simply put, it felt wrong.

  No black op warring against the shadows of evil in the world, he was grateful nonetheless he’d brought the Beretta 92-F from his think tank, shouldered now beneath his suit jacket.

  He glanced around, avoiding anything other than a passing scan at the collective object of desire onstage. It was a mixed pack of hyenas, blue and white collar, probably a few crack hoodlums on the prowl. No one made eye contact with him, and that was the only plus he could find. Problem was, if the bartender had a clue as to his identity…

  He was a church-going family man with a wife and two teenaged daughters. He would be forced into retirement, disgraced, even divorce could be in the cards if the situation took a bad turn.

  He spotted the man in glasses and a dark cashmere coat descending the short flight of steps, recognizable enough after two recent stints on the Sunday morning talking head circuit. Sizing him up, Brolinsky found it hard to believe the man had the President’s ear, one of three “invisibles” who had personally engineered the unofficial Special Countermeasure Task Force. An aide to two former officials so high up the chain at the NSA, and now part of the President’s inner circle—rumor had it their word on worldwide intelligence operations could have been carved in stone—and Michael Rubin struck him as nondescript. He had a bald shiny pate, thick eyewear and a face so scrubbed it glistened for a moment as he passed through the stage lights. Brolinsky suddenly thought of him as the Pink Man.

  “You look distressed. You don’t like my choice of meeting places?” Rubin said in greeting.

  Brolinsky watched as the Pink Man claimed a seat, slid closer to him in the booth. There was something in the small dark eyes he didn’t trust, but couldn’t decide what exactly. Arrogance? Deceit and treachery forged on the anvil of jealous guarding of national secrets? Or was he reaching to find a dark side, gather up his own ammo to use against the man’s character in the event his own might be assassinated?

  “There’s a lot to be distressed about these days,” he told the Pink Man.

  “So it seems.”

  “You come here often?” he asked, thinking Rubin looked more the type to get his voyeur kicks off the Internet.

  The Pink Man smiled. “Is this where I’m supposed to check you for a wire? No
t that it would matter, since we both know our people can make a minimike or recorder look like a simple quarter or belt buckle.”

  “You want to frisk me like some common criminal? Makes me wonder what’s to hide,” Brolinsky said.

  “Your tone and look tell me you seem to think there is. The tipoff, however, was your three attempted calls to reach someone besides a flunky in the National Security Council the past few hours—as in an urgent message for the national security adviser. You should have contacted our people at the White House first, that would have been the prudent course of action in these ‘times of distress.’”

  “By your people, you mean Durham or Griswald.”

  “That would have been the more professional route.”

  “I’m not one of you.”

  Rubin ignored the remark, said, “The Man just ripped everyone within earshot a new one. Intelligence operatives are being burned by this country’s worst enemies, as I’m sure you know, the belief being these leaks are coming straight from key upper-echelon White House staff.”

  “They are,” Brolinsky stated flatly.

  “Do tell. Then my assumption about you was correct. Very well. Whatever it is you’re trying to tell me—and I think I know where you’re headed—I wouldn’t make too much noise about what’s happened overseas. I’m sure you can understand the delicate political nature such recent mishaps could create.”

  “You want to keep it from the press.”

  “The President wants to, no, he needs to keep it under the White House roof. There’s a larger situation at stake.”

  “Really?” Brolinsky scanned the crowd, finding it hard to believe they were ready to launch full-bore into a chat about national security in such a public dump, then figured between the grinding rock and roll and the howling banshees anything short of a shouting match might be safe.

  “We have complete privacy, I assure you,” Rubin stated. “Feel free to lay out this urgency of yours.”