by Wes Lowe
“What about Marlena? Why would Carter want her dead?”
“He wouldn’t. He adored her. You saw; he tried to protect her.”
“That’s bullshit.” There was one final picture in the gray folder that Barry took out. It was a picture of Harold and Marlena in bed together.
“Now, you are going to come clean or this picture will be front page news tomorrow.”
All the air was gone from Harold’s sails—he was a man defeated by his own making.
“Carter didn’t really care for her, especially because I was the one who introduced him to her. I thought she would make a fabulous first lady.” The senator shook his head. “I don’t know why but Carter always seemed to prefer Asian sluts. Thai. Korean. Japanese. Chinese. Filipino. Made me so damn mad. If he wants a girl and she says no, he keeps upping his offer. ‘Anyone can be bought,’ he says, ‘I’ve just got to find the price.’ Then he would buy them expensive clothes, get them showered and sanitized, have them made-up professionally… what for? He would be done with them in two hours, and most times never cared to see them again… But this is hardly a problem. Lots of men hate their fathers and will screw anybody who’s not their wife.”
Barry’s phone buzzed—a text message arrived. He took a quick concerned look, and then bored his eyes into Johnson’s. “Carter just cleaned out all his bank accounts, including the nearly two million bucks raised from his announcement party. If you don’t believe me, check for yourself/“
The senator jittered. He quickly pulled out his mobile phone and checked the presidential donation account. His body quaked as he said, “How did you find out before I knew? Let me know if there’s anything I can do. I don’t know who this person is anymore. Maybe I never did.”
Without saying anything Barry got up and started walking toward the lounge’s entrance.
Harold called after him. “How did you find that out?”
Barry never answered as he left the room
45
Another Trap Set
As Rayna explored the school, she learned there were at least four co-conspirators, all male. Each one of them had a separate classroom converted into a personal bedroom.
One of them was a messy alcoholic, likely in his sixties or older. The several dozen empty supersized bottles of beer, vodka, scotch and bourbon made that easy to figure out. His age was determined by the style of his jeans. All five pairs were vintage Levi’s—all had the red tab with a capital E in Levi’s, a sure sign that they were manufactured before 1970.
Another one was a neat freak. The bed was carefully made and all the clothes were folded neatly. It didn’t have the quality of being lived in a long time—maybe this guy was new.
One room was obviously Davy’s. It stank and there were hundreds of different kinds of medicines, pharmaceuticals and drugs, both legal and illegal.
The fourth room might not possibly have ever been used. There was a layer of dust and a sterility that permeated the ambiance. The only hints that it was possibly a man’s room were unworn brand new boxer shorts and black socks in the drawers.
“Sorry Julio, I didn’t bring anything to lift fingerprints with,” said Rayna into her comms as she continued checking out other rooms in the school.
“No worries. This is a great help,” replied the chief geek. “So we’ve determined one room belonged to Davy. It’s a reasonable guess that the room that wasn’t used belonged to Carter. He was so busy that he likely never stayed there.”
“I’ve got something, “ called Vanessa. “I’ve been going over the catalog of items and fragments found in the Ford Explorer. One of them is a red tab with a capital E in Levi’s. I think it’s safe to assume this guy’s not in the picture anymore either.”
Reuben offered, “I been following up on what the senator said about Davy. I did some aging on the last known face of Davy, his staff picture at NYU and he is definitely the horndog that wanted Rayna at the school. He was supposedly killed in an auto accident three years ago but the fire was so intense, no remains were found. His baldness and skin problems are all possibly the result of radiation sickness.”
Barry joined the conversation. “I got some news from my meeting with Harold. The guy who killed himself in front of Rayna was Davy Adams, Carter’s best friend since elementary school when Harold worked at Three Mile Island along with Davy’s dad. Davy faked his death three years ago so you won’t find anything recent about him. But here’s the deal. Davy hates Harold because he believes he is partly responsible for his parents’ death from radiation sickness caused by what happened at TMI. And Carter hates his dad because he blames him for his mother’s suicide.”
Rayna swallowed as she stepped down the hall to the next room. She was going to take a stab in the dark. Or was it an educated guess? “Does this make any sense? Maybe Carter wants to set off a dirty bomb. From what I’ve found at this schoolhouse, the Cesium 137 at the Conquistador, plus his and Davy’s hatred for Harold who is chair of the subcommittee responsible for nuclear power...”
She stopped mid-sentence and gasped, “Omigod. I’m inside the old teacher’s lunchroom which has been converted to a high tech man cave. I’m staring at a humungous monitor. He’s got a screen saver activated with a slideshow images of me or should I say ‘Jasmina.’ The perv found everything. Okay. Okay. I’m now sitting down at the computer keyboard but, hitting the keys doesn’t turn off the screensaver so I can’t access anything.”
“Turn your head toward everything in and around the computer,” said Julio. “I want you to look for fingerprint scanners, anything that you can place your hand or face at. We’re looking for biometric authentication devices.”
Rayna obeyed and soon heard Julio swear under his breath. “Damn. Rayna, you’re going to have to bring Davy’s body into the room. We’re going to have to try all the fingers, both eyes, face, and who knows what else.”
“I was afraid you’d say that,” said Rayna as she rushed out of the room and scurried to the front entrance.
A hundred-and-fifty pound weight was hardly a challenge for someone of Rayna’s physical conditioning. What she didn’t like about carrying Davy’s dead weight was his smell, and feeling his sores and scales against her body. While it may have seemed unreasonable, her recent Haiti experience of transmittable illnesses made her uneasy as she carried his body from the entrance to the old lunchroom.
Flying blind, Julio had to use a “try everything” method in determining how to unlock the computer’s security system. Every finger and toe was scanned, both irises were used on the scanner, and Davy’s face was placed at a variety of angles trying to get facial recognition to unlock the computer, but individually, no parts of Davy’s body were successful.
“We’re going to have to do it again but in combination, and hopefully we’ll get the right order. It’s multi-factor authentication,” said Julio.
“What happened to the good old typing the password on the keyboard?” asked Rayna.
“The computer monitor would have lit up and asked for the password if that’s what it wanted. That might have been a hell of a challenge trying to crack it. At least having Davy’s body here gives us all the normal biometric ways that one could break in.”
It took another half hour of trying different combinations, but finally they were able to break in and Julio was able to remotely access Davy’s supercomputer.
“Oh shit,” said Julio. “They are planning to blow up something in six hours, but they don’t say what or where the target is. Carter and Davy must have purposely decided not to put the location down, in case someone like us was ever able to find out their purpose.”
Rayna had continued her search of the man cave while Julio hacked into the computer. She opened a hidden compartment in a walnut tactical desk.
“I’ve found a couple of burner phones,” said Rayna, waving them in the air.
“About time you started earning your keep around here,” intoned a deep male voice.
Rayna whipped a
round and exclaimed, “Chuck!”
“The one and only. Barry said you might need some help, and it just so happened my dance card opened up.”
Chuck Hanson, a muscular black man, had been Rayna’s trainer with Fidelitas. Former SEAL Team 6, Chuck was the physical counterpart of the Geek Freaks. Unable to fit into polite society and with a strong rebellious streak with a knack for getting into serious trouble, Barry had rescued him from Rykers. Afterward he had become Fidelitas’s muscle of choice, as well as trainer of some of the nastiest SOBs who had ever walked the planet. He had helped “refine” Rayna’s lethal talents and had partnered with her a few times on Fidelitas missions.
“Didn’t want to make too much noise so I got the chopper to land half a mile away. We’re ready to go on a moment’s notice.”
There was nothing more the Geek Freaks enjoyed more than a challenge, especially when the self-proclaimed experts said it couldn’t be done. Manufacturers said when you no longer needed your burner phone number, you could easily dispose of it virtually with the “burn feature.”
It took the Geeks less than a minute to “unburn” the burner number and recover all the numbers of recent phone calls sent and received. There were over fifty of them, but none had names attached.
With the clock ticking they had to act fast, but they had to confirm the location first.
“Let’s use the same trick we used on Davy,” suggested Rayna.
Carter’s cell phone dinged—it was a message from Davy. He punched in his password and scrolled to his messages, but instead of a text, there was a video of Davy squeezing Rayna’s throat. As Davy’s grip grew stronger, Rayna gasped with even greater ecstasy. “More. More. MORE!” There was silence as a caption scrolled up.
Having a wonderful time with Jasmina. Wish you were here. Sayonara. Don’t call me, I’ll call you.
Carter growled and sent a one word text back.
Asshole.
Then, on another text, he added a smiling emoji.
Rayna, Chuck and the geeks smiled. By responding to “Davy’s” text, the geeks were able to track the location. Carter was at JFK.
“I think I know where he’s going. I’ve been looking at Carter’s file at SDA,” said Julio. “He’s been billing a lot of hours to Connorville Power Plant at Stamford Connecticut. It’s being decommissioned so there’s not a lot of activity going on there right now.”
“Which means it would be a lot easier to plant a bomb or bombs there,” reasoned Rayna.
Barry’s voice was grave. “That really ups the ante. Stamford’s population is less than 150,000 but it’s home to nine Fortune 500 companies, as well as having one of the largest concentrations of large corporations outside of New York City. Aside from the human and environmental damage, there would be financial chaos and disaster. Whatever you do, when you’re there, don’t spook him or anyone with him in case any of them are trigger happy. And even though Carter didn’t strike me as having a death wish, who knows who’s with him that might want to put their names in the history books.”
Chuck motioned with his head for Rayna to follow him out the door. “Let’s boogie.”
It took less than ten minutes before the chopper had Rayna and Chuck in the air. It would take less than three hours before they were at CNP in Stamford.
46
The Endgame Begins
Becky finally got the call she had been waiting for. She had been sitting in her ten-year-old Chevrolet Volt at JFK’s cell phone parking lot for almost an hour, and was on edge as Carter had not called yet for pickup. While he had given her an approximate time of arrival, he didn’t tell her the airline he was taking.
Her cell phone rang and she immediately picked up. “Hi Carter. You here now?”
“Yeah. Sorry I’m late. Plane was delayed as usual.”
“No worries. I’ll be there in fifteen.”
“Drive slowly when you get here. I look a little different and you might not recognize me.”
“You got it.”
Even with Carter’s advance warning, Becky missed him and had to drive around for a second time. She would have missed him again, except this time there was a raggedy-looking guy with the worst haircut she had ever seen waving as she approached.
She pulled over and rolled down the window in front of him. “Carter?”
The man grinned, opened the door and hopped in. “That’s me. Live and in color. Like my new look?”
Prince Charming had turned into an ugly frog. Her desire to get it on with extracurricular nooky disappeared. “You look fantastic,” said Becky, lying like a habitual cheating spouse.
“You’re a terrible liar, Becky. I look like shit.” Carter hopped into the car with a laugh, and they started traveling north. “We’re going to meet Sonny at your place.”
When they arrived at Becky’s bungalow, she asked quietly, “What time is Sonny boy coming?”
“Probably half an hour, maybe forty-five minutes. Why you asking?”
Becky motioned to the bedroom with her head. “We got the time,” she said invitingly.
Half an hour later as he put his clothes back on, Carter thought of how much he would enjoy killing the woman in front of him.
As Sonny walked to the front door, it opened without him knocking and he was greeted by a frumpy, dumpy broad.
Different strokes for different folks. Sonny would never have imagined that the hobbit-like woman would ever be Carter’s type but hey, he was the boss. He could do or have anybody he desired as long as he paid him.
“Sonny, meet Becky. Becky, meet Sonny. Let’s hit the road,” said Carter.
It was a quiet drive to CNP. Without street lights, the moon illuminated the trees like tall shadowy apparitions. Rounding a bend, the stacks of CNP appeared, looming ominously in the semi-darkness.
At 11 pm on a Saturday night there was just one lone uniformed man in the guardhouse that surrounded the fenced complex, and he was struggling to stay awake.
Sonny drove up beside the guard booth and rolled down the window,
“What brings you here tonight at this godawful hour, sir?” growled the bleary-eyed guard, going through the motions of caring.
“Relax, Rob. He’s with me. I forgot my cell phone and want to get a few things out of my locker before they chuck them into the dumpster,” called Becky from the passenger seat.
“Why?” guffawed Rob. “You thinking Prince Charming’s going to give you a call at midnight and get himself invited to nail your fat ass?” He eyed the cargo van suspiciously. “Not to mention, you can’t store that much junk in your locker.”
“Hey, you want to check out my van, go ahead,” said Sonny grumpily. “Just make sure you put back everything the way you found it.”
“I don’t like your tone, man. I will check it out. Open it up,” ordered Rob.
Sonny got out and opened the panel door. Carter immediately jumped out and delivered a hard right to Rob’s jaw followed by a devastating left uppercut, sending the guard to Lala land.
Becky dashed into the guardhouse and punched a code into the guard’s computer system, while Carter took out a hypodermic syringe and injected a massive dose of fentanyl into Rob.
Becky watched as the unconscious guard’s body convulsed violently, then stilled. She sneered, “So who’s nailing whose ass?” She then turned to Carter and pointed to a long one-story stucco building. “Go there. That’s the admin building. I’ve gotta take care of some business first. I just punched in the code to let us in.”
“First things first.” Carter removed Rob’s cell phone and handed the cell to Becky. “Send a text or email to whoever this guy reports to. Tell them he felt sick and needed to go home.”
Sonny and Carter quickly loaded Rob’s body into the van while Becky composed the text and sent it off.
Seconds later, Rob’s cell dinged a response.
Go home. Get some rest. Nothing ever happens at CNP anyway.
Carter showed the text to Becky.
&nb
sp; Becky guffawed, “Nobody gives a damn here anymore. Most of the staff would set up a cheering section if they knew what we were doing. We’ll have at least five hours before anyone shows up. Maybe even six.”
47
One Down
While Becky went to the administration building, Carter and Sonny sat stoically silent in the van, each caught up in their own personal worlds and how it was going to change.
Sonny could hardly wait until the mission was finished. When Carter promised him fifty thousand dollars if the job was completed properly, he could think of little else. He craved to escape the United States, live somewhere where he could have a good time on the cheap, and work when he wanted. Costa Rica fit that bill. For less than a grand a month he couldn’t live like a king, but he’d be more than middle-class. And because of Costa Rica’s vibrant tourism industry, he could always pick up extra cash by working as a handyman for the hotels.
For Carter, this was his chance to finally be his own man. Of course, there were a few obstacles to get rid of. Becky and Sonny would soon be buried in mounds of radioactive rubble at CNP, and Davy would likely not last another two days. One reason he gave Mateo such a high fee had nothing to do with his culinary expertise—the chef had mixed several grains of Ricin into a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice that was served to Davy. It was why Davy started deteriorating even faster after their triumph at the Conquistador. And to make sure that Davy’s date with death was certain, he forked over the two hundred grand to get Jasmina to perform her magic on him. The extra exertion would hasten the failure of his vital internal organs.
But Carter was happiest about the person who was going to live and suffer: his father. There would be anonymous tips that would destroy him. The word would get out that a million dollars raised for Carter’s campaign had disappeared, and that Harold’s secret offshore Cayman Islands bank account suddenly had a million dollars influx. There would be videos of Harold and Marlena having intimate conversations over private dinners and entering hotel rooms and an audio conversation between Harold and Diego, asking the cartel hit man to take her out. And of course, he would provide the clues that showed that Diego was in the Explorer when it blew up, further cementing the case against Harold.