Chapter Fourteen
Fourteen
James Westwood’s eyes opened in the darkened room; he reached for his phone on the bedside table and checked the time.
It was just moments before his five-thirty alarm was set to sound, so he turned it off, then opened his weather app to check the current conditions.
Thirty-four degrees, cloudy skies.
Next, he scrolled through a couple of websites, looking at news headlines, opened the Washington Post app and clicked on a tab that gave him the latest news in Latin America.
His eyes scanned the headlines, but he saw nothing of interest.
A quick review of X failed to show him what he was looking for, either, but he kept scrolling for nearly a minute before a message on his Signal app flashed on his phone.
J.W. sat up in bed; he was alone, as per usual, so he turned on a side lamp and spent the next two minutes crafting and then sending a reply to the text.
He rose for a trip to the bathroom, then dressed for his morning exercise, taking the weather into consideration.
He slipped into his running shoes, then made his way downstairs in his Georgetown row house, where he gave a tired nod to Big Mike Scardino, who was already in from the carriage house, leaning against the kitchen counter, sipping coffee.
The Gauntlet operative wore a Gore-Tex base layer and warm-up pants, but his North Face hooded athletic coat hung over the back of a barstool, and this revealed the Smith and Wesson semiauto pistol in a shoulder holster under his left arm.
A pair of extra fifteen-round magazines hung under his other arm.
In a voice revealing that he was still in the process of waking up, Westwood said, “Wesley Heights Trail. Thirty minutes from now.”
Scardino did not hide his look of surprise. “Uh-oh. You know why?”
“She didn’t say. My guess is Nicaragua, but I didn’t see anything in the news.”
“Me, either. Not a lot of advance notice, but I can probably get Dunseth and Fields over to the meeting point, scope out the location before we arrive.”
J.W. filled his water bottle from the dispenser on the refrigerator door. “No. It’s fine. Even if she flexes her muscle, there’s no need for us to do the same.” He looked at Scardino’s pistol hanging under his arm. “Lose the piece.”
Scardino sighed, then unfastened his shoulder holster, took it off, and laid it, along with the pistol in it, on the kitchen counter.
Big Mike flung the remainder of his coffee into the sink, put the cup on the countertop, then donned his coat. “Let me grab my scanner and a couple of headlamps,” he said, and he left Westwood there in the kitchen as he hurried back to the carriage house.
—
They left the home on Dent Place and jogged at a steady pace to the north, rising through the narrow streets of Georgetown.
They did not encounter a single runner or biker out this early, but they passed a man walking a dog on 35th Street NW, and a small group of workers stood huddled in their coats at a bus stop on Wisconsin.
On Davis Place they picked up the pace a little, running in the middle of the empty road. They continued west, past the elementary school J.W. had sent his children to decades earlier, past the apartment building of one of Scardino’s ex-girlfriends, and soon they approached Glover Archbold Park.
At the same time, both men reached to their foreheads, flipped on high-end headlamps, then jogged onto the Wesley Heights Trail that wound through the dense foliage of the park.
Scardino led the way now, his eyes alert, both for people here in the woods and for roots, stones, and railroad ties jutting up out of the ground that could have been a hazard, but they made good time, only slowing to navigate a couple of rocky streams, partly frozen over but shallow enough to be stepped through.
They went up and down hills, feet beating the winding unpaved surface that ran through the thick woods of the 185-acre park, and just as on the streets of Georgetown, they saw no runners out this early in weather this cold.
They had been alone for virtually the entirety of the twenty-five-minute run, but then lights appeared ahead of them, casting crazed shadows in all directions through the mostly leafless trees.
Mike Scardino spoke to J.W., jogging on his left. “Five, six sets. She brought the full gang.”
“Yep,” the former representative said as he slowed.
They walked down into a gully, navigated another rocky streambed, and climbed the dirt-and-mud track on the far side. Here, a massive felled log just to the side of the trail made a good place for J.W. to sit down, while Scardino remained standing, his eyes on the lights still coming from the west.
The lights converged on the two men, and then, one at a time, they were flipped off. Westwood and Scardino turned off their own headlamps, and in the low light of the predawn inside the dense trees, the men were able to make out the group around them.
Four men and two women, though it was tough to tell because they were all bundled in running gear that included neck gaiters that covered the lower part of their faces.
Some of the darkened figures fanned out on the path, climbing higher to have a better view of the area. Scardino noticed their backpacks, wondered if they were carrying submachine guns in them.
As for J.W., the sixty-year-old regarded the woman next to him in the dim light. Her hair was hidden under a knit cap, her face mostly covered by a wrap. She was short, maybe five-three.
He couldn’t see much of her now, but he had met her before in other settings, and he knew she was in her early thirties, attractive, and of Asian descent.
All the others’ faces were covered, as well, but Westwood didn’t need to see their faces to know who they were. They, like the woman standing next to him, were Asian, young, fit. And they, also like the woman standing next to him, were not American citizens.
These were Chinese intelligence officers. Spies living here, among Americans, using false identities, operating away from the Chinese embassy, existing under the radar.
Westwood unzipped his jacket, took out his phone, and handed it over to one of them.
Scardino gave up his device, as well, then pulled a radio frequency scanner out of his pocket, a small device with a retractable antenna on it, and held it away from his body as one of the men wanded both Americans with a handheld metal detector.
He repeated the movements, this time holding a radio frequency scanner, making doubly sure the Americans weren’t recording the conversation that was soon to come.
Everyone here on the scene gave off the impression that this wasn’t the first time for any of them.
When all the checks had been completed, the woman standing next to the felled tree looked to J.W. “Hello, James.” Her English was perfect. To Scardino she said, “Michael.”
Big Mike just nodded, but J.W. spoke. “Morning, Gracie. How’s the run?”
She didn’t answer the question; he’d never known her to engage in small talk, but he needled her with it just for fun. Instead, she said, “Thank you for the information yesterday.”
J.W. replied, “I didn’t see anything in the news yet. Does that mean nothing happened, or does that mean it was kept quiet?”
“Something happened. It will not remain quiet for long.”
“Shit,” J.W. said softly.
The woman he’d called Gracie said, “We heard from the Nicaraguan embassy at four thirty this morning. Your intelligence was vital and extremely useful. Unfortunately, however…our operation was not executed properly, and there were some unfortunate setbacks.”
This was exactly what J.W. had spent most of the previous day worrying about. He sat down again on the fallen tree, put his head in his hands, and rubbed his eyes with his gloved hands. “Keep talking.”
Gracie sat down next to him, then leaned forward to stretch her hamstrings, one at a time.
“One man from the United States was sent down by the CIA. He linked up with local agents to assist with the extraction. Nicaraguan intelligence set a trap based on your intelligence. They used a group of local gangsters called the Renazco outfit. Heavily armed, but not terribly well trained.”
“Never heard of them.”
“If you watch the news out of Central America today, you might. Anyway, the American and his Nicaraguan agents killed many of the Renazco outfit, but nobody cares about any of them. It was the other two that are something of a problem.”
“What other two?”
“A sniper team. MSS operatives.” She held a beat, then said, “Chinese nationals.”
Scardino was standing in front of the pair, and now he all but shouted in surprise. “Chinese intelligence was there?” Quieter, but with no less intensity, he added, “What the fuck were they doing at the scene?”
“They were there to kill the American and the asset, obviously. They didn’t trust the Renazco people to do it on their own.”
“Why not? It was just one American and some local agents.”
Defensively, the woman said, “I don’t know why not, but clearly there was cause to worry. The snipers’ bodies were found near their vehicle a few hundred meters from the extraction site. It looks like they were ambushed by the American after they’d been wounded and were trying to get away.”
Westwood wiped ice-cold perspiration from his face with his hand. “Shit. Any comebacks on what I’m doing?”
“As far as the Nicaraguans know, it was just a Chinese operation passed down to them. They have no knowledge that any of this intel came out of the USA. You and your operation are clean.” She added, “Managua will just proclaim that its valiant anti-drug officers fell in the line of duty after being attacked by a group of Renazco men. It will all get swept under the rug as far as it being an international incident.”
Scardino said, “Like Tunis.”