The Last Second (A Brit in the FBI #6)(71)
CHAPTER FIFTY
Mike circled the man, his face still pressed against the ground, trying to figure out what was going on. CIA? Yeah, right. She wasn’t about to take his word for it. She ordered him up, marched him into the dining room, and handcuffed him to a chair. He didn’t say a word as she tied his legs to the chair. It wouldn’t stop him from breaking free, but it would slow him down long enough so she could shoot him.
They stood back and eyed the man. He was dark as an Arab, with a full black beard, and go figure—he had a frigging Southern accent. Nicholas said, “All right, you’re American and you claim you’re CIA. Yet you attacked us, twice, and you weren’t exactly firing blanks. You were trying to kill us, all of us. Why?”
Mills said, “Sorry about that, it wasn’t intentional—well, it was intentional by my betraying captain, but I didn’t intend it. Here’s what happened. I was told Broussard had escaped dying and Patel wanted him dead. She told me he was headed to Lyon, to Galactus. I don’t know how she discovered that, but I told her I’d go after him. What I didn’t tell her was I wanted to capture him, question him, see what he knew about this mess, if he knew where Patel and Byrne were.
“I guess Patel—or Kiera Byrne, more likely—made a sideways deal with my captain to make sure Broussard was killed this time. I couldn’t believe it—he and my men betrayed me! Me—Al-Asaad! The meanest terrorist bugger imaginable.” He sounded so outraged, Mike wanted to laugh. Instead, she kicked his leg. “Get on with this fine tale of yours.”
“So I get to Galactus with ideas of capture, and my son-of-a-bitch captain and the men, unbeknownst to me, were there to kill him.
“He wasn’t alone, there were you three. I didn’t know who you were, maybe cohorts. My men started firing and then, of course, you guys fired back. Then everything went to hell in a handbasket.”
He shrugged, had the gall to grin up at Mike.
She nearly punched him.
“I was trying to find out who you were and my men figured they had a free pass to kill the lot of you along with Broussard. Then you managed to escape. I had no alternative but to come after you. You could have all been in on it together with Patel and she was double-crossing you, I just didn’t know. I didn’t find out who you were until a couple of minutes ago. You’d already taken down nearly all the men, including that treacherous captain of mine, and it was my pleasure to remove the last one. And then I surrendered.”
He gave them a big grin. “Really good shooting. Gotta say, those individuals aren’t—weren’t—very nice, and some were new, but still, fairly well trained. Unfortunately, as it turns out, as I already said, they weren’t loyal to me but to my captain who talked them over, probably paid them.” Another grin. “And here we are.”
Nicholas stared down at Mills, his eyes narrowed, his arms crossed. He looked royally pissed. “You’re going to have to make me believe you, mate. I’m having a hard time fathoming how this all worked.”
“I’ll fill in all the blanks, answer all your questions, but first, do you know where Kiera Byrne and Nevaeh Patel are?”
“We don’t. We’re looking for them right now.”
“I assume you know about the nuke?”
“Yes, we do. How do you?”
“I’m supposed to. I’m CIA, as I told you. I’ve been deep undercover, playing Al-Asaad for two years now. Tough gig.” Mills sounded almost chipper, and Nicholas wanted to boot him in the jaw. He was furious. Nobody had bothered alerting them about this undercover CIA nutter?
Vince Mills recognized the rage, didn’t want to have his head knocked off, and said fast, “Kiera Byrne has been working with Khaleed Al-Asaad—that is, she’s been working with me. No, don’t shoot me. Here’s what happened: nearly three years ago, we—a CIA team—managed to kill Al-Asaad. Just before we announced to the world we’d killed a major terrorist and received our just kudos, we heard about a theft of plutonium from the Idaho Research Facility. Only we knew about it, and we kept it under wraps.
“Then we heard chatter about a new player looking for someone to make a nuclear bomb. They had the plutonium, but not the nuclear material and expertise. The CIA decided Al-Asaad was the perfect go-between. I wasn’t going to say no. The bombings, all the attacks, keeping him in character so the world still believed he was out there. Granted, there were a few bombings that were the doing of various unsavory people in the region, but we claimed responsibility.
“It wasn’t hard. We made sure to have me in the vicinity, doctored a few photos, put out a massive online propaganda campaign. You know how easy it is to spread disinformation through the Internet, Drummond. I’ve been playing a top terrorist for the past two years. Look at me. I’ve got the thick wild beard, coal-dark eyes, and heavy brows. I blend right in.
“My assignment was to make contact, make a deal with them. I would pay them for the plutonium, build the bomb for them, let them inspect it to their heart’s content, then arrest them at the last minute, hijack the nuke before they could blow up New York or whatever their target. They never told me.” He took his first breath, shrugged.
“So I resurfaced as Al-Asaad and eventually managed to net both Kiera Byrne and Dr. Nevaeh Patel, as you already appear to know, which doesn’t say much for CIA security. We struck a deal and they gave me the plutonium and I built the bomb. It had to be for real because I knew Patel was brilliant and she’d know if I’d screwed something up so it wouldn’t work, plus none of us knew if Patel was really the one behind the entire deal—we were thinking North Korea—which is why I simply couldn’t arrest both her and Byrne at the get-go. I had to play it out, find out the identity of this unknown person or country. Of course, turns out Patel was the head of the hydra.