Plot counterplot, p.13
Plot/Counterplot, page 13
“I’ll need five specialists,” Dylan continued, passing out a list. “Five men or women with unique talents. I’ve done the necessary research and compiled a short list of three candidates for each position.”
“I don’t much like this,” Mr. X said, frowning. “The more people involved, the greater the risk of detection.”
Dylan didn’t love the idea of involving others either, but in this case, he had no choice. “You involved me because I was a specialist. Now we need more.” He spread his hands. “So there you have it. Shall we get started?”
* * *
The smiles and nods around the table suggested that his ideas were being received with approval. Good. That was exactly what Dylan wanted.
They thought they’d beaten him. They thought he was totally under their control. But they were wrong.
His first plot failed. That was a fact. He wasn’t Fargo Cody and his attempt to pretend to be Fargo Cody ended in miserable failure. But he and Fargo did share one useful trait. Neither of them were quitters.
Another chapter was being written. They won the first round. They had a great advantage—a willingness to do anything to anyone at any time, no matter how cruel. But they hadn’t beaten him. He would still find a way to stop them. He would make sure what happened to Leilani and Dobie was not in vain.
You may be the cruelest bastard on the face of the earth, he thought, staring at Mr. X’s deformed profile. You may outgun me, outman me, and outspend me. But I’m a writer. I will outplot you.
You think you’re the ones writing this story. But you’re not. And I’m going to write a better story than you do.
Chapter 25
Timothy Hardcastle wondered if he should have another Jack and Coke. He liked the way bourbon felt as it burned its way down his throat and nestled in the pit of his belly. He didn’t mind what it did to his head, either. He had so much stress in his life these days. He needed a little liquid comfort. He didn’t want to get drunk. Just a little something to take the edge off. That’s what he told himself.
Next week would be even worse, with PFD fast approaching. The annual madhouse. An excuse for some of the brightest young minds in the islands to act like total ignoramuses, running about in stereotypical island garb, sporting masks and giant plastic heads. Halloween for grownups. And a pain in the ass for campus security.
Yes, he definitely deserved another drink. Even if that did put him over his predetermined booze limit.
What did it matter? No one was waiting for him. Only the dog would notice if he came home wobbly. It had been six years since Stella left, unable to live on an assistant director of campus security’s income. He’d had no one in his life since. Not even a memorable one-night stand. He was beginning to give up hope. Maybe everything Stella said about him was true. Maybe he wasn’t good for anything except ticketing poorly parked Corvettes and breaking up frat parties. Maybe he didn’t deserve anything better.
Except—there was one detail that mitigated against all Stella’s criticisms and complaints, one factor that a little booze always helped recall to mind. Stella was a chronic complainer. Believing anything she said was like letting Satan select your socks. Fact was, he liked his job, he was good at it, and he made more than enough for any normal couple to get by, even here in the islands where prices were well above the national average. Meeting women was hard. He just had to be patient.
That was why he’d come here tonight. That, plus the desire to imbibe bourbon. The two goals were not mutually exclusive.
He’d hoped some nice female number might take one of the barstools on either side of him, but he’d been here more than an hour and it hadn’t happened yet. These days, women always traveled in packs. He’d have more luck if he had a wingman.
He glanced at the rough-hewn man sitting two stools to his left chugging whiskey. He was older and bigger, but maybe if they linked up, he’d have more success.
He turned the man. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I’ve got a proposition for you, buddy.”
The man nodded. “Have proposition for you also, comrade.”
* * *
Xavier laid the inebriated security officer across his kitchen table, then wrapped duct tape around him to ensure he could not move. Xavier had a Sig Sauer under his windbreaker, but he wasn’t going to need it. Once, in the outskirts of Baghdad, he’d taken down four highly trained agents single-handedly with no weapons other than his fists. Duct tape would be enough to handle this preposterous alcoholic.
“Whaddre ya doin’?” Timothy asked.
“Just making you comfortable,” Xavier said. “Then we have leetle chat.”
“I donnunderstand.” Timothy slurred.
“You will, my friend. Very soon.”
This op had been even easier than Xavier imagined. Hardcastle was at least two sheets to the wind before he arrived. After Xavier magnanimously bought the next three rounds, he was pure putty. Hardcastle wanted to hit a dance club and cruise for babushkas, so Xavier had spilled a drink on him, necessitating a trip home for a change of shirt.
Timothy Hardcastle would never leave his home alive.
Xavier retrieved a small medikit from his car. He removed a medical syringe and filled it with fluid from a small ampule. He pushed the plunger till a bit of the fluid spurted out to insure there were no air bubbles. Then he took Timothy’s right arm, stretched it out, and flicked it with his middle finger several times to bring out a vein.
Timothy was slow, but not totally numb. “What’re ya doin’?”
“Giving you stimulant. Clear your head. Neutralize alcohol.”
Timothy winced as the needle entered his vein. “But I like my alcohol.” He hiccupped again.
“That obvious.” Xavier withdrew the syringe, applied a cotton ball, then held it in place with a bandage. “Head is clearing?”
“I guess so.”
Xavier could see the man’s expression alter as his heart pumped the serum through his system. He gradually became more alert and aware—specifically, more aware of the fact that he was affixed to his own kitchen table. “What’s goin’ on here?”
“We will have conversation,” Xavier explained. “I ask questions. You answer.”
“Whaddaya wanna know?”
“Has numbness gone?”
“I—I don’t know.”
“Easy test.” He closed both fists and hammered them down into the soft part of Hardcastle’s stomach. Hardcastle’s head—the only part of his body that could move—lurched forward, coughing and gagging. Convulsive noises rose out of his throat. Xavier suspected he was close to vomiting.
“What—the hell was that?”
“Experiment,” Xavier replied. “I think you not numb.” He pounded Hardcastle again, this time harder than before.
Timothy coughed up blood in uncontrollable spurts. With a latex gloved hand, Xavier stuck a swab in his mouth to clear it. He did not want the man to aspirate on his own blood or vomit. That would be much too quick and it would impede communication.
“What was that for?” Timothy gasped.
“So you understand how serious situation is. And how badly I hurt you if you do not answer questions.”
“What do you want? I don’t know anything important.”
“You are assistant director of security at university?”
Timothy’s eyes narrowed. “Is this about that kid who cheated on his Spanish final?”
“No. More concerned with Physical Sciences building. Lab and living quarters next door.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Everything. Every detail.”
“I can’t help you. The government controls that building. I’m out of the loop.”
“I think you lie. Timothy—do you enjoy pain?”
Timothy swallowed. “No. But I can’t pretend to know what I don’t know!”
Xavier did not argue. Instead, he reopened his medikit and withdrew a plastic tube and another syringe.
“Wha—What’s that for?”
Xavier wrapped the tube tightly around Timothy’s right arm and brought out another vein. Timothy tried to struggle, but Xavier held his arm firmly. “Will hurt more if you move.”
Xavier jabbed him with the syringe.
“What are you putting in me this time?”
“Not making deposit. Making withdrawal.”
“You’re—what?”
“Drawing blood out. Slowly.”
Timothy squirmed, but the duct tape left him no room to maneuver. “You’re...taking a blood sample?”
“Not taking sample. Taking all. Do you feel yet? Trickling onto arm?” Xavier put his finger in a puddle of blood and smeared it across Hardcastle’s face. “You now universal donor. Donating blood to universe.”
“I don’t understand.”
“If I do not stop it, you will be dead in forty minutes.”
“F-Forty minutes!”
“But will be so light-headed in twenty minutes that you will be useless. So you have twenty minutes to tell everything I want. Or you bleed out. All over lovely kitchen linoleum.”
“I—I can’t do that. They’ll know it was me.”
“You answer questions, I take out needle. You don’t, you die.”
“Go ahead. Kill me. I don’t have anything to live for.”
Xavier paused. “There are worse things than dying.”
For the first time, Timothy’s voice trembled. “Like—Like what?”
Xavier put his hand in the puddling blood, then smeared it across his own face. A streak of red across his forehead. Thick lines down each side of his nose “We are at war, fool, and I am warrior.” He jabbed his fingers into his mouth, licking off the blood. “I will drink your blood, then I will eat your flesh. After I have my fill, I will kill you.” He grabbed the tube and drank the collected blood in a single swallow, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “The feast begins now.”
* * *
Before the twenty minutes were over, Xavier had all the information he sought and then some. He’d chosen the assistant director, rather than the director himself, because his death would be less cause for suspicion, especially given his troubled emotional history.
After Hardcastle finished talking, Xavier removed the needle, as promised. And then he used a razor blade to slash the man’s wrists. When the body was found, which would likely take days, he would appear to have committed suicide, which would be entirely credible, given his background.
Just before he lost consciousness, Hardcastle spoke one final time. “Why...are you so interested in...some physics geek?”
There was no harm in answering. The man would be dead in minutes. “Because geek holds power to destroy nations.”
“Who—are you working for? A...foreign power?”
Xavier couldn’t help but grin as he packed away his tools. “No. A writer.”
Chapter 26
Seamus McKay heard footsteps approaching his office. He flipped over his legal pad and tucked it into his top desk drawer. Close call—he was almost caught.
“Morning, Seamus. Hard at work, I see.”
“No rest for the wicked,” Seamus grumbled.
“Or the workaholic.” Seamus’s new superior, Eustace Doss, was nothing if not blunt. Some people thought he was rude, even mean, but Seamus knew that, as an experienced counterintelligence expert, he had simply learned to be direct. He had no capacity for small talk. “Still working on the Cartwright case?”
Seamus grunted his reply.
“Don’t feel bad, Seamus. Half the CIA, as well as a good portion of the FBI, the NSA, and Homeland Security, are working on this case. And no one knows anything.”
“Usually some group—or several—call in to take credit. This time, no one’s talking. Not even a half-credible crackpot.”
“Maybe no one wants to take credit for a failure. Since all the terrorists died in the explosion.” Eustace paused. “But if the perpetrators don’t take credit, doesn’t that make the op pointless?”
“If you assume this was a standard terrorist operation—death and destruction for the purpose of instilling terror, sending a message, or attaining political retribution.”
“Are you suggesting it wasn’t?”
This is where it got tricky. If Seamus had learned anything during his long tenure in the intelligence business, it was the prudence of not telling people what they didn’t want to hear—unless it was essential. And you were certain.
“What if this is only the first step?” Seamus suggested. “The warm-up act. Part of a much larger operation. What if they don’t want us to know who they are because if we did, we might figure out what they’re trying to do and prevent it.”
“Do you have any evidence of this?”
“It makes sense.”
“But do you have any evidence?”
“I’m working on it.”
Not for the first time, Seamus wondered if it had been a mistake to get out of the field and put in for a desk job at the National Counterterrorism Center office in Honolulu. He’d spent almost his entire adult life doing the nasty to insure the security of the greatest nation in the history of mankind. He’d spent sixteen years working for the CIA, most of that time in the Middle East. He was probably the most fluent speaker of Farsi they ever had. He organized and led the counterintelligence deployment in East Africa following the attack on the US embassy in Dar es Salaam. After 9/11, he hunted down Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan and had him trapped within a mountainous twenty-mile radius. He would’ve gotten the murderous bastard, too, if their focus hadn’t shifted to Iraq.
After Afghanistan Seamus had a series of missions in the Middle East, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. He dealt with Russian arms dealers, and a dangerously unstable Uzbekistan bio-weapons research facility. He infiltrated a Libyan prison to extract an American journalist. His last foreign assignment was to Iran, where his Farsi was most useful. He successfully thwarted an impending attack on the US water supply—and in the process lost his entire life. At least every part of it that mattered.
He received the CIA’s Intelligence Star, the highest award they offered. It wasn’t enough. He put in for a stateside transfer, hoping a change of scenery might help him find his lost focus. They reassigned him to D.C.—and that turned out to be the worst job of his career. The one that almost killed him. So he asked for this desk job with the NCTC out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. He wasn’t hiding. He wasn’t isolating. He simply wanted a calmer life. One that would give him time to pursue his secret dream. He was living in paradise, for God’s sake. This was going to be the happiest time of his life. Soon.
“When I have something, I’ll let you know,” Seamus told his boss. He didn’t say “if.” He said “when.”
“I would hope so. In the meantime, can you take a look at this incident report?” He passed Seamus a gray file. “Looks like a home invasion gone bad. Woman was severely injured, boyfriend purportedly kidnapped or killed, no ransom request. North side of the island.”
Seamus took the file but did not open it. “Kidnapping is the FBI’s turf. What’s our involvement?”
“May not be any. But it came fewer than two hours after an explosion, fire, and death at the Mahoe Assisted Living Center.”
“Okay. So?”
“The arson investigator says the fires were triggered by a controlled detonation of K4.”
Seamus sat up. “At an old folks’ home?”
“Subsequent investigation revealed the place was in full lockdown mode, beefed-up security. The arsonists obtained access by disabling the perimeter security alarms and motion detectors with a digital mutating encryption generator. Preliminary computer analysis by the new Aprilynne decryption program suggests the generator used an algorithm designed by Hans Ringold at the Swiss Institute of Technology. Not something found in the toolkit of your average cat burglar.”
Seamus and Eustace looked at one another. For two men who had served in this business so long, a look was often enough. Eustace knew Seamus would recall that the people who broke into the Cartwright Institute had used a similar device.
Aprilynne was new. Few people knew about it. Especially—God willing—the enemies of the United States. So even the most sophisticated terrorist might use the Ringold algorithm thinking it was untraceable.
And it had turned up twice in the same general area in a relatively brief period of time.
That fact alone was more than enough reason for Seamus to look into this incident report.
“Why was Mahoe in lockdown?”
“The manager ordered it, but he did so at the request of a friend of one of the retirees. The one who turned up dead on the beach.”
“Murdered?”
“Unclear. The manager thinks it was an accident—brain-addled resident wandered off and drowned. But the whole situation sounds about a dozen alarms in my head. His friend orders more security for the old guy, and a few hours later, he’s dead.”
“Who is this mysterious benefactor?”
“The same person who disappeared shortly thereafter during the home invasion.”
“Weird.”
“It gets weirder. We have witnesses who say they saw the same guy arrested on the Beach Walk and taken in custody maybe an hour or so before the old guy croaked. But there’s no record of his arrest at the police station.”
Seamus opened the file and scanned the contents. The assault was brutal. Woman was shot and is still in critical condition. She was known to be dating the man who beefed up security at Mahoe. Lots of booze at the scene, broken furniture. Police suspect that the boyfriend might’ve been behind the attack, lost control, attacked the woman, staged it to look like a home invasion and fled.
“What’s the guy’s name?”
“Dylan Kane Taggart.” The Hawaiian middle name was pronounced “Kah-nay.”
Seamus blinked. “Wait a minute. Not Dylan Taggart.”
“Name rings a bell?”
Seamus flipped through the file. “Dylan Taggart? The writer?”
“What, like in a rodeo?”
