Operation Mockingbird Read online

  OPERATION

  MOCKINGBIRD

  OPERATION

  MOCKINGBIRD

  LINDA BALETSA

  Spratt & Co. LLC

  Boston ● Miami

  Copyright © 2013 by Linda Baletsa

  All rights reserved

  First Edition

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination of are used fictitiously.

  Operation Mockingbird may be purchased online at amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com and at your local bookstores.

  ISBN: 978-0-9894461-0-5

  Cover Design by LogoWizards.com

  Spratt & Co. LLC

  November 11, 2013

  Boston, MA

  To Trey and Megan

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Acknowledgements

  CHAPTER ONE

  Kandahar, Afghanistan

  A THUNDERING EXPLOSION ripped through the night. Matt Connelly’s heart jumped and then began racing. He pressed his back and arms against the wall, bracing himself, as he looked down one end of the alley and then the other. Dust filled the air, obscuring anything farther than a few feet in front of him. He began to choke and waved his hand in front of his face, trying to clear the air. The crescent-shaped moon he had seen just moments before perched above the building across the alley was now only vaguely visible through clouds of dust.

  There was another huge blast, and the building behind him shuddered violently against his back. Matt leaned forward and pushed himself off with the toes of his boots, propelling himself away from the structure. He landed face down in a pool of putrid water. The liquid assaulted his eyes and nose.

  He pushed himself up gagging and spitting just as a third explosion tore through the air. The ground trembled beneath him as the reverberating undertow of the explosion rolled past. Chunks of plaster and small rocks rained down from the sky, pounding his body and the ground around him. He covered his head with his hands and arms. Without support, he fell back into the water.

  He held his breath as he braced himself against the assault on his body. The objects falling from the sky continued to pummel him, purposefully pushing him deeper and deeper. A searing pain tore through his left shoulder. He tensed but couldn’t move. His eyes burned. His lungs were on fire.

  Matt uncovered his head and, reaching forward, pushed his head and torso up. He gasped for air and then, breathing deeply, filled his lungs. The fog before him slowly began to clear. The water beneath him began to settle. In it, Matt saw the reflection of flames licking the sky. He vaguely registered a cacophony of sounds around him. With his arms beneath him, supporting his upper body, he started to twist around. His shoulder screamed in protest. The weight on the back of his legs and lower back grew heavier, pushing him down farther and farther into the filth.

  The terrible screams and cries from those in the rubble behind him were the last sounds Matt heard before he fell into the murky abyss of unconsciousness.

  Miami, Florida

  Two Months Later

  THE HOT AIR GREETED Matt with a wet and familiar kiss as he strode off the plane and onto the main concourse of Miami International Airport. The blinding South Florida sun streamed through the large windows lining one wall of the newly renovated terminal. As he made his way through the busy terminal, Matt used his right arm to gingerly swing his carry-on bag over his shoulder. Nonetheless, pain shot up and down his left side. More than two months since the original injury and one month since he had been reinjured, the shoulder still served as a painful reminder of his time in the Middle East.

  Photographs of Miami were plastered on the walls. Pictures of strawberry fields and citrus groves. A scene of the Miami skyline at night lit up with brilliant colors. A row of Art Deco hotels on South Beach. The Freedom Tower beckoning from the center of Downtown Miami. Matt smiled at the memories these pictures evoked.

  At Passport Control, the TSA agent’s eyes flickered over Matt before he swiped the passport through the reader connected to the computer. As the computer retrieved the appropriate data, the agent examined the passport carefully, flipping through the many pages of stamps. Matt saw the computer screen flash, and the agent started scrutinizing the monitor, scrolling through the data and then typing very slowly on the keyboard. Matt expelled a sigh of relief when his passport was returned and he was sent on his way.

  Weaving his way through the crowd, Matt dodged people embracing amid piles of luggage. Locals greeted long-lost family members in Creole, Spanish and Hebrew in the chaos that was the third largest American airport for international passengers. Occasionally, a word of English could be heard, but in most cases greetings were delivered in a heavy accent. He smiled as visitors from the Northeast, in town to escape the cold, appeared to be checking signs to make sure they had in fact arrived at a United States airport and not in some foreign country.

  The appreciative glances he garnered from the women he passed did not go unnoticed. Matt was 6 feet 2 inches tall, leaner than when he had started his journey and, after months in the desert, deeply tanned. His light brown hair was bleached practically blond by the sun. Matt figured he was probably being mistaken for a lawyer or an accountant returning from a relaxing vacation in the Caribbean. Nothing could have been farther from the truth.

  Baggage. We all have it, read the Kenneth Cole advertisement on the luggage carousel. But Matt felt rather light in the baggage department. Sure, he had some issues but, after what he had just been through, he figured his baggage was completely manageable. Baggage. We all have it. But it doesn’t necessarily need to weigh you down, Matt thought, finishing the advertisement from his own perspective. He grabbed his bag, walked out of the airport and hailed a cab.

  Twenty minutes later, the cab pulled up at Matt’s childhood home in Coconut Grove, the oldest neighborhood in Miami. It was a small two-bedroom Florida bungalow originally built in the 1950s and dwarfed now by the McMansions that had popped up on either side during the last real estate boom. He paid the cab driver and smiled as he walked up the path leading to the front door. His neighbor Pierre had been true to his word and maintained the lawn while Matt was gone. The dense foliage that had laid claim to the yard for even longer than Matt was somewhat contained.

  After getting settled in, Matt loaded the washing machine with clothes heavy with dust and mud before grabbing a beer from the fridge.
He sat down in front of the computer and booted it up. While he waited, he twisted off the bottle top and tossed it into a nearby trashcan. Going straight to email, he quickly deleted all the spam emails and other garbage that had accumulated in the months since he had last been able to check his email. He was left with several inquiries from friends concerned about his whereabouts. He sent out a brief message to everyone on his buddy list to let them know he was fine, was back in town and would catch up with them later.

  There was a message from [email protected] that survived the purge. Alex Doren identified himself as a fellow writer and asked for a personal interview with Matt to speak about his experiences in Afghanistan. No way, he thought to himself. If anyone was going to write about his experiences, it was going to be him.

  Matt had written a few pieces while he was at a U.S. Army base hospital in Afghanistan recovering from his injuries, and he wanted to get those published. Then he wanted to take a six-month sabbatical and write a book. A book would give him a lot more breathing space for more details and his own opinion, stuff that probably wouldn’t be considered appropriate for a daily periodical. All of this, he would need to clear with his boss Dave Kagan. Matt deleted the message without responding.

  He had saved the best for last and settled down to read the three messages from his old friend Stephen Cross, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist from The New York Times who had always been encouraging and helpful when Matt was just starting out. He and Stephen had been in Iraq together but had separated when Stephen had left Iraq and headed to Europe for a much-deserved vacation before returning to the United States. Matt decided to make the trek to the Kandahar Province in Afghanistan before his own return and they hadn’t communicated directly since.

  The first message brought a chuckle:

  Hey, buddy, I’m back. I arrived last night. Four weeks since I left and I’m still cleaning Iraqi sand out of every orifice. I’m not sure where you are and when you’ll get this, but when you do, give me a call or shoot me a text.

  Matt smiled, tipped his beer to the computer monitor screen and leaned back to enjoy the second message:

  Matt, I’ve been getting settled back in town. Tomorrow, I meet with my boss. I’m going to try to sell her some of my material, regroup for a while here, and then head back out. Since my return, I’ve been checking out the competition. Man, I can’t believe how far off the mark these guys are about what’s going on in the sandbox. Our stuff’s going to blow people away. Call me!

  The third message, dated just two week before, intrigued Matt:

  Matt, I heard what happened to you. By now you should be on your way back to the states. We need to talk. Call me as soon as you get this.

  Matt grabbed the phone and punched in Stephen’s cell phone number. His call was directed straight to voice mail. A computer generated voice told him that Stephen’s voice mailbox was full.

  “Damn,” Matt muttered.

  He hung up and turned back to the computer to type a reply email.

  Hey, Stephen. Great to hear from you! I just got back. I tried to reach you but no luck. Tomorrow I start to make the rounds myself. I’m meeting with my boss in the morning. Other than that, I’ll be around all day. Call me.

  Matt headed off to bed.

  Just as he started to succumb to the comfort of clean sheets, soft pillows and a real mattress, he thought about Stephen’s emails. That last one had sounded like he was on to something. Knowing the man as Matt did, whatever Stephen had gotten himself involved with would be good, with no small amount of danger and intrigue — if not in reality, then certainly by the time Stephen finished telling the tale.

  CHAPTER TWO

  THE NEXT MORNING Matt got his Jeep and drove down to The Chronicle Building. Parking in the basement garage, he took the elevator up to the lobby where the first thing he saw was Ana Lopez. Her face lit up the moment she saw him.

  “Hola, Matt. ¿Como estas?” she said, walking up to him quickly.

  In Miami, where even strangers were greeted with a kiss on the cheek, Matt also received an embrace lasting long enough to communicate a familiar undercurrent of attraction.

  “Very good, Ana,” Matt replied. “And you?”

  “Excellent now,” she said looking into his eyes. Subtlety was an art wasted on Ana. Flirtation and sexual innuendo, on the other hand, she had long since mastered.

  Ana had been one of four in a secretarial pool meant to service the over-eager young journalists working for The Chronicle, one of them being Matt. She had since moved up the career ladder exponentially. Now, she was the executive assistant to Dave Kagan, the editor-in-chief and Matt’s boss. The job change definitely agreed with her. She was wearing a red dress that hugged her full figure in all the right places. She moved easily in shoes that most women would consider impossible for walking. Her ears and fingers shimmered with gold jewelry, glistening like the thick auburn hair hanging long and straight to the middle of her back. Her dark eyes were heavily lined and her lips were moist with freshly applied lipstick.

  “Ay, Matt, I’m so glad you’re back,” she continued. “It’s been so boring here without you. And I’ve missed my happy hour buddy.”

  Her bottom lip pushed out into an adorable pout. It was a look Matt had been the recipient of many times in the past, one that completely enthralled him. He sometimes sought to disappoint Ana just for the fun of seeing that sad face and then replacing it with one of sheer delight. He wasn’t the only one, though, who appreciated Ana. Back in the day, Ana had most of the single guys in the office vying for her attention — which was exactly the way she liked it.

  “I’m glad to be back,” Matt replied. “And I’m definitely looking forward to one of those happy hours.”

  “Well, I’ll put you back in the loop,” she said beaming. There it was — the smile.

  As they walked through the hallways and toward Dave Kagan’s office, Matt could feel the energy bouncing off the walls of the newsroom. He had missed it. The phones ringing, computer keyboards crackling and reporters huddled together along the tight row of desks. The smell of burnt coffee from the morning and leftover Cuban food from lunch and then dinner for the journalists working late to meet the dreaded deadline. Finally, they got to Dave Kagan’s corner office. Ana stood back to let Matt go in first.

  “Matt,” Kagan said warmly as he rose from behind his enormous antique desk. “Welcome back.”

  “Thanks, Dave. It’s good to be here.”

  His boss may have put on a few pounds, his blond hair may have thinned a bit, but the time since Matt had first come to the paper ten years ago had otherwise been good to the man. He was dressed in freshly pressed khaki trousers. He wore a starched white shirt that was in sharp contrast to the deeply tanned skin visible at the neckline and where his sleeves ended. A navy sweater was tied loosely around his neck. A gold Rolex glittered on his wrist from underneath the French cuffs fastened with monogrammed cuff links.

  “Sit down, Matt,” Dave said as he gestured to the empty seat in front of his desk. “And, Ana, could you get us both some black coffee?”

  Dave settled into the deep leather chair behind his desk. Out the picture window behind the editor, Matt could see all the way across Biscayne Bay to the Venetian Islands and almost the entire length of South Beach. On one side of Kagan’s desk sat a flat-screen computer monitor hooked up to an ultra-thin laptop in a cradle. Advertising layouts covered the flat surfaces of the otherwise immaculate desk.

  Dave Kagan had been the paper’s editor-in-chief since before Matt had joined the staff fresh out of college. He had been a very hands-on editor, involved in every story line as it developed, and reviewing every article before it was permitted to be included in the final edition. He had been more diligent than any of the copy editors, and Matt had been the recipient of many pages bearing the red Sharpie evidence of Kagan’s dissatisfaction.

  “So, Matt, how are you?” Dave gestured with his chin in the general direction of Matt’s shoulde
r.

  “Fine,” Matt replied shrugging off Dave’s concern. “A little sore, but the doctors tell me I’ll be fine.”

  “That’s good to hear. I was worried about you. You took a lot of unnecessary risks in Afghanistan,” Kagan continued. “What the hell were you doing skipping out on the embed program? You were supposed to stay with all the other approved reporters, not run off to Fallujah and then Kandahar where you didn’t have any military support. That was risky, Matt, and could have ended up much worse than it did.”

  “It wasn’t that bad …”

  “Not only was it bad, Matt,” Dave interrupted, “but it was also against The Chronicle’s orders. You should have stayed in the embed program instead of running around Afghanistan by yourself. You could’ve gotten some good stuff and we would have been able to keep you safe.”

  “Good stuff?” Matt snorted. “Come on, Dave, those embeds got crap. They only got what the Defense Department wanted them to get.”

  In 2003, the Bush Administration created the “embed program,” which allowed only approved journalists to be in Iraq and Afghanistan and only if they agreed to be attached to military units. Nearly 600 reporters working for news agencies from around the world agreed to the terms and traveled alongside U.S. and coalition forces. Administration officials hailed the program for permitting access to the front lines and soldiers’ daily lives. Media watchdog groups, on the other hand, criticized its often restrictive nature and publicly worried that reporters would become indoctrinated into the military culture, develop relationships with the soldiers and then deliver stories from a military point of view instead of an objective one. Some journalists — including Matt — believed that the program rules only enhanced the military’s ability to limit the release of undesirable news and eschewed any involvement with the program.