Double Crossfire Read online

  They walked into the basement and sat at a table with a small Cisco encrypted video conference camera. It was point to point, and as secure as anything could be today. Zara dialed the number and Wise answered. His face was large in the screen. Brown hair parted on the left. Acne scars visible. Red tie loosened and the spread collar on his white dress shirt open at the neck.

  “What’s the status?”

  During the run-up to the uprising, Zara had completely vetted Wise. He was a former Navy SEAL, who had entered the service at eighteen and departed at twenty-one years old, used the GI Bill to attend George Mason University and graduate with a degree in criminal justice. Joining the FBI in his midtwenties, his stock had steadily risen until the American people had elected President Smart. Wise was two removed from an earlier FBI plot to derail the Smart presidency and had ultimately paid the price from flying too close to the sun. His rocketing career flamed out and he was lucky to keep his job.

  A year ago, Zara and Wise had met through a high-end dating app that catered to professionals and weeded out the riffraff. What Zara had intended as a one-night stand turned into a political affiliation that had endured to this day. Having a seasoned veteran and political ally, coupled with the occasional good, solid fuck, was a bonus for her.

  She and Wise had hatched a plan to put in motion the wheels of a coup. Half the country would consider their plan seditious, like John Wilkes Booth, Mary Surratt, and his other co-conspirators, while the other half would consider it patriotic, ridding the country of a polarizing political figure.

  “Like most things in life, it’s a fifty-fifty shot,” Zara had said after sex one night. The postcoital discussion had hatched the plan that they were executing today.

  Now, Zara said, “We’ve got Cassie with us. From an enemy point of view, Mahegan is guarding the CIA director. Savage is at Fort Bragg.”

  He had taught her to always lay out the enemy situation first, like a military operation. You had to know where the enemy was arrayed on the battlefield and what their intentions might be.

  “And friendlies?” Wise asked.

  “We lost four at the director’s country house, but we expected that. We didn’t think Mahegan or his team would be easy targets.”

  Wise nodded. “Four down and how many left?”

  “We’ve got sixteen trainees remaining. We started with five teams of four. I can break them into teams of two, if necessary. That will give us eight teams, nine including Cassie and me. I’ve got them deployed in four different locations around the National Capital Region.”

  “Cassie?”

  “Yes, I’m taking Cassie with me. I’ve got her confused enough with a drug regimen that she’s pretty pliable.”

  “Be careful there. She is an Army Ranger.”

  “And I’m a psychiatrist who can change her brain,” Zara said.

  Jamie remained off screen and silent; should anyone be recording this, Zara presumed.

  “Okay. It’s your funeral, literally or figuratively.”

  “I know what I’m doing. There’s no way the female body can fight the DHT, Flakka, and midazolam cocktail. It injects the supercharged testosterone into the body, makes them crazy with rage, and then swings them all the way down with the midazolam.”

  “Sounds awesome,” Wise said. The sarcasm bit at Zara, who had worked hard on weaponizing the women.

  “Thanks,” she said. “What have you got?”

  “The presidential schedule went black today, but my sources tell me that number one and number two will be at a safe house in Loudoun County, not far from her residence.”

  The president and vice president.

  “And the Speaker?” she asked.

  “He’s on his boat. But you have to go to his house first. You’ll be greeted there by a guide, who will take you where you need to go.”

  “A guide?”

  “Just meet with the Speaker and he’ll give you the rest of the plan.”

  “Okay, thanks.”

  “I know your friend is there listening. Nothing short of director works for me,” Wise said.

  “I understand,” Zara said.

  “We have a deal. I know what you did to Broome. To paraphrase Ben Franklin, either we all hang together, or we most assuredly will all hang separately.”

  “It’s yours for the taking,” she said.

  “Okay, good luck.”

  Zara pressed the end button and the connection dropped.

  “He filming that?” Jamie asked.

  “Probably, but who cares? Like he said, we either have this in the bag or we don’t. It’s all or nothing. A video is the least of our worries, especially one that you’re not on.”

  The two women climbed the stairs and sat at the kitchen table again, Jamie resting her head in her hands.

  “This better work,” Jamie said.

  “It’s all for you,” Zara replied.

  Jamie looked up at her, gave her a hard stare, and said, “It’s for the country, Zara, and don’t forget that.”

  Yeah, right, Zara thought. Her political alliance with Jamie was pragmatic, not ideological. Able to flip to either side of an issue, Zara was 51 to 49 percent on most policy matters of the day; however, she was 100 percent committed to power and money. She certainly believed in better health care, higher taxes on the rich, and protections for those historically discriminated against. Yet, she lacked the passion about those and other issues and focused on building wealth and positioning herself to pivot into power. Having made in the high six figures as a psychiatrist, Zara parlayed her feminism and Spanish heritage into an explosive lobbying and consulting business on K Street in Washington, DC. With each passing day of tasting the wealth and power of those she engaged, Zara became equally powerful, if not more so. Her business grew to eight figures in revenue, most of which she pocketed. With the money, came power. She transitioned from app dating to sleeping with some of the most powerful players in DC: a Federal Reserve Board member, senators, congressmen and congresswomen, generals and admirals. Over the last five years, she left no stone unturned in her drive to accumulate leverage and its resultant power.

  That ascendancy had led her to the rare political affiliation with Jamie Carter, whom she had met during the early days of Jamie’s presidential exploratory committee. One of Jamie’s Senate staffers had reached out to Zara, asking if she could meet with Jamie to discuss opioid addiction and other health care–related issues. Zara seized on the opportunity to meet with the likely next president—all of the polls were showing her close to a double-digit lead over any of the candidates from the opposing party. Zara had the right look: ethnic, olive skin, black hair, slender body, the slightest hint of an accent when she wanted it, and large, seductive eyes. Her intelligence matched her beauty, and she believed that Jamie saw in her the rare strategic thinker and tactical operator that she was. After a lengthy discussion that led to a lengthy dinner, Jamie had called a week later and asked Zara to join her team. Zara had replied that she would do so, only for the right price and unfiltered access. After some debate, Jamie must have seen the promise that Zara held and had agreed to Zara’s terms.

  Then came the exhilarating primary win and campaign, touting health care as a major issue. The telegenic Zara Perro scoring near-daily segments with CNN and MSNBC. She migrated from being a niche health care advisor to the face of the campaign. She was inside the ropes, next to the future president. Well spoken and direct, Zara was the perfect advisor. Everyone wanted to either be her or next to her. Accustomed to influence and control, even Zara admitted to herself that the spotlight she was under had become intoxicating. She began to catch herself believing that she was that good, that smart, that beautiful.

  But she knew better. Still, the current became stronger and harder to resist. Like a swimmer stuck in a riptide, she went with the flow, instead of wearing herself out fighting it. Then came the crushing, unpredicted defeat and accompanying fall from grace. She had landed a lucrative talking-head contract w
ith CNN, but she found herself to be a bitter voice in the wilderness. Not her style. If she was anything, it wasn’t ideological. The CNN money could not compensate for the damage to her brand and business that her proximity to the losing candidate had caused.

  She had taken her eye off the ball. Eight figures rapidly dropped to seven and then to six. She fired most of her staff, because she didn’t have the access she’d anticipated or was seen as being too closely aligned with a bitter loser. It had even taken her a few days to pull out of the riptide and get her head above water to see that she was too far from land to be rescued. Her presence in the Carter campaign had been so pervasive that when people thought of Zara Perro, they thought of Jamie Carter, and vice versa.

  And so here she was, plotting the comeback. Hopes for a landslide in the Senate and House had provided meager returns, certainly nothing that would lead to eviction of the president through impeachment, no matter the special counsel’s tepid product. While Jamie had saved money and was financially stable, Zara knew the absence of power and influence was a tangible hole in her being. She was outside looking in.

  So Jamie saying that this conspiracy to dethrone Smart was about the country was utter bullshit. It was pure revenge and lust for power.

  Which Zara was okay with, as long as it served her purposes. She missed the power, the access, and the money. She hated being associated with a losing cause, and if this was the only way to set it right, then so be it. She was a mercenary, not a true believer.

  Zara looked at Jamie, her countenance blank, and said, “You’re the boss.”

  “Don’t forget that. We’re almost there.”

  Jamie’s phone chimed with a text. She picked it up, shielded it from Zara’s view, and said, “Okay. Get rolling. Just remember. This thing goes south, I’ve got nothing to do with it. I’m Teflon.”

  Zara nodded and pushed away from the table. Climbing the stairs, she held a finger to her lips as Rosa padded along the hall. Rosa stopped and turned around, away from Cassie’s bedroom in the northeast corner of the house.

  Zara peeked in Cassie’s room. She had fallen asleep. Hooking the IV drip back up, this time with Zara’s chemical recipe for success, the DHT-and-Flakka mix, she clicked it into the catheter taped onto the back of Cassie’s hand.

  Cassie turned her head. “What the . . .”

  “It’s okay, Cassie. Just like in therapy. This will make you feel better. I could tell you were missing the treatment. So bipolar. There should be another medicine from the trauma center in the pack you took. You wouldn’t happen to know where that is, would you?”

  Sleepy-eyed, Cassie shook her head.

  “Because if you hid it somewhere, you know it is unique to you. It is the only thing that can undo what we are doing here. If you ever want to return to normal, you need the medicine that is missing. If you took it and aren’t taking proper precautions, then you will age very quickly with this treatment. It won’t end well.”

  “Then why are you doing it,” Cassie muttered.

  “Because it makes you a better killer than you already are.”

  “Why do you want me to kill?”

  The drug was already taking effect. Her eyes opened wide as she sat upright.

  “I call this concoction Running Eagle, named after the female Native American warrior in honor of your fab boyfriend, Chayton Mahegan. He spells his name wrong, by the way. It should be Mohegan.”

  “Jake,” Cassie said absently, as if she was dreaming about him. Perhaps she had been.

  “Get dressed, Cassie, we’ve got some business to take care of. Do what I say and everything will be okay.”

  Cassie looked at her, seemed to understand, nodded, slid off the bed, grabbed her clothes, and walked into the bathroom, shutting the door behind her.

  * * *

  The NetJets airplane landed at Reagan National Airport in Arlington, Virginia. A car with a nameless driver took Zara and Cassie to a Georgetown M Street address, where they then walked three blocks north into the heart of the residential townhomes. Cassie watched Zara fish around a brick walkway, something she presumed Zara had done before.

  “The Speaker and I have a thing,” Zara said. The key was right there, under a loose brick on the sidewalk in front of a town house. They continued walking and looped around the row of homes and circled to the back alley, where the garages were lined up behind their respective residences.

  Cassie had been relatively subdued. She felt different, as if she had been given a sedative. She was tired of all the drugs, the ups and downs, and she really needed what was in the medical cooler. To her knowledge, she didn’t know if the contents could be replicated ever again. As she was waking up, she caught Zara giving her what had to be a DHT cocktail shot, like she had received at the trauma clinic. She felt her eyes roll back into her head, dazed, confused.

  “Where are we going?” Cassie asked.

  “We’re meeting with the Speaker of the House. He wants to discuss Senator Carter’s new appointment.”

  “At night? In Georgetown? On a Sunday?”

  “Yes, yes, and yes. What better time or location? He’s in the opposite party and doesn’t want to be seen talking to us. The political divide is so deep right now, he can’t risk it.”

  “What’s my role?”

  “Listen and learn,” Zara said.

  They entered through the back door and were met by two men in ski masks holding pistols with silencer cans screwed on the muzzles. Cassie recognized the pistols as M17s, the new U.S. Army sidearm. The two men were dressed in black tactical cargo pants and stretch nylon shirts that showed off their considerable bulk.

  “Hands out front,” one man said.

  “Do what he says,” Zara said. Cassie’s veins were on fire again. She was raging and ready to fight.

  She lashed out with a high kick that went straight up into the left gunman’s face. Simultaneously she swept the pistol from the man on the right, using a knuckle-fisted punch to the throat and a smooth sweep downward, grabbing the pistol from the man on the right. She shoved it under that man’s chin as she spun and kicked the pistol out of the other man’s hands. It skidded across the floor with a loud, scraping sound of metal on tile. Back to the other man, who now had drawn a knife.

  She said, “You know that saying about gunfights and knives?”

  The man smiled beneath the balaclava about the time his partner fired a stun gun at Cassie, sending enough voltage through her body to make her drop the pistol and slowly go to her knees, convulsing.

  “Now that we have that out of the way,” one of the men said. A man stepped forward with flex-cuffs, while the other man retrieved his pistol and kept it aimed at Zara’s forehead. The man expertly tightened the plastic handcuffs on each woman and turned them around, placed sandbags over their heads and tightened them around the neck. A vehicle pulled into the alley. The motor idled roughly, as if it was turbocharged. The men marched Cassie and Zara to the middle seat. One man sat behind them and the other sat shotgun. The driver was similarly dressed and masked.

  The SUV made sharp turns through the tight streets of Georgetown until it veered sharply and stopped. The musty smell of the Potomac River permeated the air even in the vehicle. Quickly the men were out of the car, dragging the women from their seats and shutting the doors. The vehicle sped away, leaving silence in its wake. A man grabbed Cassie by the arm and walked her toward the crisp sounds of tumbling water sloshing against a pier or berth. The freeway or bridge hissed in the distance.

  The man helped Cassie stumble over a pier or gunnel onto a boat of some type. It rocked beneath her feet as she lowered herself onto a padded seat cushion. A large hand grabbed her and pulled her belowdecks. Someone untied the lines and the boat sped away, downriver as best Cassie could determine. After twenty minutes, the boat slowed and spent another ten minutes crawling through the water. Finally it stopped and nudged against something firm.

  “Let’s go,” one of the men said, waving a pistol at th
em.

  “Take these damn sandbags off,” Zara demanded. For Cassie’s part, everything was reminding her of Iran. Her capture, the torture, the escape. She had to escape.

  “As you wish,” one man said.

  The men removed the sandbags and Cassie immediately began scanning, taking in her surroundings. She was trying to place the marina at which they were moored, but failed. She didn’t know Washington, DC, all that well, despite the fact that her father had been chairman of the Joint Chiefs and she had grown up in nearby rural Greene County, Virginia.

  There were over fifty boats parked at adjacent piers. A passenger jet flew overhead, low and slow, giving Cassie the idea that they were located either north or south of Reagan National Airport. They walked along the pier as the men guided them onto a large sailboat, which had the mainsail wrapped around a mast that stood at least fifty feet high. Cassie had run along the Potomac River trail many times when she’d trained for ROTC and triathlons. This could be Daingerfield Island, she thought. Her mind began rapidly processing escape routes away from the remote marina: Swim to Maryland. Run onto the trail to Old Town. Jimmy a car in the parking lot. Steal a boat and head into the river. Stop a car on GW Parkway.

  “Into the galley,” the man said.

  Once they were standing in the small galley of the sailboat, Cassie immediately recognized the Speaker of the House.

  “Hope you don’t mind the extra security. They can be a bit rough, but with Hite dead, I can’t be too careful,” Speaker Josh Williams said.

  “Well, I’d say you were careful enough,” Zara replied.

  Williams was a stout man, with thinning gray hair and a bulbous nose, riddled with veins from drinking too much. Not Tip O’Neill, but close. He had small, narrow eyes that seemed out of place on his large head. Perpetually unkempt, Williams was wearing an unzipped, oversized blue Windbreaker over a wrinkled blue sweatshirt that read, NITTANY LIONS, an ode to his alma mater, Penn State. The boat smelled of the dank, musty water in which it sat and of fried food, the McDonald’s bag sitting on the galley table the most likely culprit.

  “Who’s this newbie?” Williams asked Zara.