Overlord Page 15

  Henri Farbeaux tilted his head at what he would call the audacity of the man as he just strolled out the front doors of the CIA headquarters as if he hadn’t a care in the world. The colonel lowered his glasses and shook his head. He raised his small radio and hit the transmit button two times, then waited until he heard the responding three clicks in return. Once he had received the response he raised the glasses and studied Hiram Vickers. “Yes,” he mumbled. He knew automatically that this was the same man whose picture had been forwarded to him from Leavenworth. Farbeaux lowered his glasses and walked out from behind the stand of trees that fronted the open gates of the Langley facility. He walked to the small side street that was only a hundred and fifty yards away and waited. Soon a black rental car pulled up and he stepped inside. He took a deep breath and then looked at Colonel Jack Collins.

  “That’s him.” He pulled out his cell phone and looked at the one message he had waiting for him. He frowned, then placed the cell phone in his pocket. “We can pick him up when he gets to Colonial Farm Road. That will be his way home.”

  Jack didn’t say a word as he placed his foot down hard upon the gas pedal. The black Chevrolet sped into the morning sun.

  “I suppose you still refuse to be persuaded to wait, Colonel?” Henri asked.

  “This needs to end, and end now.” Jack looked at Henri, his enemy for many years; the man he knew beyond any doubt was in love with Sarah McIntire. “The world is not going to wait on me. I’m out of time, Colonel.”

  Farbeaux took a deep breath and then looked out of the side window. This favor he owed, he knew that, but to willingly walk into a murder was something Farbeaux liked to do of his own volition, not on the whim of a man he hated for allowing his wife to die in the jungle eight years before. He looked at Jack as he drove and knew that the man he faced was not the person he always thought he had been. This American colonel was unlike any individual he had ever known, and if a man like this could love a woman such as Sarah McIntire there had to be more to him than his enemies ever saw. He had started to reassess his opinion on his wife’s demise in the Amazon at this man’s hands. Farbeaux had his doubts that Jack was capable of cold-blooded murder.

  “Listen, I’m a little more experienced at being a bad guy. I think you should allow a professional to do this. From what I’ve learned, this man that you want to kill can be retired without any fuss.”

  Jack said nothing. The light-gray suit Collins wore and the white shirt underneath were starting to darken with sweat as the man neared his prey. Henri had the same physical reaction as Jack when it came time to finish business that was long in coming. He knew then that the colonel was going to carry this thing through to its obvious and, to him, logical conclusion.

  “Turn left and we can beat him to his town house.” Henri realized that trying to talk this man out of what he was about to do was no use. He knew because he had been there himself.

  GEORGETOWN

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  Hiram Vickers stepped from his car and glanced around. The early evening was warm. A slight breeze brushed his sweaty features and he tossed his keys in the air. Before they reached his hand he felt the gun at his back. The keys fell to the pavement of the parking area. Vickers froze.

  “Man, there are security cameras all over the place. Maybe you should have picked a better robbery target, or at least another location.”

  “Tell me where the cameras are so we can wave and smile,” came the slight French-accented reply. “Now, shall we go inside and talk? Ah, ah, pick up your keys. And please lower your hands and quit being so melodramatic. After all, this is Washington, not your Dodge City. We don’t want to attract the attention of your influential neighbors, now do we?”

  Vickers reached down and retrieved the keys, then straightened. He managed to see the face of the man who held the silenced weapon at his kidneys. While his face seemed familiar he couldn’t place where he had seen it before.

  “Who in the hell are you?” Vickers asked as he was not too gently pushed forward toward his first-floor apartment door. He reached out to place his key in the first door he came to and was stopped by Farbeaux.

  “Now why would you attempt to go into your neighbor’s house? Try the next one.”

  Vickers knew then that he was in some serious trouble. He cursed his poor attempt at trying to fool the man with the gun. He went to the next apartment and shoved the key in and opened the door. Henri pushed the man inside and quickly reached behind him to lock the door, all the while keeping the gun leveled at Vickers’s kidneys.

  Vickers almost lost his balance and bladder control when he saw the man in the gray suit sitting in his living room chair. The intense blue eyes bore into his frightened ones. But the one object he noticed even more than the man’s blue eyes was the silenced Beretta in his right hand. His guest was sitting casually as the barrel of the weapon gently tapped his knee.

  “Look, you guys really don’t know who you’re fucking with here,” he said as he gestured that he wanted to reach into his coat. Jack Collins nodded his head that it was all right. The blue eyes went to Henri, wanting him to shoot the man if anything untoward came free of his coat. Vickers pulled out his CIA identification and tossed it to Jack, who caught it but didn’t examine it. Instead he just placed it on the small coffee table to his left and stared at the cowering man before him.

  “You don’t know me?” Collins slowly stood from the chair and faced the man he had wanted to meet since his sister’s murder six months before.

  “Why should I?” Vickers said as Henri strode away and into the man’s kitchen. Jack heard the refrigerator open and the Frenchman rummage through it.

  “I thought since you knew my sister that you just might know me.”

  Vickers felt his heart slip a notch in his chest as he realized just who was inside his home. All thoughts of the Matchstick Man were all but gone—along with his future.

  “Look, I really don’t have any idea what it is you’re talking about. Who is your sister?”

  Henri Farbeaux stepped from the kitchen with an opened can of Coke and watched the activity he found immensely amusing. He did notice a momentary flare in Jack’s eyes. It wasn’t one of anger, but one of doubt when Vickers said he didn’t know what the colonel was referring to. Henri sipped the cold drink.

  Jack walked toward Vickers with a purposeful stride. He stopped only inches from Vickers’s nose.

  “Lynn Simpson … Collins.”

  Vickers’s eyes flitted to the Frenchman, who raised his soda and nodded. Vickers didn’t know if he was praising the cold drink or saying we gotcha.

  Jack knew the man they sought was right in front of him. “Why was she killed?”

  “You can’t shoot me right here in the middle of Georgetown for something I am not involved in. I don’t know what—”

  The gun’s barrel struck the CIA man on the side of the head, making him yelp in pain. He looked at his hand when he pulled it away from his ear and it was covered in blood.

  “Who said anything about shooting?” Henri said as he sipped from the can. “There are quite a number of ways to use a gun, my friend, and I think the colonel knows them all.”

  “But I—”

  Another gun-barrel blow to the other ear and Vickers this time went down.

  “Why?” Jack persisted.

  Vickers looked up at Collins and saw no mercy in the eyes of the man.

  “Okay, okay,” the CIA man screamed as he tried to stand. The gun came down again, sending him to the braided carpeting. “What was that for?”

  “I believe he was telling you to be forthright and straight with him before you speak again,” Henri said as he raised the can to his lips. He froze when he felt the weapon digging into his backside. The can stopped at the lips and he didn’t move.

  Jack saw the other three men but it was too late. They were drawn on before he could react. They had been in the apartment the whole time and Jack hadn’t checked when he entered the bui
lding. He cursed himself for his unprofessional act.

  “This man has done quite enough damage,” a tall, thin man in a black Windbreaker said as he stepped around Vickers to remove Jack’s weapon. Henri was simultaneously pushed out of the kitchen’s doorway. He was as angry as Collins for being taken by surprise. He quickly surmised that although they were both extremely adept at battlefield prowess, they were sorely lacking in the fine art of cold-blooded murder tactics.

  “Maybe we should have planned this a little better, Colonel,” Farbeaux said as he joined Collins in the living room.

  Collins counted four men in total. There was one more outside the front door as he had seen a shadow pass the window a moment before. They were all wearing black Windbreakers and at that moment Collins knew just who it was they were dealing with. The infamous Men in Black that had been reborn, and now he knew who it was that had reinstated the teams—the CIA. Everything became crystal clear to Jack.

  Vickers finally stood and wiped the blood from both ears, then bravely punched Jack in the stomach. The colonel barely winced. One of the Black Team snickered when Collins didn’t even flinch at the assault. Instead he looked at Henri.

  “Not only did this asshole kill Lynn, Henri, these are the wondrously patriotic gentlemen that hit our complex six months back, looking for the Ripper formula.” Collins turned back to face the man standing next to Vickers.

  “Not us, but our commander, Mr. Smith. Don’t tell me you’re the men that dispatched him and his team?” the thin man asked.

  “You bet. Killed every one of the bastards,” Jack said as he looked into the steady eyes of the man in black.

  “Enough of this crap—kill the son of a bitch!” Vickers said.

  The man turned the weapon away from Collins and shot Vickers in the meatiest section of his right calf. Hiram screamed and went down, sliding to the carpet against the wall.

  “You must remain quiet as we attempt to sort through this, Mr. Vickers.”

  Jack was surprised but held the expression in check as Vickers rolled on the bloodstained carpeting in agony. He looked up at the team leader.

  “What are you doing?” he wailed as he tried to hold his wounded calf.

  “You are no longer head of your desk, sir. They told me to tell you one fuck-up is all that is tolerated.” The man took deliberate aim at the face of Hiram Vickers, who covered his eyes as blood from his hands dripped onto his face.

  Jack hit the floor as the front window exploded into the room as a silenced weapon opened up. The first bullet struck the man with the gun in his exposed hand, dropping him to the floor. Jack fell upon him. Henri ducked just as three of the bullets flew past him. One struck the man at his back in the nose, dropping him as if he were a mere sack of potatoes. The two men standing behind the first hit the floor as the front door was kicked in. Several more rounds found their mark, hitting the men in their exposed backs.

  Jack wrestled with the first gunman, then wrenched the weapon up as the trigger was pulled. Collins felt their rescuer run into the apartment and down the hallway, where several more shots were fired just as his own efforts caught the struggling man in the lower chin. A bullet exploded into the assassin’s brain. He went limp. Henri ran by and took one of the weapons from the two fallen men and ran to the front door. As Collins pushed the dead man in black away with disgust he looked around but didn’t see Hiram Vickers. He saw the blood trail leading out of the front door. Henri stepped back inside with the silenced weapon still smoking after discharge. He shook his head.

  “Your target just ran for the hills, Colonel.” Henri looked at the hallway and was surprised when a familiar face emerged from the bedroom, dragging one more of the men in black by the collar. He was also dead.

  “Always have a navy man plan your ops, Jack, you know that.” Carl Everett let go of the dead man’s collar and looked over the others.

  Collins finally managed to get to his feet and shook some of the blood from his exposed hand. He looked at Carl and shook his head.

  “I thought you had a woman to look after in Romania?” He went to the door and looked out past Farbeaux. Vickers’s car was gone. Jack looked at the gun in his hand, then tossed it on the couch next to the door.

  “Ah, she left me for another man, a general in the Mossad, as a matter of fact.” Carl slid his nine millimeter into the belt at the back of his waistband. He looked at Henri and tilted his head. “And a good thing too, it looks like you’re starting to hang out with characters that can get you into a lot of trouble.”

  “You can’t be here, Carl,” Collins said. “I’ll explain later but you cannot be around me.”

  “Well, if that’s not a thank-you, I’ll—”

  “Jesus Christ!” a voice from behind Jack said.

  “We are really losing our touch,” Henri said, realizing they had been taken by surprise once again as he spied the man with the drawn weapon standing in the doorway.

  Collins turned and immediately recognized the Group’s man inside the FBI.

  “Agent Stimson, how are things?” Jack wiped his hand on the white curtains at the window.

  The agent placed his weapon in its holster and looked at the scene inside the apartment.

  “I don’t know how in the hell I’m going to explain this one to my boss.” The FBI special agent stepped inside and eyed the three men. “Jack you have put me in a hell of a spot here.”

  “How did you know where to find us?” The colonel looked from Everett to the man he had recruited himself five years before.

  Stimson looked at Collins and shook his head. “How in the hell do I know how your people find these things out? I’m just an errand boy here.” Stimson shook his head as he examined the scene again, trying to make sense of what he was seeing. “Well, I guess it doesn’t matter now, the Bureau’s had orders for a couple of months to keep tabs on our Mr. Vickers. It seems the Oval Office doesn’t like certain factions over in Langley and wanted to start a file on more than just a few of their operatives.”

  “Bullshit. Dr. Compton authorized you to use the computer chip tags Mr. Everett and I have in our arms.”

  “Okay, that too.” The agent again shook his head as he looked at the three men before him. “By the way, you three … well, you’re under arrest.”

  “Now you know better than that,” Carl said as he raised a brow at the agent.

  “Look, you guys can take me down but I have to tell you that I have eight more agents outside. We have enough of a mess around here. By the orders of the president of the United States you are hereby placed into protective custody.”

  “President, my ass. I smell Niles, correct?” Jack asked.

  “I don’t know about these gentlemen,” Farbeaux said, “but I’m a foreign national who has nothing to do with secret groups or even the president of the United States. So if you would excuse me, I’ll say—”

  “You’ll say thank-you and be grateful you’re not in handcuffs, Colonel Farbeaux,” Stimson said with an angry glare.

  “Yes, Colonel Collins, I would say your little bald employer is indeed behind this.” Henri walked up to Jack and smiled as he slightly raised both hands. “I guess if you can’t get one bad guy, your boss thinks another will be just as good. At least enough to appease your president over this mess.” He gestured at the dead men around him.

  “No, I’m afraid your own government wants to speak with you, Colonel,” Stimson said.

  Henri deflated before their eyes when he realized his time on the run from his own government was now at an end. He took the gun from his pants and handed it to the agent. The look he gave Jack was not a pleasant one, and Collins knew trying to explain to Henri that he had nothing to do with his arrest would go by the wayside. Henri Farbeaux never forgot a slight and Collins knew he was back to square one with the Frenchman.

  “Come, gentlemen, we have little time. We have to get you clear of this and cleared fast. Things are starting to go to hell in a handbasket across the globe. The
president just placed the rapid deployment force in Kuwait on alert for action inside the borders of Iran.”

  Jack was taken aback. “I didn’t know FBI field agents were briefed on presidential orders?”

  “He didn’t brief me, Director Compton did. And he told me to tell you that the Azerbaijan field team is involved. I guess you’re supposed to know what that means.”

  Jack’s face went slack, a reaction that both Carl and Henri noticed.

  “What, Jack?” Carl asked.

  “Sarah is on the field team in Azerbaijan.”

  “Then we must obey your orders,” Henri said, becoming dead serious.

  The men were led from Vickers’s apartment. It was Jack who remembered what they had come here for.

  “Vickers could not have been working alone, you know that?” he asked no one in particular.

  “I’m afraid the men he does work for are untouchable at the moment,” Stimson said. He led the men past his special agents as they rushed into the slaughterhouse that was once a beautiful condo inside Georgetown. “Call the forensics team and issue an all-points for Mr. Hiram Vickers. This is his place and his mess,” he said to the team inside.

  “And why are the men in black untouchable?” Everett asked.

  “Because priorities have shifted, gentlemen, from passive preparedness to a war footing. Dr. Compton said you would understand. He said to tell you, Operations Magic and Overlord are on. And that you picked one hell of a time to go rogue on him.”

  Farbeaux didn’t know what either meant, but became concerned when he saw the countenance of Jack Collins go from worry to fear in a split second. “If you don’t mind telling me, what do those terms mean?”

  Jack stopped before reaching the FBI sedan.