Silent Arsenal
Sunglasses to wingtips, the guy was spook, Brognola concluded.
“Time is short on this one, Mr. Brognola,” Sunglasses said, producing a thick letter-size envelope stamped with Classified-Eyes only and the presidential seal, handing it to the big Fed. “The fate of the free world and a not-so-inconsequential matter of the possible extinction of the human race may have just fallen into your hands.”
“LOVE THE ‘Miami Vice’ look, but don’t you think the sunglasses are overdoing it?”
Lyons pushed the Blues Brothers shades snug up his nose. “What can I say? Your presence is blinding.”
Cop instincts flaring up, he could see her gears mesh, Susie-Candy wondering how to handle him, but already knowing what problem had walked into her life. All of three seconds looking at her, Lyons heard the bullshit radar in his head blipping off the screen, blond bogey at twelve o’clock.
She finally took a seat in the booth across from Lyons, blowing smoke his way, glancing around, then crossing a leg, the strap-on pump going back and forth like a piston. The damsel-in-distress look wasn’t about to aid his cause, but Lyons didn’t plan on staying any longer than it took to get the answers he wanted.
She sipped from a glass of watered-down champagne that Lyons had promised and paid twenty bucks for after slipping a fifty into her garter when she was on stage, shaking it for her coat-and-tie hyenas. A friendly chat, he’d told her, was all he wanted, nursing a beer while she took her sweet time getting over to him, working her platoon of admirers for a few dollars more. Now that she was his for the moment, Lyons felt the resentment and hostility from wannabes—more than likely on the lam from husband and father duties—boring into the side of his head. He wondered how much of her time he could commandeer before she either turned snippy during Q and A or the security kid with the mouth came over to tell Don Ho his money was no good here. He knew he was being watched, every fiber of instinct screaming the softer, kinder approach was probably just a dream.
Lyons gave it a few seconds before he cut to the chase, treated Candy to a smile that would have come from the heart under other circumstances. The frilly one-piece Roaring Twenties get-up did little to hide a package Lyons surmised lightened many a fat wallet, but the painted face was already showing wear and tear around the eyes from all-night shenanigans. He figured a few more years of life in the fast lane and she’d look every bit the jaded, used-up whore she was acting. Well, he was no one to judge character flaws, and so far he was unmolested by the security quartet. Still, something felt wrong, a lurking menace in the air, and he wondered who was about to do the fishing. A check of his six, and the guy he figured for either the manager or the owner still had the evil eye aimed his way, ready to march out the troops.
“Who’s the guy over there with the bad perm, looking all mean and surly?”
“The owner.”
The way she answered, sure she was in control, Lyons knew he was on the clock. He produced the photo Evans had given him, laid it on the table. It was a shot of the daughter in the saddle of her horse back at the ranch. She appeared relaxed, content enough in the photo, a beauty like Evans claimed, but there was something forced in the expression that told Lyons she wasn’t the happiest camper in Idaho. Chalk it up to youthful disillusionment maybe, but Lyons had seen something more than suppressed rebellion. The truth was, he knew if he discovered Evans had lied about any abuse, he was prepared to walk away. These days, he thought, there was an epidemic of children being savaged, scarred for life by adults, if they weren’t outright murdered. In all good conscience he knew he wouldn’t be a party to returning Evans’s daughter to a torture chamber of psychological and physical abuse if that happened to be the case.
“Tell me where I can find Dee-Dee.”
She laughed, nervous eyes darting around, body language a stone wall of defiance.
“You think this is funny, Susie? She’s sixteen, that by itself means I could get this place shut down, then you’d be out of a job, on the street, probably hooking, unless you’re working the johnson on someone’s husband, or pimping for some scumbag takes your money for crack.”
“Kiss my ass.”
“I’ll take a rain check.”
Lyons read the sudden fear in her eyes, but sensed it wasn’t about being unemployed as she made another roving search of the crowd.
“Look at me, Susie.”
She did, the cigarette trembling in her hand. “Maybe she doesn’t want to be found.”
“Maybe. If that’s true, why?”
She blew smoke in his face. “You’re a cop, like her old man. I can tell, all cops have this look…”
“Was a cop. I’m not interested in your psychoanalysis of a job I’m sure you’ve ever only been on the wrong side of.”
“Touché. So, you a friend of his? A private detective? What?”
“I’m just some guy he used to know and he asked a favor.”
She grunted, choosing her words. “Loneliness.”
“What?”
Lyons watched as she paused, thought about something, the tough-street act almost fading away. “Look, she’s a sweet kid, I like her, I’m her only real friend. All she needed was a friend, you know.”
“Who doesn’t.”
“You want some answers, Miami, listen.” Another look past Lyons, then she went on. “Dee-Dee was always kind of sad. She spent most of her time alone, but it was more than me feeling sorry for her. She has what I call a special heart, an innocence she deserves to keep, something I lost a long time ago.”
“Oh, I’m sure she’ll stay special working here.”
“It’s all an act, Miami. It isn’t some free-for-all whoring you might think, like hand jobs under the table.”
“Girl has to make a living, that it?”
“Dee-Dee deserves a lot more out of life than small-town Nowhere, U.S.A., and she knew it. How’s that for psychoanalysis?”
“And so you come along and offer her the Promised Land.”
She ignored the remark, went on, “She wrote poems, pretty good ones, and told me how her father didn’t like that. He actually tore them up one day in front of her, told her he wasn’t going to stand by and watch her dream her life away. Might as well called her a nobody. I’d say that’s reason to want to leave home—wouldn’t you?—someone reaches in and rips your soul out. She never wanted to leave Los Angeles in the first place.”
Lyons resisted the tug at his heartstrings, but knew he failed.
“Yeah, there’s a lot you don’t know.”
“Telling me she ran away with you, her mentor, because she missed the big-city lights?”
“If you’re asking did her old man sleep with her, the answer is no. But he’s a drunk, and he can be mean, and he’s a control freak. As far as I know, he never hit her, either.”
“I still have cop’s eyes, Susie. And I’m looking at someone holding back. Keep blowing smoke in my face, but everything about you tells me she’s in trouble. So cut the concerned-mother-hen act and tell me what you know. Now.”
“Listen to me,” she said, her voice lowering to a whisper, Lyons straining to make out her voice as it was drowned by the thunder of rock and roll. She pulled back, Lyons swearing he saw her eyes misting. “I—I made a mistake…you don’t want to know…”
“Wrong. I want to know now more than I did when I came in.”
“I can’t.”
Lyons could almost reach out and touch the wall of fear, her hand shaking as she ground out the smoke, uncrossed her legs. It was a bad move, as Lyons envisioned the cavalry en route, but he reached over, grabbed her arm.
“I’m not leaving until you answer my question.”
“You’re already gone, sport.”
She was breaking away as Lyons heard the voice he’d already put the face to tell her, “Get dressed, and take off. Your VIPs are here.”
“I wasn’t finished.”
“You’re finished, sport, but first me and you are going to have a conversation. Now,” he said, Lyons watching as the Perm settled into the booth, “we can handle this one of two ways…”
CHAPTER TWO
“I see I have your undivided attention.”
Brognola was glancing up from the first series of high-resolution satellite imagery when the cocky grin vanished off sunglasses. The remark, he supposed, was in reference to how intently the big Fed studied photos. Whoever the shadow emissary—CIA, NSA, DIA—Brognola found himself impatient to get on with the brief. He sensed, though, some undercurrent of resentment building the more Sunglasses dawdled, sitting here, inscrutably silent, the watchful Sphinx likewise desiring for a mere civil servant of the Justice Department to know how important he was, a spook holding the key to some divine riddle. A crisis was being dumped in his lap, requiring the immediate resources of the Farm, and Brognola didn’t have time or patience for spook nonsense, nor was he about to explain why he was the man of the hour and Sunglasses was designated the White House gofer. If that’s what he even was, and Brognola didn’t much care.
“I see HAZMAT suits,” Brognola said. “A jungle compound, Asian soldiers. I’ve got what I’m thinking look like poppy fields, fires all over the place, high-resolution photos of corpses, and which, I presume, are being incinerated, presumably killed by some biological or chemical agent. Clearly a contaminated, quarantined area.”
“Clearly. And you presume correct.”
“Do you think you can tell me what I’m looking at in ten words or less and skip the X-Files routine?”
“You are looking at the Kachin State in Burma.”
“Myanmar.”
“Burma, Thailand and Laos, of Golden Triangle infamy, produce over eighty percent of the world’s opium.”
“I’m aware of that. You’re here to talk about the scourge of dope?”
“Production of heroin in Burma alone has quadrupled the past five years, demand—so both the DEA and our intelligence community reports—rising exponentially as various terror organizations use funds from narcotics trafficking to expand their global jihad. Part of the dilemma from our standpoint is the State Law and Order Restoration Council—SLORC—has taken over heroin production from the rebels, making Burma an even more closed society than it previously was. Makes it tough to get operatives on the ground, infiltrate rebel groups sympathetic to the cause of freedom and justice.”
Whose freedom, whose justice? Brognola wondered, feeling his cynical meter shooting up the longer he sat in the presence of Sunglasses. If this was headed where he suspected—dumping his Stony Man warriors inside Myanmar for some protracted jungle war against SLORC-sponsored drug armies—he would send Sunglasses back to the Man, tail tucked between the crack of his silk slacks.
The spook had to have read his look, said, “I say something wrong?”
“I’m assuming you’re not here to enlist my services in the war against drugs?”
The spook cleared his throat, carried on in a voice that bordered condescending. “There are roughly thirty-five known major rebel groups, most of them fighting for independent chunks of real estate or to take back control of the poppy fields. The SLORC isn’t about to let that happen. It appears some form of high-tech genocide is being unleashed on the indigenous Burmese, but we know it wasn’t perpetrated by the SLORC.
“All drug roads may lead to Thailand and Laos, but the real gold at the end of the rainbow may lead to China, the lion that no longer needs to sleep. You have a major gas pipeline under construction in Burma, which may stretch all the way through Thailand to Vietnam, plans for an overseas pipeline reaching clear to Indonesia, the Chinese might even want to get into the act. The SLORC needs money for this task. They need more and bigger guns. Drug money is a fast and easy way to spread the corruption of their military junta around Southeast Asia. If certain situations can be corrected in Burma, the west has a great interest in helping to engineer this international pipeline.
“The SLORC and its drugs and this latest incident are the hurdles. Now, the Chinese have the weapons and the technology for delivering mass death, if the SLORC chooses to lie down with them. The fear is Yangon has either gone high-tech and is seeking, or has acquired weapons of mass destruction. There is a major principal, already known to our intelligence community, who has been looking to trade the technology for WMD but who are also interested in more money generated by narcotics trafficking. Shadows inside shadows, wolves coming to the table in sheep’s clothing, so to speak.”
So much for ten words or less, Brognola thought, perusing the horror show in his hands.
“What crashed in the Kachin was robotic spacecraft,” Sunglasses went on.
“A satellite?”
“The robotic spacecraft was in low earth orbit and was picked up and tracked by the NRO as it reentered Earth’s atmosphere. Deliberate deorbiting, the Kachin, it appears, was chosen as a laboratory, victims the test subjects. The flight path was controlled by computers on Earth, we greatly suspect, but sufficient heat was picked up to tell us it was also using boosters but in reverse thrust. It actually slowed to a near hover, unleashed its payload, by aerosol first then remote-controlled detonation, spreading the whole mess over several square miles. Depending on the weather, contamination could have reached as far as Yangon. From there, cross-border contamination, we don’t know.”
“Who?”
“I’m getting to that.”
Brognola scowled. “What’s the agent?”
“That is the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question. Some sort of bioengineered virus is the educated guess, and which appears nearly one hundred percent fatal. It would appear to make a Level Four virus—the worst—like catching the flu in comparison to this Bio-Agent X. We have CIA, DEA in the Golden Triangle, contract agents—mostly rebels—but Yangon is keeping a tight lid on this particular boiling pot. We can’t get any of our operatives close enough to the hot zone. Word of this disaster has leaked out to the UN, Red Cross, and so on, all manner of aid and assistance being offered to the SLORC from the world community.”
“I take it that’s not going to happen, not if Yangon thinks there’s a coming foreign invasion to burn down their poppy fields.”
“Channels of communication are open, but it will be a tough sale. It gets worse.” Another pause for dramatic effect, then Sunglasses continued. “We parked a spy spacecraft over the area in question. It was attacked at 1000 EST by a roving military spacecraft trailing in the same high-altitude geosynchronous—east to west—orbit. An anti- or hunter-killer robotic spacecraft completely destroyed it. The measured blast radius picked up by our command and control data handling systems at the NRO, NSA and CIA was big enough to vaporize several city blocks. Whether its platform is also loaded with nuclear capability…we don’t know.
“The political powers here in town are anxious to keep this from going public, since a number of key players were allowed to walk around with their agenda right under our noses. These, uh, key players, have been ‘marked,’ shall we say, in keeping with the new conventional wisdom that enemies to national security are fair game for hunting.
“Keep flipping. There’s another situation—one, it is believed, that is related to the Kachin incident and the shoot-down of our spy spacecraft.”
Brognola thumbed through the pile until he came to the high-resolution imagery of more corpses being tossed into fires. There was a shot of a silver transport plane with an emblem of what looked like a mailed fist on the fuselage, shots of men, white and black, and all of them armed, standing on a ridge overlooking a large camp on a barren plain. It was another scene of mass death and corpse incineration.
“You’re looking at a Somali warlord and his cutthroats,” Sunglasses said. “The corpses being burned are Ethiopian refugees fleeing a major civil war in their own country. We received initial reports with some degree of skepticism, but the CIA confirmed this incident with the flyover of a Predator drone. They were following up after an Ethiopian man and woman—the only survivors—managed to cross into Kenya to tell the story. This Somali warlord received a shipment, it is believed, of biotech food from the westerners you see. Only this food was deliberately poisoned. The symptoms of the outbreak are nearly identical to the Burmese guinea pigs.”
“A killer virus spawned in…what, microyeast?”
“You have many of the pertinent details, the access codes for the CD-ROMs written down, some good leads. No one has all the answers, but I gathered from my briefing by the President you might know how to proceed.”
“You never answered my original question of who?”
“Germans.”
Brognola blinked. “Yes, our good friends and allies. It is a cabal called EuroDef, run by German businessmen and military contractors who have contacts here in the United States. The workforce, technicians and scientists come from a number of different countries, including Russian and American microbiologists, virologists, scientists and so on, looking to sell their wisdom to the highest bidder.”
“Am I hearing conspiracy?”
“One so dark and potentially embarrassing…well, I get the impression this will be handled in an unofficial capacity.”
It was a lot to digest, but Brognola knew what the President was asking. The green light was flashed for Stony Man to cut loose its dogs of covert war.
The big Fed judged the spook’s long silence for dismissal. “If that’s all…”
“For now. Good luck, Mr. Brognola.”
Without another word or look back, Brognola was out the door.
THE ONLY IMMEDIATE questions in his mind were how much pain he would be forced to inflict by way of multiple contusions, abrasions and broken bones, and how much collateral damage he would wreak before he walked out with the answer he wanted. Lyons mulled the possibilities, racked his brain for a peaceful solution.
As covert operatives, the Farm had a way of frowning on extracurricular melees that tended to bring police attention to Brognola’s doorstep. Sure, the big Fed could always cut through red tape, and he could be on his merry black ops way, any charges vanishing into cyber limbo, even as he was aware he would be forced to endure sufficient and justified rebuke from Brognola. Okay, then consider the predicament with mature judgment and acute detail to responsibility.
Schwarz and Blancanales were in the War Wagon, staking out the door and the street. A quick call on his tac radio and Lyons could marshal up a little help from his friends, maybe they would play some conciliatory role as negotiators, usher him quiet and nice into the night, with all forgiven. He could have bobbed his head to the threatening noise the Perm was making, meek as a lamb, shuffled off, sorry if he’d caused any disturbance, bowing and scraping all the way out the door. He wondered if he was growing soft or getting too old to go on the muscle to thrash a guy who clearly deserved a can of whup-ass rammed into his throat or some other orifice.
Nah. Only in a perfect world, he decided, where there was peace and love and goodwill toward all men, and the young and the innocent weren’t preyed upon by adult savages. The mature, responsible Carl Lyons, then, would have to wait for another day.
“You listening to me, sport?”
Lyons had his head cocked toward a booth where a quartet of new arrivals were in a serious discussion with two of the Perm’s SS. Three looked like muscle, big and broad, clearly packing cannons beneath their sport jackets, while number four, decked out in a cashmere coat, wearing sunglasses, the goatee and ax face…
Wait a second, Lyons thought. He was sure he’d seen van Gogh somewhere before. Where? Take off the facial hair, the shades…
He would have sworn he’d seen him on TV, one of those cable talking-head shows where everyone was such an expert they could have told all the little people the mysteries of the universe. No doubt in his mind they were the VIPs, as Lyons saw Susie materialize in a mink coat, before she was led away, van Gogh wrapping a hand around the furry arm.
The Perm, snapping his fingers now, snippy. “Hey, sport. I’m the one you need to be worried about. I asked you a question.”
Lyons faced the Perm. “I heard you. All this ‘you know people,’ telling me you’ve got clout in this town. Outfit muscle, I’m guessing.”
“I’m telling you, sport, you can leave here standing or I can have you wheeled out, dump your body in the Potomac and nobody would ever know. One look at you, I don’t think you’d rate much attention.”
“What if I told you I was a special agent with the Justice Department?”
“The kind of people I know own Feds, have half the politicians in their pocket, whistling to their tune. If I don’t squash you like the insect you are, I know people who can get your badge yanked and pinned to your ass.”
“You’re a big man, is that it?”
“Bigger than you really want to find out, sport.” Lyons chuckled, nodded and grinned. “I’ve got it now. I know who you remind me of.” The Perm froze, Lyons glancing over his shoulder, found the bulldogs still on their leash. “‘The Gong Show,’ that’s it. You look like that guy, the host, the one with the frizzy hairdo, shirt always unbuttoned to his navel, you know, showing off a chest I’ve seen with more muscle and meat on a starving Kurd refugee. Loved that show. I especially got a kick out of Gene-Gene the Dancing Machine. Remember that guy? Hey, maybe it’s really you, that silly guy, you know, career change… What the hell was his name? Can you still mimic those Gene-Gene moves?”
The moment was sealed now and Lyons knew what had to be done. It was way beyond hope, mature or responsible.
“That’s it…”
The Perm was rising when Lyons grabbed him by the earlobe, squeezing, twisting, lifting him to his feet. Funny what pain did to get the other guy’s attention. The Perm’s squeal was cutting through the rock music when Lyons clamped a hand over his throat.
And the SS was coming.
There was a general paralysis among the patrons, Lyons saw, catching a couple of scantily clad females mirrored in the wall glass as they scurried for cover. Lyons had the pair of goons marked in the mirror, as he spun the “Gong Show” clone around, gauging range to target number one. The foot shot out. Lyons rewarded by a whoof and eyeballs rolling back in the head as he scored a home run to testicles. Number two faltered, watching as his comrade folded at his feet. The .45 was out next, whipping sideways, slamming off number two’s scalp. So much 250 pounds of bulging pecs and biceps, but Lyons liked the way he hit the floor, out cold, the odds cut by half. The dancer on stage screamed and grabbed up her clothes. Lyons adjusted his aim as goons three and four bulled their way through the crowd.
“Freeze!” Lyons shouted, the sight of the .45 thrust at their faces freezing SS Three and Four in their tracks. “Eat the deck, facedown!”
“Mr. Greer, do you want us to call the cops?”
“I am the cops, asshole. Last chance!”
“Do what he says…no cops,” Greer sputtered.
When they stretched out, Lyons flung the Perm to the edge of the stage, the .45’s muzzle pressed between his eyes. “One time. Where is Dee-Dee?” Lyons saw the Perm had trouble finding a tongue he was on the verge of swallowing, released some pressure. “What was that?”
“You don’t know…who you’re fucking with, Miami.”
Lyons cocked the hammer to another shrill cry from somewhere near the stage.
“Room…”
Lyons bent closer, caught the number of the hotel suite. Time to exit stage left, but Lyons spotted a few wannabe heroes in the crowd, eyes angry, jaws working, shadows shuffling in the mirrors. He pulled the Perm to his feet, sweeping around the .45, barking at a suit to sit. He was halfway to the front door when he came to a table of three guys who looked set to throw up a barricade of muscle, twitching around in their seats, mouthing words Lyons couldn’t make out.
“Here,” Lyons told them, flinging the Perm over the table. A tumble through bottles and ashtrays, and the Perm flopped down, pinning them to their seats. “You three look like you could use a lap dance.”