Walsh speaks up again. “A few years ago, Phillips was temporarily detached from army Special Forces and brought into the Special Activities Center. He was skilled, focused, and good at his job. We offered him a permanent transfer, but he declined. Said he loved the army too damn much.”
“Sounds like a stand-up American. And a loyal soldier.”
“Not anymore, obviously,” says Perkins. “We know that Metro Police, the FBI, the ATF, and the Virginia State Police had a little gathering in his motel room yesterday.”
“Glad to hear you’re up on the latest. But you still haven’t said what you want from me.”
“We’ve talked to your bosses at DC Metro,” says Perkins. “You’re now a contract consultant with CIA.”
“Meaning what? Do I get a raise?”
Walsh doesn’t appreciate my joke. “It means we’ll pass along information to you if you agree to pass along information to us.”
“Okay. What’ve you got that we don’t?”
“For starters,” says Walsh, “some names you’d never find on your own.”
“Look,” says Perkins, “we’re on the same team. We want to stop the bombings.”
It can’t be that simple. With CIA, it never is. “What’s the connection? Did Phillips come back to work for you?”
“That’s right,” says Perkins. “After Kabul fell, he had a change of heart. He contacted us and we put him back into our Special Activities Center.”
“Where’d you send him?”
“Back to Afghanistan. Under our wing.”
“How many missions?”
“Just one,” says Perkins.
“What was the mission?”
“Classified,” says Walsh.
I take a sip of my coffee and look back and forth between them. “Let me guess. He went rogue.”
CHAPTER 61
I CAN ALWAYS TELL when I’ve hit a nerve.
The two CIA agents look at each other. Walsh fiddles with his wrinkled lapel.
“What did Phillips do when he stepped out on you?” I ask.
Perkins breaks the silence. “Broke a bunch of laws and regulations. He joined up with other Special Forces members out there, freelancing, conducting confidential missions against orders. He self-deployed for about six months before coming back stateside. We also know he later spent some time in a VA hospital in Virginia, then checked himself out after some trouble there.”
“A month after that,” says Walsh, “is when the first bomb went off.”
“You guys think there’s a link between those bombings and what Phillips was up to overseas?”
“Weknowthere’s a link,” says Perkins.
I sit quietly for a minute, running through the case in my mind. Every conversation. Every interview. Every detail.
Then it hits me.
“The C-4! That’s it, right? When ATF asked Langley for the taggants we found, somebody got spooked. Because the taggants matched the supply Phillips brought back from his mission in Afghanistan.”
