In the Crosshairs

12

Marguerite del Coda, sixteen years with the agency, met them at planeside, heavy sunglasses tilted low on her nose. “I might have known,” she said when Swanson and Gibson stepped onto the tarmac. “I received a strange message from Langley that two ‘representatives’ from the office of the director of intelligence would be arriving. No names, no details other than to arrange transport onward. Welcome back to my little slice of America, guys. Get in the car.” She got into the front passenger seat, and the two operatives, groggy from the long flight, climbed into the rear. “Back to the office,” she told the driver.

No one spoke during the ride as the driver expertly wove through the complex of roads at the air base in southern Germany. Ramstein was home to the entire USAF headquarters in Europe and teemed with some fifty thousand Americans of various services. Because it was a central NATO point, thousands more rolled in the count. What had started almost a century earlier, when the Hitler regime cleared an airstrip out of dense forests, had grown into a modern military metropolis.

Riding del Coda’s pass, they cleared the checkpoints and she led them to her private office. She peeled off a gray jacket and put a big corner desk between them and her. It wasn’t neat, and the place smelled of stress. The CIA regional administrator dropped into a chair and fiddled with her dark hair for a moment while staring at them.

“This has something to do with all the scuttlebutt going around, I guess? You guys are being targeted by some fool?” Little stayed secret within the CIA itself, for despite restrictions they were, after all, spies.

Swanson sat in one of the two facing easy chairs, while Gibson took a place on the sofa. “Yup,” he said. “We might as well start our hunt by asking you some questions, Marguerite. You’ve been over here forever.”

“Fire away,” she said. Her brown eyes were looking past them, as if she were already thinking about other things. Del Coda flexed her hands, folded them on the desk, and brought her eyes back down. She had known both of these operators for a long time, because Ramstein was a central clearinghouse in the war-on-terror intelligence business.

“We’re looking for one of our former contractors who went over to the dark side.” Gibson thought she seemed a bit off her game. “Name of Nicky Marks.”

“Only thing I know is that he was a shooter,” she replied. “One of your recruits, as I recall.”

“Don’t remind me.” Gibson flushed. “Anyway, have you picked up anything about him lately?”

She shifted in the chair and the navy-blue shirt she wore tightened on her figure. “Nope, other than he killed some woman in Paris. You’re telling me that Marks is behind all this noise?”

Swanson shrugged. “We don’t know much of anything right now, Marguerite, except that he’s causing us a lot of trouble.”

She unconsciously chewed on her lower lip, her eyes drifting to a computer screen on one side of the desk. “Want me to run him through the system?”

Swanson looked over at his partner. “Sure, light him up. He has to know that the French and Interpol are looking for him on the homicide. No harm in us adding him to the watch list, which he would expect. Just don’t use our names at all.”

“We think he has a source inside the agency. That’s why we’re moving quietly. Nobody but you and Marty Atkins know we’re here.” Gibson looked serious, then flashed an ironic grin. “Maybe two or three hundred others.”

“Well, god damn it all!” She exploded out of her seat, picked up a plastic ballpoint pen, and broke it in half, flinging the pieces across the office. “I’ve got the drone program raising my blood pressure, the rendition flights still come through here, and thousands of Kraut demonstrators outside the fence line want to close us down. I do not need this!”

Gibson laughed at her outburst. The woman was famous for her volatility. “None of us do. Chill out.”

The regional station chief stomped around the room, following a faint track in the old Afghan maroon carpet, her mind whirling. “Okay, okay. I’m all right. Is there anything else I can do?”

“Pass the word, person to person, that we want to keep Marks as isolated from fresh information as possible,” Swanson said. “The less he knows, the better. You contact Marty directly on any developments.”

“Okay. All mission comms will be handled here,” she said, making a note.

The three agents fell silent while del Coda cooled down, then she asked, “Why are you going to Afghanistan, then? Why not Pakistan or Iraq?”

Swanson stood up. “He’s going home, and he wants us to follow him.”

“You realize that you may be walking straight into an ambush?” she said.

“Most likely. It’s his turf, but it’s our turn, Marguerite. We’re getting closer by the day.”

Her mental gears had begun turning, which was why she held such a high-ranking position in the agency. Del Coda had the uncanny ability to work multiple complex problems simultaneously, and she was considering options. “Okay, I’ll put Marks’s name out there, which will make him step carefully, but how about this, too? We tag the two of you for a drone strike?”

Gibson raised his eyebrows. “Offhand, I can think of about a million good reasons why I don’t want a drone falling on my head.”

“Let the lady talk, Luke,” Swanson said, realizing that he was beginning to think of Gibson as an equal, a workable partner. “Why a drone?”

She went back to the desk and brought the computer to life as she flipped through several screens, referring to the latest list of official passwords. “Most of the birds used in strikes in the Middle East, Africa, and Afghanistan are parked here. The pilots are back in Nowhere, Nevada, but we have the hardware and launch the missions. You know all that, right?” They nodded. It was public knowledge, because a couple of whistle-blowers had wanted their fifteen minutes of fame.

“If I can get clearance from Director Atkins, we can outfit each of you with a transponder to track your movements, and until this thing is done I can earmark a drone for your call. We’ll have it circling overhead when you finally move in on Nicky Marks.” Del Coda clicked the computer and the screen went black again. “Because of the protests, I got drones to spare, boys. Want one?”

The men looked at each other and nodded. “Okay, thanks,” Swanson said.

“Good idea,” Gibson conceded. Inside, he brightened a bit at the memory of how a Reaper smart bomb had blown away the home of Mahfouz al-Rashidi right before his eyes not so long ago. This might come in handy.

Del Coda was on her feet again, seeming to drop the stress she’d complained of like an old blanket. She liked actually doing something again rather than being an administrator. “Come on. We’ll have some dinner, get you geared up, and you’ll be out of here tomorrow morning.”

Fog and rain slid across the Shenandoah Valley like moving curtains on a stage, forcing Lucky Sharif to keep the wipers going almost all the way as he drove from Washington to the stately layout of the Virginia Military Institute. He did the math in his head on the way down. If Luke Gibson was in his early thirties, as Kyle estimated, then he would have been at VMI between the ages of eighteen and twenty-one, which would put him in a graduating class between 1998 and 2000, give or take a year. The problem was that Sharif didn’t want to mention the name by itself, so he would have to plant some misdirection.

The state-run military college prided itself on a long history that had produced such leaders as George Marshall and George Patton. Stonewall Jackson was a professor there before the Civil War. Among the throngs of spit-shined young men and women moving with determined purpose around the grounds today were future officers who might carve their own niches in history, or fall in the line of duty.

Sharif didn’t seek out the superintendent — not yet — but made his way to the offices of the archivist, an efficient woman drinking a cup of tea at her desk. He showed his badge, which she examined closely, as if identifying the metal, then took a good look at the identity card.

“This is the surprise of my day, Special Agent Sharif. My name is Clara Cooper.” She got up and extended her hand. The mop of red hair was showing signs of gray, and Sharif believed it was due for another henna rinse. “Are we in trouble with the FBI?”

Sharif gave a soft laugh. “No, Ms. Cooper. Not at all. I’m just doing some routine background checks. I would like to see some Bombs.”

“Why, you could have saved yourself a trip, sir. The yearbooks are all posted online. We have a wonderful electronic archive.”

“I’m sure you do. But we prefer not to rely only on electronic copies. You’d be surprised what hackers can and will do. So we double-source whenever possible.”

“Certainly, certainly,” she clucked like a mama hen. The idea of some hacker rudely disrupting her archives turned her mouth into a firm, straight line. “What year would you like to see?”

“How about 1988, ’89, and 2000? Can you do that?”

“Of course. You can look at them right here in my office if you wish privacy. Make yourself at home while I fetch them. Please, have some tea.”

She was back in five minutes, cradling three large volumes, which she placed on a conference table beneath bright halogen lamps. Sharif put on some reading glasses, pulled out his notepad, went to work, and struck gold on the first try, in The Bomb for 2000.

Instead of looking for individual names, he had fanned through the pages just to get a feel for how the book was organized, and he stopped at a formal portrait of two young men — the top officers of the entire regiment. They were resplendent in full-dress blue-gray uniform coatees and white pants, black-plumed shakos, white belt across the chest, three rows of shining brass buttons, red sashes, swords on right shoulders, and arms laden with gold-lace chevrons. The man on the left, the regimental executive officer, wore five chevrons. The square-jawed regimental CO wore six, plus other markings to signify that he was top dog. He was identified as First Captain Lucas Gibson.

Sharif spent another thirty minutes going through the yearbooks, then handed Clara Cooper a list of six names that included Gibson and asked for their academic records. He had expected her to protest about privacy and confidentiality and that sort of dodge, but Clara had understood that the FBI badge could override all that, so why make a fuss? The cadets from those long-ago classes would by now be rising high in their military or other careers, and that meant higher clearances for secrecy. Why make a bother when the outcome was inevitable? After all, it was a routine background check. The special agent had said so.

“I’ll go over to the superintendent’s office and get approval and dig these up for you,” she said with a wave of the folded paper. “Won’t be long.”

Sharif took a break and walked outside. Cadets were marching crisply, doing PT, or busy at their other assigned chores around the pristine 200-acre campus. Discipline was evident everywhere; this wasn’t the kind of place where a phony would thrive, and Gibson had made it to the top. Sharif talked with a few of them to get a feel for the type of personality that could handle such a strict environment.

Clara came back with the paperwork, and he delved into the files, examining each folder equally, but caring only about Luke Gibson. The rest were cover. Gibson and one of the other cadets had been valedictorians of their high-school classes. The boy had it all — grades, leadership ability, physical fitness, and fluency in two foreign languages — French and Arabic. He majored in international relations and affairs, finishing tenth overall in academics, captained the baseball team, and scored as an expert marksman on the rifle team, taking an individual first in the annual match against West Point. Sharif tapped his pen in thought. Gibson was the gold standard that year, and had made the promotion selection committee’s job easy.

He went back to the files. Five of the six cadets became commissioned officers upon graduation: two Army, two Air Force, one to the Coast Guard. There was no such notation on Gibson’s transcript. Sharif asked the archivist about that, and she explained that, unlike federal schools like Annapolis and West Point, VMI graduates were required to take the training but didn’t have to join the military.

“Ah.” This was where the CIA had scooped him up. After this, Gibson was off the official radar.

“Thanks for all your assistance, ma’am,” Sharif said. “But, like the old detectives, I have one more question. I noticed that the Bomb from 2000 was dedicated to First Captain Gary Smith, who was the regimental commander. That seems to be a discrepancy, because the commander for that year was a fellow named, uh, Gibson. Lucas Gibson. How can that happen?”

Clara frowned. She was puzzled. “I don’t know, Special Agent Sharif. There is only one regimental CO at a time. Let me call someone — my predecessor, Millie Hartnett. She knows everything.” Clara used her cell phone to dial Millie and exchanged pleasantries, then put her on speakerphone to include Sharif.

The woman’s voice sounded strong. “Oh, my. That was just awful. I recall it. The whole school went into mourning.”

“Why?”

“Gary was a wonderful cadet — stood first in his class in academics, and played quarterback for the football team. He had already served two years as an enlisted soldier before coming to VMI and had — let me remember here, he was a paratrooper with the hundred and first.”

Lucky Sharif felt Gibson’s glow dimming. Maybe he wasn’t the gold standard that year after all.

“Well, what happened to him, Millie?”

“It was around Thanksgiving. Gary went rock climbing with some friends over the break and tragically fell to his death. The police said it was a terrible accident.”

“So the corps was without its student commander for a while?”

“Not for long. That couldn’t be allowed, so the selection committee bumped up the regimental XO to the higher rank so the institute could get back to normal. Gary was a good boy. It was awful.”

Clara glanced at Sharif. “Anything else?”

“No, ma’am. Many thanks to both of you. I’ll see myself out.” When he left, he could hear Clara and Millie turning the conversation to more personal matters as they set a lunch date.

Sharif got into the car and called Washington to get an FBI researcher to investigate the climbing accident that took the life of a VMI student by the name of Gary Smith, including his military record. Then he drove away from the orderly, regimental campus and back into the untidy real world.