“Jack Raines.”
There was a long pause. “Jack Raines is dead.”
“I regret to inform you I’m still alive and kicking.”
“How the hell do I know this is really Jack Raines?”
“Because I called you on this number.”
“That doesn’t prove anything. You could have stolen it or taken it off a dead man—a dead Jack Raines.”
“You mean like you took that dead man’s little black book in Cincinnati? I was there, remember? I watched you take it out of his breast pocket after your man, Sam, if memory serves, garroted the guy.”
“Jack … good god … it really is you?”
“Afraid so, Angus.”
“We thought you were dead. Everyone thought you were dead.”
“I know. I wanted to be dead. Now, I need to be alive.”
“What’s this about?”
“This is about something I need you to do.”
“Well, I’m not sure I would still be able to—”
“Or else, among other things, I expose your agency’s existence and where it is in the black budget.”
“That could get you killed.”
“Maybe. I need something and you are going to help me.”
“I don’t think I can, Jack. We don’t have a working agreement with you anymore.”
“That’s a really shitty attitude, Angus, considering everything I’ve done for you.”
“And we appreciate it. You saved our asses any number of times. But I must advise you not to start getting troublesome. You could find yourself dead again, only this time it would be permanent. Then what you know gets buried with you.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, Angus. You see, if I don’t report in on a regular basis, everything I know about the entire alphabet soup of agencies, including yours, along with various operations that would cause an uproar if it were to be divulged, is going to be revealed in detail to Congress, the Senate, the Justice Department, the media, and posted online for everyone to see in black and white.”
There was a long silence.
“I think you should be careful making threats, Jack.”
“Here’s the deal, Angus. I’m not fucking around. Either you help me and do what I need done, or a whole lot of people are going to find a noose around their necks. Yours may be one of those necks.”
His resistance finally broke down a little. “All right, Jack, I’ll hear you out. I owe you that much. You’ve done a lot of good things for us. Maybe I can help. What do you need?”
Jack decided to let him pretend he was doing the right thing for the right reasons.
“I’m in a city called Milford Falls, New York. I’m parked outside the federal building there. The first thing I want is for the snipers on rooftops to point their weapons elsewhere.”
“Okay. I don’t know why they would be doing such a thing, but I’ll put an end to it. No problem. Is that it?”
“You heard about the atom bomb that was assembled here and just about to head into New York City?”
“Jesus Christ, Jack, that’s classified at the highest level. How the hell did you find out about that?”
“I’m the one who called it in. I’m the one who provided the coordinates so a team could get in there and stop it.”
“That was you?”
“That was me.”
Angus let out an audible sigh. “Okay, you have my attention. What’s your problem?”
“Black ops of some kind swooped in here and took my asset.”
There was a long pause before the man finally spoke. “Your asset? All I’m at liberty to say is that our people followed some terrorists in a sedan and a pickup on satellite imagery as they were speeding away from the scene. Before the team could stop them, the sedan crashed and four men were killed. They traced the pickup to a bar and picked a woman up later.”
Jack took a breath to calm himself. “Angus, my asset and I went in there and found the bomb. I provided the coordinates. As we were getting out of there four terrorist lookouts chased us. That’s why we were going fast. They crashed. We didn’t.”
“The car crashed, she didn’t. That doesn’t prove she isn’t one of the terrorists.”
“There is a cistern out there. You will find the bodies of two men down inside. One has a piece of rebar through his skull. The other one is missing his left eye. My asset did that to them to find out where the bomb was. She is the one who got that information and saved your ass, along with the lives of hundreds of thousands of people.”
“We don’t approve of torture.”
“Ah, okay, thanks for letting me know. The next time I’ll just let the nuke go off. Is that the way you want it, Angus?”
“Look Jack, this is a messy situation. Politicians are involved now.”
“I don’t see it as messy at all. My asset stopped a nuclear attack. She is on our side. I want her back. What’s messy about that?”
Angus let out a deep breath into the receiver. “Can I be completely honest with you?”
“I wish you would.”
“Those terrorist attacks all over the country have everyone screaming for blood. The Russian hack has us on the brink of war.”
“It wasn’t a Russian hack. It was the terrorists making everyone think it was the Russians as a diversion. Are all your people stupid enough to fall for that remote-server trick? Do I need to explain to you how it works?”
“No, of course not. But that’s what was leaked to the press. Perception is reality. It doesn’t matter if it’s true or not. Everyone wants blood. The government has to be seen as delivering it. With such fragmented attacks involving so many groups, no one knows where to strike back, so the Russians have become the target of everyone’s anger. We have our nukes on alert.”
“What the hell does that have to do with you people snatching my asset?”
“Those attacks caught every agency with their pants down. Most of those terrorists were on watch lists. You and I both know that watch lists are largely propaganda to satisfy the public. The lists don’t mean squat if the people on them weren’t stopped before they launch attacks. They weren’t. Everyone from the FBI to the NSA to Justice dropped the ball.”
“That’s because they’re all too busy spying on Americans instead of doing their job,” Jack said. “There are a lot of dedicated people there—or at least there used to be—”
“You’re right, Jack, but look, the agencies need to shift public anger from them by putting the blame on something other than radical Islamic terrorism. They needed a sacrificial lamb.
“That girl is a nobody. She’s just a bartender who grew up in a trailer park. It’s easy for them to paint her as a right-wing terrorist. That fits the narrative they want to push—a white female terrorist who isn’t Muslim. That fits their political agenda perfectly, so they’ve latched on to her with their claws and they aren’t going to let go.
“They caught her with a knife, an unregistered gun, no permit to carry it, and an unlicensed suppressor. That’s a federal offense in and of itself. That fits the picture they intend to paint. Once they get a confession out of her, that will redirect everyone’s anger to her, rather than Islam. If they hang her as a traitor and terrorist that will cement public opinion that it’s right-wing terrorism, and not Islamic radicalism that’s to blame. That’s what they want to push to the public.
“You know as well as I do, Jack, that sometimes sacrifices have to be made to keep the public happy. She’s the sacrifice. You need to let it go. The public perception is more important.”
Jack was so angry he could hardly speak. “So you want to fry the very person who saved the country from a nuclear attack? Are you fucking kidding me!”
“Calm down, Jack. It’s necessary for the good of—”
“That girl is my asset,” Jack said in a menacing voice. “Not yours, mine. What would your life be like right now had the nuke gone off in New York City?”
“Well, I—”