Inside Out

66

Concord, North Carolina

While Winter and Lydia were clearing the dinner dishes, his cell phone buzzed from the bedroom. He got to it on the third ring.

“Yeah?” Winter answered.

“I found them. Those four men were Special Forces. But they died long before you met them.”

“That's crazy,” Winter said. “I killed ghosts?”

“You're thinking inside the box. You know what a cutout is? Technically anybody who drops their real identity in favor of a new one for security reasons is a cutout. A protected witness would be considered a cutout, as would a CIA or FBI agent who is going undercover.”

“You're sure they're cutouts?”

“Yes. As for Ward Field, it started out as a training base for pilots during the second world war and continued operations through 1974 before it was classified as redundant by the Air Force and closed. But the land and the base, although decommissioned in 1974, remains restricted airspace. According to a series of reports in The Washington Post, Ward was listed as one of the CIA's launching pads for sensitive operations. Remember Iran-Contra, when the CIA flew guns south and, according to some, ferried cocaine on the return trips in order to sell it on the streets to purchase more guns? According to the articles, Ward Field was a secret base where cargo planes landed and took off. Isolated plus restricted equals perfect.”

“You're saying the CIA is behind the assaults?”

“Involved up to their eyeballs. Maybe the FBI doesn't have their prints. It's possible they were purged after they were dead and buried. I know the CIA missed the fact that the real prints are still on file at the Pentagon. You'd figure they would have purged those fingerprint records to cover their tracks.”

“Unless someone wants to know when one of them is fingerprinted,” Winter speculated.

“I'm paranoid enough to imagine there might be a trip wire set to alert the CIA, NSC, or maybe even military intelligence. Maybe I'll have some questions to answer about how I came to have those prints.”

“The UNSUBs' bodies will match your print cards,” Winter said. “That's mighty strong corroboration.”

“Don't count on it. Those guys will certainly erase their trail, if they haven't already. I checked for similar reports of deaths in the Special Forces over a ten-year period. Even figuring that most are legitimate accidental deaths, there could be a lot of dead men still serving their country.”

“Maybe you should take a vacation.”

Reed chortled. “My bags have been packed all afternoon.”

“Do you have hard copies?”

“I'm mailing a set to a friend who will know what to do with them.”

“I need a set,” Winter said.

“This is sensitive stuff. This might end up being the only record there is of this. I think I better send it to somebody they aren't watching. You don't want them to come to you looking for these, do you? They've demonstrated that they can play rough.”

“Nobody's watching me,” Winter protested.

“You sure?” Reed asked him. “This isn't amateur night at the Apollo.”

Winter felt a stab of paranoia after Reed hung up.

If the men on Ward Field and Rook Island were CIA assassins and the FBI knew, it would be devastating. If Winter had the evidence, perhaps Shapiro could use it and, if nothing else, make sure Greg's name wasn't dragged through the mud. One thing was for sure-no one would ever believe the CIA was involved in this without the proof Reed had. Winter could believe the FBI was in on keeping the CIA's involvement covered up. The question was why the CIA would have gone to such unbelievable extremes to kill Devlin?

Was it possible that the CIA was working to help Sam Manelli? What in God's name was going on when the government murdered its own soldiers and agents for a mobster's benefit? Winter wondered if Manelli's history of invulnerability to arrest and conviction was due to something the CIA was afraid he could let out of the bag? Or was it something that Devlin knew?

What was obvious to Winter was that-if they would kill so many people to silence one witness against Sam Manelli-the CIA surely wouldn't hesitate to kill a few more.