Lethal Agent (Mitch Rapp #18)(89)

There was no doubt that she was right, Kevin Gray knew. The DEA man being interviewed could barely meet the interviewer’s eye. But this was politics. Truth and lies were irrelevant. All that mattered was what people believed.

He had arrived at Barnett’s house around 4:30 a.m., just as the Internet was starting to light up with rumors about an anthrax shipment being intercepted on the U.S. border. Now the sun was up and the newspaper article filled with the lurid details he’d leaked was in the wild. As expected, it had caught fire and was burning bright on virtually every news outlet worldwide. But like all infernos, it was proving impossible to control.

Joshua Alexander was once again demonstrating the political cunning that had made his meteoric rise to the presidency possible. He and Irene Kennedy weren’t satisfied to absorb—or even deflect—the political blow. They were trying to turn it to their advantage.

“Can we see?” the reporter said over the television’s speakers.

The DEA agent grimaced in pain as he lifted his shirt and showed the deep bruising on his chest.

“So that’s where the bullet hit your vest?”

He nodded. “One round here and another in my back.”

“And you were sure the vest would stop the round?”

“Yeah,” he responded, lowering his shirt again. “Well, pretty sure anyway.”

“That seems like an incredible risk to take.”

An uncomfortable smile played at the edges of his mouth. “The cartels have millions of dollars to spend on technology and they spend a lot of it on surveillance. In this case, it was something we could use. It can take years to penetrate a trafficking organization with an undercover agent, but with the biothreat we didn’t have years. We had to make sure another attack wasn’t carried out and try to trace the supply chain back to ISIS. Like the old saying goes, desperate times call for desperate measures.”

Based on the reporter’s expression, she had lost all objectivity. “I never thought I’d be sitting across a kitchen table from a card-carrying hero. But here I am.”

The DEA man shook his head. “The American people pay my salary. It’s the job.”

Barnett started jabbing in the air with the remote again. “Look at that son of a bitch! He’s eating this up! He and his people just went from being the morons who let someone walk away with their coke to being America’s darlings.”

Gray felt like he was going to be sick. He didn’t have any idea how to talk his boss down and, for one of the first times in his career, he had no idea what to do.

Barnett began compulsively changing channels, finding pretty much the same story on every one. While she was distracted, Gray pulled the phone from his pocket and pretended to check texts. In reality, he was turning on a recording app.

Barnett landed on a station with a former FBI executive speaking to a roundtable of pundits. Even more ominous was the tiny picture-in-picture at the bottom right corner of the screen. It depicted people shuffling into the White House Briefing Room.

“. . . next time you complain about paying taxes or start talking about how the government can’t get anything done, I want you to remember those guys getting shot for the benefit of a cartel surveillance drone.”

“So you’re saying that CIA operative’s financial problems—his motivation for stealing those drugs—were fabricated,” the man next to him said.

“Of course they were. The Agency would have used the IRS, SEC, and probably a number of foreign intelligence agencies to create an ironclad legend for his guy. They had to make it absolutely convincing that he’d resort to something like this. After that, I can only speculate. My best guess is that he used this to make contact with the cartel that transported the anthrax and made a case for them to hire him. It’s really incredible. This is dangerous to the point of being insane. I mean, we’re talking a ninety-nine percent chance the cartel just tortures him to death for stealing their product.”

“Bullshit!” Barnett shouted. “That asshole isn’t just coming up with all this on his own. He and Kennedy have been friends for years. She fed it to him and sent him out on a media tour.”

“And where do you think this man is now?” one of the interviewers asked.

“Dead,” the FBI man answered, genuine anger audible in his voice. “If he actually managed to succeed in getting inside that cartel operation, they would have executed him the second that story leaked.”

“And our ability to track the terrorists and cartel operations died with him,” the host said by way of a quick summary. “We’re being told that the White House press conference is about to start.”

The screen shifted to a view of the briefing room, and Gray watched Alexander’s press secretary stride onto the podium.

“This is going to be short,” he said and then began reading a prepared statement. “The events described in the Post this morning are largely accurate. We did intercept an anthrax shipment in San Ysidro and a CIA operative did assault three DEA volunteers in an attempt to infiltrate the cartel that had partnered with ISIS. What you don’t know is that the operation was successful. Our man was able to access the top echelons of that cartel and was using those contacts to locate Sayid Halabi and the rest of the ISIS hierarchy. He was also able to thwart a second attempt to smuggle a quantity of anthrax across our border. However, as of this morning, we’ve lost contact with him and he’s now presumed dead. Unfortunately, the information he was able to gather to date wasn’t specific or conclusive. Having said that, our law enforcement agencies are doing what they can with it. Further, the FBI has picked up the reporter who wrote the article and are questioning him about his source. There’s not much more to say at this point, other than to thank the men and women who have risked everything to keep this country safe. They won’t be forgotten.”