Ghost Rendition Read online

  By 3:30 I had all the clothes I owned laid out on my bed and it was not a pretty sight. Suzanne used to do most of my shopping. She’d bring three of everything home, I’d try them on, she’d choose and return the rejects to the store. She had good taste, and she was the one who had to look at me. I hadn’t bought a piece of dress clothing since the divorce. My work doesn’t usually call for nice clothes. I dress to not stand out.

  I owned two jackets, but both had been ravaged by moths. The restaurant was casual, a shirt and slacks would be fine, but which ones? I wanted Suzanne to know I was putting in the effort. I couldn’t remember which were Suzanne’s favorites. Did that make me a bad husband? Bad ex-husband? Bad future husband? I did the breathing exercises I used to calm myself as a sniper. They didn’t help. The phone Caroline had left with my father buzzed.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “The Russians are here.”

  “They can’t be.”

  “And yet they are. I won’t be able to hold them off alone for long.”

  “I’m on my way.”

  If I called Suzanne and asked her to postpone, she might not give me another chance. There was a good chance I could do my work with Caroline and still get back in time. I spent my life making calculated gambles. I donned my camouflage gear, got in the Camry, and headed toward Caroline, Pratt, and the boys. Once I make a decision in the field, I don’t second-guess myself. It’s a dangerous distraction. I was on my third and fourth guess by the time I arrived at the safe house.

  If a genie popped out of a bottle and told me that he could magically make things right with Suzanne, but I would have to give up being a contractor, I would have taken the deal in a second. But here I was with the best chance I might ever get with her, and I was driving in the opposite direction. Yes, Caroline and Pratt’s lives were in real danger. And this was part of a plan to keep my family safe. But why hadn’t I walked away before this? At what point do you become what you do, no matter what your intentions are? Maybe if we survived, I would talk it out with Caroline. Then again, looking for relationship advice from a divorced Mossad agent who likely manipulated me to kill her ex-husband probably wasn’t the best way to resolve my issues.

  The safe house she and the boys were holed up in was almost exactly like the last one, an isolated nondescript single-family home next to woods on one side and a fenced-in neighbor on the other. The Israelis seemed intent on singlehandedly driving up suburban real estate prices. Pratt had given me situation updates along the way. True to form, the Russians had launched a brute force attack. They were coming at the house from the front and back. They tacked in diagonal moves toward the house. Caroline had armed the boys and had them trying to lay down suppressive fire. That had slowed the Russians down at first, but after they realized that there was no danger of the boys actually hitting anything, they had resumed their advance.

  I had equipped myself relatively lightly. This operation wasn’t about stealth or surveillance. It was going to be a quick success or failure. I had my vest on, my Browning in a shoulder holster, extra clips in my belt, and my MSR rifle in its case. I walked through the neighbors’ yard without taking extraordinary precautions. The Russians were too caught up in their mad charge to notice. I slid through a hole in the fence that Caroline had cut for me and entered the safe house through a basement window she had left open. The basement was set up exactly like the other safe house. The interrogation equipment was identical. I almost expected the Suit to come down the stairs and pepper me with questions.

  I got to the second floor staying away from the windows. The boys were having a great time firing MTAR-22s at the Russians. The Micro Tavor is a favorite of the Israeli military. They can be configured as a 5.56-mm assault rifle, but these were set up as 9-mm submachine guns with 32-round magazines, and the boys were expending them in long sustained bursts. It was like they were playing a video game, laughing and high fiving as they shot. Caroline went from window to window to see how the Russians were progressing.

  “Can we take the silencers off?” Todd asked. “It would make the sound much cooler.”

  Caroline ignored him. “About time you got here,” she greeted me.

  “I would have hurried if I knew you were having such a good time.”

  “I’m not reason enough?” she said.

  “Hey, tell them that I saved your eyes,” Pratt said.

  I waited for him to explain. Guessing was too tiring.

  “You see, I knew you were exaggerating,” Todd said.

  “If I hadn’t turned off the power, Richard would have shoved a knife in your eye,” Pratt said. “Tell them. They won’t believe me.” Caroline must have described her ex-husband’s interrogation methods, which had Pratt feeling very heroic.

  “Once you save a fellow agent’s eyes, you are officially a super-secret agent,” I said.

  “You see! You see!” Pratt said, and let loose a long, random, round of ordnance.

  “I thought you said he wasn’t an agent, just a contractor,” Todd said.

  “Let’s get to it,” I said to Caroline.

  She plugged a microphone into her iPhone, clicked her megaphone app, and crawled to the front window. She barked out harsh sounding Russian, and the shooting from outside halted.

  The reply came in heavily accented English. “Send out Mr. Pratt, and we will let the rest of you live.”

  “Fuck off,” was Caroline’s succinct reply.

  “Mr. Pratt, we do not wish to harm you. The Americans will send you to Egypt to die. There is a place of honor waiting for you in Russia.”

  “Go fuck yourself,” Caroline expanded on her earlier answer.

  “We have twenty agents here. The Americans protect you with two. They don’t care if you die.” Come with us and live like a Russian Czar!”

  “You have ten contractors and you can all fuck yourselves one by one,” Caroline said.

  The Russians resumed fire with gusto.

  I heard footsteps running down the stairs. I crawled to the window and saw Pratt run out the front door, computer clutched in his hands.

  “He’s running,” I yelled to Caroline.

  “It’s your shot,” she said, my MSR was already in her hands.

  The Remington Modular Sniper Rifle has a 0.7 MOA. One minute of angle means a hair over one inch of lost accuracy for every hundred yards of distance from the target. Pratt wasn’t going to get that far. The angle was the trickier part. You have to adjust your range to the slant range multiplied by the cosine of the angle of decline. Shooters used to carry a drop table to figure this kind of thing out. Now I have an app on my phone that does it. I did the math and lined Pratt up in the scope. I felt an odd surge of emotion that made my hands shake.

  “Are you okay?” Caroline asked.

  I did a few quick breaths and forced myself to calm down. I didn’t have much time. I let out a final breath and squeezed the trigger in between heartbeats. I hit Pratt high on his back. He fell forward and his computer flew from his hands. Blood from his mouth stained the grass. I shuddered. Caroline put a steadying hand on my shoulder.

  The Russians swarmed Pratt like roaches when the lights went out. Their strategy, if they had one, was to present too many targets for us to hit at once. Caroline had an MTAR configured as an assault rifle, and we picked off the Russians with surgical precision. We killed eight of them, but a short squat one with a bushy mustache broke through and grabbed Pratt’s computer. The other surviving Russian sprayed fire up at us as the one with the computer ran for the woods. I hit the shooter but only got his vest. He followed his compatriot into the woods, and they were gone. They left Pratt to die on the lawn. So much for living like a czar.

  Caroline and I waited long enough for the Russians to have safely cleared and went out to the lawn. Pratt looked like a little kid who had fallen asleep on the grass. His arms and legs were splayed carelessly at his sides. The spray of blood from his mouth was the only thing that spoiled the picture.


  “Get up, you big ham,” I said to him.

  “Are they gone?” he asked, not moving.

  “No, we thought it wouldn’t be fair if we didn’t let them get a clean shot at you.”

  He got up with his big sloppy grin on his face. “That was sarcastic,” he said.

  “What gave it away?” I said.

  “That was too. Did they buy it?” he asked.

  “They ran off like we were trying to steal their Halloween candy,” I said.

  “You did well,” Caroline added.

  “That fake blood tastes horrible.”

  “Brush your teeth,” I said.

  The blood capsule that Caroline had supplied had delivered an impressive spray. Israelis do tech well.

  “They’ll have the computer back to Russia and in the hands of their best tech team within twenty-four hours. It will really take them a week to realize they didn’t get the real code?” I asked.

  That’s what Caroline had outlined for this part of the plan, but I still found it hard to believe.

  “Probably more. It’s an approach that we thought would succeed. It turned out to be a dead end, but it took months of coding before we were sure we couldn’t make it work,” Pratt explained.

  “You weren’t supposed to tip the Russians for a few days still,” I said to Caroline.

  “They picked it up on their own. I guess they’re not as stupid as they look,” she said.

  “You’re slipping. Only ten contractors. You could have handled this yourself,” I said.

  “They’ll have a cleanup team here soon. They won’t want their agents found on American soil,” she said. “I’ll let you know when we’re settled again.”

  I took my cue to leave. It was six o’clock on the nose. If I drove at the top of the speed limit I could make it home in time to shower, change, and get to the restaurant on time. You don’t want to speed when you have a handgun and a sniper rifle hidden in a false bottom in the trunk, but it made me crazy not to be able to go faster.

  I made it onto the Saw Mill Parkway in good time. There wasn’t much traffic going south. It looked like I was going to get lucky. I actually thought that, “I am going to get lucky.” I’m not superstitious, but as soon as the thought crossed my mind, a stream of bullets bounced off my window. I was glad I had decided to install the bulletproof glass, but dying quickly with a bullet in my head might have been preferable to having to face Suzanne if I stood her up.

  The two surviving Russian contractors were strafing me from a red Porsche. What was wrong with them, still using cars that an amateur could spot? And how was it possible that they hadn’t managed to get farther away by now? They probably got lost. They had a Porsche, they were creeping along in the right lane, and they had no GPS? What were the odds of that?

  I hit the pedal hard, making it clear that I was trying to get away, not chase them. They swerved after me. These guys had the computer, and they were going to risk delivery just to try to kill me. I wanted to write a letter to Putin telling him he needed to remind these idiots about mission priorities.

  I peeled off at the exit. They would expect me to pull off to the side and ambush them. I turned instead and went back along the service road the wrong way against traffic. I weaved between oncoming cars. It wasn’t easy to do while looking in my rearview mirror.

  I saw the Russians barrel out of the exit guns blazing, aimed at where I would have been if I’d been lying in wait. They succeeded in destroying a lamp post.

  They fishtailed to a halt, spun, and sped down the service road assuming I was making a run for it. They never looked back.

  I did a hard spin onto the shoulder and pointed myself in the right direction. I merged back into traffic slowly. It wouldn’t make sense for the Russians to double back looking for me, but who knew with these guys. The flashing police lights in my rearview mirror made me vow never to mention my luck again.

  I could take the ticket and hope the cop left it at that or try to outrun him. My plates were fake, he couldn’t trace me, and if he searched my trunk thoroughly enough, it would be a big problem. I floored it and the Camry took off like a rocket. It’s not what the cop expected, and I got a good head start, making it back to the exit before he got up to speed. I headed south on the Saw Mill weaving in and out of traffic to make it harder for him to reacquire me. He could radio ahead and try to get someone to cut me off, but then he’d have to explain how he got dusted by a Camry.

  As soon as I was sure he didn’t have a visual on me, I could take an exit and get lost in the side streets. I checked my rearview mirror for his lights and almost drove right up the back of the Russians’ red Porsche. They were back in the right lane cruising along below the speed limit. Who had trained these clowns? Either go for anonymity and stay under the radar or go for speed. These guys managed to do neither.

  They launched their usual spray of ordnance. I swerved hard left to avoid the bulk of it. I hit the accelerator hard and hoped I could put some quick distance between us, but now they were all for speed.

  I swerved hard across lanes and let them fly by. The nearest exit was a mile away, and worse, my rearview mirror flashed red and blue with cop lights. I was boxed in.

  I had one play. I honked and gave the Russians the bird. The Russian in the passenger seat went crazy. He rolled down his window and opened up on me with abandon. He was so excited about killing me, that he didn’t see the cop behind me.

  I swerved to the left lane and the cop got the brunt of his fire. He was still far enough away that I knew he wouldn’t take any serious damage, but now he had something to chase. The Russians took off like a rocket. The cop floored it and tried to keep up. I waved them both good-bye.

  It was 7:30. I could call Suzanne and plead over the phone or get to her as soon as possible and plead in person. I opted for in person. She would have a harder time staying angry if she could see how pathetic I looked. And it had the virtue of postponing the moment of truth. I drove perilously fast and made it to my house by 7:50. I swapped my license plates, stowed my guns, and showered in record time. I grabbed the least wrinkled shirt and pants off the bed and threw them on as I ran back to the car. I stood outside the door of the Big House by 8:20. I was over an hour late. I rang the doorbell and fought the impulse to run away. Devon opened the door and the look on his face made me wish I had.

  “Why are you wearing that shirt?” he asked.

  It was an inoffensive brown button down. “Your mom bought me this shirt.” I thought it was a safe assumption since she made almost all of my purchases.

  “Grandma gave that to you and mom hates it.”

  “My mother?”

  “Her mother.”

  Suzanne had a complicated relationship with her mother who never hid her disapproval of Suzanne’s career moves. It came back to me that she used to say that it looked like a turd that her mother had dropped on us. Why hadn’t I thrown it away? And why did Devon remember and I didn’t? I should have let him dress me.

  “She probably forgot all about it by now,” I said.

  For a moment I thought he wasn’t going to let me in. He turned sideways and I squeezed past him. Suzanne was coming down the stairs. I launched right into groveling. “I’m sorry I’m late. I got caught up with work and then a cop got me for an illegal U-turn because I was rushing to get here and it turned into a whole thing. You look beautiful by the way. It was worth the ticket,” I said. She did look great. She was wearing a simple black dress with a scoop neck and a string of pearls I had given her when Devon was born. “Did I say how sorry I am? I plan on saying it a few hundred times during dinner too. It could be fun. I might break the record.”

  “Devon, please give your father and me a few minutes to talk.” Considering Suzanne’s biggest worry was Devon spending too much time alone in his room, this was not a good sign.

  “Suzanne, I was looking forward to this all day. I had every shirt and pants I owned on the bed trying to figure out what to wear.”


  “And that’s what you came up with? I thought I gave it to Goodwill.”

  “I suck at this. I know that. But there is nothing in the world more important than figuring things out with you. That has to count for something.”

  “It does, but not for everything.”

  “Did I mention how sorry I am?” was all I could manage.

  “One question. Was the blonde woman with you when you were working?”

  “There is nothing going on with her. I promise you that.”

  “That’s not what I asked.”

  “Yes. I need her help for my work, but that’s it.”

  “Why? What is she helping you with?”

  “I can’t tell you.”

  “But it was more important than being here on time.”

  “Of course not.”

  “She kidnapped you against your will?”

  “I thought the timing would work out. It should have. It was bad luck.”

  “And you couldn’t call and let me know because you were too engrossed with your work with her.”

  “Please don’t make this about her. This is you and me,” I said.

  “You managed to drive off Dean, but you want me to ignore you and this mystery blonde woman.”

  “There is no me and the blonde woman.”

  “I used to think it was me, my own insecurities, that I was seeing things that weren’t there. But there is something. And you can’t or won’t tell me. How can I live with that?”

  She looked at me as if to give me one more chance to prove her wrong. But what could I say? Sorry I haven’t told you earlier, but I’m a CIA contractor and I’ve put Devon and your life at risk. Even if she got over that, it would only put her more at risk. Suzanne could be very believable that her ex-husband had never been honest with her. That was her final shield, and I couldn’t risk taking it from her.