Red Cell Seven by Stephen Frey Page A

part of the family and needed so badly to prove he was? Bill had lied to him all these years about who his mother was—lied to everyone.
    “Look,” Bill spoke up, “when Red Cell Seven starts doing the same things terrorists are doing, that’s a problem for me. It’s that simple.”
    “Shane has dedicated half his life to RCS,” Troy said again. “He was the leader of the Falcons; he was my leader. He knew Dorn had told Carlson it was over for RCS.”
    “You know more than you’ve told me…don’t you, son?”
    Troy shrugged.
    “Why won’t you tell me everything?”
    “Why won’t you ?”
    “Who says I won’t?”
    They both knew how absurd the answer to that question was, so Troy didn’t even bother acknowledging the response. Bill couldn’t tell everyone everything—not even his son.
    “All I really know, Dad, is that Maddux would do anything to protect this country. And on some basic level, I have to respect that conviction.”
    “How can you say that? I mean, what about that LNG tanker?”
    “That’s exactly what I mean, Dad. He’d do anything to make this country strong.”
    “If that ship had made Norfolk, Virgina, half a million people would have died.”
    “But Maddux was convinced Capitol Hill had forgotten how bad 9/11 was. He figured they needed a wakeup call. You know as well as I do he didn’t want to kill half a million Americans. He was sacrificing some for the greater good of the whole.” Troy glanced out the window. Night had fallen on Washington. He pointed at the TV screen as his eyes moved away from the window. “Apparently he was right. We were vulnerable. And now we’re paying for it.”
    “Killing half a million innocent civilians isn’t the way to send a wakeup call,” Bill shot back. “Even with what happened today at those malls. Jesus, son, you should—”
    “I know, Dad,” Troy interrupted angrily. “And I did something about it. That’s how I got myself thrown off the Arctic Fire in the middle of the Bering Sea. Remember? I figured out what was going on with Maddux, and I tried to stop him. Just like Charlie Banks did. And I ended up in thirty-seven-degree water who knows how far from land without a life preserver. Just like Charlie did. The only reason I’m here is that one of the crew took pity on me. And Jack came to save me.”
    Bill nodded solemnly. “Right.”
    “That’s why he’s dead.”
    “I know. I’m sorry, son.”
    “So maybe I have to share some of the guilt for that, too,” Troy said, sending Bill an accusatory glare.
    Bill glanced away after a few moments.
    “All I’m saying,” Troy continued, “is that in a very small way, I understand where Shane’s coming from. Especially now that I know how many attacks RCS has stopped over the last decade.”
    “We didn’t stop what happened today at the malls,” Bill muttered dejectedly.
    “No,” Troy agreed quietly, “we didn’t.”
    “And I can’t endorse Maddux’s vigilante brand of justice, either. Roger told me about that little sideshow.”
    “He only took out people who deserved it,” Troy argued. “He eliminated the scum who’d worked the system and dodged prison on a technicality. Murderers, rapists, pedophiles—and only ones he was absolutely sure were guilty. I don’t have a problem with that.”
    “But how do you know that’s all he did? How do you know he didn’t take out a few people who didn’t deserve it along the way? People he had a personal beef with.”
    “I don’t know, Dad, and I don’t care. Look, if you were so hopped up about what Maddux was doing on the side, and Carlson had told you about it, why didn’t you stop it?”
    “Who says I didn’t try?”
    Troy gazed at his father, wondering—about a lot of things. “I still don’t understand why President Dorn changed his mind about Red Cell Seven. I don’t get why he wanted to destroy it a few weeks ago and now he wants to keep it. Why all of a sudden he wants to make it a cornerstone of