Termination Orders Read online

  Cougar nodded, and Zalmay knew that he understood.

  “I’m sorry you have to go alone, Zalmay. But I promise you, what you’re doing is important. I’m counting on you.”

  Zalmay nodded in assent. “Will we meet again?”

  “In the States, if everything goes right. And let’s pray that it will. Good-bye, Zalmay.”

  “Good-bye, Cougar. Peace be upon you.”

  Zalmay gave the American the keys to the jeep and watched him as he climbed into the driver’s seat and started the engine. Zalmay watched him as he drove off, feeling more the loss of his friend than of leaving his home. When Cougar disappeared into the city, Zalmay turned his thoughts to the road ahead: a harsh, dry land punctuated with towns and villages and a thousand enemies between him and his destination.

  CHAPTER 2

  Dan Morgan turned onto the small suburban cul-de-sac, the familiar tightness gripping his knee as he forced himself with gritted teeth to pound the pavement harder. Embrace the pain; love the pain. He pressed on for the last few dozen yards to his house, feeling the cutting chill of the early-March air in his throat as he inhaled.

  Neika, who absolutely would not be tired out, had been straining at her leash to chase a squirrel but now set her sights on home. She let out a frustrated half bark, half whimper, muffled and choked off by her collar. Somehow, she still retained the exuberant energy of a puppy, but he knew she could really do some damage when she was threatened.

  “Easy, girl,” Morgan chuckled. He broke into a slow trot and then slowed to a smooth stroll as he walked into his front yard. He took a minute outside to catch his breath, letting Neika off her leash. She trotted into the garage to sit at the kitchen door, panting, tongue lolling, and eyeing him impatiently.

  Morgan stretched his calves and, feeling another jolt of pain, rubbed his aching knee. “Well, Dan,” he muttered to himself as he opened the door and Neika plowed inside, “I guess you’re officially not a young man anymore.”

  As with everything else, Morgan took aging stoically in stride, even now, with forty-one just around the corner. However, those little signs that his body was no longer what it once was always had their own particular sting, especially in the way that they carried a stark reminder of the life he no longer led.

  As he walked into the house, he was met by the smell of coffee and frying bacon. His daughter, Alex, was at the stove, cracking eggs on the edge of a skillet. She was as tall as he, and her brown hair had been recently cut shorter, to chin-length. She combined Morgan’s athleticism with Jenny’s slender frame, and even her casual movements were full of grace.

  “Well, this is a nice surprise,” he said.

  She turned around nonchalantly, looking at him with sharp, intelligent eyes, and gave him a good-natured smile. “Mom’s out running errands, so I thought I’d be a good kid and make breakfast.” Alex turned back to the counter and scooped crispy strips of bacon from the skillet onto a paper towel.

  “Are you sure you should be handling bacon?” Morgan asked, gently ribbing. “Isn’t that against the rules?” She had not eaten meat for nearly three months.

  Alex laughed. “Whatever rules there are, Dad, I’m the one who makes them.”

  “So it wouldn’t actually be cheating if you had some, just this once?” He grinned with feigned hopefulness.

  “And look, eggs over easy, just the way you like ’em,” she said, ignoring his comment. She poked the spatula at one of the three sizzling in the pan and then, a bit too abruptly, flipped it over. The yolk began to ooze out from under it. “Ah, crap.”

  Morgan walked over to her and reached for the spatula. “Here, let me show you.”

  “I think I can handle frying an egg, Dad.” That was his daughter: independent to the bone.

  Neika, who had gotten her fill at her water bowl, sauntered over to beg for scraps.

  “Nothing for you here, puppy,” Alex said. The coffeemaker sputtered, then beeped as the last of the brew dripped into the pot. She poured out two mugs and scooped two spoonfuls of sugar into one. “Still take yours black, Dad?”

  “You got it.”

  She handed him a mug and took a sip from hers. “Ooh, sweet, sweet caffeine.”

  “So,” he said, “big plans for the weekend?”

  “Oh, I might meet up with Tom and Robbie later today, if they’re around. Nothing definite yet.”

  While she fussed with the eggs in the skillet, he took a moment to regard her, with her new and yet-unfamiliar chin-length hair. She really was becoming a lovely young woman, charming and vivacious. It was more than that, though: there was something about her that seemed much more composed and self-assured than the moody adolescent she had been even six months ago, when she had turned sixteen. He had always been unconditionally proud of her, but, now more than ever, she seemed to really command it.

  “So, your mother mentioned there’s a boy you’ve been seeing,” he said, as casually and good-naturedly as possible. He expected her to roll her eyes and clam up, but he was surprised to find not a hint of annoyance in her voice.

  “His name is Dylan, Dad. He’s a good guy, and I like him a lot.”

  “That’s great, sweetie. I’m happy for you.”

  “And if you promise to behave,” she said, “I might even bring him home to meet you.”

  He grinned and sipped his coffee. It was steaming hot, and it made him realize how cold he was. “How did you two meet?”

  “An APS event.”

  “APS?”

  “You know,” she said. “Americans for a Peaceful Society. Remember I told you I joined up?”

  “Oh, the peaceniks . . .” said Morgan, chuckling, He sipped more coffee.

  “I think the preferred term is pacifist, Dad,” she said, with an edge of irritation to her voice.

  “In the sixties they called them hippies.” He had meant the comment to be good-natured, but he knew immediately it was the wrong thing to say at the wrong time.

  Alex scowled. “I guess it would be too much to ask for you to take me seriously.”

  Morgan frowned. Things seemed to have taken a turn rather quickly. “I didn’t mean . . .”

  “I know what you meant,” she said dryly. “I know how much respect you have for people like—well, people like me, I guess.”

  “Of course I respect you, Alex,” he said. “But you have to admit, this whole pacifist thing tends to be a bit . . . unrealistic, don’t you think?” He was trying hard not to anger her, to humor her, this new passion of hers, but he could tell he wasn’t doing a very good job of it. So much for being a master of deception, he thought.

  “Dad, do you know what’s happening out there? Do you know how many soldiers are dying in our wars? How many civilians? Just innocent bystanders, at home, going to work or to school? Do you know, Dad, what our government does to terror suspects, many of whom turn out to be innocent?”

  He nodded. He wanted to tell her he knew more than she could imagine. He wanted to tell her things he had not only heard about but seen. Instead, he bit his lip and let her continue.

  “So maybe APS is a small ripple in a big pond. So maybe I can’t change the world. At least I’m doing something.”

  Dan bit down harder, doing his best to keep from saying something he might regret. “Maybe, Alex. But the truth is, there are evil people in this world. People who would much rather you and I and everyone we know be dead. It’s not like we go to war just for the fun of it. The people who make those decisions always weigh everything carefully, to make sure it’s really, absolutely necessary.”

  She scoffed. “Right. And even then, it still never seems to solve anything, does it?”

  “Isn’t it ironic,” Morgan said, grinning in an attempt to change the tone of the conversation, “that we’re fighting over this?”

  One of the eggs in the skillet let out a loud pop. Alex sighed. “How about you go sit down, I’ll bring breakfast in a minute, and we’ll forget I ever mentioned anything?”

&nb
sp; It may not have been much, but it was a peace offering of sorts. Morgan took it as an opening. “Truce, then?”

  “Truce.”

  “Hey, listen,” he said. “I was saving this until after breakfast, but, you know, the Bruins are playing at the Garden this Friday. I thought you might like to go, too.”

  “Yeah, Dad,” she said, with a measure of genuine excitement in her voice, though still tempered with her irritation. “I’d love to.” Sports had always been their bond; whatever the arguments between them, this common ground brought them together. He wondered if it would be enough as she grew older and drifted further and further away. He wanted to tell her that he loved her, that he would do anything for her happiness.

  “Okay, then,” he said instead, and he turned to walk into the dining room. The table was set for breakfast for two, the silverware slightly askew but with pretensions of luxury, like linen napkins clumsily folded into fans, and a copy of the Boston Globe sitting neatly next to his plate. What a sweet kid, he thought, even if she was a little misguided by her own naivety. He sat heavily into the chair, relieving his knees with a sigh, and shivered at the chill of his damp shirt against his skin as he leaned back.

  He picked up the paper and flipped through to the National section, which had a long piece on Lana McKay, an up-and-coming senator from Ohio who was making waves in Washington. A fresh face in politics, she had been catapulted into the national spotlight in the past year by her powerful appeals to ethics and political reform. She was bold, had a reputation for getting things done, and had emerged as a presidential hopeful in the next election. Morgan knew well how political fads came and went, and he knew even better that politicians sang a radically different tune inside their cabinets than they did to the press. But even he thought there might be something to this one.

  He scanned the article but he couldn’t concentrate on the words; his heart just wasn’t in national affairs at the moment. Then he looked below the fold to find the smarmy mug of Senator Edgar Nickerson smiling at him. He and McKay were shaking hands at some political event. It made sense, of course, for McKay to be seen with the man widely considered to be the most trusted politician in America. But Morgan’s image of her suffered from the association. Nickerson was one of the top players in DC—an old-money aristocrat who had a way of making people trust him implicitly. But Morgan knew better than to believe his public image: the man knew how to play the political game, with a reputation among insiders for masterful behind-the-scenes manipulations that no one ever dared speak of aloud for fear of reprisal.

  Morgan decided he wouldn’t let politics spoil what was already not the most pleasant of days, so he turned to the sports page for a March Madness update and was immersed in reading when the doorbell rang.

  “I’ll get it!” he called out to Alex. He walked to the foyer and opened the front door to find a narrow-shouldered man with thinning blond hair and nervous eyes. It was a familiar face, and one he thought he’d never see again. It fell somewhat short of being a pleasant surprise.

  “What the hell are you doing here, Plante?”

  “Hello, Cobra. How are you?” said the man softly, with an edge of anxiety to his voice. “It’s been a long time.”

  “There’s no Cobra here,” said Morgan. “Not anymore.”

  “Would you rather I called you by your civilian name?” Plante asked. “I can do that, if you prefer.”

  “I would rather you tell me what the hell you’re doing at my front door,” said Morgan. “Or are you here just to catch up on old times?”

  “I need to talk to you,” said Plante, the apprehension obvious in his tone. “Please.”

  “Dad, who is it?” called Alex from the kitchen.

  “Just a couple of Jehovah’s Witnesses, sweetie,” he yelled to her. Then he turned back to Plante. “You know what? I changed my mind. I don’t care why you’re here. Get the hell off my property before I exercise my right to shoot you as a trespasser.”

  “Won’t you—”

  “Listen here,” Morgan interrupted, lowering his voice to a growl. “I don’t work for you anymore. Whatever it is, I don’t care. It’s not my problem. It belongs to you and the rest of the clowns at the Agency.”

  “What if I told you it’s a matter of life and death? What if I told you no one else could help us?”

  “Jesus, it’s always life and death with you people, isn’t it?”

  “You know that better than anyone else, don’t you, Cobra?”

  Morgan gritted his teeth. “Listen, Plante, my daughter’s here, and she just cooked my breakfast. So I’m going in, and I’m going to sit down with her and eat, and you’re going to get the hell away from me and my family.”

  “You won’t even listen to what I have to say?”

  “There’s nothing you can say, Plante. Now, go away.” Morgan began to swing the door shut.

  “Cobra, it’s Cougar,” said Plante. The name stopped Morgan dead in his tracks. “Your old partner, Peter Conley. He’s been killed. I’m sorry to tell you like this. But now you’re the only one who can help us.”

  Morgan looked at Plante in shock, then took a deep breath.

  “Fine. You can come in. But if I find out you’re bullshitting me . . .”

  Morgan stepped aside to let Plante into his home. And just like that, his past had flooded back to wash away his life of suburban tranquility.

  CHAPTER 3

  Morgan walked into the kitchen hunched in the posture of apology and found Alex with a plate of eggs and bacon in each hand, ready to walk them into the dining room.

  “Who was that, Dad?” she asked.

  “I’m sorry, honey,” Morgan said. “It’s a business associate of mine. He has an urgent issue, and he needs to talk to me about it right away. I’m going to have to take a rain check on breakfast.”

  “Oh,” she said, obviously disappointed. Then she asked, scrunching up her brow, “What exactly is an emergency for a classic car broker?”

  He chuckled. “There’s a surprise entry at an auction that my client is interested in. Sometimes these things can be extremely time-sensitive.”

  “I see,” she said blankly.

  “I’m going to try to get rid of him as soon as I can, and then we can spend some time together.”

  “Okay, Dad,” she said, with a pride and stoicism that he knew masked some hurt feelings. “You should take your breakfast in with you, at least. You need to eat, and I wouldn’t want it to go to waste.”

  Morgan figured that accepting the food would be the least bad choice, so he took the plate and walked to the foyer, where Plante was standing. He ushered the surprise visitor into his office, shutting the door behind them and setting the plate of eggs and bacon down on the desk.

  Morgan sat down in his chair, behind his desk. Plante pulled up a green leather upholstered chair. He was a thin, balding man with a weak nose and chin. He looked aged, too, his hair getting prematurely white and perpetual worry carved into his face even more deeply than before. But some things hadn’t changed: he still wore a rumpled button-down with a loosened tie and sleeves pushed up to his elbows, just like he did eight years before and for as long as Morgan had known him before that. And he still had the same steady anxiety, which, if anything, as Morgan remembered, made him a more rather than less effective handler.

  “I gotta tell you, Plante, you were the last person I expected to see show up at my front door.”

  It was true. He hadn’t heard from Plante in years, not since Morgan’s bitter departure from the Agency. The moment Morgan saw his old associate, a million possibilities had flooded his mind, and he instinctively began to think of how he might take Alex and his wife, Jenny, and leave the country. A lot of these plans involved killing Plante right then and there.

  Morgan checked himself. If he were in that kind of danger, he wouldn’t be sitting down with Plante for a chat. He’d be a corpse already. They needed him. And he would have slammed the door in Plante’s face if he hadn’t m
entioned the one person who prevented him from doing that, the one person Morgan held dearest from his past life.

  “It’s been a long time,” said Plante.

  “Yeah. Plante, how did it happen?” Morgan wasn’t in the mood for small talk.

  Plante didn’t need to ask what he was referring to. “We’re not sure, Cobra. Cougar was working undercover in Afghanistan. Someone shot him and set fire to his apartment with his body inside.”

  Morgan shut his eyes in grief. Conley and he had been partners ever since they left The Farm, up until Morgan’s retirement. Being in life-and-death situations had been routine for them, and they had developed a deep and abiding trust and admiration for each other. He couldn’t count how many times they had saved each other’s asses. Morgan would have readily given his life for his friend. He could hardly hold back the shame and guilt at the thought that if only he had been there with him . . .

  “Who?”

  “Who what?”

  Morgan’s eyes were set with grim determination. “Who did it, Plante? Who pulled the trigger?”

  “We don’t know exactly.”

  “You’re the goddamn Central Intelligence Agency. Where the hell is your intelligence?” His grief was turning into anger, and all the past bitterness he had felt for the organization welled up inside him.

  “It caught us by surprise. And he had enough enemies—you know how it is. What do you want me to tell you?”

  Morgan got up, slamming his hand down on the desk. “I want you to tell me who did this so they can get the slow, painful death that they deserve.”

  Plante regarded Morgan as if he understood, with a look of pain that might have been guilt. Morgan bit his lip and sat down.

  “That’s what we all hope for, Cobra. That’s why I’m here, asking for your help.”

  “That’s not why you’re here,” said Morgan. “What’s going to happen to his body?”

  Plante looked at him contritely. “We couldn’t bring him back and risk exposing what he was. I don’t think I have to explain to you why that is. Given that he had no immediate family and that his body was badly burned . . .”