Collateral (Tier One #6)

Westin Palace Madrid

Madrid, Spain

1510 Local Time

Every time Dempsey had an opportunity to observe Wang in action, he was mystified. The kid was working on three laptops simultaneously—which he had arranged in an arc on the table—establishing his own mini tactical operations center. It was like watching a master pianist in concert, except instead of making beautiful music, the cadence of Wang’s keystrokes was wreaking havoc in the digital dimension, a dimension that Dempsey accepted the existence of but had no access to or understanding of. Kind of like astrophysics, politics, and women’s fashion. He couldn’t help but wonder: If Baldwin were standing here instead of him, would he see beauty or artistic genius in Wang’s performance?

“Target acquired,” Wang said robotically. “I have Pichler on the security feed in the lobby. She’s crossing to the elevators, heading up to her room, I assume.”

Dempsey nodded and slipped the subcompact Sig Sauer P365 into a shoulder holster beneath his black hotel staff waistcoat. He looked down at Wang, but the kid didn’t even bother looking up. Before the attack on Newport News, Wang would have jumped on the opportunity to make some smart-ass James Bond—or better yet, Austin Powers—dig at Dempsey in his penguin suit, but not today.

Today, he was all business.

“She’s in elevator three . . .”

Dempsey straightened the Westin name tag on his lapel and confirmed in the mirror that the Sig was not producing a detectable bulge beneath his left armpit, even with the seven-inch SRD9 suppressor in place.

“Ready,” Grimes said via the microtransmitter in Dempsey’s ear. “Call the ball.”

Grimes was in a room on the third floor, just beside the service elevator, also dressed as hotel staff. When their target, Selina Pichler, ordered room service—dinner and a glass of Rioja—as she had the last three nights at this time, Grimes and Dempsey would arrive early and surprise her. The plan was to take her in her room, clean up the mess, and disappear the body . . . a straight-up Cold War hit job that would make Robert Ludlum proud.

Dempsey paced back and forth, glancing at Wang occasionally, but the kid was laser focused on his work. He watched Wang’s hands fly over the three keyboards, pulling up images from multiple cameras, clicking icons to listen in on phone lines, and streaming a live audio feed from the advanced bug adhered to the wall of the room adjacent to Pichler’s.

“She’s in her room and already placing the order,” Wang said. “Two glasses of wine and, oh, look at her go, she’s ordering a piece of cake as well. Soooo decadent tonight.”

Dempsey said nothing, aware that Wang was not talking to him. This was the running patter Wang always had going when he worked, but only now did Dempsey notice that Wang was toggling his mike back and forth between mute and vox.

Interesting, he thought and now understood why the cyber jibber-jabber that SAD had historically been forced to endure while on target seemed greatly reduced of late. Oh, Wang still babbled all right, only now he was keeping it to himself. A wan smile spread across Dempsey’s face as he thought of simpler times, before Wang had fallen down this dark hole. A kid with his skills should be pulling down seven figures in the private sector, coding trading algorithms for a hedge fund or designing video games in California. But here he was, morose, haunted, and spiraling down into the fiery hell of a life ruled by vengeance and regret—a hell that Dempsey knew all too well. He looked at Wang’s profile and said a silent prayer that the kid would find his way out of the pit and become the fun-loving man-boy he had once been.

Me . . . I’m content to stay in the pit. It’s where I do my best work.

Minutes clicked by in awkward silence.

“Pichler’s order is filled and headed to the service elevator,” Wang said.

“Moving into position,” Grimes said in Dempsey’s earpiece, and he picked up the tray containing an elegant fruit platter and a pony bottle of expensive red wine. He was heading to the door when Wang stopped him.

“Wait,” Wang said sharply.

Dempsey swiveled to look at him. “What’s the target doing?”

“It’s not her,” Wang said, his attention fixed on the leftmost computer monitor. “We just got a flash message from Home Plate. Mission abort.”

“Two, One—mission abort,” Dempsey repeated, making sure to reach Grimes before it was too late.

“Check,” came her reply. “Where do you want me?”

“In the dugout,” Dempsey said, indicating the hotel room.

He set the tray down on a table and glanced at Buz, who was sitting on a sofa, computer on his lap. The old spook exhaled, set his computer aside, and joined Dempsey looking over Wang’s shoulder at a video chat window Wang had opened with Ember HQ.

There better be a good fucking reason they turned this off, Dempsey thought, irritation blooming in his chest.

Baldwin appeared on the screen, looking as haggard and depleted as Dempsey had ever seen him.

“Jesus, Baldwin, are you all right?” he said. “You look like hell.”

“There’s been an incident,” Baldwin said.

An incident? What the hell does that mean? Our whole world is one big-ass incident, he thought, but restrained himself from vocalizing.

The hotel room door lock clicked and Grimes walked in. Dempsey waved her over. When he looked back at the monitor, Munn was on-screen, leaning over Baldwin’s shoulder.

“Guys, the Vice President has just been killed. There’s been an attack in Kiev. He was in Independence Square with the Ukrainian President, addressing the crowd, when there was an explosion. Reporting on the ground is that Tenet and Zinovenko are both dead, along with the US Ambassador to Ukraine and most of Tenet’s security detail.”

Dempsey felt the blood drain from his face. “Anybody claiming responsibility?” he asked.

“No. We don’t know much, but a BBC reporter in Kiev has made an unconfirmed report that the attack was carried out by Ukrainian ultranationalists. It’s looking like this could be an act of domestic terrorism fueled by anger over Zinovenko granting autonomy to the separatists in the Donbas.”

Dempsey had once overheard Jarvis joking with a Pentagon official about the Navy SEAL mentality, saying: You have to understand that to a hammer, everything looks like a nail. At the time, Dempsey had been mildly offended. Now, as his mind automatically assigned blame for the attack to Zeta, the analogy hit home.

“It’s just like Istanbul all over again,” he muttered, then being the hammer that he was, added, “I think we have to consider Zeta as the primary suspect.”

“Unlikely, John,” Munn said with a hard grimace. “Russian Prime Minister Vavilov is listed among the dead.”

“What?” Dempsey screwed up his face. “What the hell was the Russian PM doing there?”

“Russia is a signatory to the Donbas treaty,” Baldwin answered. “I imagine Petrov sent Vavilov for the same reason the White House sent Vice President Tenet—to take credit for brokering the armistice.”

Dempsey turned to Buz, looking for an ally. “What do you think?”

The old spook smiled. “I wouldn’t put anything past Petrov and Zhukov. Vavilov is very popular in Russia, and word on the street is he’s become increasingly out of step with Petrov. Maybe Petrov saw this as an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone—get rid of a potential domestic rival and use Vavilov’s death as ironclad plausible deniability so nobody could suggest Russian involvement.”

Dempsey nodded and enthusiastically jerked a thumb at Buz. “Yeah, what he said.”

“Look, I’m not ruling out the possibility that this was a Zeta false flag,” Munn said, uncharacteristically landing on the other side of an issue from Dempsey, “but we can’t let our own personal biases color our judgment. Maybe Zhukov was the mastermind behind this, maybe not, but that doesn’t change the fact that the DNI wants hard evidence and he’s tasking us to get it.”

A tense silence hung in the room until Baldwin said, “Elizabeth, you look like you have something on your mind.”

“Absolutely I do,” she said with her jaw set. “A thousand dollars says Bessonov has delayed confessing critical intelligence that might have prevented this attack. I think she’s been slow-walking us from the beginning—giving us the lowest priority Zeta NOCs first to give Zhukov time to move his other chess pieces on the board.”

“The DNI has expressed similar frustration and concern with our handling of Bessonov,” Baldwin said, his shoulders visibly slumping, “And I take full responsibility for that. If this attack in Kiev was a Zeta operation, then my methodical approach of systematically eliminating Zeta field operatives will prove to be a mistake. But hindsight is twenty-twenty, and everyone on this call knows my position on torture. We must address the situation at hand before events spiral out of control. So, while we figure out how to step up the pressure on Bessonov and extract everything she knows about Zeta operations in Ukraine, SAD is going to Kiev. The DNI wants a loaded gun ready to point and shoot the minute we have a target.”

“I hear you, Ian, but here’s the deal,” Dempsey said, “this”—he drew an imaginary hoop in the air to signify the four people in the hotel room—“ain’t Ember SAD.”

“I understand that we have been operating shorthanded for too long,” Baldwin said, “and while it’s not an excuse, please keep in mind that recruiting for Ember is a much greater challenge than for other organizations. Nonetheless, I hear you, which is why Munn and Martin will be augmenting you for the foreseeable future, and Buz will be returning to Florida to round out the Head Shed.”

“Is Martin ready to go?” Dempsey said, shifting his gaze to Munn on-screen.

“As luck would have it, the doc cleared him to return to unrestricted duty earlier today,” Munn said with a shit-eating grin.

A wide, toothy smile stretched across Dempsey’s face. Well, it’s about damn time . . . Hooyah!

“Copy that,” he said, straightening. “If you guys can call ahead and have the Boeing ready to go, we’ll pack up here and be at Portela Airport within the hour.”

“Will do,” Munn said. “See you jackasses soon.”

The feed went black.

Dempsey shook his head, then locked eyes with Grimes. Her face was a mask he couldn’t read. Next to her, Wang was staring at his hands, while Buz stowed his computer.

Three heads of state assassinated at once, including the Vice President of the United States!

He felt the ground tilt a little as the news hit home. All the pundits believed that Tenet was likely to be the next President. By taking him out, it opened the door to all kinds of political chaos . . . chaos that Russia could exploit. When Dempsey was just a door kicker, he didn’t care about politics. So long as he had ammunition and a target, it didn’t matter which administration was calling the shots. But now, because of his time in Ember, the geopolitical ramifications started percolating in his mind. All indications were that a Tenet administration would continue President Warner’s hawkish and hardline policies toward Petrov’s Russia. If what Buz had said were true, and Russian Prime Minister Vavilov had been a potential rival to Petrov, was it really that big of a stretch to think this attack was yet another brilliant and ballsy Arkady Zhukov operation? The Russians were the ultimate chess players, which meant they weren’t above sacrificing their own pieces to win the game.

He blew air through his teeth. All this time he’d felt like they had Zhukov on his toes, when in reality, the Russian chess master was still playing two moves ahead.

“You okay?” Grimes asked, but the question was hollow.

“No,” he said, turning to pack his things. “We’re losing.”