Bodyguard of Lies

CHAPTER 11

Hannah had tossed and turned for hours with an occasional dozing off, but she was too angry to sleep. It would be light in a couple of hours and if she could just sleep now it would be enough.

She had just punched the feather pillow into a more pleasing shape when the shrill ringing of the phone ended all pretense of sleep. The voice on the other end was more of a shock than the timing of the call: John.

"Hannah, it's me. I have to see you right now. It's important. I'll come through the back. Just let me in the patio doors, OK?"

Hannah stared at the phone in disbelief, trying to think of something to say, but the phone had already gone dead. Hannah quickly pushed back her covers and shivered in the cool air. After belting her robe, she moved to the security alarm pad by the bedroom door. She punched in the code so she wouldn't set off the hall sensor.

By the time she got to the den, she could see John's form filling the partitions of the French door. She noticed a couple of things as she opened the locks: John's eyes were wide and frightened looking and there was someone behind him.

John seemed to propel himself through the doorway even as Hannah had the knob in her hand. He pushed her back until her legs hit an Ottoman and she dropped into a seated position. John kept going and rolled onto the carpet, his hands behind him.

In the dimly lit gloom from the outside security lights, Hannah noticed something around his neck and wondered what it was. At that moment her eyes left John and she saw that the other person had followed John into the room.

The woman kicked the door shut and walked out of the shadows until she was standing in front of Hannah. Hannah looked down and saw what she had in her hand: a wicked looking gun with a bulky barrel.

"John, what is going on?" Hannah demanded, feeling strangely calm in spite of the strange circumstances of his return.

The woman leaned forward. "My name's Neeley and yours is Hannah Masterson and I suggest you shut up and do what I tell you if you want to live."

Neeley then motioned to her two prisoners to move over to the couch. Hannah now noticed that John's hands were tied behind his back. There was a rope around his neck and Neeley had used that to move John through the woods.

When Hannah and John were seated on the couch, Neeley turned off the light and then sat on the edge of the coffee table, gun still pointed.

"I'm sorry, Hannah," John said.

"What is going on?" Hannah demanded once more.

"It's a long story," John said.

"One I want to hear also," Neeley said. "We've got a problem."

Hannah was still looking at her husband. "John, who is this woman? What is going on? Where did you go?"

Neeley leaned forward and spoke very clearly, biting the words off as if she were speaking to a wayward child. "If you want to live, shut up and listen." That caught Hannah's undivided attention. "We don't have much time. John has a story to tell us and once we hear it we need to make some decisions."

“Listen — ” John began, but Neeley pulled the hammer back on the gun.

“I want to know what happened.”

John’s eyes shifted between the two women, and then he sighed in defeat. “All right. I was in the Army. In the Engineer Corps. A dumb second lieutenant. My area of expertise was oil pipelines. Pretty boring stuff. Putting in my time to pay off my ROTC scholarship.”

Hannah’s eyes were boring into her husband, as if she were trying to see beyond the words he was saying and was looking at someone she’d never seen before.

John continued. “Then I got a visit from this guy named Bailey in August ‘93. He had orders assigning me to him. He didn’t say why. We flew overseas to Germany. I met Gant in Berlin. As soon as I met him I knew I was in over my head. Like Bailey, he wasn’t wearing a uniform, but he sure had a lot of weapons. They told me that he would take care of me.”

“Who was Gant?” Hannah ignored Neeley’s look and concentrated on her husband.

“The man who was in charge of the mission,” John said. He pointed at Neeley. “She knows — knew — him.”

“Keep going,” Neeley ordered.

“They told me that they wanted me to listen in on a meeting and judge the viability of what I heard. I didn’t have a fucking clue what they were talking about and no one busted their butt to inform me of anything else.

“We flew out of Berlin aboard military transport. To a staging base in Saudi Arabia. There, in the middle of the night, Gant wakes me, makes me grab my gear and drags me to a waiting Combat Talon — a modified C-130 cargo plane. There was some sort of all terrain vehicle with big tires strapped down in the cargo bay. An army version of a dune buggy with lots of cans and stuff tied off on it.

“We got on and the Talon took off. We were in the air a long time. They were flying low level, below the radar. I knew we were over Africa, but had no clue exactly where. The plane was jerking around so much I got sick, puking my guts out into the barf bags the crew gave me. Gant, hell, he slept most of the flight.

“Then the plane slows down and descends even further as the back ramp opens. Gant cuts the straps holding the all terrain vehicle and tells me to get in the passenger seat. As soon as I was in he told me to buckle up. I strapped in just in time. The 130 touched down on the desert floor, rolling. Gant cranks the engine as the ramp lowers even further, until it’s just about a foot above the sand. It was night and there was sand blowing everywhere and I couldn’t see a damn thing. Gant had on night vision goggles and his hands were on the wheel.

“We’re still moving and Gant throws the thing into gear. Scared the shit out of me as he hits the gas and we literally fly out of the back of the plane, hit the desert floor, bounce and then he’s tearing ass away, even as the plane accelerates and lifts off. Whole thing took less than thirty seconds from the plane touching down to it was back up and we were driving away.

“I had no idea where the hell we were.”

John came to a halt, beads of sweat on his forehead. Neeley glanced at Hannah. She was surprisingly calm, still simply staring at her husband.

“And then?” Neeley prodded.

“Gant drove for about an hour, then parked in a wadi. I helped him throw a camo net over the all-terrain. All he was doing was issuing orders, not explaining a damn thing. We grabbed our rucksacks and climbed out of the wadi toward a ridge about a mile away.

“It took us about two hours to get a spot just below the top of the ridge. We maintained listening silence after radioing in that we were on the ground in position. We broke that silence only twice in the ten days we were on the ground.” John’s voice was flat now, his sentences clipped as he recited his story.

“It took us two nights to dig the hide site. We hid under camouflage netting during the day. God, the sun was hot. And that hole — ” he shook his head. “It was six feet wide by four feet front to rear and five feet vertical from the small slit that we looked out to the bottom. The overhead cover was made of small metal rods with canvas on top. Gant covered the whole thing with sand before sliding in. The site was set on a ridge looking toward the compound.”

“What compound?” Neeley asked.

“I saw it the first day as we hid. A cluster of buildings in the middle of nowhere. Pickup trucks with machineguns in the cargo bed coming and going. A chopper flew in that first day. Russian design, but that didn’t mean dick in Africa.” He looked up at Neeley, backtracking slightly. “Gant finally told me after we had begun digging that we were in the Sudan, about fifty kilometers south of Khartoum. That a meeting was supposed to take place in the compound soon — he wasn’t sure quite when — and we were going to listen in.”

Neeley felt the sweat on her hand, between the flesh and the plastic of the pistol grip. Gant had never told her he’d even been in the Sudan, but she had a good idea who they were trying to listen to. During the early nineties the Sudan was a hot bed for terrorists.

John continued. “With our backpacks, radio and water cans crammed in that hole, it was almost impossible to move more than a few inches in any direction. The smell was the worst part. We urinated in a small cup and carefully dumped it out the left front into the sand. We collected our feces in small plastic sandwich bags and buried it in a narrow trench Gant dug in the rear bottom.” John gave a short laugh. “There wasn’t much shit because we only brought enough food for one cold meal every day. Hell, we’d both lost ten to fifteen pounds by that last day, maybe more. I’d never done anything even remotely like it. But, Gant, it was like he was on vacation. He was so calm about it all.”

Neeley remembered how gaunt Gant had looked when she met him in Templehoff. Masterson’s recitation — he’d done this before and she knew when — his debriefing after the mission.

Hannah cut in. “All this—“ she waved her hands indicating Neeley and John, “is about something you did before you met me? That’s why you ran away?”

John nodded.

“It has nothing to do with me?” Hannah pressed.

“I’m sorry,” John said. “I thought—“

“Finish the story,” Neeley said, checking the glowing clock in the kitchen.

“Gant — ” John Masterson shook his head as he remembered. “He could handle doing that. Sitting in that fucking hole, shitting in a bag. It drove me nuts.” John nodded, thinking back. “Gant’s biggest concern going in had been water. He’d tied down four ten gallon cans on the all terrain. Every three days he went and retrieved one. By that last day only one still held a little bit of water. I was getting nervous but Gant didn’t seem worried. He’d check the satellite radio twice a day, just listening.

“So we sat and waited.

“Then the activity in the compound picked up. A convoy came from the north, from Khartoum. Ten pickups with machineguns and two Land Rovers with tinted windows. Around a dozen people got out of the Land Rovers and moved into the main building while the ones on the pickups took security positions all around.

“Then the helicopter came and a half dozen people off-loaded, including several Westerners. They went into the same buildings. Gant pulled out this device — some sort of laser. He aimed it at the building, at one of the windows. They’d painted them all black, so you couldn’t see inside but this laser could pick up sound vibrations off the glass. He hooked it up to a laptop computer. Then he plugged in two headsets, handing me one.

“I put it on. We could hear what they were saying in there.” John barked a bitter laugh. “They were negotiating. About a couple of oil pipelines.”

“From Turkmenistan to the Arabian Sea and to Pakistan,” Neeley said.

John nodded, surprised. “Yeah.”

“Across Afghanistan,” Neeley added.

John nodded once more. “Which at the time the Taliban ruled. That was one of the groups there at the meeting. There were also a couple of Pakistanis. For their end of the one pipeline. And some Saudis about their end.”

“And the Americans?” Neeley prompted.

“The head of Cintgo, who was supposed to build the pipelines along with a couple of his people. And to broker the deal, Senator Collins.”

“Shit,” Neeley muttered.

Hannah spoke up. “Was Bin Laden there?”

The other two turned to her in surprise, so she quickly explained. “It was in the papers and magazines. He hung out in Sudan in the early 90s. He — his construction company — even built a highway there. Before they kicked him out and he went back to Afghanistan. Everyone knows that.”

“No,” Neeley said, “everyone doesn’t know that.” She turned to John. “Well?”

John’s eyes took on a distant look. “Yes, he was there. Brokering for the Taliban. Cintgo was worried about security for the pipelines in Afghanistan. The Russians had tried to build one in the country when they occupied it and the Mujahadeen, led by Bin Laden, had cut it so many times it failed.

“Gant was on the radio with someone. Telling them what he knew so far. Someone named Nero.”

“Who’s Nero?” Hannah cut in.

“The guy who runs the Cellar,” John said. “The organization Gant worked for.”

John looked at Neeley. “I could hear them through the headphones. And I figured out pretty quick that Gant was there for more than just listening. The laser device also could paint the target.”

“’Paint’?” Hannah asked.

“Designate whatever it’s pointed out as a target,” John explained to his wife.

“But Collins was there,” Hannah said.

“No shit,” John said. “I’ve thought about it over the years, then one time I was watching the Godfather and it came to me — Collins was like that police captain that those mob guys brought to that meeting in the Bronx. To insure safety.”

“Except in the movie they killed the cop,” Hannah pointed out.

Neeley was surprised at the other woman’s comments. She’d gotten over her surprise about her husband rather quickly.

“Well, Nero wasn’t going to kill a senator apparently,” John said. “Nero told the Navy jets that were on station to head back to their carrier.”

“Did Gant tape this?” Neeley asked.

“No.”

Neeley was surprised again.

“They all reached a basic agreement to build the two pipes,” John Masterson continued. “Then the meeting broke up. Collins and the Cintgo guys got on the chopper and flew away. The Pakistanis drove away. But we were still listening. That’s when we learned then that the Taliban had made a secret videotape of the meeting. It was in the possession of a guy named Sheik Hassan al-Turabi.”

John fell silent. Neeley gestured with the Mod-59 to Hannah. “Go make us some drinks.” Neeley went to John and untied him.

Hannah walked to the wet bar and fixed three drinks. Her hands were still, her head clear. She came back and handed one to the other two and sat on the other end of the couch from John with her own drink. For some reason learning that this wasn’t at all about her, but came from something before her time with John out-weighed the betrayal of his leaving and his lies. She felt strangely free of responsibility.

“And?” Neeley pressed.

“At the time it wasn’t that big of a deal,” John said. “The proposed Afghan pipelines. Dealing with the Taliban. Hell, even I’d heard Cintgo was trying to do this. You could read it in the trades. And we’d been supporting Bin Laden for years against the Russians.”

“But Collins being there—“ Neeley let that hang.

“Still not that big of a deal,” John said. “Gant radioed in a final report of the meeting and requested pick up. While we were packing up we got new orders. Someone wanted that videotape.”

“Collins,” Neeley said.

John shrugged. “I guess. Or Nero to use as leverage against Collins. So we hung around a little longer. Listened. Found out that al-Turabi was to keep the videotape. He was going back to Afghanistan via Somalia. Give some support to the brothers’ in-country there.”

“So you went to Somalia,” Neeley said.

“Yeah,” John said. “We pulled out of the hide sight, went back to the all-terrain and loaded up. Gant drove us into the desert and we waited. The Talon came back, landed and we drove on board. Took us to the airfield in Mogadishu where all the special operations people were stationed — the Rangers, Delta Force, and the Task Force 160 helicopters.”

John fell silent for a few moments and Neeley didn’t feel the inclination to prod him forward any more. She wasn’t sure she wanted to hear what he was going to say. Hannah was sitting, drink in hand, watching her husband. Neeley noticed the other woman had yet to take a sip of her drink.

“We saw the special ops guys running their missions. The humanitarian part, then the snatch raids when things changed. The place was getting hairy. Gant disappeared into town a couple of times, searching for al-Turabi. I guess he found him.”

John’s voice went flat once more as he recited, just as he had probably done years ago at a debriefing. “The 3^rd of October. There was going to be a raid later that day. Gant was talking with Nero and he was pissed, the first time I saw him get really emotional. I was just an engineer and wasn’t sure what he was talking about, but he laid it out for me — the Ranger and Delta Force guys had no armor support and they were running their missions in daylight, negating their night vision technological advantage. And, what really ticked Gant off, was that they were using the same tactics over and over again. And Nero wanted him to use the raid that day as cover for taking out al-Turabi and getting the fucking video.

“The first wave of choppers lifted. I heard Gant ask: ‘Is this thing a go or no go, Mister Nero?’ I don’t know what Nero said, but Gant didn’t act like he appreciated the answer.”

Neeley could hear the sound of a clock chiming in another room as John Masterson continued.

“We saw the raid go into downtown. Everything seemed to be going all right. Then Gant and I loaded onto one of the Little Birds, an OH-6, to run our own little op in the middle of this. We flew downtown, to where the raid was. We landed on the roof. Delta guys had secured the building and snatched a bunch of their targets, including al-Turabi.

“Gant found the tape and some documents on al-Turabi, taped around his waist. Gant gave me the documents and stuck the tape in his pack. Then we shoved al-Turabi on board one of the Blackhawks. Things were beginning to get a little hairy. We were getting incoming fire. Gant and I were supposed to go out on the Blackhawk with al-Turabi but Gant decided against it. He felt the Delta guys could use our firepower as the ground column was caught up in some trouble and hadn’t arrived yet.

“I was pissed at him,” John said. “I wanted to get the hell out of there as fast as possible. But he saved my life by doing that. Cause that chopper lifted, and started to move away, when it got hit by rocket fire from an adjoining building and went down. Al-Turabi and several others on board were killed.”

John sighed and became quiet. Neeley was trying to sort through what he had already told him. She wanted to know everything about the past very badly, but she also wanted to know what John was lying about concerning the present. “You didn’t leave Hannah the day Gant called.”

John stared at her and finally reluctantly nodded. “I was scared when Gant called, but he told me I was covered. That someone — he must have meant you — would come by and everything would stay the same. I was going off to golf when Nero called me on my cell phone. He told me it was time for me to go.”

“That’s why I didn’t sense it,” Hannah sounded relieved, as if a great mystery had been solved.

“I don’t get it,” Neeley said. “What did he mean by that.”

John looked at his wife. “I am so sorry. I never really thought Nero would come for you.”

Hannah was surprised. “For me?”

John shook his head, rubbing his hands across weary eyes. “This has all been a nightmare. Ever since that day in Mogadishu.”

Hannah was about to say something, but Neeley cut her off. “I don’t understand. If you were working for Nero, why did you and Gant keep the video and documents?”

John looked up at her. “Because Gant had seen who in the next building had fired the missile that downed the helicopter we were supposed to be on, killing everyone on board.”

Two things happened very quickly. There was a sharp crack as if someone had thrown a rock at the big window and Neeley reached over, grabbed Hannah's head and smashed her facedown into the carpet.

Hannah heard another loud pop and then Neeley was on top of her and whispering. "Keep down. Crawl into the hallway."

Hannah started to move and only then noticed the weight of John on her legs. Hannah gasped and struggled to free her feet. She felt something warm and wet soak her back. "Get off me, John!"

Neeley's voice was insistent and level. "He can't, Hannah. He's dead."

Hannah pulled her feet loose with a jerk. She started a low crawl toward the hall all the while hearing the shots and the crashes that followed them. Whoever was firing was using a damn large caliber gun. As she got close to the hallway, a glass frame above her shattered, raining splinters of glass on and around her.

Hannah paused and turned to look for Neeley. Another well-placed shot caused her to roll into the hall, regardless of the glass.

Suddenly Neeley was at her side, John’s briefcase in her hand. "Crawl into your room. Get dressed, fast. We've gotta get out of here."

Hannah looked at the strange woman. “John is dead?”

“Yes.”

Hannah closed her eyes. A hand pinched her arm. “You don’t move, we’re both gonna be dead too.”

"Why should I listen to you? You were going to kill John and me a few minutes ago."

Neeley pushed her. "I wasn't going to kill you. I came to help. Now go get dressed!"

Hannah shook her head. "What do you mean you weren't going to kill us? You had a gun pointed at us! That's certainly—"

Neeley brought the pistol back up, cutting her off. "OK, I will kill you if you don't get dressed right now. Whoever's out there is an expert. We only have a few minutes to get out of here so do what I say now!"

Whether the words or the tone worked wasn't clear, but Hannah crawled to the big bedroom. Neeley followed and darted around Hannah, making her way to the bathroom. By squatting in the tub she could see most of the backyard. With the light off, she knew she couldn't be seen from the outside. It was still dark out there but the promise of daylight was not far away.

Neeley couldn't see a thing and regretted leaving her pack in the truck. Whoever the Cellar had sent had been amazingly fast. The firing had stopped once they got out of the den. She had been surprised at the number of bullets the shooter had put into the house. He couldn't have seen them once Neeley shoved Hannah down, but he had continued to fire as if he knew where they were. And he should have come into the house by now. How did he know they hadn't run out the front door or garage, or called the cops?

Neeley had it then. This guy was smart. He had access to the same equipment Gant had had and would operate in the same way. Neeley braced her forearms on the edge of the tub, the barrel of her pistol pointing into the back yard. She took a chance. "Hannah, get away from the kitchen window!" she yelled.

She saw the bright muzzle flash right where she expected it. By the old tree. She heard the kitchen window shatter. Hannah was calling out but Neeley ignored her as she fired rapidly. First shot to blow out the plane of glass between her and the target, then three rounds as fast as she could pull the trigger at the muzzle flash even though she knew the shooter would have relocated as soon as he fired.

"What are you doing?" Hannah was yelling, the sound of the gun echoing off the tiles.

Neeley ran to the bedroom, staying low just in case and grabbed Hannah's arm with a fierce grip. She hissed in Hannah's ear. "The house is bugged. The person outside can hear us. Do whatever I say if you want to make it out of here alive."

Neeley looked down and realized Hannah had on a silk dress buttoned wrong and had been trying to pull on pantyhose. "Jesus," Neeley muttered.

Neeley reached into the closet and felt around. Nothing felt like denim. "Socks, Hannah," Neeley whispered. "Socks and tennis shoes. Sneakers," she added. Neeley grabbed the nylon out of Hannah’s hand.

In a minute she had Hannah reasonably well put together. She edged back to the door of the bathroom and looked out. Nothing moving. Neeley looked at Hannah, who was moving now, stuffing clothes and items into a large tote bag. "Call the cops," Neeley said loudly.

"What?" Hannah asked, confused.

"Call the cops. As soon as you get them on the phone, I'll be gone," Neeley said. She was watching the woodline. "Move!" Neeley snapped. "Call them now!"

Hannah crawled over to the nightstand and picked up the phone. Neeley saw something moving in the woodline and smiled. She turned and grabbed Hannah's arm. "Let's go," she whispered.

"But—"

Neeley clamped a hand over Hannah's mouth and dragged her toward the garage, the phone falling to the ground.

Racine was running through the woods, heading back toward his car. He rubbed his hand down his left side as he moved. There was a little bit of blood. Splinters from the tree. The bitch was good with a pistol. It must have been sixty-seventy feet from his position to the window she'd fired out of. Contrary to the cop shows on TV it took a damn good shot to even get close with a pistol at that distance.

Racine pulled the small headphones off and tucked them into a pocket, sealing the Velcro cover to make sure they didn't fall out. The house had been wired, just as he'd expected. He'd picked up the conversation in the kitchen as he'd hit the right freq. Jesus! Masterson had just been sitting there spilling his guts and that had forced Racine to act before he was ready.

He'd taken out John to shut him up, but the women had reacted faster than he had expected. He'd peppered the fucking house, tracking them by sound from the wire as best he could, trying to flush them out, until they'd mentioned the cops. That was a bit too much publicity for him, especially after Baltimore.

"Fuck!" Racine came to a halt. Neeley wouldn't call the cops! She'd tricked him. Just as she'd tricked him to shoot at the window. Racine half-turned back toward the house, and then realized it was too late for that.

He smiled, his teeth giving him a ferocious appearance in the dark. It didn't matter. He knew exactly how to meet up with Hannah and Gant's ghost. Racine began sprinting, heading back the way he had come.