Jack Coughlin - An Act of Treason

“Then what does he want? A pardon?”

Langdon replied. “He wants very little. He has stolen a few million dollars from a covert account and plans to go find somewhere quiet to retire in leisure. We wipe that from the books. He instructs that we pay him off with another million dollars a year for the next ten years through covert channels. Petty cash. Mostly, he does not want to be looking over his shoulder for a CIA-paid hit squad. In return, Jim Hall proposes that if we leave him alone-just keep pretending that he really is dead-then he will leave us alone, and our other networks and agents remain operational and safe.”

Patterson rubbed his hands together. “Are you willing to do that?”

“It actually is a small price. Yes, we can send somebody out to get him in a few years, but it might be better just to cut him loose rather than take the chance of failure. My recommendation would be to back off and let him go. After all, as he mentions, he also supplied us with two patsies to take the fall for Pakistan. Jim Hall was a very thorough agent.”

Bobby Patterson was absorbing the troubling information and admitted that it made a weird kind of sense. A rogue agent silenced and two people to blame for the Pakistan troubles. “What about those others?”

“First, we have Agent Lauren Carson, who was Jim Hall’s assistant.” Mel Langdon worked his slide show again and a series of photos of a beautiful young woman walked across the screen. “She was under suspicion almost from the start, primarily for helping him steal the money, and now she has cut and run. We found evidence of her apparent guilt, so our top investigator is running a search for her and is confident that she will be in custody within a few hours. Once we have Carson, we take our own sweet time to convict her in a secret court, and send her to a secure prison within our private system. We impose a total press blackout on Carson, because the news vultures would love to run stories of the beauty queen spymistress. Unfortunately, she is also CIA, and we don’t want that connection known.” A final picture of the smiling woman lingered on the screen, then disappeared in a shower of pixels, just as the real Lauren Carson was about to do.

Patterson realized that he was sweating, despite the air-conditioning. He had been in many negotiations in his life, but this was literally life-and-death material. Sending an attractive young woman to a prison cell for the rest of her life while letting a real killer go free was hard to swallow. “What about the other person that Hall claims to have set up for Pakistan? I assume that would be the Marine sniper?”

“Yes.” A few photos of Kyle Swanson came onto the screen, and he was never smiling. His eyes, in each picture, no matter how informal, carried a flash of predator. “That one is a done deal. We got the Paki government to agree to turn him over if we filed a pack of murder charges against him. We pick him up from prison tomorrow and fly him back to the States. Gunny Swanson will be secured in Fort Leavenworth. Once in, he won’t be coming out. He will suffer a fatal mishap before he ever faces a military tribunal.”

Bobby Patterson saw the symmetry as the noose was pulled tight on Kyle Swanson. President Russell had sided with the generals and come down hard on Patterson for overstepping his bounds in the flap about Task Force Trident. “So this renegade Marine sniper from Task Force Trident will become the face of this disaster in Pakistan, murdering innocent people and all?”

Mel Langdon brought the lights back up for a final time and found Patterson looking more comfortable than he did when he had first entered the room. Sold him. “Yes. An out-of-control covert operative goes nuts, takes the fall, and the little secret military group that runs him will be abolished. The White House and the CIA cannot be held responsible that he was not trained and handled properly.”

Patterson thought quietly as he mulled the situation. A photograph of Kyle Swanson lingered on the screen, as if staring at him with that icy and unrelenting glare. The man is afraid of nothing, thought Patterson. “How do we wrap it up?”

“Lauren Carson is as good as caught,” Langdon replied with confidence. “The sniper is already in custody. All we have to do is post a coded answer on a phony Facebook account that Jim Hall can access from any Wi-Fi computer or PDA, anywhere in the world, and he goes away.”

“What could go wrong?” Bobby Patterson asked. It was more hope than question. The end is in sight! Put a lid on this thing, the president had said. The White House chief of staff breathed a sigh of relief.

“Nothing,” said the CIA director of operations.

“Okay,” said Patterson. “Send the Facebook message and we’re done.”

ISLAMABAD

K YLE S WANSON WORKED SLOWLYin his cell, doing what he had to do, whether or not he liked it. He was facing a stretch of unknown duration at the United States Disciplinary Barracks in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, a hard-time military prison. And he was not naive. A prisoner does not have to be officially sentenced to death in order to die when the immense forces of the intelligence world want him dead.

“It’s kind of funny, when you think about it,” Swanson told the rats as he took a seat on his mattress and prepared to get to work. “It wasn’t that long ago, back when I rescued General Middleton from his kidnappers, that they buried me with full honors at Arlington Cemetery because they wanted me to disappear and do even more work for them. Now it looks like I’m heading for an unmarked grave in the Leavenworth cemetery, branded as a traitor. Hell of a thing, boys.”

He picked at the end of the dental floss and measured out a string that encircled his waist, plus a few inches, then used the built-in metal tab to cut it. Swanson was sitting with his legs crossed and laid the strip carefully before him, memorizing it with his fingers. A skittering sound was heard nearby. “You damned rats stay over there,” he ordered. “Don’t fuck with my dental floss.”

The State Department guy said he would be picked up from this prison tomorrow at noon, which meant Americans would take him into custody. He did not want to kill any Americans to break free after he was pulled out of this cell, but he also did not want to reach Leavenworth in irons. He would only have one chance. He strung out another length of floss, cut it, laid it beside the first.

If he could pick the right moment and overpower one of them, then he could grab the pistol the man was certain to be carrying and take control of the situation. He could escape, but that would make him a white boy on the run in Pakistan, wanted for murder by his own government. Not good, but the options were few.

Strip after strip of dental floss was measured and cut, then laid out. He could not go to the helpful imam, because while the man might be honor-bound to help, he had also exposed himself enough for Kyle’s sake. Another visit might doom him, no matter what his rank in the government or religious establishment. “You know, rats, I made a big choice back there during the explosions. I’ve seen women and kids die before, lots of them, and I could have walked on by without a second thought. But no, not this time. I essentially went against all of my training and experience and gave myself up for those kids.” He paused for a long moment. “I don’t even know why I did it. People die in wars all the time. It wasn’t my job. But here I am with you guys in a dark cell, and your futures are brighter than mine. Hell of a thing.”

When the roll of floss was emptied, Kyle flipped the plastic holder to a back corner of the cell. Leaning forward at the waist, he pressed his palms against the multiple strands and began to slowly roll them back and forth on the floor a few times to tangle the thread, then tied knots in one end to stabilize it, put it back on the floor, and rolled it some more. Satisfied at last, he tied off the other end. A single strand of dental floss was useless, but twenty strips woven together made a perfectly satisfactory garrote. Many little strings can tie down a giant, as Gulliver discovered among the tiny Lilliputians. Swanson stood and wrapped the gathered string around his waist like a belt, then secured it with a light tie, one end dipping lower than the other. His waist measured thirty inches, which allowed plenty of room for him to wrap the ends around each fist a couple of times and use the excess in the middle as a choking weapon.