The Powers That Be. Cliff Ryder

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СКАЧАТЬ had happened to their asset there. Without a word, she grabbed a towel from Mindy and wiped her face and neck, then draped it around her shoulders as she headed to her home office.

      When Kate had been appointed as the director of Room 59, the town house she lived in had been swept and cleared by the agency, and modifications had been made to every room, particularly this one. As she pulled her chair up to the glass-topped desk, Kate slipped on a pair of Micro Emissive Displays eyescreen glasses, enabling her to access and surf the Web not only wirelessly, but without a keyboard. With precise eye movements, she selected where she wanted to go and blinked to activate programs. She quickly logged in and sent a page to Judy.

      Judy Burges was the consummate diplomat. Recruited from England’s diplomatic service, she was the only person, besides the shadowy heads of the agency, to have been with Room 59 since its inception. As always, she looked perfect, from her sleek, highlighted brown hair done up in a simple chignon to her immaculate navy pantsuit. Kate smoothed her rumpled gi and thanked her lucky stars that she could only be seen from the neck up.

      “Good to see you, Kate.” There was a barely perceptible pause. “I hope I’m not interrupting anything?”

      Kate berated herself for assuming that Judy wouldn’t notice anything out of the ordinary. “Not at all. I was just working out when I got your message.”

      “Naturally.” Her clipped tone made clear what Judy thought of Kate’s excuse. “You have my message. Our asset in Paradise has not made any of his drops in the last seventy-two hours. Given the rumors of increasing instability there, there is concern that he has been compromised. The heads would like a sitrep and proposed plan of action in an hour. I’ve downloaded all of the pertinent information for you. Shall I expect you in the conference room at eight-thirty?”

      “I’ll see you then.” Kate broke the connection and leaned back for a moment, taking a deep breath while frowning at the wall. She knew as well as Judy that they had to work together, but that didn’t mean they had to like each other. Kate was proud of the work she did, but she couldn’t help getting the feeling that the polished Ms. Burges sometimes considered her nothing more than glorified middle management just because she had come to her position through her intelligence-analysis work at the CIA. Kate was extremely aware of the difference in her current position. If I screw up in this business, it’s not just that an operative dies. Hundreds, maybe thousands more could die with him, she thought.

      Kate brought up her instant-message screen, finding Mindy online as usual.

      “Hey, what’s up?” Mindy typed in response to Kate’s greeting.

      “Just coffee and a plain bagel this morning—duty calls.”

      “Right away.”

      “And let Jake know I’ll be in conference until at least nine.”

      “You got it.”

      Rising, Kate walked into the adjoining master bath. Shucking the gi, blue belt, white cotton pants and her under-garments, Kate stepped into the shower, already analyzing and discarding plans and possibilities. Assuming he has really been compromised, and given the island’s current state, will they go for an insertion to get real-eyes intel, or just write him off and move on? If the former, who’s available with the necessary background? She reviewed dossiers in her mind, until a likely candidate popped up. Marcus would be the perfect choice, if he’s finished with that mission in cattle country.

      2

      Shit, this is not how it was supposed to go down, Marcus thought, eyeing the meth-cranked biker brandishing a meter-long rusty iron pipe.

      “I’m tellin’ you, guys, we got a fuckin’ rat in the house, and we’re all looking at him right now!”

      Robbie “Horse” Jenkins shook with the conviction of his drug-fueled suspicions. The biker was a long-term user—in his case, several years, and his face and body showed the ravages of his addiction. His words sprayed out from rotting teeth and his lips, along with the rest of his face, were scabbed and cracked, a by-product of the constant thirst and poor hygiene methamphetamine induced in addicts. His limbs trembled from the damage to his nervous system, but his grip on the pipe was as solid as a rock. The pungent odor wafting from the biker’s filthy jeans, T-shirt and grimy leather vest made Marcus think of summertime on his godfather’s ranch in Texas, where dead cows would bloat and burst from the heat. Given the choice, he’d rather have smelled one of those stinking carcasses than Horse at the moment.

      Marcus adjusted the do-rag atop his curly black hair and grinned. “Hey, Horse, take it easy now. Maybe Terry’s a rat and maybe he isn’t, but before we pass judgment, let’s hear his side of the story, huh?”

      The good news was that Horse wasn’t inciting the rest of his gang to beat or kill Marcus. The bad news was that he was directing the others’ drug-heightened psychosis at their chemist. The skinny, long-haired guy holding both his hands out in front of him had used his two semesters of college chemistry to produce batches of the most potent meth around, which the Death Angels had been distributing to unsuspecting college kids and hard-core addicts throughout a four-state area.

      With the government cracking down on the base ingredients for cooking the drug, a pipeline for pseudoephedrine from Asia had been flooding the Pacific Northwest during the past year. Assigned by Room 59 to track the flow back to its source, Marcus was wearing the same pair of jeans and leather jacket he had on when he’d first infiltrated the Angels two months earlier, insinuating himself up the chain of command. He tried hard not to think about what he’d had to do to get there—serve as muscle as the Angels got their shipments and payments, stand by and watch helplessly as the bikers spread their chemical death, inwardly seething with anger as he saw kids with their whole lives ahead of them trading it all for an insidious, deadly addiction. He’d worked through it by concentrating on the end, not the means used to get there, and finally he’d won enough trust for the Angels to take him to the source.

      They were in a converted warehouse in the deserted plains of Montana, their drug lab, manufacturing base and the next link in the chain across the Pacific. But his potential link to the supplier was about to get his head bashed in because their strung-out leader was riding a paranoia high.

      “For Christ’s sake, listen to Smooth, man. I haven’t ratted on anybody.” While Horse and the rest of the Angels reeked like month-old dirty laundry marinated in sweat and beer, Marcus smelled the fear oozing out of Terry’s pores ten feet away.

      Horse whipped his head around, wild eyes fixing on Marcus. “Yeah? Why you standin’ up for him, man? Maybe you’re in on it, too. You and him got a sweet deal goin’? Sell us all out and take over yourself!” He moved toward Marcus, the pipe held in front of him like an orange baseball bat.

      Although Marcus knew at least four ways to disarm Horse, six ways to disable him and more ways than he could count to kill him, that was the last thing he wanted. “Hell no, man, I roll with ya, you know that. Just sayin’ you want to think a bit before you cap our cook. He’s a wizard with the rock, that’s all. Be a long time ’fore we find anyone that good at baking again, y’know?” And if you splatter his brains against the wall, my connection goes with him, Marcus thought.

      “Yeah…yeah, maybe you’re right….” Horse said.

      The thing about meth addicts was that their addiction was so powerful, if they could be distracted from their train of thought for a few seconds, they often forgot what they were doing in the first place as the gnawing need made its demands known. Marcus waited. Horse started lowering his СКАЧАТЬ