Read the book: «Devil's Bargain»

PROLOGUE

Jaric Muhdal was waiting for the miracle to happen.

Word of the alleged breakout had been written in Kurdish on a wadded note tossed into his lap five days ago by his Turk captor. Muhdal had been ordered to eat the missive once he’d read it. Or was it six days, a week since the encounter? And was this simply mental torture, taunting him with false hopes of escaping the hell on earth called Dyrik Prison? One last sadistic blow by his tormentors to break his spirit, and days, he believed, before he was marched out to the courtyard to be beheaded?

It was nearly impossible to track time or grasp insight into mind games played by his tormentors, he concluded as he hacked out a strand of gummy blood, wincing when his tongue ran over the craters inside his mouth. Rage building, he felt the slime ooze down over his bare chest and stomach, pool to a warm slither against exposed genitals. Time was frozen, but his hatred felt as if it could last an eternity.

How much more could he take? Daily he was hung upside down, pummeled by fists, flogged by a metal studded belt. A slice of moldy bread, a cup of tepid water a day—he was a withered sack of drooping flesh. For endless hours he sat naked and bleeding from his scalp to the soles of his feet in the blackness of a six-by-four concrete-block cell, breathing the stink of his own filth and fear; waiting for execution. Still, solitary confinement was respite from torture.

He knew plenty about deprivation, suffering, cruelty—his people, after all, had been savaged by the Turks for eighty years—but even those who believed they carried the heart of a lion could long for death under such brutal conditions.

Only they wouldn’t break him, he determined. No begging to be spared when the time came, no crack in the armor of his will. He would take what he knew about his fellow PKK freedom fighters with him to the grave. As leader, there was no other way, the warrior’s ego also dictating he stand an iron pillar, an example of unwavering defiance in the enemy’s face. With the imprisonment of Abdullah Ocalan, the disappearance of his younger brother, Osman—previous heir to power—he hadn’t climbed the ranks of the Workers Party of Kurdistan by showing mercy, either to friend or foe. Why expect anything now but the worst at the hands of a savage, hated enemy? He would die the way he had lived. At worst, he could take comfort not even his death would cripple the dream of a Kurdistan nation.

Muhdal felt the pain dig needles of fire through every nerve ending. For some strange reason, agony seared to mind images of his wife and three children, murdered many years ago by Turk soldiers, leaving him to wonder how much they had suffered before they were beheaded, their bodies dumped in a mass grave with the other villagers. The ringing in his ears, his brain jellied and throbbing, smothered by darkness, and he found himself suddenly drifting away into warm darkness. Muffled by the steel door, the screams of other prisoners, whipped and beaten down the corridor, some of them, he knew, with testicles plugged into generators, echoing the cry of anger and hatred in his heart.

Pain was good, he decided. So was hate.

So was never forgetting.

Focus, he told himself, perhaps the Turk was being truthful. Hold on.

“Hope!” Escape first, then dip his hands in more enemy blood. Perhaps freedom was on the way, but at what price? he wondered. After all, the guards, like many Turks here, he knew, were Boz Kurt, members of a secret netherworld of militants, all of whom were hardly resigned to carry out the Ankara regime’s wishes without personal gain. Their treachery and brutal ways were legendary, even by Turk standards. The Gray Wolves—or so went the mythical nonsense, he knew, fighting to pull thoughts together inside the crucible of his skull—believed the first Turk was suckled by a wolf on the Central Asian steppe. Whether or not the milk of a wild beast spawned a bloodline of ferocious warriors, Muhdal only knew all Turks were devils in human skin. As for the Boz Kurt, they weren’t only considered terrorists by Ankara, but they were also drug traffickers.

Which was why he and fifteen of his fighters had been arrested in the first place.

Revolutions required money to purchase weapons, even loyalty. Briefly he thought back eight months, the Turks catching them asleep, but the question lingered as to how the Turks had found them, slipped so easily into the gorge. Of course, he never expected a trial, a just legal system all but an alien concept in Turkey. His crimes—so the Turks claimed—ranged from murder to drug trafficking, too many, in fact, to count.

Killing the enemy, he believed, was acceptable in the eyes of Allah. So was stealing from Turk thieves and murderers, a holy decree, spoken directly to him from God in dreams, God telling him the spoils of war were to be used to gain an edge against the enemy. How could he, in all good conscience, have stood idly by anyway, watch the Turks use the southeast corner of the country to fatten their own coffers with truck caravans of heroin funneled from Afghanistan, hashish from Lebanon. And when the Ankara regime, faceless butchers who marched their killers out to Anatolia, had declared a campaign of genocide against them generations ago, and soon after the treacherous Brits reneged on their promise to give the Kurds their own country…?

The groan echoing in his ears, he gnashed chipped, broken teeth, invisible flames racing down the long furrows in his back. It hurt to breathe.

The first of several rumbles sounded from a great distance, but it was next to impossible to judge direction, much less clearly absorb sound through the chiming in his ears, windowless walls and door a barrier to whatever the source. He strained his ears, heart racing, then shuddered to his feet, hand on wall to brace himself. Tremors rippled underfoot next, the thunder pealing closer, nearly on top of his cell. This region, he knew, was notorious for earthquakes, ground splitting open without warning, hills crumbling down to consume tens of thousands within minutes. Images of being buried alive were jumping through his mind, then the bedlam beyond the darkness broke through the bells in his ears.

Muhdal laughed, hope flaming as the racket of weapons fire, the screams of men being shot in the corridor seemed to pound the door, an invisible but living force shouting freedom was mere feet and seconds away.

The murderous din, he thought, oh, but it was the singing of angels.

Freedom! Salvation! Revenge!

He made out the rattling of a key being inserted. Laughing, so giddy with relief, he wasn’t sure he could walk. But pain seemed to leak out of bruised and gashed flesh like water through a sieve right then. Waiting, he watched as the door swung out, light stabbing the dark, piercing his eyes, autofire and angry shouts blasting a wave of sense, shattering noise in his face.

Squinting, he made out the stocky figure of the Boz Kurt guard. He was shoving himself off the wall when it happened.

There was a wink of light in the doorway, a shadow rolling up behind the man, an armed wraith clad in black, from hood to boots. Muhdal looked from the bayonet fixed to the assault rifle, believed he heard tesekkurler, the hooded one thanking the guard in Turk. Then a pistol flew up in a gloved hand, the shadow jamming the muzzle against the Turk’s skull. Muhdal felt his knees buckle as the shot rang out and blood sprayed his lips.

THE UNIDENTIFIED BOGEY blipped onto the screen, dropping from the sky, out of nowhere, it seemed. By the time he calculated numbers scrolling on the digital readout—speed, distance and rate of descent—Colonel Mustafa Gobruz knew it was too late. The hell with his men assuring him there was no evidence of malfunction. Whatever the object, it was sailing a bullet straight course for the compound, less than one minute out, he figured, falling to slam right on top of their heads.

Gobruz felt the anxiety edge to panic in the room, his three-man radar team crunching numbers he already knew. “I can read!”

The colonel then barked orders to scramble all hands, man the antiaircraft batteries, shoot down the bogey on sight. But even as he punched on the Klaxon to throw the compound into full battle alert, Gobruz feared the worst, doomsday numbers ticking down now to mere seconds. The sprawling compound might survive a direct hit from a missile or a crash landing by a crippled aircraft. The dread concern, however, was for the ammunition depots, fuel bins, choppers, motor pools, every machine in close proximity to the C and C, topped out with fuel and—

One explosion, pounding through ordnance and thousands of gallons of high-octane fuel, he knew, and the base would erupt, a conflagration leaving behind a smoking crater on the east Anatolia steppe.

Gobruz, snapping up field glasses, burst out the door, stared to the southeast. Baffling, frightening questions shot through his mind as he glanced at soldiers racing up behind the big guns, searchlights scissoring white beams over black sky, barracks spilling forth more troops.

This was no accident, he knew. A deliberate attack, no question, but who was manning the craft, plunging it to the base, perhaps using it as a flying bomb? Or was it one of those unmanned drones, maybe packed with high explosives? Again, who, why? The Kurds had no access to either surface-to-surface missiles or aircraft, much less high-tech unmanned aerial vehicles. Of course, Iran, Iraq and Syria bordered the nation, often providing weapons and fighters to the Kurds, hoping the primitive rabble could create its own independent nation, thus invite them in when the Ankara government collapsed.

Gobruz glanced at the antiaircraft guns, soldiers working with a fury to bring the cannons around and on-line. He was lifting the field glasses, but discovered there was no need.

The object was coming to them, hard, fast and low.

The searchlights framed the craft’s bulk, not more than a hundred feet up and out, he saw, as it nose-dived for the cyclone fencing. It appeared a midsize cargo plane, lights out, but no transport bird he knew of carried what appeared to be missiles on its wings.

“Fire!” he shouted across the compound. “What are you waiting for?”

He heard the bark of small-arms fire—why weren’t the big guns pounding?—glimpsed the fixed-wing plane clear the fenceline.

Then the world erupted in a flash of roaring fire. Blinded by a white sea of flames, eyeballs and face scorched by superheated wind, Gobruz caught the shrieks, his men torched by incendiary explosions he was sure. He was wheeling, about to launch himself through the doorway when he felt the flames sweep over him, his own screams added to the chorus of wailing demons as he was consumed by the wave of fire.

“LIVE OR DIE, your choice!”

Muhdal watched the faceless gunman, unsure of what was even real, senses warped, swollen by the din. Peering into the bright sheen, Muhdal saw the wraith flash white teeth, dark eyes burning with either laughter or anger. He strained to listen, his savior telling him he had ten seconds to strip the Turk and dress, or the door would slam shut.

Some choice, he thought. Outside, the price for freedom sounded more to him as if the gates of hell had opened to disgorge a legion of devils, there to devour every prisoner.

Men bellowed in agony, wailing from some distance. Muhdal nearly gagged as he sniffed the sickly sweet odor of roasting flesh. Were his men being burned alive, trapped in their cells, thrashing, craving for death to extinguish their misery? Were his rescuers Turks or Kurds? What was this madness?

His confusion deepened as the wraith snapped an order over his shoulder, switching to the Russian language. Another hooded shadow swept through the doorway and hurled what he assumed was water from a bucket. Muhdal took the liquid in the face and chest, then howled when he realized what doused him. The urine burned like acid, biting into countless open wounds.

“Bastards! You throw piss in my face?”

“Five seconds, or I shoot you dead!”

Was that laughter in his eyes? Muhdal wondered, the piss-thrower stepping back, kicking away the Turk’s assault rifle, then melting into the corridor where the hellish noise reached a deafening crescendo. Cursing, with a bayoneted muzzle inches from his face, Muhdal nearly shredded the blouse and pants off the body, dressed, finally squeezing into boots a size too small. No weapon in his hands, but he felt the gun in his heart, cocked and ready with murderous wrath, the pain a scalding blaze, now that urine was smothered by clothing, soaking into fabric. He was tempted to lunge for the RPK-74 light machine gun, but the hardman grabbed him by the shoulder, snarled something in Russian, shoved him through the doorway.

“Move it!” Muhdal found more black hoods swarming the halls. Some were armed with the longer, heavier version of the AK-74, banana clips holding forty-five rounds, Muhdal noting holstered side arms, commando vests, webbing studded with grenades and spare clips, com links snugged over hoods. Two big machine guns, Squad Automatic Weapons with 200 round box magazines in the hands of giants. He figured eight invaders at first count, but with shooting converging from all directions it was impossible to say. The deeper he headed down the corridor, the more he feared his immediate future. Several of the invaders were emptying weapons into the cages, mowing down prisoners behind the iron bars, rats in a barrel. They were tossing something on the bodies. As he passed strewed bodies, he found playing cards, the ace of spades with a grinning death’s-head resting on lifeless grimaces.

Muhdal wondered if they were murdering his own men, when, rounding the corner, thrust down the bisecting corridor that led to the north exit, he spotted Zeki and Balik being hustled outside by another squad of invaders manhandling the rest of his fighters for the open door, barking at them in a mix of Kurd and Russian the whole way. Whoever these hooded killers, they were professionals, he decided, wondering how they had taken down the prison so swiftly, no Turk resistance he could find anywhere. As long as they weren’t Americans—who aided and abetted the Ankara regime—he figured he could live with the indignity of a piss shower for the moment, if salvation from Dyrik was guaranteed. Still, he wouldn’t forget his shame.

Muhdal kept moving, saw several of the invaders spear bayonets through chests of downed Turks, gutting one or two like pigs, innards gushing to the floor. The vile stench was so strong now, bile wormed up his chest, hot slime rolling into his throat. And he spotted the smoke and flames leaping up through the grate in the floor of another wing, two fuel drums dumped on their sides. He picked up his pace, eager to put distance to the screams of men burning alive.

Muhdal hit the courtyard, grateful for fresh air, found the invaders ushering his men into the bellies of three Black Hawk gunships. The guard quarters had been reduced to flaming rubble, he saw, likewise the motor pool of Humvees and troop carriers, nothing but burning scrap. Forging into rotor wash, he gave the grounds and walls a quick search, spotted parachute canopies billowed out by heated wind. A look at the guard towers, he saw bodies draped over railings, the claws of four grappling hooks dug into the top edges of the wall.

Professionals, all right, he thought, aware the attack on the prison had been split down the middle between the invaders. Snipers, creeping in from the steppe, took out the guards, scaled the walls, the other half dropping square into the belly to blast and burn.

Nearing the Black Hawk, the Barking Hood on his heels urging speed, Muhdal looked to the distant northern sky. There, the sky strobed, blackness peppered to near daylight with brilliant white flashes. He knew there was a large Turk military base in that direction, thought he heard the rumbling of explosions, but the sound was muted by rotor wash.

He boarded the gunship, glanced at Balik before he was shoved to sit. He seethed, staring at the Barking Hood, another invader looking up from the green glow of a laptop monitor. White teeth flashed, a thumbs-up from the other invader, and the Barking Hood laughed.

Suddenly Muhdal felt as if he were quagmired in a nightmare, skin on fire, heart pumping with fury. Who were they? What did they want? They might have known who he was, but they didn’t know that, make no mistake, he would return the favor for dousing him in his cell.

The Barking Hood turned, stripped off the com link as the gunship lifted off. As the man tugged off the hood, Muhdal stared up at a face, purpled and cratered around the eyes and jaws from past battle souvenirs, the whole grisly picture as sharp as the edge of a razor, it could have been the skull on the ace of spades.

The big commando chuckled. “Cheer up, Moody. We’re here to help make you all rich men.”

Muhdal felt his heart lurch, jaw drop. “Americans?”

The Skull laughed. “Yeah, well, they say even the Devil can speak in all tongues.”

Speechless, anchored by fear, Muhdal wondered what horror lay in Kurd futures, staring into the Skull’s laughing eyes.

“You do believe in the Devil, don’t you, Moody? You damn well better—you’re looking at him.”

HE WAS CALLED Acheron, named for his resurrection after both the river of Greek mythology in Hades, and the demon who guarded the gates of Hell.

It was the sweetest thing, he thought, Judas bastards oblivious he was risen from the dead. Physically speaking, of course, it was impossible to breathe life into oneself, arise from ashes and dust, but the metaphor worked for him; he was alive and doing fine. Thanks to Big Brother, the old Michael Mitchell was long dead and gone, but Acheron was moving on into the night to settle that score, silence an unclean tongue.

And on national television, no less.

Acheron, he thought—he liked that, seeing himself as the living ghost of the charred bones of that skeleton body double from a forgotten covert war zone in Syria. Oh, he was back, all right, feeling good, strong, ready to grab center stage on the Josh Randall show, pull a dagger from the back of the operation of the ages.

With one final look over his shoulder, he found the Clairmont Studio lot clear of mortals, then keyed the guest door open. The kid at the gate had been easy, one shot through the forehead with the throwaway sound suppressed Walther M-6, but he had counted on the bogus Washington Post press pass to get him close enough to the booth, eliminate one problem, confiscate keys. That left two armed rental badges inside, he knew, certain his professional talent would drop a couple of overweight play babies who seemed more inclined to walk female employees to their cars after hours than patrol the premises between doughnuts and coffee. Nailing down the routine of the security detail—so much sloppiness and laziness, he stopped counting the errors of their ways thirty minutes into his first watch—his escape route was mapped out, dry run when he wasn’t surveying the studio from his high-rise apartment directly across Connecticut Avenue. This, he figured, would prove so easy it was damn near criminal.

Snicking the door closed behind, he found the hall empty, focused on the lights and the chatter of fools at the end of the corridor. Snugging the dark sunglasses tight with a forefinger, his former Company boss wouldn’t recognize him, he knew, not until he spoke the bastard’s handle. Black wig, mustache and goatee pasted on, it was a shame, he considered, that other traitors may be watching the left-wing-circle jerk tonight and never know who made the special guest appearance. Well, what was fifteen minutes of fame anyway, when there were years of glory and pleasure at the end of the golden road, beyond his return from the dead?

Marching, he unzipped the loose-fitting windbreaker, pockets weighted down with two exit goodies, twin .50-Magnum Desert Eagles, the show-stoppers. It was a bonus, he recalled, cozying up to the makeup girl at the neighborhood pub, plying her with drinks. She couldn’t have drawn the setup any better. The stage then, would be off to the right, two cameramen, ten o’clock, rentals on standby, in case an unruly guest needed the hook. It happened, he knew, or so he heard, the punk star so extreme sometimes in left-wing diatribe, even the rational of viewpoint had taken a lunge at his mustache. By God, what he wouldn’t give himself, he thought, to rip that mustache off his face, ram it down his gullet…

The coming statement would suffice.

A few paces from the studio, and he heard the loudmouth in question—LIQ—snorting at something the kid said. “With all due respect,” LIQ rebuked, “Josh, I was there. Your sources aren’t quite on the money. I’m telling you there’s a secret paramilitary infrastructure, of assassins and saboteurs working for the United States government.”

No shit, Acheron thought. And why did the talking dickheads always soften the verbal blow “with all due respect?” Politicians were the worst of flimflam artists, he thought, all their “quite frankly” and “to be quite honest with you” spelling out they lied the rest of the time. Let that be him up there, he’d tell the punk, “With all due kiss my ass, here’s the real fucking deal.”

Stow the righteous anger, he told himself. This was business.

The canister, tossed and bouncing up in the heart of the staff, led the entrance, gas spewing a cloud of noxious fumes. Their reaction was typical, expected: cries of panic flayed the air, clipboards and cue cards fell, a mad scramble of bodies ricocheted off one another. He compounded the terror, the Desert Eagle out and pealing. Two heartbeats’ worth of thunder blasting through the studio, he tagged the cameramen first, 250-grain boattails exploding through ribs, hurling them back, deadweight bowling down one of the rentals.

The act sticking to the script, he knew he was still live and in color, coast to coast. He was a star right then, and shine he would.

Another tap of the trigger, and he glimpsed a bright red cloud erupt out the back of the standing rental, bodies thrashing and hacking their way out of the tear gas. Tracking on, he dropped Rental Number Three as he staggered to his feet, a headshot, leaving no doubt. With only seconds to wrap it up, exit stage left, Acheron swung his aim stageward. The kid bleated out what sounded a plea, the star shrill next in demand his life be spared, silk-suited arms flapping. Acheron blew him out of his seat.

Rolling toward the raised platform, Acheron found the LIQ glued to his chair, hands raised. What the hell? Obviously the guy had gone soft, a civilian life of fame and small fortune dulling the edge of former killer instincts and battlefield reflex. Where he remembered the LIQ once lean and hard, Acheron saw a double decker chin, coiffed hair, pink manicured fingers, a goddamn walrus in Armani, he thought.

The former CIA assassin drew a bead between wide eyes, flipped the calling card on the table.

Fat quivered under the man’s jowl as he looked up from the ace of spades with a death’s-head. “You?”

“With all due kiss my ass—you’re a dirty rat bastard, Captain Jack.”

“Wait!”

“Waited more than ten years already,” Acheron said, and squeezed the trigger.

FRAMED IN SOFT LIGHT, they stared back, a living malevolence, it felt, mocking sleepless nights, telling him they would come for a day of reckoning.

“The rebel angels have risen from the pit.”

How could it be possible? he wondered. Another shot of whiskey, and the courage he chased kept running away, an evanescent ray of light in the shadows of his living room.

Over ten years had passed since he and several colleagues hatched the dread warning phrase they hoped none of them would ever need to pass on. Already one of them was dead, the national audience bearing witness to murder, and live on television, for God’s sake.

It was happening.

Still, Timothy Balton wanted to believe it was some grotesque prank by former colleagues, perhaps envious of his early retirement, that he carved himself a slice of peace and quiet, or maybe angry he turned away from them after a life of service and dedication to national security. Unfortunately there was this blight—off the record—on his career, haunting them all for more than a decade.

Their deaths had been confirmed—sort of. After those two covert debacles, which never came to the attention of any Senate committee on intelligence or counterterrorism, even the President of the United States kept in the dark, the rumor mill churned, casting spectres of grave doubt and fear over the headshed in the loop. The best forensics teams the NSA and the CIA could marshal stated, off the record, they couldn’t be one-hundred-percent certain the burned remains were those of Alpha Deep Six. Then there were the slush funds for black ops in secret numbered accounts, twenty million and change whisked into cyberspace following their supposed demise. Well, the horrible truth behind the vanishing act leaked out when the headshed’s cover-up was launched in dark earnest. A few crumbs of intel, however, tossed their way, here and there, by followers deemed nonessential personnel and cheated by Alpha Deep Six of their own payday only magnified the enormity of the agenda. As former head of the DOD’s Classified Military Aircraft-Classified Military Flights—CMA-CMF—he discovered, during a yearlong follow-up investigation, low- and high-tech jets, cargo planes and helicopters were vanishing from CIA, DIA and NSA bases and installations from Nevada to Afghanistan. The bodies of personnel responsible for guarding such aircraft began stacking up so fast, no witnesses, no clues, not a shred of evidence as to the identities of the assassins left behind, it struck him as if…

What? That all of them had been executed by murderous phantoms?

Trembling, he poured another dose from the half-empty bottle. Down the hatch, hands steady moments later, enough so he felt confident he could aim and fire the Taurus PT-58 with deadly accuracy. He pulled the CD-ROM from the desk drawer. Say they did come? What then? Hand Alpha Deep Six the gathered intelligence on all secrets known about them? Give up the details, hoping they would spare his life, about their disappearance and purported resurrection, what they had allegedly initiated as part of an agenda so horrific he now considered it the evil of the ages?

Evil, he knew, that he was, albeit indirectly, responsible for loosing on the world.

He stared at the picture on his desk. Choking back tears, he wondered if he would soon join his wife and only son.