End Game Read online

  “You’re really good at this,” she told Cynthia.

  The woman smoothed back her bleach-blond hair, then blotted sweat off her chest—her impossibly perky boobs threatening to explode from her tight top. “Thanks. I’ve been doing it for a while. Takes time to learn all the punches and kicks. But you look like you’ve had some training.”

  Gillespie smiled. “A little bit.”

  “I like you’re accent. You’re not from Houston.”

  “North Georgia.”

  “And I love all that red hair and your freckles. You know, I once dated a man who said he stopped for blondes and brunettes, but he took two steps back for redheads.”

  Gillespie chuckled under her breath. “I tend to scare away most men. They don’t step back. They run.”

  “All right, ladies, break time is over,” cried Greg.

  “My Lord, he’s a real drill sergeant,” said Gillespie.

  “Yeah,” Cynthia agreed. “But look at that ass.”

  The remark reminded Gillespie of army boot camp, of her old friend Lissette, who helped her get through the misery by making jokes and lusting after all the sergeants. The army had allowed Gillespie to escape from Creekwood Trailer Park and her father’s grocery list of emotional problems and addictions. She’d finally been able to make a name for herself as an intelligence analyst who advised special- forces teams and operations.

  Four years in the army, then another four years at University of Central Florida to earn a degree in civil engineering, had prepared her well for a career with the NSA. When she was handpicked by Grim herself to join Third Echelon was one of the proudest moments of Gillespie’s life. Someone had finally noticed her, recognized her skill set, and appreciated her sarcasm and take-no-prisoners attitude.

  As they were about to move forward and prepare for the next phase of punishment, Cynthia glanced down at the BlackBerry sitting atop her purse and shifted back to take a call.

  Gillespie assumed the fighting stance, then turned as Cynthia suddenly rushed from the room.

  Chapter 2.

  ALLEN Ames slammed open the stairwell door and squinted in the brighter light. He charged across the parking lot, threading between parked cars as his senses reached outward for the shooter.

  Thankfully, most people were inside and not stopping to watch a semicrazed, darkly clad man running with a rifle slung over his back. But did that even matter now? The operation had already gone so far south that they’d need an icebreaker to get home.

  He rounded a row of bushes, mounted the sidewalk, and, at the far corner of the building, he spotted a man emerging from a delivery entrance near a UPS truck.

  The guy was no more than five feet five, with a black crew cut, and clearly of Asian descent. He took one look at Ames and sprinted off, a rifle slung over his back.

  LEONARD’S receptionist was hiding under her desk as Valentina rushed by and broke her heel. She wrenched open the office door, kicked off her shoes, and ran barefoot down the corridor. She found the nearest entry to the stairwell and nearly ran head-on into Hansen, whose glossy eyes and pained expression must have matched her own.

  They stomped together down the stairs, with Valentina crying out, “The receptionist can identify me!”

  “I know. How the hell did they get to him first?”

  “They must’ve been tipped off.”

  “Yeah, because some of us were sloppy.”

  THE shooter sprinted all the way to the back of the parking lot, and Ames quickened his pace to keep him in sight. This guy was, in fact, the fastest runner Ames had ever seen, probably faster than himself, and they were both pounding the pavement at full tilt. But the shooter stole a glance over his shoulder, missed a step, tripped, staggered forward, then exploited the moment to stop and draw a pistol.

  Ames ducked behind the nearest car as the round punched into the side mirror not six inches from his head. He cursed, tugged free his own sidearm, then lifted his head ever so slightly to see the shooter running off.

  Taking a deep breath, Ames rose, steeled himself, then took a shot, the round suppressed and thumping quietly into the shooter’s right arm. The guy jerked to one side, clutched his wound, but kept on.

  Still … he was wounded prey. Time to close in.

  Baring his teeth, Ames propelled himself forward as though ready to leap the hurdles. He closed in on the shooter and finally saw his opportunity.

  With a groan of exertion, he launched himself into the air and landed on the trunk of a black Corvette, the fiberglass crackling and crunching beneath his feet as he ran up to the roof.

  The shooter turned, saw Ames.

  Ames, about to lose his balance, fired anyway. Though he missed, the round drove the shooter onto the grassy median between lots.

  That was when Ames leapt off the car and tackled him. The thick scent of mud and wet grass wafted into his face as they rolled over and Ames drove his elbow into the man’s nose, immediately breaking it. Then he found the correct pressure point on the man’s wrist, forcing him to release the pistol, which he tossed aside.

  Now bleeding from his gunshot wound and broken nose, the shooter was too disoriented to struggle. Ames quickly cuffed him and rolled him onto his back.

  The guy was no older than Ames, his eyes burning with hatred—the only fight he had left in him. It was at moments like this—post-adrenaline-rush moments—that the compulsion clutched Ames and he could not stop it. Not yet.

  Trembling, he reached into his pocket and produced a Zippo lighter of the kind he’d been carrying since he was sixteen. Unconsciously, he rolled the lighter through his fingers and opened it before the shooter’s eyes with remarkable precision and dexterity, the flame appearing as though from a magician’s hand. Pale yellow light flickered over the shooter’s face, and the hatred in the man’s eyes began to melt into something else as Ames brought the lighter even closer.

  For just a few seconds, they remained there, locked firmly in the grasp of that hypnotizing flame, and all Ames wanted to do was see the man burn.

  But he was stronger than that. No government or police shrink had ever been able to crack him. He snapped shut the lighter, took a deep breath, then grabbed the shooter by the shirt collar and hauled him to his feet—just as a pickup truck with darkly tinted windows rolled by.

  Ames glanced in the truck’s direction. The driver’s-side window lowered, and another Asian man holding a pistol with a long suppressor appeared.

  With a gasp, Ames shoved the shooter between himself and the truck, even as the driver fired two rounds that punched hard into the shooter’s back. Ames released the man and picked up his own pistol in time to fire into the truck’s tailgate, but the vehicle was already screeching away before Ames could read the tag. Now their only witness lay dead at Ames’s feet.

  “Hansen, it’s Ames,” he began over the channel. “I got the shooter. He was alive but now—”

  “What happened?”

  “Uh, no time now.”

  “Rally back at the hotel.”

  “What about the body?”

  Hansen cursed. “We’re coming down.”

  TWENTY minutes later they all gathered in Hansen’s hotel room, and as team leader, he insisted on debriefing them before they spoke to Grim.

  Gillespie had been the last one to show up and now cursed and said, “This can’t be our fault, can it? It’s all bad intel. They were on to him before we even moved in. That’s all it is. Bad intel.”

  “Maybe, maybe not,” said Hansen.

  “Maybe the Chinese didn’t off him. Maybe someone else did,” said Ames. “Maybe they want us to believe the Chinese did it.”

  “This is all ridiculous,” cried Valentina. “My part of the recon was flawless. I can’t speak for any of you …”

  “Why don’t you just say it, honey?” snapped Ames. “Tell us how much you love us.”

  She glowered at him.

  “Whoa! Please don’t burn me.” Ames threw up his hands in mock surrender.r />
  Hansen balled his own hand into a fist. “Listen up. This is why Grim won’t cut us loose yet. We need to earn her trust, and we start by trusting each other—not placing blame.”

  “Don’t call me a Splinter Cell if I’m not working alone,” said Valentina. “I don’t need any of you.”

  “The feeling’s mutual,” said Gillespie.

  Noboru picked up the TV’s remote and turned on the news. There it was: a three-ring circus of police and TV news crews outside the office complex. The report shifted to Leonard’s estate, still smoldering behind a young field reporter who gaped at the blackened skeleton. “I think the bombs in the house were meant for his wife.”

  “Genius over here,” said Ames. “Make this guy a general. How do you say ‘general’ in Japanese?”

  “Shut up,” spat Noboru.

  “Look, as far as we know everything went according to plan,” said Hansen. “The shooter and the bombs were already in place. No one saw anything else, right? No sloppy work on our part, right? No footprints.”

  Noboru shrugged. Ames did likewise. Gillespie and Valentina just sighed in disgust.

  Then Valentina spun around and said, “What’re you worried about, Ben? When you say Grim won’t cut us loose, you mean us, not yourself. You’re the only one who’s worked as a real Splinter Cell, on his own, without any … baggage.” Valentina looked daggers at the others.

  Ames puckered up for a kiss.

  “Yeah, I went out once. More than a year ago.”

  “And you came back from Russia a hero, so they put you in charge of the rest of us of noobs,” said Gillespie. “So what now? Have we just screwed ourselves out of the NSA?”

  “I don’t think so,” said Ames. “I wouldn’t ask for a raise right now, but the government’s always looking for suicidal maniacs who can fit into tight corners.”

  “Speak for yourself,” said Valentina.

  “I will, because you look like you’re putting on a few pounds there, Maya.”

  “Ames, enough,” snapped Hansen. “Get back to your hotels. Pack up. We’re out of here. I’ll call Grim, and we’ll work out what to do with this body.”

  ON the flight back home, Hansen dozed off, and in the shadows between consciousness and dreaming he strained to see a face… .

  Then he heard Gillespie’s voice echo: “You came back from Russia a hero.”

  A hero.

  Nothing could be further from the truth.

  Hansen took himself back to that fateful day when he’d marveled over the NSA office complex and gone in to receive his very first mission… .

  Chapter 3.

  NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY THIRD ECHELON HEADQUARTERS FORT MEADE, MARYLAND EIGHTEEN MONTHS AGO

  WALLS of obsidian-colored glass rose from the Maryland countryside and reflected swaths of deep blue and green across their mottled surfaces. A series of barbed wire and electrical fences cordoned off the grounds, and gatehouses were placed at designated intervals to allow entrance into parking lots that could accommodate more than eighteen thousand cars. The length and breadth of the NSA complex repeatedly amazed Hansen, and he sometimes felt like pinching himself as a reminder that, yes, even though he was still so young—painfully young, as Grim had once put it—this was his life now.

  The agency was, according to the rest of the world, not in the business of covert field operations. They were the technology geeks, the code makers and code breakers who built supercomputers and called those seventy-two-hour workweeks “good times.” They were the analysts who could gain access to, and examine, every piece of information available, no matter the media—from highly encrypted satellite phone calls between heads of state to extremely low-frequency transmissions from naval vessels to the e-mails and text messages passed between average citizens. They were rarely in direct competition with the military services, although most military folks wished for a one-handed intelligence representative—not because they wanted to hire the handicapped but because pronouncements like “On the one hand they could attack, and on the other hand they could retreat,” never helped in military decision making.

  That these geeks would ever be involved in the covert and/or human angle of intelligence would surprise some individuals within the agency. Moreover, if Third Echelon’s existence were ever made public, accidentally or otherwise, liberal- minded bureaucrats across the United States might very well clutch their chests and drop to the waxed wooden floors of their offices. Obviously, the often morally ambiguous business of protecting the nation could not be left to the faint of heart.

  Enter Third Echelon’s Splinter Cells.

  Splinter Cell operatives aggressively collected intelligence vital to U.S. security. They protected critical U.S. information systems and kept all operations invisible to the public eye. They worked outside the boundaries of international treaties, knowing full well that if captured the United States would neither acknowledge nor support their operations. They bridged the gap between gathering intel and acting upon it, and Hansen could not be more honored or more proud to dedicate his life to something as important as protecting the country he so dearly loved. Perhaps that sounded cheesy or naive; he didn’t care and assumed that in ten years he’d be just as cynical as any other government employee. But right now he believed in the ideals and in the fact that freedom was, of course, never free.

  To that end, Hansen now stood deep within the subterranean confines of the NSA, in a sector that did not exist. With some trepidation, he swiped his ID badge through the reader, listened for the muted beep, and the LED turned green.

  He found Grim seated alone at the diamond-shaped conference table inside the situation room. All around her, intelligence seemed to course through the room’s veins, the unseen servers reverberating like a thousand heartbeats per second. Big-screen LCD status boards hung from the walls, and three-dimensional maps, streaming security-camera videos, and electronic dossiers of known terrorists flashed and scrolled and rotated like the collected imagery extracted from some colossal brain. In fact, the entire power grid was in a constant state of upgrade in order to accommodate the agency’s ever-increasing demand for electricity. As Grim liked to muse, “The beast must be fed.”

  Hansen shuddered as he made eye contact with her. All right, she was his boss. She had hired him. But damn if he didn’t feel a connection. Act on it? That would take some serious courage. Nevertheless, there was something deliciously reckless about lusting after a woman ten years his senior, especially one as strong-willed and incredibly intelligent as Anna. Hansen imagined some serious fire lurking beneath her conservative exterior. Her short, medium brown hair barely touched her shoulders, and she frequently wore shirt/jacket combinations in earth tones or pastels, along with matching skirts and those glasses that Hansen longed to see removed. Her eyes were a blue-green flecked with gold, and as she stood, he forced himself not to probe anywhere near her ample chest, unsuccessfully hidden beneath her jacket. She moved silently around the table in her flats, rubbed a sore spot on her lower back, then gestured to their left.

  “So this is it, Ben. I’m sending you to Russia. This will be your first real field operation. Think you can handle it?”

  A chill worked its way across Hansen’s shoulders. Finally, a chance to prove himself in the field after six months of hard training. He took a deep breath, but before he could answer, Grim added, “That’s a rhetorical question. I wouldn’t have picked you if I didn’t think you could do this.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “I’ve never seen anyone challenge our trainers the way you have… . Well, maybe one other. But the point is that we’ve been very impressed with your skills. Who knew that a country boy from Fort Stockton would end up here?” She grinned broadly and gestured to the web of technology spanning the room.

  Hansen shrugged. “I wasn’t much of a cowboy.”

  “Lucky for us. And, you know, when I met you at the bar that night, I knew you were Splinter Cell material. And I knew you were wasting y
our talent at the CIA. So this moment is, in fact, unsurprising. You belong with us. And you belong out there, in the field.”

  He wanted to say, I belong with you, but instead said, “I’m ready, ma’am.”

  “All right, then.” She crossed to a computer terminal, where she called up several photographs of a balding, bearded man in his late forties. He wore a dark brown parka and stood beside a snow-covered sedan, lighting up a cigarette. Hansen focused on the two most significant aspects of the man’s appearance: his large hoop earring and the ponytail that writhed down his coat like a snake. Hansen also recognized the area behind the man as Lubyanka Square, in downtown Moscow, not because he’d visited but because he’d learned that Russia’s old KGB had once been headquartered there.

  Grim sipped her coffee. “This is Mikhail Bratus, a longtime agent with the GRU.”

  The GRU (Glavnoje Razvedyvatel’noje Upravlenije) is the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Russian Armed Forces’ General Staff. It gathers human intelligence through military attaches and agents and relies upon a vast network of SIGINT (signals intelligence) satellites.

  A recent defector from the GRU warned that all of the United States had been penetrated by agents who had orchestrated the delivery of secret arms caches—including suitcase nukes—that were hidden and waiting for Russian special forces poised to invade the country. Government leaders in every state were being watched and targeted by assassination squads that were ready to strike once war got under way.

  It was quite a story, and not a word of it had ever been verified, but Hansen was fascinated by the account and had read the interviews several times.

  “Bratus is a very clever and well-respected agent. He has dangerous ties to several drug cartels, both in the Russian Federation and Afghanistan. He employs many of the drug runners to serve as his eyes and ears while they move their drugs on the trains and highways out of Vladivostok.”

  As Grim spoke, Hansen had a hard time concentrating. Her perfume was intoxicating.