Fog of War (Justin Hall # 3) by Ethan Jones Read Free Book Online Page B

left no room for options.
    “OK, when do they want to see me?”
    “ASAP.”
    True to their reputation, they want everything done yesterday.
    “I’ll see if I can change flights. If everything works out, I could be at Langley as early as Wednesday morning. The afternoon would work better.”
    “Great. I’ll let them know. After the meeting, I expect a briefing about the intelligence they’ll be giving you.”
    If it is worth anything, Justin thought, but held his tongue.
    McClain said, “One last thing, Carrie’s meeting you in the States as well.”
    “Carrie?” Justin arched his bushy eyebrows at the mentioning of his partner’s name. “Isn’t she still on leave?”
    “She was. She called this morning from Grozny. She’s coming back, and I want her to attend the CIA’s briefing.”
    Justin wanted to ask if Carrie had found her father’s grave, but knew better. Carrie would not confide in McClain such an important detail of her life. She barely knew McClain, who had taken his position less than four months ago. Carrie’s father, a colonel in the Canadian Army, had disappeared during a covert mission in the late eighties in the Soviet Union. She joined the Army in part to learn about his fate, but all her efforts had hit a dead end. Recently, she had come into possession of some classified information: a photograph that was supposed to show his grave, somewhere in northern Grozny, Chechnya. If she hasn’t told me, she hasn’t told anyone.
    “All right,” Justin said. “Anything else?”
    “No, that’s it. I’ll brief Carrie right away. Take care, boys.”
    “You too, sir,” Justin and Nathan spoke in almost a single voice.
    “CIA needs you,” Nathan said with a smirk after Justin ended the call. He pointed his index finger at Justin, then gave him a wink.
    “Yeah, they do. Like someone needs a pair of tongs to get their nuts out of the fire without burning their hands.”
    Nathan grinned. “What’s this intel about?”
    “Well, according to McClain it’s highly classified. I’d have to see it before believing it. CIA isn’t known for playing nice and sharing their toys with us.”
    “But we’re giving them everything we’ve got from the Iranian defector.”
    “That’s to trick us into believing this is a fair exchange, and we’re working together. We were going to give those reports to them anyway. Perhaps not so fast, but eventually they were going to get a copy. Anyway, let’s grab some dinner before finishing the cleanup. What’s left in the fridge?”
    “A couple of pizza slices and some spaghetti.”
    “It will do. We’ll have a big breakfast tomorrow before our flight. Let’s eat.”
     

 
     
     
     
     
     
     
    Chapter Four
     
     
    Ashgabat, Turkmenistan
    September 21, 3:45 a.m. local time
     
    Justin and Nathan waited until the moon hid behind a heavy curtain of clouds and slipped out of the apartment under the cover of darkness. They had been following the movements of their neighbors and the flow of traffic over the past few nights, before their infiltration into Iran. This was the best time to leave undetected, when the entire district fell into complete silence. The last drunken patrons of the nightclub at the end of the block had already stumbled back into their cars or their homes. And it was too early for morning shift workers to hit the streets.
    Canada had no embassy or consular presence in Turkmenistan, and so the Embassy of Canada in Ankara, Turkey, provided services for Canadians in this country. Justin and Nathan did not need any assistance regarding their passports, since they had entered the country by using Russian passports. Justin was a freelance travel journalist, with two large camera bags around his shoulders to prove it. Nathan was his assistant and reporter. A Canadian diplomatic presence would have offered them a secure place to find weapons and other operational gear and to drop them off at the end of the mission.
    Instead, they had to rely