The Jungle

22

MACD LAWLESS MARVELED AT THE RESILIENCY OF children. He’d expected that Pauline would have been traumatized by her abduction and the weeks of captivity, but when they talked about it that first morning she told him that they told her that they were friends of his and that this was part of a secret mission and that if she was a good girl she’d be helping him. She knew her daddy was a war hero and wouldn’t do anything that would get him hurt, so she played along with them. Besides which, they let her eat whatever she wanted and watch television all day and deep into the night.

He considered it a miracle that they had made it so easy for her, but he supposed it was for their own selfish reasons. A compliant child who thought she was helping her father was a lot easier to control than a frightened little girl wailing to go home. That they treated her well in no way made him feel guilty about killing them in cold blood.

That first day, they played on the beach, making sand castles and playing fetch with her dog, Brandy, who MacD suspected she’d missed most of all. Her appetite at mealtimes was normal, and at eight-thirty, when they put her to bed, she drifted off in seconds and slept through the night.

He had no illusions that there couldn’t still be psychological damage, but for now she seemed her normal happy self, especially now that her father was home. He talked with his parents about monitoring her over the weeks and months ahead. When he told them about the Corporation, they knew he had to go back, if for no other reason than to stop the man responsible for their granddaughter’s kidnapping.

He asked about his ex-wife and was told that she hadn’t had contact with Pauline for months. The news didn’t come as a surprise. He’d married her only because she was pregnant, and she skipped out on them when Pauline was two. The only real parents the girl knew were Kay and her husband. She knew MacD was her dad but treated him like a favorite uncle instead, and as long as she was happy that was fine by him.

It was dawn on the third day when trouble struck.

MacD was up early, brewing coffee in the kitchen of the borrowed beachfront cottage. It was located in Mississippi, but far from the hustle and bustle of the gulf cities and towns. It had no electricity without the generator, and water had to be stored in a giant cistern out back, but it was tidy and charmingly furnished.

He had fond memories of coming here when he was a kid and recalled that his first kiss took place in a back bedroom when his family vacationed with the owners, whose daughter was two years his senior.

The kettle on the gas ring was beginning to steam when he heard the distant whup-whup of helicopter blades. It wasn’t an unusual sound, because of their proximity to the offshore oil and gas fields, so he ignored it and opened the jar of instant coffee. But when the sound grew steadily louder, no longer a background thrum but a fast-approaching beat, he extinguished the burner and crossed to the front windows that looked over a two-lane coastal road, a narrow strip of sea grass, and the wide white beach.

The chopper was a massive Black Hawk painted olive drab so that it looked like a military bird, but MacD knew better. Somehow they’d been tracked. It came in low over the swells, its rotor wash whipping up spume. They were so close now that there was no way for him to get his parents and daughter to their car, parked alongside the cottage. He had a single Beretta 9mm from the Houston safe house stashed under his mattress. He ran for his bedroom, yelling to wake his parents. His father emerged from their room, his hair doing an Albert Einstein impression.

“Dad, it’s them,” MacD said, cocking the matte-black pistol. “Get Mom and Pauline and crawl out the back and run. I’ll hold them off for as long as I can.”

He didn’t wait to see if his father followed his instructions. He went back to the front window and peered around its edge. The chopper touched down on the beach, kicking up a maelstrom of sand that completely obscured it. He expected a team of commandos to burst out of the dust storm, automatic weapons chattering. Knowing that the glass would deflect his shots, he smashed out one of the windowpanes and took aim, ready to plug the first figure he saw.

What he hadn’t expected was the chopper blades to begin to slow. Any combat pilot knew to keep the turbines wound up for a fast extraction. The blades continued to decelerate until the clouds of sand settled back to earth. The side door rolled open, and a man in uniform and wearing a flight helmet jumped to the ground. He waited a moment, then helped another man step from the helicopter.

He was elderly, with a shock of white hair and a stoop that had nothing to do with the proximity of the rotor blades. He looked like a banker, in a conservative three-piece suit in navy blue, crisp white shirt, and red tie. MacD didn’t know what to make of this dramatic entrance, but he lowered his weapon and moved to the front door as the aged gentleman made his way across the asphalt road. The chopper’s crewman remained behind.

Warily, MacD swung open the front door and stepped out onto the covered front porch, angling his pistol so that the man could see it.

“That’s close enough,” he called when the stranger reached the nearside shoulder.

“I assure you, Mr. Lawless, that with my hearing it is not.”

“Who are you?”

“My name is Langston Overholt IV. I was once Juan Cabrillo’s boss at the CIA, and I’m afraid we need his help.”

MacD recalled the Chairman mentioning his former boss and how the Corporation was hired for quite a few black ops by the legendary spymaster. He safetied his pistol and tucked it into the back of his shorts. The two men met midpoint on the lawn, and Overholt insisted they shake hands.

“It is opportune that you’re here with your family,” Langston said, handing over his identification.

The old Cold Warrior was pushing eighty but had lost none of his mental faculties. The Agency kept him on well past retirement age as a sort of spy emeritus who’d forgotten more about espionage than the current crop of wunderkinder would ever know.

“How did you know who I am?” MacD asked.

“Juan mentioned that he’d hired you, and kept me in the loop about what happened to your daughter. The Corporation’s jet’s tail number was noted in Houston. I put two and two together when I checked the Times-Picayune online and read that, on the day you arrived, three unidentified drug dealers burned in a house fire. I flew to New Orleans and paid a visit to your parents’ house, and when they didn’t answer I asked a neighbor about them. I told the delightful, and talkative, Mrs. Kirby that I suspected you had all left on a hasty vacation and inquired where you might go. She told me that your family sometimes borrows a beach house from an old family friend, one David Werner. The land records gave me this address in all of ten seconds.”

MacD was chagrined. In their haste, he’d neglected to tell the neighbors not to mention they had gone to the Werners’ cabin. Overholt had found them without breaking a sweat. It would have been that easy for John Smith too, he thought darkly and cursed his oversight.

“Impressive,” he finally said.

“Son, I learned to be a spy from Allen Dulles himself. Do you know where the Oregon is?”

“Monte Carlo.”

“Excellent. I am afraid that I must ask you to cut short your visit and come with me. Time is of the essence.”

“Where are we going?”

“Pensacola Naval Air Station, where, if a colleague of mine has been successful, a jet is standing by to take you to the Oregon.”

“What’s the rush?”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Lawless, but I must insist we leave right away. I’ll explain everything once we’re airborne.”

To get an eighty-year-old man to fly halfway across the country, MacD knew that this was something important. “Give me a minute.”

He turned and was surprised to see that his father hadn’t listened after all, and his parents and daughter were crowded in the doorway, gawking at the chopper and its distinguished-looking passenger. All three seemed to know that he was leaving with the man. Pauline and Kay both had tear-welled eyes, and his dad had clenched his jaw to fight from crying too. The good-byes were as painful to experience as they were for Overholt to watch, especially knowing that young Pauline had just been returned to the bosom of her family.

Five minutes later the pair was settled in the utilitarian chopper and wearing helmets with a private voice channel so they could not be overheard by the flight crew. The cargo master, who had helped Overholt step from the big helo, studiously ignored them as the chopper lifted clear of the beach and started pounding eastward in a hundred-mile dash to the Navy base.

“I want to thank you again, Mr. Lawless,” Overholt opened. “I know you wanted to spend more time with your family.”

“You can call me MacD.”

Overholt digested the odd nickname and nodded. “All right, MacD. A couple days ago there was a security breach at the White House involving our nation’s nuclear codes.” He held up a hand when he saw the questions racing through MacD’s mind. “It was a demonstration of what our best and brightest finally figured out is a machine called a quantum computer. Do you know what that is?”

“It’s theoretical now, but someday they’ll make the ones we use today as obsolete as vacuum tubes.”

“Quite right. However, it is no longer theory. One was used to hack into the NSA and ferret out the most secure set of numbers in the world. With that demonstration came a list of demands that we pull troops out of Afghanistan and all of the Middle East, release the Guantánamo detainees, cut off aid to Israel, that sort of thing.”

“Is it al-Qaeda? That sure sounds like their manifesto.”

“Unknown at this time, but considered unlikely for reasons I’ll explain in a minute. The president delayed action, and at the exact same time the following day there was another communication—a fax, actually—stating that the blood was on the president’s hands. Moments later the Acela train crashed into another locomotive. Over two hundred dead.”

“God. Ah heard about that on the radio. They said it was an accident.”

“It wasn’t,” Overholt said sharply. “It was a deliberate act of terrorism.”

“What are we goin’ to do?”

“Therein lies the rub. The unknown terrorist knows our every move because he can tap into our communications grid—landlines, cells, and everything that passes through a satellite, including the military birds. And they tell me this computer can decrypt our toughest codes. We can’t mobilize our armed forces without telling him we’re coming.

“That is why our response must be carried out by couriers and all correspondence done on typewriters. We’re practically back to where I started in this game. It was Fiona Katamora who reached out to me. She was rescued by the Corporation last year and remembered the Chairman well. Because our hands are tied, we want to sic Juan and the rest of you cutthroats on this terrorist.”

“I get it. You can’t just call him because this guy will know.”

“Precisely, my boy. I carry the message to you and you take it back to the Oregon, and nothing’s been put out over the wire. Even the flight we’re arranging for you is being handled by a Navy captain from the Pentagon. He flew to Pensacola yesterday with a presidential decree.”

“Is the president aware of our mission?”

“Obliquely. He knows we’re up to something, but the fewer details getting spread around, the better. We’re keeping the group as tight as possible to avoid an inadvertent slip over the phone or in an e-mail. The staffer from the Joint Chiefs getting you the plane has no idea who’ll be on it or why.

“Tell Juan that he has to locate the computer and destroy it,” Langston continued. “If he doesn’t, I fear for the fate of our great country. In fact, I fear for the fate of the world. This man”—he spat the word—“professes to value life, which is why he hasn’t used his awesome capabilities to destroy us outright, but the Middle East could explode overnight if Israel’s enemies sense she is a weakened state. And without our military help, Pakistan could fall to a Taliban-type regime in months, giving them nuclear capability and the hatred toward us to use it.”

“How will we communicate with you?” MacD asked.

“That’s just it. You can’t. Not directly.”

It was then that MacD realized Overholt’s problem dovetailed with the Corporation’s. It hit him like a ton of bricks and almost made him gasp aloud. “Jee-zus. Gunawan Bahar.”

“Who?”

“The guy behind my daughter’s kidnapping. He was the one who orchestrated my actin’ as his spy aboard the Oregon. He’s afraid of the Corporation for some reason, and Ah think this is it. Damn, Mr. Overholt, you’re the link he never saw comin’.”

A look of confusion crossed the spymaster’s face.

MacD said, “This Bahar guy is behind the quantum computer. It all makes sense now! The computers on the oil rig. That must have been his first attempt to crack all our codes. That must not have worked, so his people built him a better machine.” He wondered if the crystals they recovered played a roll in that development, but didn’t bother mentioning it because it didn’t really matter at this point. “He knew that once he had his computer, there wasn’t anything our government, or any government, could do about it, but he was aware that the Corporation existed and knew we could be a threat if we somehow found out about it. He’d also know if and when we were ever alerted. He could block the ship from ever receivin’ orders from you. Can that computer do that?”

“I imagine it could.”

“But you outfoxed him by reachin’ out to me. We know who and what we’re lookin’ for, and Bahar has no idea we’re comin’. He thought he could keep tabs on us by usin’ me, and he thought he could isolate us too, but that ain’t gonna happen.” An idea suddenly hit him, and his sense of optimism faded. “He’s goin’ to know.”

“What? How?”

“When the kidnappers don’t report in, he’s goin’ to know that Ah rescued Pauline and that Ah’m no longer his stool.”

Langston hadn’t survived for more than fifty years in the CIA without being quick on his feet. “I’ll fly back to New Orleans and have a chat with the chief of police. His investigation is about to lead him to the arrest and confession of a drug dealer who hit the wrong house and killed three men by mistake. I’ll get him to parade an officer in mufti for the cameras. Oh, and the arson investigators are about to discover the body of a little girl in the ashes of their house.”

“Perfect,” MacD said, more than impressed with the octogenarian.

Overholt had a binder, sitting on the bench seat next to him. He handed it over to Lawless. “I’ve been working on this since the secretary of state made me aware of the situation and suggested you guys could help. It’s a list of things you might need from us, with corresponding code numbers. The phone you’re going to call if you need anything on that list is a securities firm on Wall Street so that anyone calling in with long lists of numbers, like quantities of stocks to buy, won’t sound suspicious.”

MacD opened the book and leafed to a random page. If they needed all transatlantic telephone cables to go off-line, that was a number 3282. If they needed a fake media story run, that was a number 6529, with a subset of numbers listing two dozen types of news pieces. If they needed a nuclear strike anywhere on the planet, that was number 7432, with the GPS coordinates tacked on after.

MacD pointed that last one out to the man from Langley. “Yes,” Overholt said to the unasked question, “the situation is that dire. If need be, I can make it happen. I don’t know how much we can do from our end. Big Brother is watching, and if Bahar catches wind of our interest, he’s going to know something’s up. We’ll try to make some discreet, one-on-one inquiries, but I can’t promise much.”

“I understand.”

They talked for the remainder of the flight, but it seemed too soon that the big Sikorsky was flaring over the apron at the sprawling air station. They’d been directed to land next to a row of parked F-18s.

The chopper’s onboard crewman opened the side roller door, and MacD jumped to the tarmac. The rotor’s downdraft was like standing at the eye wall of a hurricane.

“It was a pleasure meeting you, young man,” Overholt said from his seat. He had to shout over the spinning blades and still-lit turbines. “I was the one who gave Juan his superstition about being wished good luck. I will simply say happy hunting, and, not to put too fine of a point on this, but you are our best and only hope.”

“We won’t let you down, Mr. Overholt.” MacD threw him a wave and backed away as the turbine pitch increased and the chopper took to the air once again.