Triangle Of Terror

“Perhaps I state the obvious, but we live in very strange, dangerous and volatile times, my friend,” Rubin said, rounding the corner, picking up his march a notch as they closed on the garage.

“The worst, however, is on the horizon. And my task force knows this for a fact. We have garnered the complete trust of the President because we have delivered intelligence that has saved untold innocent lives, even prevented a third world war. Like the late Storm Trackers, we search out and predict the future, know what the opposition is going to do before they do. For example, take Pakistan. Say militants or sympathizers in the military take—or seize—control of the country, armed thus with the keys and access codes to their nuclear arsenal. Meaning they have the ultimate suicide bomber in charge. Could it happen? Well, my friend, we brought intelligence to the Oval Office that had already thwarted just such a palace coup, but who is to say there won’t be another attempt? So, you see, certain, uh, extreme measures were necessary in order to insure that the President stays breathing and the world remains safe from nuclear blackmail.

“The Man, for your information, sees us as his personal intelligence gurus, what some tabloid press hound, were one to catch a whiff, might call necromancers, seers. Bottom line, we deliver the goods. The Man took note of our astonishing successes where others could not perform. It took some long hours, brainstorming about the creation of SCTF, but he gave the nod.”

Brolinsky saw the attendant was gone as they hit the mouth of the garage. The gate was down on both sides. Rubin crouched and slipped to the other side. Brolinsky did the same, the Pink Man informing him the pass he received earlier would let him out.

In silence, Brolinsky strained his ears for any sound that might alert him to a waiting presence, as he descended beside Rubin into the gloomy bowels. Feeling the hackles rise on the back of his neck, he spotted his SUV, parked against the far wall, no other vehicles in sight.

“His name was Jason Lind,” Rubin suddenly said. “His official title was chief deputy of counter intelligence. CIA. He was always present at the President’s daily national security briefs. Turns out he had a nasty little hobby involving Internet porn, creating his own lurid Websites—I’ll skip the particulars. Anyway, he was found in his home about an hour ago. Self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head, a suicide note stating he was behind the leaks. It’s been verified.”

How convenient, Brolinsky thought, there seemed to be an epidemic of suicide lately by those who counted the most, taking any dark truths with them to the beyond.

“There you have it,” Rubin said.

Sensing a presence lurking in the garage, thinking he spotted a shadow darting behind a pillar to his nine, Brolinsky began scouring his flanks, then glimpsed Rubin tug on a pair of black gloves. His heart was racing to meteoric levels.

And then it happened.

The Glock .45 looked almost comical in the Pink Man’s hand, but the dark eyes, alive with murderous intent, froze Brolinsky. In the next instant he recognized the bittersweet quasi-gasoline stink swarming his nose, but the arm was locked around his neck, the rag smothering his face before he could react. It was strange, he thought, the fumes swelling his brain, the lights fading. The Marine, the plant whistle-blower and Jason Lind flashed through his mind. He found himself wishing he could tell the Pink Man somehow, some way the last bitter laugh would land on his head. He had contacted a former mission controller at the NSA and clued her in to his suspicions. That hopeful thought trailed to a fading anger and sorrow that he would never again see his family as he succumbed to warm swaddling blackness.

3

Major Alan Hawke, United States Special Forces, had heard the rumors, but seeing was, indeed, believing. What was inside the hovel, under medical examination, added a new and nervous wrinkle to the mission. It was just the kind of horror—and hassle—he didn’t need. This wasn’t Task Force Talon of Afghanistan infamy, where he had served under Colonel Braden, and soldiers turned a blind eye, or else. Out here, there were new grunts on the block who might go over his head, flap tongues to starred brass who would land his neck on a chopping block. At that moment, he wrestled with any number of conflicting loyalties as to whom to report to, aware his next move could well lead to a court-martial. But he knew what had to be done.

And he knew he would do it, if he wanted to survive, if he didn’t want his own atrocities brought to light.

Listening to the whapping blades of his Apache helicopter, the two Hueys framing the stone hovel in a white halo from a hundred yards south over his shoulder, feeling the swirling grit sting his neck, he silently urged Task Force Iron Hawk’s medic to emerge with a final report. Feeling the ghosts of fifteen dead Iraqis, he scoured the black walls of the wadi, M-16/M-203 combo ready to cut loose at any rebel who might have fled the firefight some eight hours earlier.

It had been a fluke, stumbling across the building while roving the skies in search of armed runners. Going through the door, ready to shoot, they found the two victims, stricken and stretched out on prayer rugs from God only knew what, though he had his suspicions. A man and a woman, husband and wife, it turned out. His interpreter, donning a HAZMAT suit, had pried from them a very unnerving tale.

And confirmed what he’d been hearing during the briefs the past several months.

He told himself he really had no business this far north, edged up against the Turk border, this neck of rugged mountain country. Kurd-controlled, there was enough ethnic hatred wandering around to mow down any resistance rabble who escaped their steel talons. But his orders didn’t always come direct from Central Command.

The problem was how to avoid reporting what he’d found.

He saw the spacesuit emerge through the doorway, Captain Medley removing his helmet. With no way to read the grim expression, Hawke waited until the man was on top of him.

Medley appeared to gather his thoughts on how to proceed. “The good news is it doesn’t appear to be a bio agent, but I’d like to draw blood, take tissue samples for further examination,” he said.

“No.”

Medley looked aghast. “But, sir—”

“What’s killing them?” Hawke asked.

“Killed.”

Hawke groaned to himself, more an act than anything else, hoping Medley read the noise as disappointment at the lack of information. In this case ignorance was bliss.

Medley continued. “The spasms, the manner in which their limbs locked up, asphyxiation, all classic symptoms of exposure to a nerve agent.”

“Sergeant Ellis informed me they had just returned from across the Turk border, delivering some cargo they could or would not specify.”

“My guess is they handled the agent, a seal broke on a drum, or whatever they were shipping it in. They must have been exposed to high doses given their symptoms.”

“Are you telling me this wasn’t their first trip?”

“That, running the nerve agent in faulty containers, or there’s a good chance they overturned the vehicle, dumped the cargo, got splashed in the process. For a nerve agent, inhalation or direct skin contact will do the deed.”

“If your scenario is correct, they should have dropped right then, across the border.”

“Not necessarily. It would depend on how much of the agent they were exposed to. Either way, they’re long past any atropine injection now.”

Hawke looked his medic dead in the eye. “You are to forget what you saw here. Do you copy, Captain?” He could see Medley didn’t like it, was poised to argue, but seemed to think better of it.

“Yes, sir,” the medic said with reluctance.

“Hop on board then,” he told Medley, then whistled at the four shadows hunkered in the wadi, rotating his raised fist.

So it was true, he thought, holding his ground, waiting while his troops hustled past him to board the Hueys. Whatever had begun in Afghanistan, all the talk he’d heard from CIA spooks dancing with the devil, Braden…

Marching for his grounded Hueys, forging into the whirlwind, Hawke raised his Apache crew and ordered, “Give me one right down Broadway, mister.”

The order copied, he gathered speed. The Hellfire missile flamed away from its pod. As the thunder pealed behind, and suspecting how the sins of the past were about to create hell on earth, he thought, God help us. God help us all.

4

“Calm down.”

“That’s a Presidential Directive, in case you’ve never seen one, Colonel. And in case you haven’t guessed yet, we’ve got an official human shitstorm headed this way. I, for one, can say I don’t much care for the tone from the Oval Office. It damn near hints at treason.”

Examining the faxed letter with the presidential seal in the Humvee’s headlights, Colonel Braden glanced at General Compton, bared his teeth at the beefy tub in jungle fatigues, then returned to reading their orders.

“Someone talked, Colonel, maybe even someone we thought we could trust. Which, if true, means they know what you’ve been doing down here!”

The more Compton whined, worried, no doubt, about saving his own fatass, the more Braden felt the blood pressure pulsing in his eardrums. He imagined he heard the HK-33 assault rifle slung over his shoulder calling the general’s name. From behind him he heard the splash, witnessed the sight of al-Tikriti’s body, wrapped in a plastic shroud, being dumped in the river by two of Task Force Talon’s finest. It interrupted the man’s bleating for all of two seconds.

“Maybe you want to tell me how we’re going to account for two murdered detainees. Maybe you’ve got a makeup kit I don’t know about that we can use to patch up and mask four more who look like they’ve gone a few rounds with—”

“Calm down!” Braden shouted.

Braden’s hands shook with simmering rage. He scanned the next two lines, but Compton was nearly barking in his ear.

“You listening to me? We are looking at a fat whopping mess that no amount of sterilizing will sanitize unless we burn the whole damn camp down and build it back from scratch. I have cargo back at camp with no manifests, no serial numbers. I have the Brazilian making noise to return to Brasilia and blow the whistle unless he sees—”

“Calm the fuck down! Let me think here!” Braden was seething.