The Shadow Agent Read online

  “It seems a long way to go just to kill me.”

  “Maybe, maybe not. But he wants you there for some reason, and I honestly can’t think of one that I like.”

  Slattery said, “We shouldn’t discount the possibility of this being an attempt to capture you, Tom, with two people you care about being used as the bait.”

  “I don’t think it’s that.”

  “Why not?”

  “There were no threats on Grunn’s life, right? No hostile overtones at all, no dire consequences if I chose not to go. If he really needed me to go there—if assets were in place or he was selling me out to the Benefactor—then he’d make it so I couldn’t say no. Like you said, Grunn is family. How could I do nothing if her life were in danger? Also, the instructions didn’t say anything about my going there unarmed. If he or someone else were luring me into a trap, I tend to think they’d specify that.”

  “A sidearm doesn’t do much good against a sniper in a fixed position,” Raveis said.

  Slattery added, “And what if he didn’t know he was leading you into a trap? It’s also possible that he could have been given no choice but to do it.”

  “This is an invitation, not a demand,” Tom said. “It’s as polite an invitation as circumstances allow. Carrington wants a meeting with me. He wants to tell me something.”

  Slattery asked, “Then why didn’t he identify himself?”

  “Because he knew he wouldn’t have to. He knew I’d know. He knew you’d know. You both knew it when you texted me.”

  “We weren’t sure what to think,” Raveis said.

  No one spoke for a moment.

  “It’s Carrington,” Tom said. “Everything about this, everything I know about him, tells me that.”

  “So you’re going,” Slattery said. “You’re in.”

  Tom looked at her. “Yes.”

  Raveis waited a moment, then gestured to Slattery, who reached for a small backpack by her feet.

  She picked it up and handed it to Tom.

  “A Kevlar vest is inside,” Raveis said. “Obviously, it won’t protect you from head shots or intermediate-caliber rifle rounds, but do me a favor and wear it anyway. There’s no point in wiring you or giving you a recording device to carry. Even at his most drunk, Carrington is too smart to let himself get caught on tape. There is a tracking device in the pack, though. It’ll fit in your pocket and is accurate up to three feet. It will guide my team to wherever you are.”

  “Your team?”

  “I’m calling an audible here, Tom. The instructions said for you to come alone, but they didn’t say anything about you traveling alone. I want your team with you on the train, tailing you from a safe distance. I want eyes on you for as long as possible, and I want your people in communication with mine at all times. The next stop after Ansonia is a town called Seymour. It’ll take the train about seven minutes to get there. I’ll have my own quick-response force waiting to link up with your team there. Once they do, it shouldn’t take more than ten minutes for them to double back to where you are.”

  Raveis paused. It seemed to Tom that the man had stopped himself from saying something.

  Tom had never known Raveis to do anything other than speak his mind.

  “What are you thinking?” Tom said.

  “Carrington is the reason a lot of good people are dead. He’s how the Algerian found you and Stella. The Colonel is convinced of that, and so am I. So if Carrington is the one waiting for you up there, why would Grunn willingly help him? If the Algerian hadn’t found you, Grunn wouldn’t have suffered the way she did. Her team wouldn’t have been killed. She wouldn’t have had a knife held to her throat. And let’s not forget that upon her return to us she volunteered for Carrington’s kill squad. So if she is helping him now, if she has left us and gone to him willingly, then why the sudden change of heart? And how did he get to her to begin with? She was in the field, as well hidden as you are.”

  Tom had no answers, so he offered none.

  Raveis said, “I learned a long time ago not to tell you what to do, and I know you being the one to kill Carrington tonight is too much to ask, but this is an opportunity I can’t pass up. When you get off the train, you’ll have roughly seventeen minutes before my people get there. And I don’t need to tell you what their orders will be when they do. That’s seventeen minutes we won’t have eyes on you, so you’ll be on your own. You see anything you don’t like, you think you see something you don’t like, abort your mission and get to a public place, and wait there for my team to find you.”

  “Copy,” Tom said.

  But Raveis wasn’t done. “Carrington knows you better than anyone, and he’ll say or do whatever it takes to try to turn you against us. You need to remember that. You need to view everything he tells you with a hefty amount of skepticism. If you can’t do that, Tom, I’m calling this off right now.”

  “Don’t worry about me,” Tom said.

  “That’s what I’m paid to do.”

  “And what about Grunn?”

  Slattery said, “I look at what she has done, and I see collusion. Maybe even conspiracy.”

  “Yeah, well, things aren’t always how they look.”

  Raveis smiled. “I sure hope you’re on my side if I’m ever falsely accused.”

  Tom said nothing.

  “It’s your op,” Raveis answered. “Grunn is your call to make. You understand what I mean by that, right?”

  Tom nodded. “Yes.”

  “Keep Carrington talking. It shouldn’t be difficult if, like you say, he’s there to tell you something. Find out what he’s been up to these past few months, everything and anything you can, then get out of the way and let my people do their job. When it’s over, they’ll bring you and your team back to me for debriefing. Grunn, too, if you’re able to bring her in, which I hope for your sake you are. Any questions?”

  “If you want to know what he knows, why not take him alive?”

  Raveis shook his head. “That call has been made, Tom. Those are my orders. James Carrington dies tonight.”

  Again, Tom remained silent.

  “Anything else?”

  Tom shook his head.

  Raveis reached for the console and lowered the privacy screen by a few inches.

  He said to the driver, “Take us back.”

  Six

  Upon their return to the hotel just before eight a.m., Torres, Garrick, and Tom gathered in the small bar off the lobby to fieldstrip and clean their respective weapons.

  The room quickly filled with the pine-like scent of Ballistol, the combined solvent and lubricant that Garrick had recommended to the team and Tom now preferred.

  Tom’s sidearm was a Heckler & Koch 45c Tactical—a polymer-framed compact chambered in .45 ACP and equipped with a suppressor-ready extended barrel.

  Torres’s pistol was a Glock 19, Garrick’s a Beretta 92, both chambered in 9 mil.

  Garrick also carried a commando-length Daniel Defense AR-15 fitted with an EOTech holographic sight. When disassembled into two pieces—one being the upper receiver and barrel, the other being the lower receiver and stock, the disconnecting of which required the removal of just two pins—the weapon fit easily into a backpack.

  Known for frequently practicing reassembly of his AR to the point of obsession, Garrick could have the weapon out of the pack and hot in less than ten seconds.

  They worked on their gear in silence. Tom had briefed his team during the ride back, so there wasn’t much to talk about, but it was more than just that. Torres and Garrick sensed the mind frame of their leader and deferred to it, as members of a close-knit team would.

  Spending every minute of every day together for months did that.

  When they were done cleaning, and their weapons were reassembled and loaded, they took turns washing up in the bar sink; then, still saying little, they returned to their rooms on the top floor to rest for the long night ahead.

  Tom was stretched out again on the bed he had sl
ept in the night before, but it was no less strange to him today than it had been then.

  He had hours to wait before it would be time to leave, and nothing to do but think.

  So he did just that.

  He recalled the first time he had met James Carrington and the truth he’d only recently learned about that day.

  Tom had been led to believe his assignment right out of basic training to Carrington’s Seabee Engineer Reconnaissance Team had been merit based, but in fact, it was the first of many acts taken on his behalf by a man he wouldn’t meet for another fifteen years.

  The man he knew only as the Colonel.

  A man who, unbeknownst to Tom till recently, had recruited Tom’s father, a civil engineer with clients that included foreign governments, for clandestine work.

  It was that work that had caught the attention of the Benefactor, resulting in the murder of George Sexton’s wife and daughter.

  The night his family had been attacked at home, Tom’s father had been away on a last-minute business trip, and Tom had been off at military school in upstate New York.

  Two years later George Sexton had met his death while hunting those four men, after which the Colonel had recognized Tom’s potential value.

  Who better to one day kill the man the Colonel had devoted his life to fighting than the son of one of his victims?

  And so a long chess game had begun.

  His father’s death had left Tom with nowhere to go, so he’d enlisted in the navy, as Sexton men had done for generations, with his eye on joining the Seabees—the construction battalion.

  He had wanted to learn to build things.

  When the Colonel had gotten word about what Tom had done, he had contacted a navy captain named James Carrington, who promptly traveled to Gulfport, Mississippi, to meet with Tom under the guise of looking for the right kind of man for his team.

  From that moment on, Carrington had barely let Tom out of his sight.

  For eight years, Tom had served alongside Carrington, but a month prior to Tom’s discharge, Carrington had abruptly resigned his commission to pursue private-sector work.

  It wasn’t long after Tom’s discharge that Carrington had arranged a meeting in New York, during which he offered Tom a lucrative contract as a private military contractor.

  But Tom passed on the offer because he’d had enough of military life. He wanted motion, as in freedom of movement, and to, among other things, set his own bedtime.

  Carrington had honored Tom’s decision to wander, though not without first establishing a secret protocol through which they could contact each other, should either of them need to.

  I might need your help, Carrington had said. Or you might need mine.

  And so Tom had disappeared and begun drifting, always staying near the places he knew well—Vermont, where he had been raised in a town called Smithton; Troy, New York, where he had gone to military school; and New Haven, Connecticut, where he had spent one year at Yale.

  He’d never actually visited any of those towns—Smithton, Troy, New Haven—but he’d remained within a few hours’ drive of at least one of them.

  He’d never understood why he had done that, but he didn’t bother to think too much about it.

  Like an animal, he was living by his instincts.

  But that day finally did come when Tom’s help was needed, and Carrington had reached out. And exactly as the Colonel had intended, the son of George Sexton was waiting and ready to do his part to take on the man who had ripped his family from him.

  Under direct orders, Carrington had been unable to reveal the truth to Tom—the real reason why he’d found and recruited Tom that long-ago day as well as the connection between George Sexton and the Colonel.

  He’d also kept secret the long-standing friendship between George Sexton and Sam Raveis.

  For fifteen years, the Colonel and Raveis had been aware of Tom, though Tom had never even heard of either of them.

  More than just aware, they had played an active part in guiding him onto the long and winding path that would ultimately lead him to Stella.

  One alteration in that course, and Tom would have never met her, and without her, what would he have to fight for?

  Without her, he would simply be a man seeking revenge.

  The same act of madness that had gotten his father killed.

  Tom heard knocking on his door.

  The gentle rapping of a single knuckle told him who it was.

  He sat up, moved to the edge of the bed, and checked his watch.

  He had been daydreaming, awake but drifting.

  “Come in,” he said.

  Torres swung the door open but remained in the doorway. “It’s almost time to go.”

  Tom nodded. “Thanks. I’ll be right down.”

  “How are you doing?”

  “I’m good.”

  Torres lingered. Tom noticed she had an iPad in her hand.

  “What’s on your mind?” he said.

  “I asked a friend to find the blueprints of that factory where your meeting is supposed to take place. I thought maybe I could determine all the exits for you, in case you needed them. He emailed the blueprints to me; I’ve looked them over, and I see a problem.”

  “What?”

  She stepped to the bed, handing him the tablet. Remaining seated, Tom looked at what was on the display.

  He could smell her perfume—just a hint of it. The only feminine presence in his life these days came from her.

  Torres said, “As you can see, the factory is actually four connected wings situated around a center courtyard. The coordinates your old CO provided, they don’t just put you inside the factory, they put you in the dead center of that courtyard. The factory is almost a block long, which means there are rows of windows, eighteen feet by eighteen feet, overlooking that open space. Five stories of them, and from all sides.” She paused. “You see what I see, right? Because to my eye, that’s a kill box.”

  Tom studied the blueprints for a moment more before handing the device back to Torres. “What would be your recommendation?”

  “Don’t go. And I don’t mean stay out of that kill box once you’re there. I mean don’t go at all.”

  Tom had made a point of being the kind of leader who encouraged those with whom he worked to speak their minds, so he waited for her to elaborate.

  “I’m concerned your judgment is clouded,” Torres said. “I know what Carrington means to you. And I know you don’t agree with the kill order.”

  “You were law enforcement. It doesn’t bother you that he was essentially convicted without a trial?”

  “Of course it does. But we’re playing by a different set of rules. That’s what we signed up for. It’s the only way we’re going to win.”

  Tom nodded, took a breath, let it out, then said, “I’ll be fine.”

  If Torres was disappointed that he’d dismissed her concerns, she didn’t show it.

  He had never seen her lose the beat in any of the situations they’d been in so far.

  “We should get going,” Tom said.

  “We’ll be with you the whole way there, boss. Garrick and me. And we’ll get to you as fast as we can once we join up with Raveis’s team. So just don’t do anything foolish in between, okay? For seventeen minutes, just be that supersmart guy we know you are. Deal?”

  Tom nodded.

  Torres lingered a moment, looking down at Tom, then turned and headed toward the door. Tom spoke, and she stopped, looking back at him.

  “You still have friends in law enforcement, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Anyone you trust?”

  “Yes.”

  “I want you to pay that person a visit. First thing tomorrow.”

  “Sure. Why?”

  “I need some plates run. Write this down.”

  Torres removed a small Moleskine notebook and pen from her back jeans pocket. Tom recited a series of numbers and letters.

  “Whose plates?
”

  “Slattery’s. I want you and your friend to find out everything you can. No calls between the two of you, no emails, no texts. Do everything in person, okay?”

  “Yeah. Anything in particular you want to know about her?”

  Tom shrugged. “She knows a lot about me. It seems only fair I know something about her.”

  Torres returned the notebook and pen to her back pocket.

  “And keep this within the team,” Tom said.

  Torres nodded. “What are you thinking?”

  “I’m just being supersmart.”

  She smiled. “You know, you really shouldn’t lie to a member of your team. It’s bad for morale.”

  “I’ll meet you guys in the lobby,” Tom said.

  Torres turned and left.

  Tom waited a moment before reaching for his HK.

  Completing a brass check—pulling back the slide just far enough to eye the cartridge in the chamber—he stood and took one more look around the small room, then gathered his things and left.

  It was eight thirty when they exited the hotel.

  The rain had stopped, but there was a mist in the October air. A breeze was blowing steadily, though every now and then it gusted hard and loud.

  It was the kind of early-autumn night that gave the first hints of the coming winter.

  Torres drove, with Garrick in the passenger seat, a backpack on the floor between his feet.

  After opening the pack, he removed the two pieces of his carbine and assembled them, attaching the front pivot pin first and then locking the two halves of the receiver together with the takedown pin.

  Pulling back and releasing the charging handle to confirm that the weapon was in working order, Garrick then inserted a thirty-round magazine into the magwell, cycled the carrier bolt again to chamber a round, and engaged the thumb safety.

  He was ready and scanning their surroundings before the SUV had traveled a half block.

  By 9:35 they had taken seats on the train—Tom by the front of a car; Garrick six seats behind him, the disassembled carbine in his backpack; and Torres across the aisle from him.