Rules of Betrayal

28

“He’s leaving the West Tower building now,” said the man seated behind the wheel of the maroon Buick sedan.

“How long was he inside?” asked a voice in his earpiece.

The man watched Frank Connor walk across the dark parking lot and unlock the front door of his battered Volvo station wagon.

“Two hours.”

“Same contact as earlier?”

“Security desk has him signed in to see James Malloy, watch officer, operations center.” The man slid lower in his seat as Connor backed out of his space and drove directly past him. “Target is mobile. Permission to pursue?”

“Negative. Proceed to 3624 S Street, Northwest. Malloy residence. Have a heart-to-heart with Mr. Malloy when he gets home. Find out what Connor was so interested in. And be advised, Malloy was a SEAL. You can expect him to have firearms in the house.”

The man, whose name was Jake Taylor, took note. He was ex-military himself. He’d enlisted in the army at seventeen and over a ten-year career had served with the 82nd Airborne Division, the first Ranger battalion, and the Green Berets in Iraq.

Faced with the prospect of returning stateside, First Sergeant Taylor put in his papers and signed up with a private contractor. He was back in Baghdad inside a month. The pay was outstanding, the chow well above army standards, and, best of all, he was back doing what he did best: killing.

Every night after his official duty was completed, he left the safety of his compound and trawled the back alleys of Baghdad. There was no part of the city he didn’t frequent. With his wiry black hair, olive skin, and two-day stubble, he hardly looked different from a native. His targets were insurgents whose names had been posted on the watch list. He would locate them, track them, then gain entry to their homes and slay them, often as they lay in their beds asleep. He used his knife, because it was quieter and because he liked the taste of blood. News of the executions spread. The frightened citizens gave the stealthy killer a name. They called him “the Ripper” because of his propensity to cut open his victims’ bodies from stem to stern.

In the course of three years, he executed 461 men and 37 women.

Jake Taylor had left Iraq. “Jake the Ripper” had come home.

“What’s his status?” asked the Ripper.

“Married. Wife is thirty-five years old. A nonprofessional. No children. Be sure to clean up afterward. We don’t want Connor knowing we’re interested in him.”

“Roger that.”

The Ripper started the Buick and left the parking lot, driving north past Arlington National Cemetery and crossing Key Bridge into the District of Columbia thirty minutes later. He passed Georgetown University, turned onto Reservoir Road, and found a parking spot in the quiet residential neighborhood north of campus. During the drive over, photographs of Malloy’s home as well as a floor plan of the residence had been sent to his phone, and he spent ten minutes committing them to memory.

At two a.m., he slipped on a pair of leather gloves and pulled a balaclava over his face. He retrieved a P40 semiautomatic pistol from his glove compartment and screwed on a silencer. He set the gun on the seat beside him while he stuffed several pairs of flexicuffs and a roll of duct tape into his pocket. He checked his calf to make sure the KA-BAR knife was in its sheath. His only other tool was a pair of needle-nosed pliers. He’d learned long ago that simplest was best. Fingernails were very sensitive.

There was one last thing to do. Taking a vial from his jacket, he shook two small blue tablets into the palm of his hand. The tablets were Oxycontin, a synthetic morphine known on the street as “hillbilly heroin.” Using the vial, he crushed each tablet on a small vanity mirror, then snorted them rapidly. An arctic rush spread through his limbs and his eyes rolled back in his head.

“Time to rock ’n’ roll,” he whispered, and slid into the night.

The Ripper returned to his automobile a few minutes before three. He pulled off the balaclava and sat for a minute, gathering his breath.

“Raven, checking in,” he said into the encrypted phone.

“What do you have?”

“Connor wanted to see about the location of a B-52 that went down in 1984 somewhere in Pakistan. He said the bomber lost a cruise missile-a friggin’ nuke-and thought there might be some people trying to retrieve it.”

“A nuke? Was he able to find this missile?”

“No, ma’am. The pictures of the crash site taken twenty-five years ago were missing. But Malloy borrowed a KH-14 making a pass over the area and the bird spotted a recovery team in the vicinity of the crash site.”

“Real time?”

“Yes, ma’am. Malloy said the team had plenty of equipment and it looked as if they were getting ready to move out.”

“And Connor saw all this?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“Did Connor tell Malloy what he intended to do?”

“No. Malloy just said that Connor was real upset.”

“And did he tell anyone else about what he’d discovered?”

“Not while he was with Malloy.”

“Good.”

“And so?” asked Jake the Ripper, wiping the blade of his knife back and forth against his trouser leg. “What about Connor?”

“That’s the question,” said his superior, and for a rare moment the Ripper caught her accent. Working for a woman was bad enough, but for a foreigner, too, was damned near unimaginable. “What about him?”