Read Against All Enemies for Free Online

of his tells, always had. “No especially hot spots,” he said.
    “Be more specific,” Jonathan pressed.
    “Okay, he’s given up France, Switzerland, and Italy, so far. But that’s not the point—”
    A laugh escaped from Jonathan’s throat before he could stop it. “That’s a lot less than more, Colonel. Jesus, how can you equate Paris to Kabul?”
    “I don’t,” Rollins said. He appeared to be embarrassed. “But my bosses do. They think that he’s only toying with us, that sooner or later, he’ll start releasing the truly damaging material.”
    “How do you know he’s even got it to release?” Boxers asked.
    “Because we know which databases and files he stole,” Rollins said. “And it goes way past Agency assets. We’re talking war plans here, guys. We’re talking every bad thing you can imagine.”
    Jonathan laughed again.
    “This is funny to you?” Rollins said.
    “Hell yes, it’s funny,” Jonathan said. His volume rose with his blood pressure. “How many times do you guys need to learn the same lesson? How did you let one guy—I don’t care who the hell he is—access that kind of data and not know he was doing it?”
    “Because he was with the Unit!” Rollins boomed. “We’re the best of the best, remember? The most trusted of the trusted! Can you think of a single time that you were denied access to something you told your boss you needed to see when you were in country? It’s not like you have to open every file. You just copy everything and look at it later. This is huge, Dig. It’s beyond huge.”
    “If he turns himself in, he’ll go to prison forever,” Jonathan said. “How can we talk him into that?”
    “It’s better than getting murdered.”
    “Is it?” Boxers asked. “Given the choice, I’d take the bullet over a concrete hole.”
    Rollins stood, prompting Jonathan and Boxers to share a glance. If Jonathan hadn’t received assurances that the colonel was unarmed, he’d have interpreted the movement as an aggressive act, an effort to gain physical advantage.
    “That brings me to the next point,” Rollins said.
    “You ever notice there’s always a next point when you’re talking with Roleplay?” Boxers quipped. Rollins’s shoulders stiffened at the use of the name he hated.
    “I have,” Jonathan said. He was this close to kicking the colonel out of the compound. “Just tell the whole damn story.”
    “It’s the question you just asked,” Rollins said. “How was he able to do steal what he stole? We don’t have the answer to that question. Our tech guys can’t figure it out. We need to know how he got the information.”
    “So you want to squeeze him before you put him in a hole forever,” Boxers said.
    Rollins squared off opposite Big Guy, staring him directly in the eye. “Yes, Box, that’s exactly what I want to do. I want to squeeze him for information. I have every right to want it, and I have every intention of getting it.”
    “Why not just do it yourself, then?” Jonathan asked. “Get somebody with stars on his shoulder to cut the orders and you go in with the Unit and grab him.”
    Rollins took a few seconds to settle down, then returned to his chair. “That’s not possible. The president will never approve a move like that.”
    “But he’ll approve it for the CIA?” Jonathan asked. “What’s the difference?”
    “There are places where the Agency can go that the US military cannot.”
    “Do you even know where he is?” Boxers asked. “I kind of got the impression that you were clueless.”
    “We have reason to believe that he is somewhere in Central or South America.”
    “That’s good, limiting the search parameters to six, seven million square miles,” Boxers said. “With eighty million dollars’ worth of Unit training in his head, that’s a big playground to disappear into.”
    “I think the colonel is telling us they think he’s in a part of the six or seven million square miles where the military cannot go