CHAPTER 104 Sampson
Sampson
“PERKINS! WHERE ARE YOU?”
I can hear Tom Walsh calling from the entryway. When nobody answered his knock, he pushed in through the unlocked door.
Aiden Phillips is hidden beside the office door. He aims his pistol at Perkins and opens and closes his hand to mimic talking.
“In here, Tom!” Roland Perkins calls out.
I’m standing at the side of the sofa, wondering if there’s a way to take Phillips down. Should I warn Walsh or just let things play out? Phillips had a dozen chances to kill me tonight, and I’m still standing. For some reason, he wants me alive as a witness.
What is it he wants me to hear from these two spooks?
Walsh walks into the office and stops short, clearly startled to see me there. He takes a few tentative steps farther into the room. “John Sampson? What’s going on? What are you doing here?”
“He’s with me,” says Phillips, stepping up behind him.
Walsh freezes when he feels the pistol at the nape of his neck. Then he raises his hands slowly. “Let’s be cool here.”
“Okay,” says Phillips. “I’m cool. You can turn around. Slowly.”
Walsh pivots until they’re face to face. “Phillips! Jesus fucking Christ!”
“Now, back up,” says Phillips, nudging Walsh toward the sofa. “Take a seat.”
Walsh settles nervously on the opposite side of the sofa from Perkins. As Phillips limps out of the shadow, Walsh glances at his bloody leg.
“What happened there?” he asks. “One of your bombs go off in the workshop?”
“No,” says Phillips. “Somebody was trying to shut me up. Permanently.” Phillips looks at me. “Take his phone.”
I move behind Walsh, reach into his jacket pocket, and pull out his iPhone.
Phillips eyes Walsh. “You armed?”
“Armed? This is Georgetown, not the O.K. Corral. See for yourself.” Walsh lifts his jacket above his belt and opens the flaps. Then he lifts his pants legs to mid-calf. “You want to see my dick too?”
Phillips takes a step closer. “No. I want to talk about Lieutenant J. T. Polermo.”
Walsh has been playing it tough. Now I actually see him flinch. For a guy who’s been trained his whole career not to give anything away, it’s a pretty big tell.
“Polermo? What about him? I haven’t seen him since we got back.”
“How about the others?”
“What others?”
“The others who knew about your little business operation in Pakistan.”
Perkins turns to Walsh. “Tom, what the hell is he talking about?”
“Quiet,” says Phillips, shutting him down. “While you were sitting stateside with your cushy desk job, me and Walsh and Polermo were in the thick of it over there. We all had our little side projects. But only Walsh violated title eighteen, paragraph twenty-three eighty-one.”
Perkins sits up straight. “Treason?”
“Good for you,” says Phillips. “You know your criminal codes.”
On the other end of the sofa, Walsh is turning red. “Phillips. Shut the fuck up.”
But I can tell that Aiden is just getting started.
“Before we pulled out of Afghanistan,” he says, “our people destroyed a lot of equipment so the Taliban couldn’t use it.
We disabled tons of Humvees and helicopters.
And when the Taliban located our advanced missile-defense systems, they figured out that the hardware was useless without the software and codes. ”
Walsh is squirming now. “Phillips! We can talk about this! You and me.”
Phillips leans toward him. “No. I’ve waited a long time for this.
I prefer an audience.” He turns back to Perkins.
“The Taliban tried to find the software on the black market, but it was all outdated or corrupted. So they came looking for an inside source. They learned that the classified software and codes were being held in a secret base in Pakistan near Guldara Baghicha. The base was run by the army, but the CIA was in charge of classified military materials. One paramilitary officer in particular.”
Perkins looks at Walsh.
“Bullshit,” says Walsh. “I didn’t have access to those codes.”
“Of course not,” says Phillips. “You couldn’t do it alone. Those systems required multilevel authorization. It took four other people. Four enlisted soldiers who must have suspected that you were doing business with the Taliban. J. T. Polermo was one of them.”
Walsh jabs a finger at Phillips. “You’re out of your mind, son!” He turns to Perkins. “You’ve seen this guy’s file! You know what Sampson found out about him. He’s a loose cannon! He should be in a psych ward!”
Phillips stays calm. “So what happened, Walsh? Did you get nervous? Did you worry that one of them would talk? Is that why you hired Polermo as your cleanup man?” Phillips pulls a slip of paper out of his pocket and walks toward Perkins. “You want the other names? I’ve got ’em right here—”
Walsh stands up and grabs for the paper. Perkins jumps in front of him and snatches it first.
I hear a loud pop.
It’s the sound of Perkins’s head exploding.