“What are you doing here?” she snarled.
The man coughed and wheezed.
Jessica punched him hard in the kidneys. “I said what are you doing here, Ricky?”
“I’m—” he began.
She unleashed another blow to the back of his head and then forced him to the ground.
“How did you find me, Ricky? Or should I say Ricardo Cabrera!”
“Alpha . . . Bravo,” he moaned.
“You’re . . . Bravo Zero?” she gasped, releasing her knee from his back.
“In the cab . . . your packages,” he groaned.
Jessica checked over both shoulders. They were still alone. “Don’t move!” she hissed, pushing her foot against his neck, his face rubbed into the gravel. Ricky nodded and winced.
Jessica slowly backed away from Ricky toward his truck. Satisfied that he wasn’t getting up, she clicked open the cab door. Inside she saw five black hard-shell suitcases piled on the passenger seat. She turned back to Ricky, now in a fetal position.
“Don’t you move, Ricardo.” He shook his head.
Jessica transferred four of the cases into the trunk of her Mustang, the fifth she strapped like a child into the passenger seat. She returned to Ricky and bent down close to his ear.
“I should kill you right now,” she hissed.
“No,” he moaned. “I didn’t know we were on the same side.”
“Never say that!” she barked, and kicked him again in the kidneys. “I don’t care who you think you work for. We are never on the same side.” She got into her car, slammed the door, and revved up the engine.
As she pulled out, Ricky sat up, coughing and spitting blood into his palms. The Mustang suddenly jolted to a halt and the door swung open.
Jessica stepped out, marched over to Ricky, and stood over him. He looked up at her and raised his bloody palms. She snap-kicked him just under the jawbone, sending him sprawling flat on his back in the gravel parking lot.
“I’m Alpha.”
70.
GEORGE WASHINGTON MEMORIAL PARKWAY, McLEAN, VIRGINIA
FRIDAY, 9:48 P.M.
When the black Audi A6 veered off the parkway and into the scenic overlook, the white Cadillac Escalade was already there.
“She’s early,” the Deputy Director of the CIA said aloud. He pulled into the space next to Adelman-Zamora’s SUV and cut the engine. He removed the batteries from each of his three cell phones and shoved them in the glove compartment of his wife’s car. Then he exited the Audi, checked that no one was watching, and opened the Escalade’s passenger door.
“What the hell’s going on?” she chirped before he had climbed in.
“Madam Chairwoman—”
“If you don’t stop calling me madam, I’m going to throw you into the fucking Potomac,” Brenda hissed. “Where are we with our goddamn operation?”
“My operation,” he said slowly, “is proceeding. It’s all going according to plan. We are moving into the final phase now.”
“What kind of tradecraft bullshit is that? Why don’t you tell me again in English.”
“OPSEC.”
“What?” She scowled.
“Operations security. We agreed that I shield you from the details and just give you the big picture. That’s what I’m doing. It’s for the safety of the operation. And just in case something goes wrong.”
“What’s going wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong,” he said.
“I don’t believe you,” she said. “Those four soccer dads? They have to be yours, right?”
He looked at her, giving nothing away.
“Don’t give me that blank-stare spook crap,” she scoffed. “I’ve been around long enough to know their capture can’t be a coincidence. They have to be yours. And if one of your teams is sitting in a Cuban jail, then something went god-awful wrong.”
The Deputy Director blinked. “Yes they’re mine, some of them. But, no, nothing went wrong. I told you, it’s all going according to plan.”
“You sent a team into Cuba to be captured on purpose?”
He didn’t reply.
“Who would possibly agree to such a high-risk kamikaze operation?”
He continued to stare coldly.
—
The look of confusion on her face slowly melted away. “You evil fucking genius,” she whispered. “You played on their emotions. You knew that they’d want redemption for their grandfathers. You duped them into a failed invasion to create an international incident.”
He blinked.
“Don’t tell me you promised them”—she swallowed hard—“air cover.”
He shook his head. “They knew the risks. They just didn’t know the bigger picture.”
“So, now what?” she asked, bouncing in her seat. “You have to tell me what’s next. I have to know!”
“We’re moving into the final phase.”
“That’s all you’re going to say?”
“I’ve got multiple people in the air as we speak. It’s all converging. Everything is a go. That’s all I’m going to tell you. Anything more might compromise the operation.”
She exhaled loudly.