The Black Bullet

CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE

It was about 5:45 p.m. when Eric Hunter arrived at Gibraltar with Lauren Miles and Senior Special Agent Mike Gates. They got to the point quickly with Hunter leading the questions. “How much of Sean O’Brien’s history do you know?”

“What I’ve told you,” Dave Collins said, speaking in a measured tone, holding back any animation in voice or body. “He was an extraordinary homicide detective with Miami-Dade. Married for a few years until cancer took his wife. Did a couple of tours of duty in the Middle East. Delta Force. Guy can swim like a dolphin.”

Mike Gates said, “You know anything about his background in Pakistan?”

“Pakistan? No.”

“He was so covert, even we had a hard time getting our hands on everything he did, primarily because after the service he stayed over there.”

“So, what the hell does that have to do with anything?”

“Come on Dave,” Hunter said, “you were in the Agency too long not to be curious as to why a guy, top of his class, trained to be the best-of-the-best, doesn’t come home after a long tour of duty and re-connect with friends … family.”

“His parents are dead. Raised by an uncle who is dead. No siblings. He hadn’t met his wife yet. Not a lot to re-connect to.” Dave turned to Lauren. “You know Sean well. What’s this all about?”

“I don’t know, Dave, some things have come up.”

“What things?”

“Bad things,” Gates said. “We believe O’Brien worked as a mercenary, a hired gun, if you will, ostensibly for the Trident Company. They’re a multi-national corporation primarily hired by companies like Halliburton, Shell and others to keep the peace, to make sure their workers aren’t hurt in those global hotspots they do business.”

Hunter added, “O’Brien was in and around the Afghanistan-Pakistan border for three months, unaccounted for.”

“Says who?” Dave fired back.

“Says the top people he reported to at Trident.”

“You can’t rely on that, and you know it. If a contract employee goes MIA, they either don’t acknowledge he was on the payroll or certainly don’t broadcast his last whereabouts. I’m going to need more than that.”

“Okay,” Gates said, pinching the bridge of his nose, his eyes heavy with fatigue. “We believe O’Brien was recruited or sold his expertise to supply terrorists groups along the Afghan border with U.S. troop information, movements, insurgent levels, whatever- we don’t believe he ever fully left their payroll when his services were up.”

“So,” said Dave, weariness and anger in his voice, “O’Brien hung up his Soldier-of-Fortune card and decided to become a Miami cop to gain a little respectability all the while hanging out as a plant or a homegrown G.I. Joe sleeper cell just waiting to spring a big ol’ nine-eleven again.”

“Something like that, my friend,” Gates mocked, “but this time he was springing weapons-grade uranium from a German U-boat and finding the stuff buried on the fucking island. Come on, pal. Nobody’s that good! We think he’s in a position to make it look like an innocent find while he was working with Mohammed Sharif, probably getting a huge ‘finder’s fee,’ and then along comes a badass Russian weapons broker who’s screwed up the big plans and is as mercenary as O’Brien. So now O’Brien has a big dilemma … he’s got to find a way to retrieve the HEU, and do it while acting like his goal is to keep alive a kid who he could care less about saving. Like I say, nobody’s that good. O’Brien has stepped in shit no al Qaeda camp could have prepared him to handle.”

“That good?” Dave raised his voice. “He’s that unfortunate! Training camp? For crying out loud, Sean’s not a terrorist anymore than he’s a treasure hunter. That stuff has been hidden out there for decades. To find the remaining canisters on the island, he used the directions a dying man gave his wife in 1945, and I tapped in an old friend, someone with Remote Viewing talents, to help. Between the two, we came close enough for Sean and Nick to use a magnetometer to get a hit. O’Brien gave you guys the goods to use as a bargaining chip for a kid’s life. You lost it. Now you’re blaming him for being too good at what he does!”

No one spoke. The only sound came from the breeze causing the spinnaker rigging to clink against the mast of a sailboat across the dock.

“What is it he does?” Gates asked.

“He finds things … he finds people … dead or alive. And that’s what you and your fucking task force should be doing up there in that great big command center right now rather than pointing fingers at O’Brien.”

Hunter stepped to Gibraltar’s open sliding glass doors. He turned back to Dave and said, “Mohammed Sharif admitted he had O’Brien on the payroll.”

“Why would he do that?”

“Because we cut a deal with him.”

“What deal?”

“Offered him the location of the HEU in exchange for the name of the person we suspected might be an agent or even a double agent.”

“Do you know the location of the HEU?”

“No, but Sharif doesn’t know that yet. He named O’Brien.”

“Bullshit! Told who?”

“Me.”

“That’s interesting, Eric, because O’Brien is suspect of you and your motives.”

“Of course he is. Deflect suspicions to anyone he thinks could get in his way.”

Dave said nothing.

“I’m sorry,” Lauren said.

“What do you want me to do?” asked Dave.

Gates said, “Bring O’Brien to the command center.”

“Why?”

“We need to capture or kill as many as we can-Islamic extremists or Russians that are part of this power play. They’re all terrorists on American soil. The deal we cut is to have Mohammed and his fanatics go to where Yuri Volkow and his group are hunkered down with the HEU. If we can lead him to the location, we’ll have the perimeter surrounded with the best snipers we have. We know that Mohammed will try to take out Volkow. All we have to do is make sure, when the smoke clears, we take no prisoners. Then we’ll secure the HEU for disposal. We get two for one.”

“You think this is some kind of a fucking video game!” Dave yelled. “You can’t predict what’s going to happen, if anything. In the meantime, the Russians are going to hold an international auction.”

“Bring O’Brien to us,” Gates said.

“Why should I?”

“To alleviate suspicion on his part. We can arrest him-charge him as an enemy combatant. Try him in a military tribunal. I think you know the outcome of that. Or we can send him to fight for Jason Canfield’s life, and let the chips fall where they may.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means O’Brien, the traitor who finds things, can find his own way out.”

“Or it means he gets caught in friendly fire and your team takes him out.”

“Either way,” said Gates, “he has a better chance than facing a tribunal.”

Lauren said, “That’s murder!”

“And this is war! Nobody likes it,” Gates barked. “But O’Brien made these choices. He can take his chances. He could come out alive.”

“Maybe,” Dave said, “or Sean and Jason will both be hit with so many rounds you won’t even recognize their bodies.”

“Don’t get an overactive imagination,” Gates said. “Bring him in at eight tomorrow morning or we go find him.”