“Mom,” she said, still breathing heavily. “Who the hell were those guys?”
CHAPTER 20
Morgan arrived at the Philadelphia International Airport early the next morning. From Istanbul, he had hired a driver to take him to Thessaloniki through Bulgaria, and from there he took a commercial flight to the United States with a connection in Zurich under the third alias he’d used in the past two days. While at the airport, he bought two disposable prepaid cell phones—burner phones. The first he used to call home, Jenny’s cell phone, and then Alex’s. If he knew anything about how the CIA operated, they were by now tapping all of his family’s lines, and he had just effectively announced his location to everyone who was looking for him. But if there was a chance that Jenny and Alex were still at home, that meant they were in danger. He was only partly relieved when no one picked up at his house and both Jenny’s and Alex’s cells went straight to voice mail. He hoped they had gotten his message and were by now safely hidden away in his father’s tiny hunting cabin in Vermont, where Morgan had instructed Jenny to go, many years ago, in case something ever happened.
He dropped that phone into the open backpack of a teenaged traveler who was headed for the check-in counter. If they were going to track him, let them try. By the time they realized they had the wrong scent, he’d be long gone.
He looked up the address of a used car lot in the phone book and took the commuter rail into the city. Airport cabs were much too easy to trace. Once inside the city, Morgan switched to buses. He kept an eye out for tails and took the usual evasive precautions, getting on and off vehicles at the last minute and making frequent, unexpected turns.
About an hour and a half later, he arrived at the Mercado used car lot, where a man in a yellow jacket approached him and asked, “What can I do to get you to drive out of here in your new car today?”
Morgan grinned.
Half an hour later, he was driving away in a 1999 Sebring convertible. From there, he made a stop to pick up some supplies at a drugstore to replace his bandages. In the parked car, he laid out the fresh rolled-up bandages, surgical tape, and scissors on the passenger seat and carefully undid the older dressing. He examined the wound, which had been restitched by a doctor in Istanbul. Considering the circumstances, it was healing fine.
Once finished, he sat in the car and mulled over his next step. He had a visceral urge to go north to reunite with Jenny and Alex, who were alone, scared, and possibly in danger. All he wanted was to be there to protect them.
But things, of course, weren’t that simple. He couldn’t just forget what had happened in Kabul. He took out the little memory card he’d received from Zalmay and clutched it in his fist. He’d looked through the rest of the photos, and they just got more and more incriminating. Several featured T approaching the airplane and talking to a man that he recognized as Bacha Marwat. The last few showed T, still at the airfield, speaking to a man whom he did not recognize, with a face that reminded Morgan of a bulldog.
As far as Morgan was aware, he was now the last living person who knew about the Acevedo International conspiracy who wasn’t also in on it. Even if he chose to ignore the fact that Acevedo was funding the enemy and reported nothing to no one, he would still be too dangerous to them at large. Morgan could take his family and disappear, but how long could he stay vanished? How long until he slipped up and T or someone else came knocking? No, he couldn’t let this go. He needed to get answers, and the answers wouldn’t be up north.
He picked up the second phone and dialed. It was a shot in the dark, and like any shot in the dark, it could go terribly awry.
“Is this line secure?”
“Is this who I think it is?” asked Plante.
“Is this line secure?” he insisted.
“Hold on,” Plante said. Morgan heard a click, and a low hum came over the line. “It’s safe now. Cobra, you need to come back in. Where are you?”
“Isn’t that the million-dollar question?” he said bitterly.
“Why are you on the run? And why did you shoot up a zoo?”
“Will it help if I say I didn’t start it?”
Morgan could imagine Plante’s disapproving stare. “I hope for your sake there’s a good reason for this. And if there is, you need to get back here and explain before they send an operative to kill you.”
“It wouldn’t be the first in the past few days.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Someone was waiting for me in Kabul,” he said. “Someone knew I was coming. I met Conley’s asset, and they killed him. He left me with a memory card that would make a lot of very powerful men very uncomfortable.”