American Assassin

Chapter 27
THANK God," Lewis announced upon seeing Stansfield enter the room. "I can't spend another minute trying to talk sense into these two."

With pure disappointment, Stansfield glared down the length of the table, first at Hurley, who was on the left, and then at Kennedy, who was directly across from him. They were both on their feet. "Sit," he commanded. Kennedy sat. Hurley remained standing. "The first person who raises his voice is being sent to Yemen for the rest of his career."

"You can't send me anywhere," Hurley snarled.

Stansfield directed his full attention to Hurley and communicated his resolve with an icy stare that silently communicated the fact that he could do a lot worse than sending his ungrateful ass to Yemen. Of the three, Hurley was the only one who had seen this look before. It had been nearly three decades ago but Hurley still remembered that his stupidity had almost cost him his life, and if it hadn't been for Stansfield's magnanimous attitude he would have died that day. Hurley slowly sank to his seat.

"Have I failed you two so poorly that it has come to this?" Stansfield said in a calm but disappointed voice. "You scream at each other like children trying to bully their way to victory." He cocked his head in Kennedy's direction. "I expect far more from you. What did I tell you about losing control of your emotions?"

"That it's a weakness."

"Correct. And how has it worked for you this evening ... screaming at one of the most hotheaded men in all of our nation's capital? Did your logic become more clear? Did your points carry more weight? Did you somehow persuade him to see things your way by shrieking at him like some wild banshee?"

Kennedy shook her head, her embarrassment complete.

Stansfield turned his icy gaze on Hurley. "And you ... are you happy that you have succeeded in getting young Irene to finally sink to your depths?"

"That's bullshit. She's a grown woman. She can fight her own battles. I resent the fact that every time she doesn't like what I'm doing she goes running to you." Hurley pointed at him. "You know the rules as well as I do. I'm in charge in the field. What I say goes. I'm God and that too-smart-for-his-own-good college punk wandered so far off the reservation he's lucky I don't put a bullet in his head."

"That's our litmus test these days? When an operator doesn't follow orders to the letter, we put a bullet in his head?"

"You know what I mean. He went way beyond his operational parameters. He basically threw them out and flew off the handle."

"And succeeded. Let's not forget that part."

"Shit," Hurley scoffed at the point. "Even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in a blue moon."

"This is how you would like to argue with me ... by mixing squirrel and moon metaphors?"

"You know I'm right."

"You are partially right, and you have also become an intolerable bully whom I'm not so sure I can keep around."

"Say the word and I'll resign. I'm sick of this bullshit."

"And then what will you do, Stan?" The deputy director of operations leaned over and placed his hands on the table. "Become a full-blown alcoholic. Another bitter, discarded spy who closes himself off from an ungrateful citizenry. You're already halfway there. You drink too much. You smoke too much. You piss and moan like some miserable woman who's mad at her husband because she's no longer young and beautiful. And there's the meat of the problem, isn't it, Stan?"

"What's the meat of the problem?"

"I think you may have heard this before. He reminds you of yourself."

"Who? The college puke?"

Stansfield nodded slowly. "And he might be better than you. That's what really scares you."

"That's bullshit."

Stansfield should have seen it sooner. He stood up abruptly and said, "So, your recommendation is that I cut him loose?"

"Absolutely. He's too much of a loose cannon. Sooner or later he's going to cause you a lot of problems."

"And who do you have to replace him?"

Hurley waffled. "A couple of decent candidates."

Stansfield looked to Lewis, who was at the head of the table. "Doctor?"

Lewis shook his head. "Neither of them have his skill set. Even if we worked with them for a year I don't think they could match him."

"That's not true," Hurley said, while looking as if he'd just taken a bite out of a lemon.

"Irene?" Stansfield asked.

She didn't speak. Just shook her head.

Stansfield pondered the situation for a moment and then said, "Here is my problem. We are flying blind in Lebanon and Syria. The director and the president overruled me and sent Cummins in to negotiate for the release of that Texas businessman." Stansfield stopped speaking for a second. He couldn't get over the stupidity of that decision and all of the damage that had been done after Cummins himself had been taken hostage. "Our assets have been getting picked off one by one for the past six months. Our network, that we worked so carefully to rebuild, is now in shambles. This situation has to be turned around, and I need men in the field to do it. I need shooters on the ground. We've all spent enough time over there to know that weakness breeds contempt. That stops today. I want these guys looking over their shoulders wondering if they're next. I want the leadership of Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah afraid to pop their heads out of their holes for fear that they might get those heads blown off. I want them on notice that if they're going to grab one of our assets who is negotiating in good faith and torture him for months on end ... dammit, we are going to come after them like crazed sons of bitches." He turned his attention back to Hurley. "I don't want to lose you, but I need this kid. He's too good to just throw away. He knows how to take the initiative."

"Initiative? That's what you want to call it?"

"Oh, for Christ's sake, Stan, could you please get hold of your ego and hypocrisy and listen to me. This is bigger than you. We have a gaping hole in our operational abilities. A big nasty neighborhood in the Middle East that is breeding terrorists like rabbits, and we have nothing. I need to get back in there."

"You're calling me a hypocrite?"

"You have an extremely convenient short-term memory. Tell me, Stan, how many times in your first two years did you get yourself into trouble by ignoring orders or running off and launching your own operations?"

"It was a different time back then. We were given far more latitude."

"And you still got in trouble." Stansfield shook his head as if trying to reconcile an irreconcilable thought. "Does the truth matter to you at all, or do you just want to go round and round all night until you wear everyone down? You don't remember all the times I had to go to bat for you and bail your ungrateful butt out of trouble, and now you're coming down on this new kid as if you were some saint."

Hurley started to speak, but Stansfield cut him off. "I'm not done. If the kid had screwed up, we wouldn't be having this conversation. He'd be gone. But he didn't screw up, did he? He made all the right decisions. He took care of our problem and didn't leave a speck of evidence and made it back here all on his own. He's a natural and you want to throw him away."

Hurley stubbornly shook his head.

Stansfield was done arguing with him. "Irene," he said, turning his attention to Kennedy, "what about running him on his own? Break him off from the team. Let Stan and Richards work together."

Hurley didn't hear Kennedy's answer because he was too busy reliving all the various times he'd landed in hot water with a station chief or someone back at Langley. There were too many to even begin counting. That was part of the reason why Stansfield and Charlie White had set him up as a freelancer almost twenty years ago. He'd worn out his welcome at every embassy from Helsinki to Pretoria. Simply put, he wasn't good at following rules, so White and Stansfield had removed him from the system. They had gone to bat for him against Leslie Peterson, that Ivy league prick who wanted to gut the Clandestine Service and replace it with satellites. He liked to say, "Satellites don't get caught breaking into embassies." Yeah, well, satellites can't seduce an ambassador's secretary into working for the CIA or kill a man. At least not yet anyway. Hurley grudgingly saw the plain truth - that he was an ingrate.

"I can work with him," Hurley announced. "And if I can't, I'll turn him back over to Irene, and she can run him."

Stansfield was speechless for a moment. Kennedy and Lewis were thunderstruck.

"Don't look so surprised," Hurley grumbled. "No one hates these f*ckers more than I do."