The Destroyed

CHAPTER 41

Mygatt, Green, and Olsen were propped next to each other against the wall of the back room, black bags over their heads, their hands and legs restrained. The amount of Beta-Somnol they’d been given had been carefully measured so that they’d only be out for approximately thirty minutes.

Right on schedule, Nate exited the room and said, “Two of them are waking up.”

“Good,” Quinn said.

He rose from his seat, walked into the room, and closed the door behind him. There was only one chair inside now. He pulled it as far from the three men as possible, and sat down.

It was another five minutes before the first one was fully alert.

“Hello?” Olsen said, his voice at first tentative, but quickly growing in strength. “Hello? Is anybody there? Hey, anyone!”

Quinn remained silent.

“Hello? Somebody! Anybody!” As Olsen tipped to the side, his shoulder knocked against Mygatt. “Who’s that? Hey, who are you?”

Mygatt groaned.

“Shit,” Olsen said.

A few seconds later, Green moaned and said, “What the hell? Take this thing off my head!”

“Mr. Green?” Olsen said.

A pause. “Olsen? What are you doing? Get this off my head!”

“Sir, I can’t. I’m tied up and my head’s covered, too.”

“Have you tried to get free?”

“I’ve only been awake a minute or so, sir.”

“Dammit,” Green said, his tone even more urgent than before. “Is the senator here, too?”

“I don’t know.”

“Senator Mygatt?” Green called out. When there was no reply, he said, “Olsen, what the hell happened at the plane?”

“We were attacked. I’m pretty sure they killed the other men. Peter, too. He went to see what he could do, but I heard gunshots right after. Then a man came into the room who seemed to know Voss. They shot me up with something. That’s all I remember.”

“Same thing happened to us. Hit us in the trailer. Goddammit! Any clue where we might be?”

“Sir?” Olsen said. “Don’t you hear it?”

“Hear what?”

“The drone? We’re on the plane, sir. Or a plane, anyway.”

Quinn decided this was as good a time as any to give them something else to think about. He shifted in his chair, intentionally causing it to creak.

The two men’s heads jerked toward the sound.

“Who’s there?” Green asked. “Senator Mygatt? Is that you?”

Quinn said nothing.

“Who’s there? I can hear you! I know you’re there!”

For several more minutes, Green and Olsen took turns trying to get Quinn to talk. Finally, as Mygatt was waking, Quinn stood up, and noisily left the room.

Peter watched the plane until it disappeared into the night. Not that he would have, but there were points during the last twenty minutes when he could have turned the tables, and stayed in the good graces of Mygatt and Green. Now, there was absolutely no turning back.

He headed to his car. He’d been able to set up most everything before he drove to the airfield with Olsen, but there were still a few things that were incomplete and one very important phone call he had to make.

Despite Helen Cho’s stated desire not to discuss the Gorman matter any further, Peter had called her three hours earlier as he was helping to put Quinn’s plan in motion. Now, as he drove back toward DC, he punched in her number again.

“What?” she said as she came on the line.

“Do you have it?”

“I swear to God, Peter, I should just-”

“Do you have it?”

She was silent for several seconds. “Yes.”

“Is it enough?”

“More than enough. But…”

“But what?” he asked. “Helen, you know who Mygatt really is. You know what he and Green have done. What’s going to happen to you and your little group there if Mygatt becomes the director of the CIA?”

“I get it. You don’t have to lecture me.”

“Noted.”

Knowing that Mygatt and Green were guilty was one thing; making people believe it would be an entirely different matter. Helen now had in her possession the hard proof.

He gave her a timeline of what she had to do next.

“If this ever comes back on me, I’m coming after you. You know that, right?” she said.

“I’d expect nothing less.”

“As long as we’re clear.”

“There’s one more thing.”

He could hear her take a deep breath. “What is it?”

He told her the final part of Quinn’s plan.

“You have got to be kidding. No way!”

“All I need you to do is open the door. Do that, and you won’t have to deal with either man ever again.”

“And if I don’t?”

“It’s going to come out anyway, and, naturally, there will be some collateral damage.”

“Are you threatening me?”

“I’m informing you. So what’s it going to be?”

This time she was quiet for nearly half a minute before she said, “You asshole.”

Over the next couple hours, Quinn took turns with Nate and Orlando silently sitting in the room for ten or fifteen minutes at a spell, then leaving again. At first, their three guests were belligerent and demanding, then they became more imploring, offering to make some kind of deal. Finally, the perceived reality of their situation set in, and fear took full control.

At this point, Quinn and the others left the men alone, letting them live with their imagination of what might happen next.

“Will Peter be able to pull it off?” Orlando asked as they waited in the main cabin.

Before Quinn could answer, Mila said, “I don’t trust him. He tried to kill me.”

“Who? Peter?” Quinn said. “That may be, but he was only doing the job he’d been hired for, and it seems to me he’s trying to make up for it now.” He glanced at Orlando. “So, yes, I think he’ll be able to pull it off.”

“I hope you’re right,” she said.

It took longer than Peter had hoped for all the parts to come together. By the time he was ready to make his second-to-last call, he’d been back in the townhouse for several hours.

He picked up the phone and dialed the number.

“Prime Cable News,” a pleasant female voice said.

“Dick Tillman, please. He’s expecting my call.”

She transferred him to a secretary who put him through to Tillman.

“I hope to hell you’re not fucking with me,” the network executive said.

“I’m not. I assume you contacted our mutual acquaintance?”

His voice lost some of its aggressiveness. “Yeah. He vouched for you.”

Peter had needed to pull several strings to get the retired general to talk to Tillman, but he knew it would do the trick. “And your camera teams?”

“The one here is no problem, but we don’t have anyone in Romania. On the word of your friend, I’ve sent a team there from Paris. They should arrive in Bucharest within the next three hours.”

“Good,” Peter said, then relayed a set of coordinates. “The Bucharest team will have ninety minutes after they land to get to that location. Tell them to do nothing to draw attention to themselves. They should get in a position that allows them a view of the gate. They’ll know what that means when they get there. Then they just wait.”

“What are they waiting for?”

“They’ll figure it out.”

“What about the other team?”

Peter gave him another set of coordinates. “Their timeline will mirror that of your team in Romania.”

“And I suppose you can’t tell me what they need to watch for, either?”

“No, I can’t. But I can tell you, Mr. Tillman, you don’t want to miss this.”

Four and a half hours after they’d taken off from the airfield in Virginia, Quinn’s phone rang.

“Yes?”

“I’ve just received the final confirmation. Everything’s in place,” Peter said. “Is two hours enough?”

“Hold on.” Quinn grabbed the walkie-talkie that connected him with the flight crew. “We’re ready to take her down. How long until we can be on the ground?”

“Forty-five minutes. Fifty, tops,” the pilot reported.

“Whatever you can do to make it sooner will be helpful.” He added the estimate to the time it would take them to drive to their final destination. “Two hours should be doable, but it’ll be tight.”

“You want a delay?” Peter asked.

“No. Any later will be less effective. We’ll make it work.”

“All right. Good luck.”

“Thanks, Peter. You really came through.” Quinn hung up and looked at the others. “Time for that chat.”

They all pulled on ski masks, and relocated to the back room. Nate and Daeng each held a video camera, so the rest stayed behind them to make sure that the only ones in the shot would be Mygatt, Green, and Olsen.

“What’s going on?” Mygatt asked.

“Where are we?” Green threw in. “Someone, please talk to us!”

“We felt the plane turn,” Olsen said. “Are we landing?”

“Yes,” Quinn said. It was the first word any of them had spoken to the prisoners since takeoff.

“What do you want? Who are you?” Mygatt said.

“Who I am isn’t important. What do I want? Well, Senator Mygatt, what I want is an explanation.”

“Explanation? About what?”

“Thomas Gorman.”

Mygatt delayed a second too long before saying, “Who?”

“We’re not going to do that, senator. Let me make this clear. As soon as we land, there are two groups of people we can give you to. One who will make sure you get home, and one who will tear you apart.” He gave it a beat, then said, “So, tell us what happened to Thomas Gorman.”

What started as dribbles of denial and deflection soon became a flood of reality as the story came out. Even then, Mygatt tried to paint himself as a hero, protecting his country, but his attempted ruse sounded empty.

“Moving in,” Quinn whispered, as soon as the senator was finished.

Both Nate and Daeng zoomed their lenses in so that only the black bag covering Mygatt’s head was visible. Quinn then walked over to the man’s side.

“How much of this story is true?”

“All of it,” Mygatt said. “Everything. And I’d do it again.”

As he said the last sentence, Quinn pulled the bag off, revealing the former senator’s face.

“Again,” Quinn said. “The story you just told, is it true?”

Mygatt’s eyes widened as he noticed the cameras.

“Senator?”

“Yes,” Mygatt whispered.

“Yes, what?”

“Yes, it’s all true.”

“So you faked the death of an American citizen, and flew him out of the country to a secret prison in Romania?”

Mygatt looked at him, surprised. “Romania? How did…It’s not like that! He was a menace. I did what everyone else wanted to do. It needed to be done. For the US.”

“And these men were with you?” As Quinn asked this, Orlando moved around and pulled the bags off Green’s and Olsen’s heads. “They were part of this?”

Nate and Daeng waited until she was out of the way, then panned their cameras over to the two newly revealed faces.

“These men are patriots,” Mygatt said.

“Were they part of this?” Quinn asked.

“They were also doing what needed to be done.”

Quinn stood up and nodded at Nate and Daeng. They switched off the cameras and lowered them.

“Thank you, Senator Mygatt, Mr. Green, and Mr. Olsen. That’ll be all.”

The bags went back over their heads.

“Hey!” Olsen called out.

“I did what you asked!” Mygatt shouted.

“You did,” Quinn said. He ushered the others out of the room and shut the door.

The pilot proved to be more than capable, getting them on the ground in thirty-eight minutes instead of forty-five.

As Peter had promised, a sedan and a white panel van were waiting for them. Logos on both sides of the van proclaimed that it belonged to KFR Catering, but the decals, along with the actual color of the van, could be removed in just a couple of minutes, changing the van to an unmarked dark blue.

As the prisoners were hustled out of the plane and into the van, Orlando sent Peter copies of Mila’s secret video footage of Thomas Gorman, and the three men’s confessions, which he would then distribute to the appropriate channels. These same channels would also receive the additional information Peter’s inside source had been able to unearth.

“You guys are released,” Quinn said to Howard and Larson.

“Easiest gig I’ve had all year,” Howard said as they shook. “You guys be careful.”

The two men walked over to the waiting sedan, and left.

Though the plane had been in the air for several hours, they had actually landed just a few hundred miles to the northeast from where they had taken off. That, of course, was information they did not share with their captives.

To ensure that Mygatt and company didn’t figure that out, Quinn slipped one of the CDs that had come with the van into the vehicle’s old stereo, and turned up the volume in the back. Each disk was labeled with the name of a different country, and contained recorded radio broadcasts from that particular nation. The one Quinn selected was from Kazakhstan.

As soon as everyone else was in, Quinn glanced at Nate. “Let’s go.”

Dewayne Beetner was not in a good mood. Why the hell he and his cameraman, Zach Yates, were in some Romanian backwater town, hiding out in a car outside what looked like a deserted factory, he didn’t know. But the assignment had come from high-up PCN management, so here they were, before the sun was even up, waiting for…something.

“Gotta take a leak,” Yates said.

Beetner grunted his indifference as Yates climbed out of the car. It wouldn’t be long before he had to do the same thing.

This wasn’t the first time Beetner and Yates had been sent on an assignment without adequate information. Occasionally tips would come in that their bosses back in New York would deem worthy of checking out. More times than not, they turned out to be nothing more than PR stunts that were a complete waste of time.

Beetner was beginning to wonder if this was even going to reach that level. He had the distinct feeling that absolutely nothing was going to happen.

His gaze drifted up to the stars above the town. Out here, away from the big city, they glowed with an intensity he seldom had a chance to see anymore. When he’d been younger, he would have been able to pick out most of the constellations, but he’d lost that knack long ago.

At least it wasn’t raining, he thought. That would have truly sucked.

Light flickered at the bottom of his vision. He tilted his head back down. A high, solid wall ran the length of the block, broken only by the closed gate they were told to keep an eye on. On the wall next to the gate, a rusty-looking lamp had just come on.

Beetner reached across the car and opened the passenger door. “Zach!” he whispered loudly. “Get back here!”

Yates ran back and climbed in.

“What is it?” the cameraman asked.

“That light. It wasn’t on before.”

“Okay. Is this it?”

“Hell if I know, but be ready just in case.”

Yates grabbed his camera from the backseat and aimed it toward the gate.

For a full five minutes nothing happened. Beetner had all but written it off as another meaningless moment in a night full of them, when, without any warning, a small door that was built into the gate opened.

“Get this. Get this,” Beetner said, still doubting whatever was going to happen would be newsworthy.

For another several seconds, nothing more occurred.

Then a foot hesitantly stepped over the threshold.

The man it belonged to emerged a moment later. His thin frame made him look small, but in height, he was probably the same as Beetner, around five foot ten. His face was gaunt and incredibly pale.

He took several tentative steps away from the gate, and looked back. Though the door remained open, no one else emerged. He then looked both ways down the road as if he were unsure where to go.

“Is he why we’re here?” Yates asked.

“I…I don’t know.” Beetner thought for a moment. “Come on. We might as well talk to him.”

As the two men climbed out of the car, the thin man turned to look at them. For a moment he did nothing, then his eyes widened in fear. He twisted back in the other direction and started walking away at a pace Beetner guessed was as fast as he could go.

“Hold on!” Beetner yelled, hoping the man understood English. “We don’t want to hurt you. We just want to ask you a question.”

The man glanced back but kept moving.

Beetner might have given up right then, but there was something about the guy that was familiar. He started jogging, and could hear Yates grunting along behind him.

“Sir, please. We’re not going to hurt you or anything.”

This time there was no response at all.

As he passed the gate, Beetner glanced over at the open doorway. He’d assumed from the way the other man had looked back that there were others with him, but the reporter saw no one on the other side, just a starlit courtyard and a decrepit building beyond.

“Sir,” he called out. “I’m not sure if you can understand me, but we just want to talk. We’re from PCN. The news network?”

At the mention of PCN, the thin man’s steps faltered.

Beetner thought he heard the man say something, but he wasn’t sure. “Sorry. I didn’t catch that,” he said.

“Trick,” the man grunted as he kept walking.

He’d spoken English.

“No, sir. No trick.”

“Trick,” the man repeated. “Not real. Leave me. Leave me.”

Not only had he spoken English, but his accent was American.

“We’re not going to hurt you,” Beetner said. He jogged the final few feet between them and put a hand on the man’s shoulder to stop him. “We just want to-”

The man jerked away, twisting as he did so that he ended up facing the PCN reporter. “Leave me! Leave me!” He stumbled backward a few steps, then whipped around and continued walking away.

Beetner stared after the man, unable to move his feet.

“Oh, shit,” Yates said from behind him.

“You saw that, right? I’m not crazy.”

“I saw,” Yates said, his tone of disbelief matching his colleague’s.

Beetner remained rooted where he was for another second. Finally, he broke free and began chasing after the biggest story he would ever have.