Jack Coughlin - Dead Shot

Clear of the final barrier, he strolled out into the waiting area, which was crowded with families and friends and business associates welcoming the flood of people who were arriving from abroad. Rental limousine drivers waved hand-printed signs that bore various last names, but he ignored them and made his way all the way to the curb to catch a cab.

He had the cab drop him at a Metro station and used the subway to get out to Reagan National, where he used an American Express card in one of the lobby computers to obtain his e-ticket for a domestic Delta Airlines flight from Washington to Florida. Juba had never seen a major league baseball game and was looking forward to the experience.

OVER THE ATLANTIC OCEAN

Kyle Swanson returned to consciousness slowly as the drugs ran their course. He had no idea how much time had passed, and his last memory was getting ready to ride the subway and then…sudden pain, people yelling, followed by an empty nothingness. No dreams. He remained still, eyes closed until his mind cleared enough to suppress the automatic fear of the unknown.

It was not completely dark when he cracked his eyes just a bit. Some light penetrated the area to give shape to objects, but he remained essentially blind, so he allowed his other senses to sort out whatever available information he could gather. He had a slight headache, a hangover from the sleeping drug, but felt no wounds.

The first thing to make itself clear was the steady whining of jet engines and a slight shaking that told him he was in an airplane. He could almost smell the nearby bulkheads, and there was a chill on his skin that matched the hum of air-conditioning. Not a prison cell but a controlled environment. Whoever had him was taking him somewhere in a small, modern jet.

Using his body, he tried to explore further but quickly concluded he was lashed to a small bed. His fingertips told him that he was naked but covered with a blanket. Abnormal. Not the treatment usually given a prisoner in foreign lands. A condom-like device pinched on his penis, a motorman’s friend that would let him urinate into a tube. Some thin wires touched his skin. Electrodes for heart and pulse monitors.

For a few moments on first awakening, he had thought terrorists might have snatched him, which would have meant some pretty uncomfortable times ahead. As he lay there on the soft mattress without moving, he could hear muffled voices from a nearby compartment: English. Kyle concluded that he was a prisoner of the United States government. They weren’t going to kill him, so there was nothing else he could do at present. There was an almost inaudible click, and another dose of the drug flowed through the IV and into his veins. He controlled his breathing and let it tug him back to sleep.

“This guy is a damned ghost,” said FBI Special Agent David Hunt, the man who had watched Swanson through his binoculars back in Paris. He removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes. DHS Agent Carolyn Walker was seated across from him in the Gulfstream, studying some papers on the table between them. More than four hours had passed since they had grabbed the assassin, and there was still nothing in the way of a solid identification.

The man who was drugged and strapped down in the rear cabin had carried no credit cards in his old black wallet, just some five hundred dollars in cash and an Arizona driver’s license that was a phony. There was no Social Security number. Empty pockets. They had photographed the face, full on and both profiles, digitally enhanced it, and transmitted it to Washington along with the fingerprints to be run through the government’s entire computer base. So far, the computers were throwing up blanks. Nothing.

Walker spread out the digital photographs that had been taken of the suspect while he slept. “His body gives us the only real information we have. No tattoos or other identifying marks, but those scars are from bullet holes, knife wounds, and medical operations. Battle wounds.”

“Which means military.” Hunt started pacing. “Okay. Active or ex? A merc? Damn, Carolyn, we don’t even know if he’s American.”

She chewed a fingernail. “My gut feeling is that he’s one of ours, because nobody has the ability to scrub an identity from U.S. databases so thoroughly without help from the inside, and that presents the real problem. We have pictures of him shooting Saladin in the head with a pistol, which indicates he also was the one who fired the kill shot with the rifle. He assassinated the man, and that is not sanctioned by our country. That’s why we are hauling his ass back home. That’s where the answer is.”

“Doesn’t make sense,” Hunt said. “Even if he was on the inside, we should have known about him snooping around in Paris. He is as sterile as they come. That’s no accident.”

A NOTHER GOVERNMENT G ULFSTREAM WASalso streaking back to Washington that evening, and its only passengers were Captain Sybelle Summers and Lieutenant Commander Benton Freedman. Both were worried. Swanson had not turned up at the designated rally point, and according to protocol, they abandoned the plan after waiting fifteen minutes.

They saw the smoke plume and drove toward it, viewing the destruction of the house with a fear that Kyle might have been buried inside. The debris was mostly confined inside the grounds, as the building had been brought straight down, one floor pancaking upon another, but damage was visible on surrounding buildings, too. Windows were shattered, and bricks littered the sidewalks.

Sybelle had hopped out of the car and moved to the Peugeot, then dropped into the open manhole. No one in the gathering crowd had paid her any attention because the main attraction was across the street. She walked a hundred meters in each direction down the tunnel. No Kyle.

Their orders were to bail out if the mission was compromised, rather than risk getting caught on foreign soil, which would only make things worse. They hated to obey, but they had no idea where Swanson was or what had happened to him.

The Lizard took them to a military airport, where their Gulfstream was being readied. Once they had taken off, he filed a brief report in code to General Middleton in Washington. There was an acknowledgment that the message had been received, but there was no other reply.

All they could do now was get back home as fast as possible.

MARYLAND

A N AMBULANCE WAS WAITINGat Andrews Air Force Base when the FBI Gulfstream landed and taxied over to a distant hangar. The unconscious patient was transferred to the vehicle, and it drove away at a normal speed, inconspicuous in the morning traffic around Washington. Special Agents Hunt and Walker followed in a black SUV.

The ambulance stayed on the Beltway, then broke away onto less busy highways and finally onto the streets of a town and an even narrower road that led to a Coast Guard station on a rocky promontory that jutted out into the Atlantic Ocean. A storm front was moving in, and rain drummed heavily on the roof of the SUV. Dave Hunt had the wipers on high but still had to lean forward as he drove slowly along a narrow road that was bordered by a mosaic of waist-high walls of rocks.

Both vehicles pulled into the parking area of a weathered old building that was two stories tall, its bare concrete walls dingy from the gravel, grit, and saltwater that had scoured it for half a century. The masts and aerials mounted on the roof were pegged tight on the surrounding rock but strained against the tension of the support wires as the wind whistled around the big masts. The building had been abandoned by the Coast Guard in the 1960s for improved quarters nearby and was now a safe house shared by several government agencies.