Coldfall Page 23

  The ideas of communism and socialism, once reviled in America, became romantic to a lost generation. And as the conflict in Viet Nam escalated, the Soviet agents effectively turned huge segments of the nation’s youth against the war and the country exploded.

  The fighting in Southeast Asia was always portrayed as a proxy war between the US and Soviet Union. A way for the superpowers to meet on the field of battle without destroying every living thing on Earth.

  In many ways, it was. But the true battle of the era was fought and won by the KGB in the streets and coffee shops and classrooms of America as millions of young people turned against the very system and ideologies that had founded the country. They were unwittingly guided into professions that would one day give them more power than even the highest office in the land.

  Schools and universities became their homes. After all, what better way to indoctrinate future generations than to have near complete control over their very thoughts in a classroom. The media, once the powerful voice of American might and a very real contributing factor to the victories over Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan was another target for the agents of influence.

  The ideology, which came to be known as progressivism, spread like a cancer through America. Within a generation, what the KGB started in the early 60s was a self-perpetuating movement within America. For a time, it was held in check as more conservative leaning politicians were elected and sent to Washington. But it kept growing and spreading until it affected every facet of life at some level.

  And with its metastasis came the new norm for half of America. Cultural shame. Disgust at what the country had once been. Concerted efforts to erase history and move toward some Utopian future that was nothing more than a fantasy that none of them could even define.

  It was no longer necessary to debate different ideas or beliefs. Now, it was much simpler to spread falsehoods in the media and on social networks. To ridicule anyone who didn’t agree with left wing ideology. To deride them at every turn. To portray them as bigots and racists and somehow less than human. To espouse violence against any who dared voice a dissenting thought.

  Alexi clearly remembered the man standing in front of the packed auditorium, beaming as he delivered the lecture. The point had been lost on some of the attendees, but he had understood clearly. Even the most powerful nation the world had ever seen could be defeated. But not by armies or tanks or bombs or rockets. Simply by dividing the people. Turning them against each other.

  “Alexi.”

  Kotaroff’s voice snapped him out of his thoughts and he jumped to his feet and followed the Colonel into the secure room.

  “We have new orders. Direct from Barinov himself.”

  Alexi’s eyebrows shot up at the mention of President Putin’s ruthless right hand. Former KGB and now the wealthiest man in Russia, to even know of Barinov was to fear him. Quietly, a few of his fellow officers had once commented after several bottles of vodka that the man is what would have been born from an unholy union between Stalin and Hitler. Just the mention of Barinov’s name caused Alexi to involuntarily shudder.

  “You spoke with him personally?” he asked in a guarded whisper.

  Kotaroff nodded solemnly.

  “Carter has accelerated events far ahead of a meticulously planned schedule. This is placing other efforts into jeopardy. He is to be convinced to pull back, to rein in the president, or he is to be terminated. Tonight.”

  “And Timmons?”

  “For the moment, he is safe. He may be useful at some point in the future.”

  “I understand, Colonel. I shall make it happen.”

  Chapter 43

  William Carter, wearing pajamas and a dressing gown, looked up from a file he was reading when the Director of National Intelligence, Sean Rosen, walked into his office. He closed the file and glanced at a small indicator light on the edge of his desk, verifying the room was secure from any form of electronic recording.

  “What’s so damn important that it couldn’t wait until a decent hour, Mr. Rosen?”

  “We have a problem,” the DNI said, not bothering to sit. “The team that was sent to retrieve the evidence in Idaho has been taken out by the opposition. They have possession of the file as well as our team leader.”

  “What?” Carter shouted, leaping to his feet. “I was assured this team was the best! How did this happen?”

  “The General’s doing, is what we’re hearing from our source inside. He sent a former Delta team, which suffered heavy losses, but prevailed.”

  “They have one of our men? Will he talk?” Carter asked, slowly resuming his seat.

  “With the proper incentives, everyone talks, Mr. Carter. It’s only a matter of time.”

  “What does he know? Can he hurt us?”

  “He led the team on the opening gambit at the Meadows’ ranch in Idaho, then one of the assaults on an FBI office. We don’t know specifically what evidence the General has, our source isn’t in a position to view it, but this could be problematic.”

  “That’s the understatement of the day,” Carter snapped, turning and looking out the window in thought.

  “We have a location. Where they’re holding him.”

  Carter’s head snapped around, his eyes flashing.

  “You could have opened with that,” he barked. “What are you doing about it?”

  “I’m bringing in two Reaper drones from California. They’ll be onsite in a couple of hours. Both are armed.”

  Carter blinked in surprise.

  “Missile attacks? How the hell are we going to hide that?”

  “Frankly,” Rosen said, a derisive tone in his voice, “I really don’t care. The country’s on course for a full blown civil war and our hand is on the throttle. But if the evidence they have gets out, along with statements from our team leader, we’re going to lose control.”

  “We will not lose control! The president has already contacted the Germans!”

  Carter’s manner was dismissive, but Rosen was immune.

  “You’ve pushed too fast,” Rosen said. “You didn’t allow the plan to play out as agreed. Right now, the military is staying out of it. Federal law enforcement is firmly in our camp. But there hasn’t been time for the country to reach a point where there will be support for the actions you’ve put into motion. You’ve pushed too hard and too fast.”

  “That was my decision. We’ve waited long enough for this. It’s time to reap the rewards of our efforts! Now, call off the drones. Missile strikes on US soil? That can’t happen! Not yet.”

  Rosen was already shaking his head and took a deep breath before continuing.

  “You’re not listening to me. What do you think will happen if proof comes out of who really killed all those FBI agents? Of who murdered the ranchers in Idaho? Federal law enforcement will suddenly be our adversary. Do you have any idea how many armed men and women that is? And the people they’re battling with today will join forces with them, as I suspect much of the military. We have to back off and eliminate the opposition. If we don’t… well, I for one don’t plan to spend the rest of my life in a federal SuperMax prison, waiting for the executioner’s needle.”

  Carter had held his infamous temper in check during the conversation, but it got the best of him when he realized this had never been a discussion. This was Rosen, thinking he could come into his office and tell him what to do. Charging around his desk, he headed directly for the man, his face a red mask of fury.

  Snatching the crystal ashtray from his desk, he was preparing to hit the DNI over the head with it when Rosen’s right hand came up and there was a muted hiss. Something stung his neck and he started to reach for it, but the office suddenly spun around him and he crashed to the floor as pain blossomed in his chest.

  Lying on his back, he could only stare at the ceiling and gasp for a breath that was quickly becoming harder and harder to draw. The DNI’s face swam into view as he leaned in to look down at Carter.

  “Should have liste
ned. Tried to get you to see reason.”

  “Wh-- wh--…”

  “What’d I do?” Rosen asked, unable to suppress a superior smile. “A little toy I borrowed from the CIA. Compressed air fires a pellet of poison no larger than a grain of sand. At close range, it penetrates the skin and, as you’ve just learned, causes immediate incapacitation. What takes a little longer is the massive heart attack that’s coming. Good bye, Bill.”

  Rosen’s face disappeared and Carter was unable to turn his head to follow. Then it reappeared a few seconds later.

  “Oh, and just so you know,” he said, still smiling. “The poison is completely undetectable in the body after twenty minutes. Didn’t want you worrying about an autopsy implicating foul play.”

  He lifted a hand to his brow and delivered a one finger salute, then moved away. After a few seconds, the pain in Carter’s chest eased and he was able to take a breath. Drawing it deeply, he opened his mouth to shout for help, but all that came out was a strangled gasp as an iron fist gripped his heart and squeezed until it stopped. For nearly thirty seconds, he remained conscious, staring at the ceiling, then his vision began to tunnel and the darkness closed in and took William Carter.

  Rosen had watched from the far side of the room. Glancing at his watch, he came forward and knelt, checking for a pulse and finding none. Standing, he hurried around Carter’s desk as he pulled on a pair of thin gloves. Removing the laptop from a drawer, he opened the lid and as soon as the screen came to life, inserted a jump drive into a USB port.

  The program on the drive quickly took control of the computer and within only a minute it was done with the first step. Files had been modified or deleted. New files had been created and made to appear as if they were much older than they actually were. Taken together, they showed one man’s obsession with fomenting civil unrest in order to profit enormously from the volatility of the stock market’s reaction.

  There was no plan to use Carter as a scapegoat, unless and until the truth of what really happened in Idaho and the FBI offices came out. If it did, there were people already in place to surreptitiously point investigators in the desired direction.

  Rosen was growing impatient, watching the screen nervously as the second and final step was executed by the program. There was no guarantee that upon its owner’s death, the laptop wouldn’t be destroyed. So, the program was now copying the evidence it had manipulated onto several different servers across the range of companies owned and operated by Carter. They would hide in plain sight, waiting to be discovered if it became necessary to control the narrative and subsequent investigation.

  The program finally completed and Rosen snatched the drive, returning it to his pocket with a sigh of relief. It had taken less than five minutes and he had constantly looked at the door, expecting one of Carter’s assistants to walk in at any moment. Placing the laptop back where it had come from, he stood and walked around the desk, surveying the body and the rest of the room as he removed the gloves.

  Satisfied with what he saw, he stepped to the door and placed his hand on the knob. Pausing to take a breath, he composed his emotions. Prepared, he yanked the door open, startling the assistant and two security men on the other side.

  “Help! He just fell down!”

  Rather than step back and get trapped inside Carter’s office, he ran out as he shouted. The three men stared at him for a beat, then there was a mad scramble through the door. Rosen turned and walked away, bypassing the bank of elevators and pushing through an obscure door.

  He climbed a flight of concrete stairs, then opened another door and stepped onto the roof. A black helicopter with no markings or tail number was idling, the rotor slowly spinning. As Rosen strode toward it, the pilot advanced the throttle and lifted off the helipad the instant the DNI climbed aboard.

  Chapter 44

  We had been in the studio for a few hours after showering and putting on clean clothes. The crew seemed to know what they were doing, huddling with Ashley as they finalized the script she would follow to present the evidence, which included interviewing both me and Tanya. We’d done our part with Tanya describing why there had been trail cameras set up at her home, then Ashley had walked us through the events of the night we’d retrieved them.

  Both of us had been caught by surprise when she bluntly asked us if we had harmed or killed the FBI agents at the scene. In hindsight, that unexpected question had probably been planned so the cameras could capture our shocked reaction. Maybe we’d come off as believable. Maybe not. Either way, our response had been genuine. And honest.

  We’d recorded for a couple of hours, several of the questions being repeated after a man who was the director didn’t like how we answered. This had bothered me the first time he’d stopped us, but he didn’t want a different answer, he simply wanted a more thorough explanation. I imagine Ashley would have handled that herself if she were an experienced television interviewer, but as she’d claimed, she didn’t know what she was doing.

  Now, our part was complete and the crew was busily editing while we waited for word that the prisoner had been convinced to cooperate. The footage from the body cam he’d worn had already been spliced in, but Mr. White was adamant that we needed the person who’d worn it to speak to its authenticity. So, we waited.

  Ashley had asked several times what was being done to him, but White wouldn’t answer. BK was nowhere around, so she’d turned her frustration to rewriting the questions for the interview.

  One of White’s men delivered a thick file, which he handed to Ashley without bothering to open. When she did, she briefly glanced at him in surprise before focusing on the contents. Tanya and I crowded behind her to see what she was reading.

  It was the Army service record for Sergeant First Class Samuel J. Glass. He was a decorated Ranger with a total of six tours, four in Afghanistan and two in Iraq. He’d been awarded a purple heart with cluster, which meant he’d been wounded more than once, as well as a bronze star and distinguished service cross. This was all information on the first page and the file was almost an inch thick. The rest was details of operations he had been involved in.

  “How the hell does a guy like this wind up nothing more than a paid killer?” Ashley asked, looking up at Mr. White.

  “It happens,” he said with a shrug. “Some of these guys get pretty messed up. But I don’t think that’s the case here.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “The medals he won. The Army doesn’t just hand those out to anyone. But they only represent a moment in time, not the totality of the man.”

  “So what happened to him?” Tanya asked.

  “Six tours happened to him,” White said. “And a busted marriage with two kids. By the time he came home, all his money was going for spousal and child support. My point is, with everything he went through, well… it shapes a man. Changes him.”

  Ashley shook her head in confusion. White nodded and pulled a chair close, settling in.

  “He spent his entire adult life in uniform, fighting in the middle east. It’s really all he ever knew before leaving the Army. But he had tried to have what society says is a normal life. Wife. Kids. And maybe he would have turned out differently if that had worked, but all its failure did was reinforce the bitterness that built up during the war.

  “His family leaves him. He’s lost more friends than he can count. He’s tired. Ready to come home and be a civilian, or that’s what he thought. Only when he gets here, it’s nothing like he remembered or expected. Especially with no money. This is only one of many reasons why drug addiction and suicide are so rampant among our veterans. Particularly when they don’t have a support system.

  “Now most guys go on to do something with themselves. Go to school. Get a job or start a business. But there’s a few that can’t stop thinking about the rush. The adrenaline of a firefight or tracking the enemy. These are the ones that wind up working for a contractor or even one of our intelligence agencies. There’s nothing wron
g with that. Most of them are good guys that simply don’t want a nine to five job or a lawn to mow.

  “But there are some, a very, very few, who lost part of themselves during the war. Or maybe they never had that part to begin with. What I’m talking about, for lack of a better description, is a moral compass. Without it, why is it any different if you kill someone for money than it is if you kill an enemy soldier. To them, it’s all just a job and there’s really no distinction.

  “Don’t get me wrong. I’m not defending anyone or laying blame. This is just the way it is and always has been. It’s nothing new. There are documented cases just like this from all the way back to the Roman Empire. You’ve heard of prostitution referred to as the oldest profession? I’d be willing to bet that mercenaries are a close second.”

  Ashley was starting to ask a question when the door into the studio opened. Two of White’s men stepped in with the prisoner between them, followed by a tall woman dressed in medical scrubs. Sam had been cleaned up and dressed in fresh clothes. The bruising on his face was artfully concealed with professional makeup.

  The guards escorted him to a chair pointed out by the director and he sat without any urging. His gaze slowly lowered until he was staring at the desk.

  “He’s ready,” the woman said to White.

  “Hey, hold on,” Ashley said, getting to her feet and looking at Sam. “What’d you do to him?”

  The woman ignored the question, waiting for White to dismiss her. He gave her a nod and stood, waiting until she had left the studio.

  “He was given a very specific cocktail of drugs,” White said.

  “I can’t interview someone who’s drugged!”

  “It will be undetectable on camera,” White said. “And it is necessary if we want him to tell the truth.”

  Ashley stared at him with her mouth open, then turned back to the prisoner who was still staring at the desk.