Termination Orders(78)

The recruits stood quietly, reverently, as Powers went on. “Tomorrow, you choose your assignments. Some of you will work in the headquarters at Langley as analysts, while others will be placed as attachés in foreign embassies and will be primarily responsible for gathering intelligence. These are both noble callings, vital to the functioning of our agency and, thus, to our country.

“But the boldest among you”—he looked intently at the graduates—“will choose to go into Black Ops. Those few will live lives that are dangerous and, odds are, short. They will do things that most are not capable of doing. But these men will have the unique opportunity to make history through their actions. I trust that when the time comes, you will choose wisely.”

“But first,” he said, breaking the solemnity of his tone, “I want you dressed in civvies and ready at 1700 hours sharp. We’ll all be going out for an informal, relaxing evening at the Snapping Gator across town. There’ll be good food, music, and I heard there might even be a woman or two.” He finished with a smile, and a round of cheers rippled through the room.

The new graduates reported back at 5:00 P.M., and they joked with one another as they jostled for seats near the front of the bus so they could be the first out. But not Morgan, who was calm and stress-free for the first time in months. He took a seat toward the back of the bus, reclined, and sighed a contented sigh. It was over. He had done it. Even though he knew the hardest part was about to begin—actually being a spy—for the time being, he wanted to bask in the accomplishment.

He closed his eyes in the darkness of the bus, its glass windows painted black to prevent them from knowing the location of The Farm. As he felt the bus pulling away, he drifted off to sleep amid the sound of his fellow graduates roughhousing up front, until the bus brakes whined to a stop.

“Gentlemen, we’re here!” said Powers. “Everybody, out!”

“Come on, Cobra!” said Conley, moving on excitedly up ahead of him. But Morgan took his time. The bar wasn’t going anywhere, and after a year of constant strain, this time there was no pressure, no hurry.

By the time he had gotten off the bus, all the other graduates had run out ahead of him. He stepped down to the ground, and he knew something was wrong before he even heard the footsteps of a half dozen black-clad masked men, who surrounded him completely and cut him off from the bus. Behind him, one of them swung some sort of club, hitting him in the back. Another’s fist hit him in the jaw, and he staggered and fell backward onto the gravel.

They closed in. Morgan struggled, throwing kicks and punches wildly, but there were too many of them to fight off. He felt a hand close over his nose and mouth, and the pungent smell of chloroform engulfed his senses. He faded fast, struggling with the single-minded desperation of a trapped animal, until he completely lost consciousness and his body fell limp, like a rag doll.

When Morgan woke up, his head ached, his throat was dry, and his arms were heavy and numb. He couldn’t see anything, and it took him a moment to realize that this was because he had a rough canvas sack over his head. He tried to bring his hands up to remove the hood but found that they had been cuffed together behind his back to the chair he was sitting on. His next instinct was to work the sack off by moving his neck, but he found he couldn’t budge. His head was taped tightly to a pole that rose from the ground behind him.

He heard voices, but he was too disoriented to make out what was being said. As the fog cleared, he realized that the reason he couldn’t understand them was that they were not speaking English. It was a foreign language, one he recognized readily enough as Russian.

They pulled the hood off his head, and a blinding light shone into his face. There were at least two men in the room, but he couldn’t see anything except vague silhouettes. He screwed his eyes shut, but it helped only slightly. He still felt the bulb’s heat on his face like a furnace.

“Who the hell are you people?” he demanded. “What do you want from me?”

The response was a fist smashing into his face. He tasted blood.

“Shut your mouth, American,” said one of them, through a thick accent. He was tall and thick like a gorilla. “You only talk if you are answering our questions.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

The man punched him hard in the gut, smashing him against the back of the chair. Morgan’s reflex was to double over, but the harness on his head held him tightly. He retched in pain.

“Where is the secret CIA training center?”

“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. You people are luna—” A meaty fist smashed into Morgan’s right cheek, and blood oozed into his mouth.