Infamy Read online

  The two men split up and moved quickly to take up positions covering the largest of the buildings inside the compound. They’d hardly melted into the shadows before the MH-60 Black Hawk helicopter appeared overhead and four men rappelled down a rope. The last of these was S. P. “Espey” Jaxon, the federal anti­terrorism agent who led the team. He made his way to where Lucy waited, while the others, on a signal from Jojola, moved ­toward the building, advancing one at a time across the open space.

  About the same time, someone from one of the other buildings shouted in Arabic and opened fire. He missed, but the member of Jaxon’s team who turned to deal with the threat did not. Even so, the element of surprise was gone.

  There was a flash and a bang as the team blew open the main door of the large building and entered. The sound of gunfire and hand grenades erupted from inside, then it stopped abruptly. Someone whistled. “Let’s go,” Jaxon said to Lucy, and they ran for the building.

  The lighting inside was dim but enough for Lucy to see bodies lying in doorways and sitting against blood-spattered walls. They were all “bad guys” and none from the team, who were searching the rooms and removing equipment and papers like high-speed burglars.

  Up a flight of stairs, past four more bodies, and at the end of the hallway, Jaxon and Lucy entered what appeared to be a mission-planning room with several laptop computers on a large table and maps on the walls, including a big one of Yemen on the southern coast of the Arabian Peninsula and others of countries in the Middle East and Africa. A chill ran down Lucy’s spine as she noted maps of Europe and the United States with colored pins stuck in some cities. Members of the team were taking photographs of the maps before rolling them up and sticking them in aluminum tubes.

  However, it wasn’t the maps that drew Lucy’s attention but the bodies near, and in some cases slumped over, the large table. She hadn’t expected so many of them. A neatly coifed, dark-haired middle-aged man with a small mustache sat in a leather chair staring up at the ceiling through dead eyes, a neat bullet hole centered in his forehead. He was dressed like a wealthy businessman, in a tailored dark suit with a starched white shirt and black tie. Next to him, an immensely fat man with a swarthy face, also in a business suit, though his was ill fitting, slumped in his chair with both hands pressed against his chest. A large stain spread out through his fingers. His breath came in ragged gasps and then stopped altogether. Two younger men in leisure suits lay on the floor behind them, clutching semiautomatic handguns they’d had no chance to shoot before bullets caught them in the face.

  Across from them, a large, florid older man with an enormous belly, short silver hair, and wearing a camouflage shirt and coat lay on the table with a knife protruding from his back. His head was turned to the side and his sightless blue eyes registered surprise. He seemed to be looking at the head of the table, where the last dead man sat upright; he’d been shot in the mouth, and a trickle of blood ran from his lips. He was dressed in a black sweatshirt, baggy black pants, and a black turban.

  Sheik Ghareeb al Taizi, Lucy thought. One of the targets, except we’d hoped to capture him. But who are all these other guys? Who killed them? Her eyes shifted to the other target, a strikingly beautiful woman sitting calmly in a chair at the other end of the table. She was looking at Lucy and smiled when their eyes met. “Lucy Karp,” she purred in heavily accented English. “Good to see you again.”

  “Nadya,” Lucy replied without emotion. “Or are you Ajmaani this evening?”

  Nadya Malovo shrugged. “I’m whoever I need to be when I need to be someone. But I prefer Nadya among old friends. Isn’t that right, Ivgeny?” she asked in Russian as she turned to a tall man with a scarred face and a patch over one eye who stood next to her with a gun pointed at her head.

  Listening to Malovo talk, Lucy understood how she could pass herself off as Ajmaani, a supposedly Muslim terrorist from Chechnya. Even speaking English or Russian she has a touch of a Chechen accent; almost perfect, Lucy thought. However, she could still discern that underneath it all Nadya Malovo was a native Russian speaker from the area around Moscow. Lucy was a “super-polyglot,” a savant fluent in more than six dozen languages, as well as several dialects.

  As such, Lucy had immediately identified the first guard at the gate as being a native of Medina in Saudi Arabia. She’d been surprised that the second guard spoke Persian. “Educated, upper middle class, said he was with VAJA,” she’d told Jaxon while they waited for the firefight to be over.

  “Iranian intelligence,” he’d replied, his eyebrows scrunched together. “What was he doing here? We were looking for Malovo and al Taizi. We’ll make sure we get his fingerprints when we leave.”

  Now Jaxon looked at the man with the eye patch and nodded to the dead men in the room whose faces were being photographed and their fingerprints taken by other members of the team. “They all resist, Ivgeny?”

  Ivgeny Karchovski shook his head and replied in his own heavy Russian accent. “They were all dead when we got here. Every one of them, except the one who just died.” He looked at Malovo. “Only one other person was alive.”

  Jaxon walked over to Malovo. “The guy at the end of the table is al Taizi,” he said to her. “Who are all the rest of these guys?”

  Malovo shrugged. “Dead men.”

  “Why did you kill them?”

  Malovo smiled as though she’d just been complimented on her clothing choice, which was a tight-fitting T-shirt and camouflage shorts. “I heard the shooting and thought it was probably American special ops,” she said. “These fools might have tried to go out in a blaze of glory, and I didn’t want to get caught in the crossfire. So I took care of the problem and waited to surrender quietly. Imagine my surprise when the first man through the door was my old flame from Afghanistan, Ivgeny Karchovski.”

  “Are you sure that’s the only reason you killed all of them?” Jaxon asked, his eyes narrowing. “Or is it that dead men tell no tales?”

  Malovo laughed, then winked. “We may need to talk, but shouldn’t we be going? There’s a large ISIS presence here, as I’m sure you know, and they’re bound to have heard the shooting.” She glanced at Karchovski. “You don’t seem happy to see me, darling.”

  Karchovski shook his head. “On the contrary, I’m glad you’re here; we came to arrest you and bring you back to the U.S.” He looked down at the dead man on the floor. “And this piece of trash.”

  “Sorry about that,” Malovo answered. “But I think that between the computers and documents you’ll find here, and what I might be able to help you with in the future, your trip won’t have been wasted.”

  At that moment, one of the young men who’d rappelled from the helicopter entered the room. Unlike the rather eclectic members of the team like Lucy, Jojola, Tran, and Blanchett, the other agents were elite former Special Forces and all business in a war zone. “The locals will be swarming this place like ants at a picnic in a few minutes. I think we’d all rather hitch a ride out of here on a Black Hawk than hoof it across the desert with a bunch of angry ISIS members after us.”

  “Agreed,” Jaxon replied. “You got what we need?”

  “We’ve grabbed all the hard drives from the desktop computers, laptops, cell phones, and any documents we could find,” the young man replied. “There’s a safe we’ll blow and clean out as we’re leaving.”

  “Then let’s call in the bird and get the hell out of here,” Jaxon said. He looked at Malovo. “Cuff her.”

  Karchovski pulled plastic ties out of a pocket and put them on the assassin’s outstretched wrists. “How romantic,” Malovo said with a sardonic smile. “Reminds me of that night in Kabul when we were oh so much younger.”

  “I wouldn’t remember,” Karchovski said.

  “Nonsense. You could never forget, darling,” Malovo said with a laugh, and stood up.

  Outside the compound walls, Lucy saw that Ned Blanchett h
ad arrived. She walked up and hugged him. “Good shooting, cowboy,” she said.

  “Thanks, sweetheart,” Blanchett replied. “Just like we planned.” He looked at Malovo and frowned. “Where’s al Taizi?”

  “Dead,” Lucy replied. “Nadya killed him, along with a half dozen other guys, before we got there.”

  “We got company,” Jojola shouted. He pointed in the direction of the village, where the headlights of a convoy of vehicles had suddenly appeared and were racing toward them.

  “Where’s the Black Hawk?” Jaxon asked.

  As if summoned at his command, the helicopter materialized out of the night, hovering just a few feet off the ground. There was a small explosion from inside the main building, then the rest of the team came running, one of them carrying a black bag with what Lucy assumed were the contents of the safe.

  Less than a minute later, the team was back on board the helicopter as it climbed up and away from the onrushing vehicles. Looking down, Lucy saw red flashes from guns, but they were soon left behind. She turned to find Nadya Malovo watching her. The beautiful assassin sat between two of the younger members of the team, who looked like teenagers who’d suddenly found themselves sitting on either side of a Playboy bunny. How can one woman—especially such a dangerous woman—exude so much animal sensuality? she wondered.

  As if reading her mind, Malovo winked. “Just like old times,” she said. “Be sure to give my love to your father when you see him. Tell him I’ll be in touch.”

  2

  ARIADNE STUPENAGEL CURSED AS THE spike of one of her high-heeled black boots sank into the soft grass of Central Park and nearly pitched her to the ground. Without losing her shoe or her pride, she quickly managed to right the ship and continued walking toward the Sunday-afternoon gathering near the Boat House.

  Should have worn more practical shoes to a picnic, she thought, but then quickly reversed herself. To hell with that . . . If I can’t wear heels, what’s the point of living?

  The day was stupefyingly hot and humid, even for New York in July, and Stupenagel was annoyed by the rivulets of sweat trickling through various crevasses of her curvaceous body. She reached up to pat her bottle-blond hair into place and then down to release another button of the sheer red blouse she wore over a well-filled black bra. She’d finished off the outfit with a very tight, very short black skirt.

  Pressing her lips together, she assured herself that they were sufficiently covered by her trademark cherry red lip gloss. She then turned up the wattage of her smile and covered the last thirty yards to the men and women milling around a group of tables, one of which displayed a banner proclaiming Welcome 148th Battlefield Surveillance Brigade Reunion Sign-in. As she approached, she was aware of the appreciative glances of the men in the crowd, and the corresponding disapproval of many of the women.

  Bold, brassy, and tall even without the heels, Stupenagel stood out in any crowd, and that was the way the hard-driving journalist liked it. At times her in-your-face attitude got her into trouble, and she’d seen her share of jail cells, third world police stations, and various other dangerous situations. In pursuit of her stories, she’d narrowly escaped run-ins with a bevy of psychopaths, hit men, gangsters, dirty cops, tin-pot dictators, and terrorists. But that bravado, and on occasion her over-the-top sexuality, also got her into the offices, bedrooms, and confidences of the rich, the powerful, and the famous. She knew when to resort to guile over confrontation, but if the situation called for a full frontal assault to overwhelm the enemy’s ­defenses, she was the right gal for the job.

  She’d toned the libido down in the past few years, especially after her engagement to Gilbert Murrow, a mild-mannered assistant district attorney who was the aide-de-camp for Butch Karp. But she could still work the feminine charm and turn men’s heads when needed. The picnic she was about to invade seemed to be just the right situation.

  The majority of the fifty or so people gathered were young men with a sprinkling of middle-aged males among them. Of the women, most seemed to be attached to the men—girlfriends and wives—though some appeared to be members of Troop D. A few of both the men and women were in Army uniforms displaying the Ranger patch, though most were dressed in civies of loud aloha shirts and tattered T-shirts. She glanced at the chests of those in uniform and noted the ribbons indicating tours in Afghanistan and Iraq.

  Stupenagel also knew that LRS stood for Long Range Surveillance. As the Army’s surveillance units in the field, the LRS teams operated behind enemy lines for as long as thirty days at a time. They primarily conducted reconnaissance, target acquisition, battle information, and damage assessment missions. A few of the units, however, specialized in capturing and interrogating prisoners, sabotage, and field assassinations.

  Company D was one of those and apparently had carte blanche to do whatever dirty work needed doing, according to one of her sources in the Pentagon. “They have a reputation for being a bunch of cowboys even for a black ops LRS unit,” he’d told her.

  I like cowboys, Stupenagel thought as she sauntered past one group of young admirers. But today she only had eyes for one of the older men. He was tall, and though dressed casually, everything about his bearing said career military. Even the word “older” was relative because except for the lines in his deeply tanned, movie-star-handsome face and a little silver in the crew cut hair above his ears, there was nothing old about him.

  The man was talking to an attractive young woman in uniform, standing apart and out of earshot of the others at the gathering. They both turned and frowned as Stupenagel walked up. She wondered if they were lovers.

  It had started a few days earlier with a call from Lucy Karp, who asked if she wanted to go out to lunch. There was nothing unusual about the invitation; she and Lucy’s mother, Marlene Ciampi, had met as freshmen at Smith College when fate had made them roommates. They soon became best friends, and even when their careers and lives had taken them down separate roads, they’d ­remained as close as sisters. So close that when Marlene and Butch had Lucy she’d been honored to be their first child’s godmother.

  Stupenagel suggested that they meet at the White Horse Tavern, a historic watering hole in Greenwich Village, long known as a hangout for artists, musicians, bohemians, and jour­nalists, everyone from Dylan Thomas to Jack Kerouac. The tavern was a favorite of hers, but as soon as she saw Lucy sitting outside at one of the sidewalk tables she knew this wasn’t a social meeting.

  Lucy stood as Stupenagel walked up and kissed her on the cheek. As they sat down, she looked her goddaughter over and thought about how she’d changed both physically and mentally. Lucy had her father’s unusual gold-flecked gray eyes and her ­mother’s dark hair and olive coloring. She’d been something of an ugly duckling growing up—a skinny, precocious child, then a gangly, awkward teenager with a large nose and a stunning talent for learning languages. However, the duckling had blossomed into a swan several years after she moved to New Mexico, where she’d fallen in love with a genuine cowboy—a ranch hand named Ned Blanchett. Since then she’d filled out nicely, though there was no extra fat on her lithe frame; she looked tan and fit due to her outdoor lifestyle and what Stupenagel thought of as “the bloom of love.”

  Yet there was more to Lucy than met the eye. Several years earlier, fate and circumstances led Lucy, because of her language skills, and Ned, a dead-eye rifleman, to being asked to join a small federal antiterrorism agency headed by former FBI agent Espey Jaxon. “The kids,” as well as their boss, were not generally forthcoming with details—everything was “highly classified and hush-hush.” But there’d been occasions when they deemed it appropriate, or necessary, to share information with Ariadne—often a quid pro quo for something she dug up. At such times, they trusted her to do the right thing with the information.

  In some ways, holding back or embargoing information bothered Stupenagel. As a muckraking, take-no-prisoners journalist, she was much more comf
ortable throwing everything against the proverbial wall and seeing what stuck. Having to use her discretion and “act responsibly”—instead of writing it all down and letting the chips fall where they may—made her want to break out in journalistic hives.

  Sitting across the table from Lucy, Stupenagel recalled with sadness one of the last times she’d been at the White Horse Tavern. She’d gone there to meet Lieutenant General Sam Allen, a decorated war hero, the interim director of the CIA, and a former lover. He’d called her out of the blue—it had been many years since they’d shared hot, passionate nights or even a cocktail—but although they reminisced a bit, it wasn’t old times in the sack he wanted to talk about.

  Disguised in an old Yankees ball cap and ratty sweatshirt, he told her that he had reason to believe that people close to the president were “aware in real time” of an attack on a U.S. consulate in Chechnya. And that rather than provide requested assistance, they had allowed the consulate to be overrun to cover up a foreign policy gaffe. Exactly why, he didn’t know.

  Allen said he planned to testify before Congress and spill the beans, but added that he was being blackmailed by powerful people who threatened to expose an affair he’d been having. He explained that he was telling her this in case something happened to him and asked her to try to protect the young woman if it did. Unfortunately, Sam Allen was prescient. He’d been murdered the night before he was due to appear before the congressional subcommittee.

  The murder of Sam Allen and the cover-up of the debacle in Chechnya was one of those instances in which not wanting to interfere with the pursuit of justice for Sam and those who died in the consulate caused her to hold off writing her story until the men who’d plotted his death were caught, and subsequently convicted by Butch Karp. After that, however, the story had taken on a life of its own, first with her exposé of the murder of Allen and the involvement of the president’s ­political cronies. Inevitably more sources came out of the woodwork, and she’d written a series of stories tied to the administration’s feckless foreign policy, especially when it came to dealing with Islamic extremism. Eventually, she ran out of new material, but she ­believed that she’d hardly scratched the surface of the exact moti­vation for the major players. Even some of their identities had remained in the shadows.