Mark Greaney - Full Force and Effect

Gavin said, “Jack? Dom?”

Jack’s breathless response caused Gavin to blow out a sigh of relief. “We’re here. Do not approach the building, there is at least one squirter heading down toward the lobby.”

“Is a squirter a bad guy running away?”

“Yes.”

“I’m watching him now. He is getting into a gray van with a man behind the wheel. They are leaving the scene.”

“Just let them go. We’ll be down in thirty seconds. You need to get us packed up and ready to get the fuck out of here.”

Gavin spun around, began running back to the office building. “I’m on it.”

—

The team had their hide site broken down, packed up, and loaded into the Mercedes in ten minutes flat. While Jack pulled the vehicle out of the underground parking garage, doing his best to keep from burning rubber to get out of the neighborhood, Dom called Adara from the backseat. She answered on the first ring. “Yes?”

Dom knew the encryption on his phone was good, so he had no worries about watching what he said. “You aren’t going to believe this.”

“You need another in extremis departure?”

“It’s becoming a thing, isn’t it?”

“Any wounded?”

“Negative. We’re okay, but we’ve got to get out of here.”

“What’s the opposition?”

“North Korean. I don’t know anything more than that, and I doubt they know who we are, but the local police are going to be looking for two guys matching the description of Jack and I as soon as they start taking statements at the crime scene.”

“Crime scene?” Adara asked.

“One dead local. Our target. Four dead foreign nationals. North Koreans.”

“Jesus, Dom.”

“Shit got crazy.”

“Just get here and I’ll get you out of the country.”

“Roger that.”

Dom ended the call and slipped the phone back in his pocket. Ryan called out from behind the wheel. “What did Sherman say?”

“She said she’ll be ready.”

Gavin spoke up for the first time. “Guys, I’m so sorry.” He explained what happened with the arrival of the building superintendent. Dom wasn’t in the mood to listen, he just closed his eyes and leaned his head back, but Jack paid attention.

When Biery had explained himself, Jack said, “If you had let us know you were leaving your overwatch we could have been ready, Gavin. You see that, don’t you?”

Gavin said, “Yeah. I see. It happened so fast. I . . . didn’t want to alarm you.”

Dom kept his eyes closed and his head back, but he said, “You know what really alarmed me? The half-dozen bastards shooting at me.”

“I’m sorry,” Gavin repeated.

The remainder of the drive to the airport passed in silence.

26

The flight from Chicago O’Hare to Reagan National was only ninety minutes in duration, but thirty-five-year-old CIA officer Adam Yao climbed up the jetway looking like he’d traveled halfway around the planet. And with good reason. This flight to D.C. was the end of nearly twenty-four hours of commercial air travel for Yao that began on the other side of the world and had left his body clock utterly confused. Although it was mid-morning now, Adam’s brain thought it was somewhere around midnight. After sleeping poorly in coach as well as traveling across nearly half the world’s time zones he struggled with the task of putting one foot in front of the other, and he noticed he was leaning onto his carry-on as he walked for balance.

Adam Yao’s flight from Singapore to D.C. was a three-legged odyssey that took him through Tokyo and Chicago before depositing him bleary-eyed and achy here at Reagan National. It was just nine-thirty a.m.; he’d love nothing more than to check into a hotel for a few hours’ rest before making an appearance at work, but his instructions were to get himself to McLean, Virginia, as soon as possible.

He planned on renting a car, but as soon as he turned his phone on after touchdown he received word a driver was outside in the arrivals area. He had no checked luggage—rare for a man flying halfway around the globe—so he stepped out into the bright morning and found a black Lincoln Navigator waiting for him.

Adam was an operations officer with the Central Intelligence Agency, but he was no desk-riding embassy spook with diplomatic cover. He’d spent a good portion of his young career working in Hong Kong under non-official cover, meaning he worked out in the shadows. After Hong Kong he was transferred back to Langley for several months of desk work, but the very week he was cleared to return to NOC status he was wheels up for Singapore, desperate to leave the boring bureaucracy of federal government employment behind and get back to what he loved to do.

Work in the shadows.

While the home office of Yao’s employer, the Central Intelligence Agency, was here in McLean, CIA was not his destination this morning. Instead, he was driven to Liberty Crossing, a gated government building complex not far away from Langley HQ.

There are two main buildings at the Liberty Crossing property off Lewinsville Road; they are virtually identical, and they are referred to by those in government as LX1 and LX2. LX1 houses the National Counterterrorism Center, and LX2 is the home of ODNI, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

Though the CIA was Yao’s employer, ODNI was the umbrella organization over all sixteen U.S. intelligence agencies, and this made ODNI Yao’s masters as well.

His identification was checked at the front gate, he was brought into the building and checked again, his phone was placed in a tiny locker, he was scanned and wanded, and after all these measures, measures that he had endured countless times in his decade with a top-secret clearance, he was ushered into an office on the third floor of the building.

He waited alone for a moment. There was coffee in front of him, but he’d had so much this morning already on the flight over from Chicago that his stomach burned, so he didn’t touch it.

Adam did not have a clue why he had been recalled to the United States, and he certainly did not know why he was here at LX2 instead of the CIA building just a ten-minute drive away. He was pretty good at guessing when things like this happened, but at the moment he was more tired than curious, so he just sat there.

Until a side door to the conference room opened.

When it did Adam glanced up, then he immediately launched to his feet. Entering the room alone was Brian Calhoun, the CIA’s director of National Clandestine Service. Calhoun was the head spy at the Agency, nearly at the top of the pecking order and so many rungs above Adam Yao he’d need a pen and a sheet of paper to figure out just how many positions separated them.

He’d never met Calhoun, outside a brief handshake during a debrief last year, but Yao was a fan, and now he wished he’d bothered to check the knot of his tie in the bathroom. He imagined he looked like hell, and Adam Yao was a young man who liked to make a good impression with his appearance.

Adam chanced a look behind the director of NCS as he entered, thinking for sure Calhoun would be followed by a gaggle of underlings, but instead Calhoun shut the side door himself and crossed the conference room with a smile.

“Son, that flight was a bitch, wasn’t it?”

“Oh, I’m fine, sir.”

“Then you’re a better man than me. Singapore to D.C. always kicks my ass. Australia’s worse, but not much.”

Adam said, “I managed some sleep along the way. I’m good to go, sir.” It wasn’t true, but he assumed Calhoun wasn’t here to listen to him complain about air travel.

“Take a seat.”

Both men sat down at the large table.