by J. T. Patten
Mena nodded.
Drake handed her Gebran Daouk’s phone. “If the screen goes off again, the password is Starfish. There’s some interesting communications going on. This guy’s opsec was for shit. See if you see anything different than I do.” Drake turned his attention back to the Geiger counter and viewed the historic readings. “We’re in over our heads.”
Holding the phone and scrolling through message traffic, Mena kept her eyes on what she was reading. “What are you suggesting?”
“I’ve got a buddy at the FBI I think I need to say hello to. She’s in the DC area, but she’ll know who we can find to help us.”
Chapter 52
Tresa Halliday was still chatting with Chicago agents Jay had introduced her to at the Roosevelt Avenue headquarters when her phone rang. The unknown caller on her display sent a wave of both dread and euphoria through her body like a poker-faced teacher returning a graded paper. She knew in her gut that it was Drake. Although the possibility of it being Havens clouded the moment, and before she knew it, the men were looking at her and the phone had rung five times.
“Excuse me.” She broke away, accepting the call and stepping out of the room to a wide and bright hallway. “Hello?”
“Special Agent Halliday, it’s me. I need your help.”
“Is this who I think it is?”
“Yes.”
“Why are you calling me?”
“Needing help didn’t clarify?”
Halliday rolled her eyes. “What help do you need?”
“I found the scientist. The one who stole the radioactive stuff.”
“Where is he? Is he alive?” she asked, excited, then covered the mouthpiece as people passed by.
“No. He’s on the floor here, dead, and there are no radioactive materials. I’m in a storage warehouse on the west side of Chicago. Big enough to park a vehicle, and from the way his body looked when I arrived, I suspect someone drove off with the goods after taking him out. There’s a handheld radiation detector that was broken on the floor, so I am also assuming he may have been testing levels. Don’t know if that’s for leaks, quality, or what. Surprising that no one took the detector unless it slid under the vehicle. Thought maybe you should call someone here in Chicago. This is going to be bad if someone doesn’t prepare for it or help stop it.”
“Drake, I’m here in Chicago now.”
Woolf’s shoulders dropped limp and jaw slackened. “You are?” was the best he could come up with.
“Yeah. Your buddy sent me. He sends his regards.”
“What buddy?”
“The one who had bullets taken out of him and has had surgery on his wrist and foot.”
Dread passed over Drake, concerned that she had nabbed Havens and was on her way now to get Woolf. Instinctively, he hung up and grabbed Mena by the arm. “We need to go.”
* * * *
“Shit.” Halliday stomped the floor. “Shit!” She wondered why it was that for a man she knew less than a month or so, Drake was like an ex-husband that she still couldn’t let go of but who still infuriated her every time they spoke.
Chapter 53
Drake hoisted the door, checking for anything threatening. It appeared clear.
“Ocean, are you still on?”
“Never left. Still don’t have Starfish reconnected. You laid down some heavy shit, bro. I’ve got your back one hundred percent.”
“Thanks, man.”
“Things cool with you two? Not like I thought you were going to get a room or anything.”
“That’s exactly what we’re doing. We know there’s a strong probability that the attack is tomorrow. Seeing loose ends being tied up all around the city tells me things are in play. We need a safe place to just think.”
Mojo gave a nod that no one saw. “Need me to find you a place?”
“No, I found a pay-by-the-hour motel on the way in. I’ll have Mena grab us a room.”
Mena could only hear one end of the conversation still, so her expression looked like she was confused. She reactivated her comms.
“We just have to figure out how to get to the hotel without getting mugged on the street or carjacking another civilian.” Now on the open street, Drake turned in to the building as a nonthreatening pedestrian passed by the two of them paying no mind until getting a whiff of Woolf. “Guess I need a shower, too,” he said as an aside to Mena. “Here’s what I need you to do, Ocean. Pinpoint each location that we have not yet been to that has a crossing of communications. If there are signals coming from locations without multiple endpoint transmissions, I need you to search and see who the individual is who is registered to the phone or where it was purchased. Since most will be burners, see if there is any other cross-information you can pull from the database. We need to roll up the network quick and start with the outermost spots in the city and work our way in to the most centralized. That gives us a better chance of hitting a place that isn’t having a party. My guess is the Archangel cell has been eliminated and the Iranians have taken over the job. Since they would only use a proxy, the new focus is probably on a criminal outfit. Make sense?”
Drake raised his eyes to Mena. “Does that work for you, or do you have any other ideas?”
“Yes. Ocean 6,” she confirmed, referring to Sebastian’s temporary call sign, “had told me that there was another source we were getting intel from. Have we heard from him…or her?”
Drake tried to read Mena’s face. Clearly Sebastian had told Mena about Dexter. The old man evidently made a habit of this, which did not please Woolf.
Her face was blank.
She knows, Drake. They are putting the pieces in place. Check, check, checkmate, Drake. You’re the pawn. The warning would have rolled off Drake were it the dark voice’s constant berating, but instead, it was the sound of his father. And that scared the living shit out of him.
“Nada,” Mojo responded. “I haven’t heard anything. One of the devices Ocean 6 was tracking was the person of interest.”
This time it was Mena who cast a look of surprise.
Drake smiled inside. “I’m not sure we would consider him a source or an agent in place. His phone went dead. Ocean, make sure you include that device in your tracking and mapping.”
“Roger that, Neptune.”
“Anything else, Starfish?”
“No.”
When Drake turned, Mena adjusted the shoulder straps of the light gray commercialized Leatherback backpack he had given her.
She had filled it with exactly what Drake said to put in. A book, a couple magazines, protein bars, some trail mix snacks, a couple bottles of water. And then she concealed in the middle inner pocket exactly what Sebastian had said to put in it.
“Okay, Ocean,” Drake said. “We have a tentative plan and less than sixteen hours before something real bad happens in this city.” It was at that moment that he knew he needed to call Halliday back. If she was in Chicago, she was potentially at risk, as well as potentially a million others. Yes, this was bigger than him. It was in the next moment that he saw the big black SUV racing toward them.
Chapter 54
Major General Qasem Soleimani hadn’t expected to receive two harrowing calls that week. He listened attentively as Major General Hamed Abdollahi expressed concern on the phone as to the status and current whereabouts of his Unit 400 operatives.
“Qasem”—Abdollahi teed up before launching into his next point—“and what have the Venezuelans said?”
This was a very different question from the last, to which Soleimani could only respond that he had not yet heard of any news. What the Unit 400 commanding officer was now asking, Soleimani had received indirect word. He was compelled to share it. “My dear brother, their news is more dire, but we have not been able to confirm. The American news has reported multiple deaths in one of the more ethnically populate
d areas of Chicago.”
“You made no mention of this when I first asked.”
“I said I do not know. Even the news from the Venezuelan embassy does not tell me. At this point, what it tells me is they have completed their mission.”
“Will you be at Golzar Tower tomorrow?”
“No, Hamed. Tomorrow, I have much to attend to. I go back to Syria in short order. But soon. Soon. I promise.”
After hanging up, the Qods Force leader, Soleimani, checked another device after completing the requisite security protocols in three layers of authentication and cyber defense. He retrieved the latest unread message sent by the Modarris on an unencrypted account. It confirmed the wave-one elements were no longer a risk. It further confirmed Gebran Daouk had been eliminated. It finally confirmed that a Chicago gang was now in possession of the materials and high explosives. All of which meant the signal intercepts by the global Five Eyes alliance could add credence to the deniability of malicious intent by Iran. On the world’s stage of scrutiny, there was evidence, even to the point of spilling their own blood, that the Persians tried to thwart an attack on the Americans. Everything was in order.
The supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, would be pleased. Hezbollah would be pleased when they received their monies for time and resources. Win. Win.
Still, the prior news from Senior Commander Majid Alawi about the Modarris was troubling. Soleimani crossed his office to open a large wall cabinet. From a closed box he retrieved a labeled plastic bag with a fish-eye camera. The bag was dated and labeled Ain al-Hilweh, the Man from Orange.
Chapter 55
“Start walking. Now. The embassy boys are coming back,” Drake instructed as the SUV closed distance on their position. Woolf did a mental inventory on what he had or what he could MacGyver in a matter of seconds to stop whoever was rolling in heavy and hot.
“Drake,” Mena said, forgetting to use a call sign, “what are you going to—”
Mojo interrupted, “Hey guys—”
“Not now, Ocean,” Drake barked. “We have a situation.”
“But—”
“Shut the fuck up!”
“Go, Mena!”
Woolf started off at quick clip in the direction of the barreling-down SUV. He had no illusion that if he jumped in its way it wouldn’t mow him down.
There was a shopping cart turned on its side about fifteen feet away now, the SUV doing about sixty roughly forty feet away on the quiet and deserted street. As intelligent as Drake Woolf was, this was no time for mathematical story problems, so he busted ass to the cart, hoping to toss it into the street and buy Mena more time.
From the SUV’s driver’s-side window first came an elbow.
Shit, they’re going to light me up. Drake turned to see how far Mena had gotten. She was out of sight, so must have turned at a street or found cover.
As the driver’s-side arm unfolded from the window opening, Woolf panicked at the new thought that Mena may have been snatched by the two other Venezuelan street pavers.
Drake gave the cart a pull, hefting it up while trying to maintain some cover behind a parked car.
A white bandaged hand emerged from the SUV’s window and waved. The driver popped his head.
Sean Havens was sporting aviators, a spiral-corded secret service style earpiece and a new close-cropped buzz cut. From the bandaged hand, he elevated a middle finger as he veered over, braking hard parallel to Woolf.
“S’up, dick. Where’s Scheherazade running off to?”
Chapter 56
“Starfish, we’ve got a ride,” Drake transmitted. “Sorry, Ocean, I’m guessing you were going to let me in on our new surprise teammate?”
“Trying to,” Mojo responded, exasperated. “Sucks. I wanna be there, too.”
Havens chimed in to the conversation on his wired earpiece comms, as Mena came into view. “We need you there, Ocean. You are the only reach back we’ve got who can give us near real-time situational awareness. Guys, we’ll talk about this a little later, but while you’ve been doing a great job, our targeting approach is chasing tactical intel. You’re connecting dots and making geo-links, but we’re now at an intersection of two nation states, a terror group, and gang activity. Chasing phone numbers all around the town and killing whoever’s holding one only gets us so far. We need to ask ourselves bigger questions, and we don’t have much time. Make sense?”
Drake nodded. He was instantly relieved to have the coach walking back on the field to lead the team.
As Mena jumped in, Havens gave a concerned but quick sideways glance to Drake. He mouthed, “You okay?”
Drake nodded, filling his lungs with the scent of security one had when evac showed up on time.
Woolf was good about wearing the mask to hide the ghosts of war. Yet, in the mere weeks that Sean had known Drake, the weakness and wear of Woolf was becoming more evident. His veneer of invincibility was fading. Though a younger man, Drake Woolf was a combat warrior old-timer. His comrades had moved forward or fallen on the battle field or even to their own pills, bullets, and booze in the relative safety of their homes. He had avoided contact with newer soldiers in response and let relationships fall by the wayside after deployments. He appeared to prefer being alone, which was on the downward spiral of constant isolation. A guy like Woolf could never adjust to civilian life, as if he ever had in the first place. Havens wanted to get Drake into an emotional reset wound-healing program with a friend at All Secure Foundation, but the operational tempo had, as usual, fucked that up for the time being. He couldn’t let it go though. Sean pressed Woolf again with a head tilt and eyebrows that raised above his shades.
Drake closed his eyes as they drove. The rumble of the SUV navigating potholes and otherwise bad street conditions and random debris on the street felt like a helo cutting the air chop. In his mind he could hear the beating of the rotor blades. Feel the pitch and sway of the Black Hawk, his legs weightless as they dangled out of open doors. He tasted the powdery grit of the desert caked on his teeth and felt the pit of his stomach wrestling with post-combat anxiety and excitement.
“Hey, you sure you’re all right?” Havens pushed.
Drake shrugged and gave a slight head shake. No. “I think I’m just tired.”
Sean pursed his lips. At least the dialogue had started again. “Okay. Let’s get you cleaned up and see if we can get you some food and a little rest. Smells like a gang gave you a long golden shower. You smell like absolute shit, unless that’s you, Mena.” Havens cringed, realizing that as he talked to her in the car, he was still on closed and encrypted radio, but the bad tradecraft was still a huge snafu.
Mena just rolled her eyes. A gesture that was becoming as routine as a blink.
The crew was certainly different from what she was used to in Foggy Bottom. These knuckle-draggers were the complete antithesis of high-brow higher education intelligence professionals. She might have felt differently, however, knowing Havens’s full background and the fact that doing overseas distance learning while killing bad guys, Drake had completed most graduate-level electrical engineering and computer science courses offered through MIT’s open courseware.
“There’s a hotel I found about two blocks away.” Drake arched his back, trying to retrieve his device from his pant pocket.
“We’ve already got digs set up.”
“Safe house?”
“FBI’s pretty big to call it a safe house. We’re assisting FBI Counterterrorism as Delta advisors. Your girlfriend’s there, too.” Havens relished the harassment and smiled a shit-eating grin.
Mena reached up to Drake and slapped him on the shoulder. “You’ve got a girlfriend? This I’ve got to see,” she mused, sitting back and literally biting her lip and removing her headscarf.
Chapter 57
The Task Force Orange team disconnected and stowed their communication devices once insid
e the Bureau’s entrance while waiting for Halliday.
Mojo was relieved to be able to cut off and focus on the data analysis.
The clicking of Sean’s cane on the floor echoed within the high-ceilinged, wide, glass-enclosed space as he limped along.
“Explain to me…Gramps,” Drake chided, “because I’m kinda uneasy about this. How is it that we go from being hunted by these guys”—he motioned toward the FBI crest on the wall—“to parking in the guest lot and just walking in the front door and announcing ourselves. I’m kinda expecting to be fully surrounded by a tactical team in seconds.”
“I called her.”
Drake’s contorted expression showed his vexed state. “Dude, I’ve got bloodstains up to my elbows.”
“Hmmm.” Sean hobbled up to the thick-glass security desk. “Is there a bathroom?”
The middle-aged African American woman pointed to her right. “Just down that hall. It’s a girls and guys, unisex.”
Sean motioned to Drake, who was transfixed on Mena putting her long dark hair in a ponytail. She had a blue raid jacket with bold gold lettering that Havens had offered to her from a duffel in the trunk. Drake was to wait for his jacket until he cleaned up. Mena, however, looked the part. But she, too, was distracted, watching the television news broadcast in a wide-screen panel above the chairs in the waiting area.