Point Of Betrayal

He clenched his jaw. Simmons had never lost a man in the field, ever. After that night, war had become intensely personal.

Stepping from the elevator, he walked down a corridor, following it as it jogged left then right. He passed through another pair of bulletproof glass doors, into a control room similar to the one he’d left behind downstairs. After the requisite security checks, he crossed the room and slipped into another, smaller room where several men and women in business suits sat at a large mahogany table with polished brass inlaid trim.

Simmons ignored the other six and focused on a big bear of a man seated at the head of the table. CIA director James Lee returned the stare.

“Good news, David?”

“No, sir.”

“Tell me what’s wrong. And for God’s sake, pull the rod out of your ass and stand like a normal person.”

It was only then that Simmons realized he stood at attention, legs and back bolt upright, arms and hands stabbing toward the floor. Old training died hard, he thought. And he’d caught himself in more than one stressful moment falling back on the order and discipline of the military.

“It’s the operation, sir. We need to talk.”

He paused while Lee dismissed the others in the room.

“Sit down, David.”

“I prefer to stand, sir.”

“Fine. Just tell me what’s wrong.”

“You told me to inform you of any irregularities, right?”

A worried look passed over Lee’s features. Leaning forward in his chair, he rested his elbows on the table and stared intently at Simmons. “Yes. Yes, I did.”

“One of the informants failed to make a rendezvous.”

“His whereabouts?”

“Unknown.”

“So we may have been compromised?” Lee asked.

Simmons shrugged. “It’s possible. But I can’t say that with certainty.”

Looking up from the table, Lee met Simmons’s gaze. “Well, what can you say with certainty?”

“That the informant missed the rendezvous.”

“You already told me that. But what the hell does it mean?”

“Hard to say. The guy might have gotten cold feet. He might be waiting at his girlfriend’s house, hoping the whole thing just blows over. It’s hard to find people in Iraq willing to cross Saddam.”

“Can we track him down?’

Simmons shook his head. “Not a good idea. If we make too big a stink, we raise everyone’s suspicions. Whole thing goes to hell after that.”

“Well, give me something I can work with here. Can we accomplish this mission without him?”

“Possibly. He had the itinerary information. He could place Saddam within a five-minute window. Without that, we may have to expose ourselves for longer periods, probably forty-five minutes to an hour.”

“What’s your comfort level with this?”

Simmons pondered this for a moment. In an operation such as this, with a paranoid target like Hussein, any deviation from the plan was cause for alarm. “Stone, Archer and Doyle are three of our best operatives. They adapt quickly to adversity. We’ve been training the Iraqis for six months. They’re good to go.”

Lee’s eyes narrowed. “You didn’t answer my question.”

“I’m comfortable. As long as my men get the air support they need, they can pull off this mission.”

Lee leaned back in his chair. Lacing his fingers together into a double fist, he stared at his thumbnails, as though lost in thought.

“You bearing a grudge?”

“Sir?”

“I know about the op in ’91. You lost men, good ones. Is that clouding your judgment?”

Anger colored Simmons face and heated the skin of his shoulders and arms. His hands clenched into fists. Lee’s bluntness took him by surprise. “Of course not. I won’t put my men in harm’s way just to settle a score.”

Lee came to his full six-foot, four-inch height and stared down at Simmons. “You’re right,” he said. “You won’t.”

A lurch that had nothing to do with the cancer passed through Simmons’s belly. “Excuse me?”

“No mission. Not tonight, anyway. My orders from the President were explicit—a surgical strike. Quick and deadly. No hint of American involvement in this, period. The Middle East is a goddamn tinderbox as it is. We don’t need to put a blow torch to it by creating another Bay of Pigs. My gut says to abort the mission. If you were using your damn head, you’d see the same thing.”

“Sir—”

“I want those people out of there. Tonight. End of conversation. Don’t get greedy. You’ll have plenty of other opportunities to plug this bastard before retirement rolls around.”

“Jim—”

Lee held up a hand to silence Simmons. “Make the call. I want our people out of Iraq within twelve hours. If you hand me a problem, I’ll hand you back more trouble than you can handle.”

Squelching an impulse to punch Lee in the solar plexus, Simmons snapped ramrod-straight to attention and fixed his gaze on an invisible spot on the wall. “Yes, sir,” he said.

“I knew I could count on you, David.”

From his peripheral vision, Simmons saw Lee smile and more rage bubbled up from within.

Lee ignored his subordinate. Hooking his jacket with two fingers, he hefted the garment and slung it over a narrow shoulder. A moment later he was gone and Simmons was alone, numb.

His stomach burning as he exited the meeting room, Simmons reached into his shirt pocket and extracted two painkillers. He’d been warned not to exceed the dose, that it might impair his coordination, his judgment. So what? According to Lee, his judgment was already flawed and Simmons’s body hurt like hell.

Returning to his own command center, Simmons considered Lee’s words. Lee was a flaming jerk, but he made a good point. A botched coup attempt in Iraq only would solidify support for Saddam Hussein, make him a sympathetic figure on the Arab street. And the coup’s backer, America, would walk away with egg on its face, a superpower unable to topple a two-bit dictator.

You’ll have plenty of other opportunities to plug this bastard before retirement rolls around.

Smug bastard. Lee had no idea what it was like to face death, to feel your heart slam so fast, so hard, that it felt as though it might explode at any moment. He pushed paper all day, moved agents and paramilitary operatives around like chess pieces on the board, one eye on his strategic plan, the other on the next promotion. Not all CIA directors had been that way, but this guy was and Simmons hated him for it.

He picked up the satellite phone and set it in his lap. With the diagnosis of cancer, he thought constantly about death, realized he’d leave nothing behind. His career had been heroic, but shrouded in secrecy and bereft of recognition. His ex-wives hated him and had trained his daughters accordingly. He’d lost contact with most of his military buddies, and only occasionally socialized with the other CIA employees outside of work.

During the last decade or so, the closest thing he had to family had been his Force Recon team. Those men had admired and trusted him, following him into hell time and again. He’d repaid them with death, leading them into a deadly mission and returning home with a handful of survivors.

“Sir, are you okay?”

Simmons looked up and saw a young woman, her amber hair pulled into a ponytail, a wireless headset wrapped around her head. She was one of six technicians and intelligence analysts in the room.

He waved her away. “I’m fine, Dana. Head just feels a little light, is all.”

“If I may say so, you look tired, a bit pale.”

“I said, I’m fine. Dammit, leave me alone.”

The volume of his voice surprised him. The woman stiffened, jerked back a bit as though burned, her pretty features hardening into a cold stare.

“Yes, sir. Jon Stone called two minutes ago, just before you returned.”

“I’ll deal with Stone.”

In his mind, his voice dripped with disdain, like venom trickling the length of a cobra’s fang. Stone was an undisciplined killer, a wild cannon. Maybe he dazzled the brass with his dual master’s degrees and his record of successful missions. Simmons knew better. He knew that every time Stone walked into a mission, he drew innocent blood. Women. Children. Stone cared little as long as he got results. Same went for his buddy, Stephen Archer.

If Simmons’s voice betrayed his hatred, the woman in front of him showed no signs of it. And what if she did? To hell with her and everyone else. Simmons was dying. And the way he saw it, a dying man ought to be able to say whatever the hell he wants.

“Sir, did you hear what it I said?”

The room came back into focus for a moment. “Huh?”

“They lost contact with Doyle, sir. He was supposed to check in with Stone and they lost contact with him.”

Simmons sat upright in his chair. Doyle not checking in? Something about that bothered him, though he couldn’t place what. Why was it so damn hard to think?

“Get out.”

“Sir?”

“Get out. All of you. I need to speak with Stone.”

The analysts and technicians filed from the room, leaving Simmons alone.

Raising the satellite phone, he began to punch in Stone’s code. Knowing he might need to dial it at a critical moment, he’d burned the code into his memory, doing so until he could recite it in his sleep. Still, he had trouble bringing the numbers on the keypad into focus. They blinked and blurred as he tried to pin them down under his index finger.

Finishing the number sequence, he leaned back in his chair, waited for Stone to pick up.

The agent’s voice sounded far away, angry in Simmons’s ear.

“Where the hell you been, man?”

“Do it,” Simmons said.

“What?”

“You heard me. Lee says it’s a go. So, go”

IHMAD JUMA STEPPED from the room and wrinkled his nose, a vain attempt to expel the stenches of vomit, blood and human excrement that clung inside his nostrils. He shut the door behind him, hoping to seal behind it the memory of an old friend who still lay inside, mangled and dying.

Correction: an old friend who had turned traitor. That made the man an enemy, and his impending death a cause for celebration. Perhaps if Juma told himself that long enough, eventually he’d believe it.

Juma moved with clipped, precise strides that belied his twenty years as an Iraqi military officer. As he continued down the hall, he realized the air felt irritatingly cool against his forehead and armpits. He extracted a handkerchief from his fatigue pants. Wiping the cloth over his forehead, he traced the edge of his severe widow’s peak and scrubbed away the sheen of perspiration that lay below it.

The screams and pleadings of Brahim Azar echoed in his mind, as unrelenting as the desert sun. He shook his head violently to shoo them away, then caught himself and looked around self-consciously. None of the passing soldiers seemed to notice his momentary distress, eliciting a silent prayer of gratitude. He’d witnessed more tortures, beatings, rapes than he could recall. The memories of these events flashed past his mind’s eye like a high-speed kaleidoscope, one blurring into the next with almost blinding speed. Years ago the images had disturbed him, yanking him from sleep, prompting violent outbursts against his family. But now he prided himself on his aloofness in the face of others’ agony.

Still something about watching an old friend suffer had disturbed him deeply, wrenching his guts and searing his soul with the unwelcome fires of guilt, self-hatred.

Several minutes later he stood in front of the great leader, in one of the man’s numerous private offices. Silence and cigar smoke hung heavily in the air, the latter stinging Juma’s eyes. His stomach continued churning, this time because of nerves. He’d been close to the leader many, many times, but never the focus of the meeting. The news was grim, and Juma couldn’t help but wonder whether delivering it might cost him his life.

The great leader sat in a high-backed chair, facing a wall. Waiting for an invitation to speak, Juma eyed his surroundings. Bookcases lined the walls, ornate brass lamps shone brightly and a television carrying Iraqi state news reports blinked in the background.

“You bring me information?”

“Yes, sir. Of utmost importance.”

“Speak.”

“A small group of men, including some within the government, have conspired to kill you. They planned to do it tonight.”

“Who are these men?”

“I have their names here, sir.” Juma pulled a manila folder from under his left arm and handed it to one of the guards, who, in turn, set in on the great leader’s desk. “They planned to kill you tonight at the royal palace. Tariq Riyadh is among them.”

“The Americans?”

“The infidels also are part of the plan, yes. They have operatives within the country, all of them posing as foreign journalists, even as we speak. As for our own countrymen, I have dispatched teams to hunt them down, arrest them.”

“No.”

“Sir?”

“Let them come en masse. We’ll kill them together, like a pack of wild dogs. Make an example of them.”

“Yes, sir. Their families?”

“Kill them, too, of course.”

CHRIS DOYLE STEPPED from the SUV, walked into the lights of the Iraqi jeep. He squinted to block out the white glare. Clutching his identification papers in his left hand, he held both hands overhead and wore a grin he didn’t feel.

An Iraqi soldier, one hand clutching the pistol grip of his submachine gun, approached Doyle and snatched the papers from his hands. Releasing the submachine gun, the soldier grabbed Doyle’s arm, spun him and shoved him hard against the vehicle. Over the rumble of the jeep’s engine, Doyle heard the rustle of paper as the soldier pored over the American’s identification documents. Doyle’s heart speeded up and he forced himself to take deep, even pulls of the exhaust-tinged air to keep his thinking clear.

“You are French?” the soldier asked.

“Oui. I mean, yes,” Doyle said, switching to Arabic.

“It says here you are a journalist. Where is your monitor?”

Doyle shrugged, smiled. “I am a nature photographer. The information ministry decided I didn’t need an escort in the swamplands. I am unimportant.”

The soldier grunted, continued poring over the forged papers. “The information ministry obviously erred,” he said without looking. “Wouldn’t you agree?”

“I was supposed to meet with my monitor tonight before I return to my hotel. He was going to check my pictures. I cannot take my film from the country without his approval. Please, I do not want problems.”

“When are you leaving?”

“One week,” Doyle lied.

The soldier’s machine gun hung loose on its strap from his right shoulder. Spare clips were sheathed on his belt. Doyle watched as the soldier, a stout man in camouflage fatigues and a beret, traced a stubby finger across the paper until he reached the line bearing Doyle’s departure date. A moment later the soldier refolded the papers, stuck them in his shirt pocket.

The stout man locked eyes with Doyle. “Why are you here?” he asked.

“I told you—”

“I mean, in this neighborhood. After dark. According to your papers, you’re staying at the Continental Hotel, which is nowhere near this place. Why are you here?”

Doyle felt his palms moisten, his mind begin to race. Crossing his arms over his chest, the American agent leaned down toward the soldier. He gave the man a conspiratorial wink, hushed his voice as though sharing with an old friend. “I‘ve been away from civilization for a while,” he said. “I’m here looking for a little companionship. I was supposed to meet someone.”

Prostitutes frequented the area. Doyle expected the man to understand, perhaps cut him some slack. Instead the man shot him a look that screamed disapproval.

Great, Doyle thought, three hundred, fifty thousand soldiers in Iraq. I get the one puritan.

“I thought you were going to meet your monitor.”

Doyle grinned. “There’s always time for this, my friend. You know?”

“Whom are you freelancing for?”

“Liberty News Service.”

The man opened his mouth to reply, stopped when the door of the white Toyota Land Cruiser opened. A tall, lanky soldier armed with an AK-47 stepped from the vehicle and approached them. With the headlight glare at his back, the man’s face was black as night until he came to within a few feet of Doyle. At the same time, the Soviet-made chopper, which had been cruising overhead in wide, lazy circles, gunned its engine and disappeared into the night, the beating rotors diminishing to a distant hum.

“Who is he?” the tall soldier asked. Doyle recognized the Republican Guard insignia on the man’s tunic and felt a cold splash of fear roll down his spine.

“A journalist,” the first Iraqi replied. “He should not have stopped here unaccompanied. He was told to report directly to his monitor.”

Giving Doyle an appraising look, the soldier spoke over his shoulder to his comrade. “A journalist? For whom?”

“I’m freelance.”

“He’s with Liberty News Service. He told me that.”

A glint of understanding sparked in the Republican Guard soldier’s otherwise impassive stare before snuffing itself out. His lips curled into a smile that didn’t reach his eyes.

“Let him go,” he said.

The first soldier started to protest, but the other man held up a hand to stop him. “His papers. Give them to him and let him go. We must not delay him any longer.”

In less than a minute Doyle was back in his car, stuffing his forged papers back inside his pants’ pocket and watching the Toyota Land Cruiser roar down the road. Doyle’s heart hammered against his rib cage and adrenaline caused his hands to shake. He puffed on a cigarette to help calm his nerves.

Something was wrong. Let him go, the man had said. No looking at the papers, no shaking Doyle down for a bribe, nothing. Doyle knew he should have felt relieved. He didn’t. He felt like a condemned man taking the first step on his last mile.

Keying the SUV to life, he piloted the vehicle to his rendezvous with Stone.

FORTY-FIVE MINUTES later Chris Doyle met Jon Stone and Stephen Archer at an abandoned factory, poorly lit with boarded-up windows. The place stank of machine oil, dust and Archer’s wintergreen chewing tobacco. Doyle had armed himself back at the hotel. A .40-caliber Glock pistol rode in the small of his back, obscured by his shirttails.

“You sure no one followed you here?” Stone asked as he shut the door behind Doyle and locked it.

Doyle shrugged. “Reasonably so. I changed clothes, walked several blocks and took one of our standby cars. Switched papers so I look like a Russian national. That’s why it took me so long to get here.”

Stone nodded, apparently satisfied.

Doyle turned and uttered a curt greeting to Archer, a small, bald man whose skin bunched in heavy folds at the base of his skull. Archer grunted, tamped down his tobacco with the tip of his tongue. The little man stood off to one side, splattering the floor with thin, brown streams of tobacco juice and swirling them with the toe of his boot so they made odd patterns in the dirt. At first, Doyle had considered Archer disengaged, perhaps even stupid. Just like everything else Doyle seemed to encounter, it all was an act. Archer could read and explain complex research reports issued by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology or defuse a nuclear warhead without taxing his mind.

Doyle carried his equipment bag on his shoulder. Slipping it off, he set it on the floor carefully. An uneasy feeling in his gut told him something was wrong.

“What’s the extraction plan?” he asked.

“Washington says it’s a go,” Stone said.

“What the hell?”

Doyle whirled toward Stone, found him standing less than eighteen inches away, arms crossed over his chest. Stone coiled and uncoiled his steroid-enhanced pectorals, biceps and triceps, causing them to writhe under his shirt like a bag of snakes. Consciously or unconsciously, it was his way of telegraphing his physical power, an intimidation tactic he employed regularly.

“Simmons says it’s a go,” Stone said. His expression seemed to dare an argument and Doyle was only too happy to comply.

“Is he crazy? We’ve been compromised. We’re as good as dead if we go through with this.”

Stone shrugged. “We don’t know we’ve been compromised. There could be a logical explanation as to why he pulled a no-show.”

“Like what?”

Stone grinned. “He likes the ladies. Maybe he was getting laid.”

“I planned to hand him thirty thousand in Iraqi dinars. I think he could keep it in his pants until he got the money.”

“Calm down, Doyle. You sound like a damn old woman.”

Anger burned hot in Doyle’s cheeks and forehead, but he kept his voice even. “You tell Riyadh that our contact disappeared?”

Popping his gum, Stone stared at Doyle for a minute. “I don’t talk to Riyadh about anything unless I think it’s a good idea. These people are spooked enough without me scaring them some more. They’re about ready to overthrow their leader, upend their country. A handful of guys against a man with an army at his disposal. You know what Saddam does to traitors?”

“I know.”

“He kills their whole family. Wife, kids, parents, even distant relatives. He tortures them, rapes the women. Scorches their skin with branding irons. Like cattle. Cuts off their—”

“Goddammit, I said I know.”

Doyle suppressed a shudder. Maybe it had been a trick of the light, but he swore a glazed look settled over Stone’s eyes as he’d discussed Saddam’s atrocities. Doyle never had trusted Stone, had balked at the notion of working with him. Stone was as unstable as hell. He always made missions happen, nearly always got results. That seemed good enough for Simmons and James Lee, the CIA director.

Stone continued. “We spent a year building up these guys. They hate Saddam and that’s good. But they used to fear him too much to do anything about it. Half these guys figured he was invincible. That any move against the man would cost them their families. We finally got them over that. Now you want me to scare them again just because one guy disappears?”

“Yes.”

“Forget it,” Stone said with a gesture. “I want these people to have their heads where it should be. Same goes for you.”

Doyle scowled, clenched his jaw until it hurt. He stepped a couple of inches closer to Stone and spoke through clenched teeth. “Don’t worry about me,” he said. “I’m here because I believe in this mission. If Washington says ‘go,’ I’ll go. But if you want blind obedience, forget it. I’m loyal, but I’m not stupid.”

Deep creases formed in Stone’s forehead and anger glinted in his eyes, but he nodded. “Suits me. I don’t give a shit why you do it, as long as you do.”

“We go to our second alternative,” Doyle said.

Stone’s face flushed red. “We can’t change now,” he said, his voice a growl.

“They may know what we have planned. The alternative is audacious enough that it might work.”

Archer spoke up. “He’s right, Stone. If we’re going to do it, we might as well stick it up their ass. Hit ’em where they least expect it.”

Stone whipped his head toward Archer. “You just stick to your motherboards and let me handle the strategy,” Stone said.

Archer held up his hands in appeasement, flashed a gap-toothed grin. “Just sticking my two cents’ worth in, okay? You’re the strategy genius. I mean, hell, look at where we are so far.”

Doyle sensed the tension crackling between Stone and Archer, watched it with morbid interest. The two men, equally deadly, always seemed a step away from killing each other. Doyle often prayed for that day, but didn’t want to be there when it happened.

Stone turned back to Doyle. “Make these girls get their damn gear on. Let’s make this shit happen.”

“THERE’S BEEN a change of plans,” Jon Stone said.

The words caused a film of perspiration to break out on Tariq Riyadh’s forehead and a cold splash of fear to roll down his spine. A change? At this point? It was unthinkable. What the hell were the Americans trying to pull so close to the moment of success? Perhaps it had been a trick to expose Riyadh and his people. Perhaps Stone and his crew were double agents and the whole plan, the promises of American cooperation, an elaborate ruse to flush out traitors. Saddam was just paranoid enough to try such a thing.