Page 47 of The Fourth Option
“I thought his deal was a year.”
“It was. We extended the timeframe. That’s how it works.”
Walker leaned back. “Mongoose is jumpy. After all the Haqqani pricks he’s given us, they’ve got to be putting things together. If I tell him you’re out, he might bolt.”
“Bolt. Please. Where would he go?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he’ll just go dark.”
“Then don’t tell him. Give him what he needs to hear.”
“Come on, Lenny.”
“Relax, Chris. Mongoose will get his payout. It’s in the files.”
Fisk lit a cigarette, exhaling toward the ceiling, the smoke wrapping around the RPG launcher above.
“I didn’t smoke before this place,” he said. “Now look at me.”
“We all leave here with something,” Walker replied.
Fisk reached into his pocket and slid a folded scrap of paper across the table. “That’s the case file number for Mongoose. You can access it from the SCIF at Eagle Base. Keep tabs from there.”
“If something goes sideways?”
“Mongoose is compartmentalized. He’s run out of headquarters now. Use that cryptonym. They’ll help.”
Walker tucked the paper into his shirt pocket. “That it?”
Fisk stood and offered his hand. “That’s it. See you around, Chris. I should roll. I’m out in a few hours.”
Walker shook his hand, then watched Fisk disappear into the smoke and noise of the Tali-Bar.
Walker sat at a hardwired terminal in the SCIF at Eagle Base, the glow of the screen casting shadows across his face. He had already pulled the Mongoose case file, what little of it was not redacted.
Redacted. Such bullshit. Walker put it out of his head, thinking instead of Mongoose. The next time Walker met Naji, the first question would be about the visas. Walker would lie if he had to, that was part of the job, but he didn’t want to. He would do as instructed and contact the counterterror center at HQS. Maybe he could get the visa expedited.
The door hissed open. Staub entered, fresh from a briefing, still wearing the chalky white gypsum of the compound on his boots.
He kept his voice low. “The meeting I just came from? You are not going to fucking believe it.”
Walker didn’t look up. “What’s up?”
Staub leaned in, even though the SCIF was hardened against every known form of surveillance, analog, digital, or otherwise.
“The chief read me into a new SAP,” he said, pronouncing the acronymlike the stuff of pine trees, short for special access program. “We’re planning to shut this place down.”
Walker looked at Staub. “Define shut down.”
“Evac,” Staub whispered. “It’s not just the military like we thought. Extraction routes. Safe houses. Contingency plans for certain assets. The kind of thing you do when you’re pulling stakes.”
Walker’s stomach tightened. “A full withdrawal?”
“The chief called it a contingency, but yeah, and it already has a code name, ‘Sable Wind.’ He wants the plan finalized in under two weeks.”
Walker sat back. The quiet in the SCIF. The empty cubicles. The silence before the storm.
“No Agency presence?”
