Barry Eisler - The Detachment

“I don’t care one way or the other,” Larison said. “You know why I’m in this. But if you feel like we’re growing targets on our backs, congratulations, it means you’re starting to wake up.”

I looked at Treven. “You want this?” I said. “Do it yourself and it’s a two-million dollar payday.”

“Don’t be an idiot,” Larison said, looking at Treven. “It’s a setup. This whole fucking thing is a setup. Go out on your own and you’ll be the first one to get picked off.”

A long moment went by. Treven said, “Whether you’re in this for the money, or whether it’s because you want to save a lot of lives, the calculus is the same. A false flag terror attack is still a terror attack. Innocent people die either way. If removing one more player makes the difference, I’ll do it, with or without the rest of you.”

“A player?” Dox said. “Have you ever seen a picture of this woman? She looks like my grandma. I’m not holding a damn pillow over her face, no sir. Give me nightmares for the rest of my life.”

I didn’t like Treven’s response. It struck me as the product of bluster, not of thought. I wondered why he’d be so touchy. Had he been feeling left out? Jealous that he hadn’t been at the center of things with Shorrock and Finch? It seemed silly that someone so capable and experienced could also be so adolescent. If I could have been paid either way and stayed at the periphery, I would have been glad to.

But it was all the same to me. “Here,” I said, firing up the iPad and accessing the secure site. I input my pass code, then saw a message from Kanezaki: Call me ASAP.

I deleted the message and handed the iPad to Treven. “Hold on,” I said. “Looks like we might have some new information about Horton.” I popped the batteries in my phone, turned it on, and called Kanezaki.

He picked up instantly. “Did you do Jack Finch?” he said.

I was taken aback but didn’t show it. “What are you talking about?” I saw the others glance over.

“Stop playing with me. The president is about to announce his replacement. Colonel Horton.”

My stomach lurched. “Finch’s replacement is…Horton?” I said. Larison was nodding as though he already knew.

“That’s not all. Shorrock, the guy you say died in Las Vegas because of an ironic act of God? He was giving secret testimony to Congress about abuses within the National Counterterrorism Center. He was just a civilian manager, he wouldn’t know an op if one snuck up and bit him on the ass, the last guy in the world to want to run, or to be able to run, a false flag attack. But you know who’s replacing him?”

I felt sick. “No.”

“The number two guy there, Dan Gillmor. And Gillmor’s no civilian appointee. He’s former JSOC, one of Horton’s guys. Been part of the military/intelligence/corporate/security complex his entire life. And he’s a fanatic. Knights of Malta like James Jesus Angleton and William Casey, crusader challenge coins-”

“Crusader challenge coins?”

“Some of these guys, like Erik Prince, think what we’re doing in the Middle East is a holy war, a new Crusades. It’s a network of zealots. And this one is now perfectly positioned to run the groups Horton told you were being used for these impending false flag attacks. Now his interfering boss is out of the way, and he’s number one. He can do anything he wants without having to explain himself to some meddling civilian.”

I didn’t say anything. There was so much to process, I couldn’t sort it all through.

Dox, Larison, and Treven were all watching me, their sandwiches forgotten. I’d said little, but my expression and posture must have told them everything.

“Did you do it?” Kanezaki said. “Shorrock? Finch? Was it you?”

I didn’t answer.

“Jesus Christ, John. You’re not preventing a coup. You just cleared the way to one.”

Still I didn’t answer. I was struggling to connect the dots. Larison was right. I’d been an idiot. An idiot.

“Do you get it?” Kanezaki said. “Horton isn’t trying to stop this thing. He’s one of the plotters. He mixed a lot of truth into his lies just to-”

“Stop,” I said. “Let me think.”

Dox said, “What’s going on?”

I held up a hand, palm out, and said to Kanezaki, “This announcement about Horton’s new position. When is it scheduled to happen?”

“I don’t know. But the word is, soon.”

“What about Gillmor? When will that be announced?”

“The same.”

I put my thumb over the phone’s microphone and looked over at the others. My mind was racing but I kept my voice calm. “Schmalz is a setup. We need to get out of here. Get ready. Just trying to learn a little more, then I’ll fill you in and we’ll talk about how to bug out.”

The three of them stood. There was an electric feeling building in the room that I didn’t like.

I moved my thumb and said to Kanezaki, “Anything else?”

“Yes. Why are you asking about the timing? Of the announcement about Horton and Gillmor.”

“If the announcements are any time soon, Horton didn’t care that I could hear of them before doing the third target. That means the third target was a setup.”

“Third target…there’s another? Who?”

“Diane Schmalz.”

“The Supreme Court Justice? Are you fucking insane?”

“Relax. I was already going to turn it down. But he never expected me to do it in the first place. It was just a ploy to get me to Washington.”

“Shit. You’re in Washington now?”

“Yes.”

“You need to get out of the city. D.C. is the last place you want Horton hunting for you. Especially now, he has local resources that can lock down that place like he’s closing the door on a closet.”

“Thanks for the information,” I said, preparing to click off. “I’ll call you when I’m somewhere safe.”

“Wait,” he said. “Hold on. Just got something on my screen. It’s…oh, fuck.”

“What?”

“Terror alert. Goes out to everyone in the intelligence and law enforcement communities. CIA, FBI, local and state police, everyone. It says…hang on, okay, Shorrock and Finch didn’t die, they were murdered. According to toxicology tests, with cyanide. And that you were involved. You, the two ISA operators you asked me about, and Dox. And that you’re all armed, special-ops trained, and believed to be in the Washington metro area right now, planning another terror attack.”

It had to be Horton. No one else knew about the cyanide. And Horton didn’t know that I hadn’t even used it.

“You can’t get out of there now,” Kanezaki said. “Every airport, every train station, every bus station, they’ll be crawling with personnel. Every surveillance camera in the city will be looking for you.”

“Do they have photographs?”

“Grainy in the alert. Like blow-ups from surveillance cameras.”

Las Vegas, I guessed. Our best bet would be cabs, at least to start with. The farther we got from the city center, the less concentrated the opposition would be. But we had to move fast.

“All right, at least they’re grainy,” I said. “I doubt the average cop-”

“You don’t get it. You’re not going to be arrested. The president has an assassination list, don’t you know that? There’s a NOFORN addendum to this alert that says you’re on it. All four of you. They’ll shoot you on sight. And if you do wind up captured, there’s Guantanamo, Bagram, Camp No, the Salt Pit…and those are just the ones that have been disclosed. There are others they can put you in the Red Cross has never heard of, let alone visited, you understand? You’ll have a number, that’s it. No one will know your name. John, some of these places, you might as well be on another planet, or in another dimension. You get there, you’re just-”