by J. T. Patten
“Who’s Doc?” she asked.
“You. That’s your callsign. Doc Halliday. Not perfect but works for me. You good with it, Drake?”
“I’m good.” Drake remained in his own world, thumbing his device frantically and fingering red circles on the display.
“Anyway. Our boy here doesn’t really care to sleep. He really doesn’t like to sit in a small room. His operational tempo over the years could be as many as a half dozen hits in a night. It’s what he does. My job is doing the best I can to get him the situational awareness he needs. Your job is to cover his back. As much as I’d like to sit back and analyze what we’re dealing with, killing Mena changes how we have to operate. We don’t have time to investigate. We’ve identified at the national intelligence level suspicious activity, and we can’t wait. There’s a wicked cocktail of crime and war going on in my city, and we’re going to take this head-on. And while I hate to think of any innocent casualties, I trust Drake. He shot a cop. One of my few friends who I asked to help, and I’m not bitching. It’s all we have to work with. Kill as many bad guys as we can and get out of Dodge.”
Drake chimed in, still focused on whatever task he was executing with his electronics. “If you take normal people and put them in this situation where their friends get shot or die, innocent lives are caught in the way, enemies get blown to bits, they might feel like you do. They may question what we do.” He stopped what he was doing and turned to her. “You’re a killer too. We know about you, and I could see it back in there. You just blew the shit out of a chick you were talking to an hour ago. I’d say you’re holding up pretty well.”
“I—”
Drake held up his hand. “We know you’re trying to get close to us. Close to me. But now you have a choice. This is as pure of a counterterrorism mission that there will ever be in your career. Help us and work with us to see this through, or get the fuck out of the car.”
“You guys came to me,” she spat.
“You can bait a rat or hunt a rat,” Sean said. “Keep your enemy close.”
Halliday nodded. “I see.” She turned to Drake. “I’m in. But this isn’t sustainable for you. You’re going to get killed. Then what?”
“Doc, let me tell you this about Drake and myself, and then we need to roll. An old bird dog may look like it wants to stay inside and lick its nut sack all day, but once you let him go outside, he starts to sniff and point. You can’t take the scent of the hunt from a good dog.”
Drake chuckled. “I thought you were going with the Old Yeller one.”
Havens engaged the SUV’s gears and drove off. He still wasn’t sure if Halliday was Old Yeller who could actually save Drake, or if she was the rabid wolf.
Chapter 73
Drake leaned forward from his seat. “Sean, before you stop, just drive up ahead of the building. Slow as we pass by. I’ve got no signal on my device. None of the guys we’ve tagged are there. I want to see if I can get any other reading before we go in.”
Sean slowed slightly. There were cars on both sides of the narrow residential side street, which seemed like an odd place to put an auto shop, but explained the likely reason why it hadn’t blossomed as a business and instead was now a criminal safe house. There were few pedestrians in sight, which was good news. The only way they could really silence sentries would be by killing them, and despite their possible gang involvement, that wasn’t enough for a death sentence. He’d have to remind Drake of that as their official position.
“Nada. If it was active, it would be lit up. I’ve got nothing. Not even security monitoring signal. Just low power Wi-Fi. There could still be someone inside but not with a powered-on device.”
“Should we go to any other place then and cross this off the list as a dead end?” Halliday asked, her device vibrating again.
Drake was scanning the area from his window.
Halliday pulled out her device. Earl again.
Havens looked in his rearview mirror. Halliday’s face was aglow. He knew she was reading and sending a message. Drake was still looking onward and probably thinking of next moves.
“Kids forget their lunch, Doc? Calling Mom to come to the school?”
She slowly looked up to Sean’s eyes in the mirror. “No. Havens, I don’t understand half the shit you say. My boss, Earl Johnson, is texting me asking if I can talk and if I’ve gotten any closer to you guys. I just texted that I’m with you now.” Tresa extended her arm to Havens, phone in hand. “Want to read it?”
“Maybe later. I’m good for now. Thanks.”
“I still want to go in and check it out. Let me go alone.” The Man from Orange pulled off his raid jacket, checked his weapon, replacing one of the magazines. “Pull up here. Go around the block. There’s a back-alley connection. See if there’s a bus or anything back there.” He turned to Halliday. “It’d be best if you stay here for now in case I need you around back.” He patted her leg. “I’ll be good. Dome lights.”
Havens flipped a couple switches, threw the car in neutral and started swerving the front tires in the darkness of the street to slow the car.
“Okay, fire hydrant and open spot coming,” Drake said, his hand on the door.
“I see it. Going left to give you room,” Sean confirmed.
“Catch the door so it doesn’t make a noise,” Drake said to Halliday before jumping out and flinging the door back into her hands before it hit a car.
Halliday watched Drake in the shadows as he never appeared to slow and followed the contours of cars, bushes, walls, and corners.
“He’s scary good,” Sean admitted, catching Tresa track Woolf’s movements.
“He’s scary.”
“He did years overseas. More tours into hell than guys I’ve known with almost twice his years.” Havens braked only to turn the corner well away from Drake’s infiltration point.
“Why does he do it?”
“Didn’t have a choice at first. Doesn’t know what else to do? Family was pretty much killed in front of him. Brother he looked up to abandoned him. Maybe was involved in the parents’ killing. Uncle turned him into a remorseless killer.” Sean turned again.
“He has remorse.”
“I know. Unfortunately, the guys who often need the most help are the guys we won’t get off the ride.”
“Were you like him?”
“Not that bad. He has his issues, but just as many came from what he’s been subjected to. I have my own stories, I suppose. Lost my family. Wife’s gone. Daughter keeps her distance. Lars, the big guy, was my brother-in-law. He was a cop here. Good guy. Loyal to a fault to me and my family.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Yeah. He tracked you down with the help of our mission support guy.” Havens paused to make sure he had her attention before dropping the bomb. “Mafia daughter, huh?”
Tresa breathed out hard from her nostrils. Havens watched from the mirror as she shook her head.
“Guess you don’t miss Cicero, but yet, you’re still working with the agent who put away your father and then pulled security off your brother. Got him killed in prison. That really sucks.”
“How did you—” Tresa stopped. “Never mind.”
“Our boss gave us that information. Seems your Earl Grey guy had been using you as a wild card so he could show he was hunting us, but really didn’t think you would do it. I’ll admit. You did a nice job. We could use you on the team. Although, if you have feelings for him, that could be complicated.” Havens braked. “This should be right about the place.”
A rear metal door opened to the alley, letting light spill out. The silhouette of Woolf came toward the car. Both Havens and Halliday could see past Drake to the two bodies on the floor before the door slammed shut behind him.
Chapter 74
“I know how they’re going to do it,” Drake said as he flopped back into the car sea
t. “I think it’s time we let the FBI do what the FBI does best. Call this place in, Tresa. Maybe you can still look like a hero.”
“What’s going on in there? Do we need to stick around or go to the next?” Havens asked.
“Drive, but she needs to call so they have time to get bomb squads to the parade route by tomorrow. I mean, it looks like the typical jihadi skunkworks bomb shop in there. Ammonium nitrate, gas cans, aluminum boxes. There were wire clippings. Obviously, no one thought we were going to pop this place tonight.”
“Are you forgetting anything?” Halliday asked.
“Is it our anniversary?”
“Hey! The zombie made a joke.” Havens cheered. “But seriously, who’s dead in there?”
“Dunno. Street hoods. Nothing on their bodies. They were laying right there next to each other. Blood smear across the floor to where they lay. If I had to guess, I’d say someone’s going to come in and clean up. They weren’t killed the quick and easy way. Someone was pissed at them. Fuel stains on the ground haven’t fully evaporated, so we may just be an hour or two behind. But no clue where they took the explosives or how.”
Halliday called Earl Johnson back but was unsuccessful. She would have no idea that he was passed out in his sitting chair after the family decided it would be best to let him sleep it off. “Jay,” she muttered as if an afterthought. She pulled his business card from her rear pocket. “Maybe now he’ll believe I’m WMD.”
“Oh, does anyone know what that radioactive material was?” Drake asked. “There’s some shit on the floor that looks suspiciously like yellow cake.”
“Like cake cake?” Tresa asked.
Havens chimed in. “Uranium ore concentrate powder. It’s what the stuff looks like after it’s mined and refined but before enrichment or fuel fabricated.”
“Is it really radioactive?” she asked again.
“You’re not much of a WMD expert, are you? Better get that fixed before you use that cover again,” Sean mocked in fun. “But no, it’s radiologically harmless.”
“That’s a relief,” said Drake, “I put it on my finger to smell and taste.”
Both Sean and Halliday whipped their heads to Drake.
“What? I didn’t know what it was. I figured it was naturally harmless raw uranium. Just pulped ore. We trained on it in…well, places. Although, this I’d say tasted and smelled different.”
Tresa had tuned out at this point and was calling Jay’s mobile phone. “Jay, Tresa Halliday. Hey, you guys have a real problem on your hands before tomorrow’s parade.”
Chapter 75
“Hi, Jay. This is Special Agent Halliday. Sorry to bother you.” Tresa put her phone on speaker as Havens pulled to the Taylor Street curb with the UIC hospital in sight. It was a safe area with enough police presence that would keep them safe without being scrutinized.
“Uh, hey. This really isn’t a good time.” There was festive background noise around Jay. It was evident from the party sounds that Jay was at some St. Paddy’s Day shindig. “Is this something that can wait?”
“It can’t. Can you give me five minutes to explain? There’s a major situation at hand.”
“Hang on. Let me get to a better place where I can hear.”
The team was all turned, staring at Halliday’s palmed phone, lifted up to the middle of the SUV like a mini-conference table. In the background Jay must have been explaining to a wife or significant other that he had to step out and wouldn’t be long. There wasn’t much explanation, which signified someone knew the drill but was not too pleased.
“Okay, sorry,” he said. “I’ve got some major questions for you, but frankly I had to escalate to my boss. I’m guessing one of your guys took our SWAT members’ weapons, and from the texts I’ve been getting all night, you’re involved with that mess in Lawndale. You need to come in and deal with it. I’m not getting involved, and I don’t want this spilling over to me. I was just helping you out, but you took advantage of that. I’m done with you.”
“Jay, I am, and sorry to have gotten you involved in this. You’ve been so helpful, which is why I’m coming to you now. Showing you my hand.”
“I’m not leaving this party to bail anyone out. I can’t vouch for people that aren’t really military liaisons. I checked with our JSOC liaison.”
“Look, we believe there’s going to be an attack at the parade tomorrow. One of my team members got intel in Lawndale about another site that we raided and found homemade explosive ingredients. We think it’s tied to the radioactive material stolen from the university.”
“Holy shit.” He rocked back and forth as he processed what he was hearing. “You think they’re going to do that at the parade?”
“It seems that everything is coming to a head. Tomorrow is the most likely mass public event. It would cause a ton of casualties.”
“Casualties are right. It’s a drunkfest. Anything could cause a lot of confusion, and the law enforcement working it have been doing double shifts because of all the bar parties and the parade on the south side. Shit. This is bad.”
“Can you get a warning out?”
“Yeah, I’ll call the teams and the boss. We did a joint special event threat assessment for this with the Crime Prevention Center here in the city and Homeland. Terrorism concerns are usually the top key finding, and I think they mentioned the potential for a dirty bomb or a truck ramming in the threat indicators already. So, we’ll already have police presence, SWAT teams, snipers all facing the parade. They use McCormick Place parking lot as emergency response staging and family assistance center,” he clarified, “the big event building near the lake right next to Soldier Field. Parade can have over forty thousand people crammed into that little area.”
“I know the place. Right.”
Drake asked aloud, “Can they just cancel the parade?”
“I’m guessing that’s one of your guys?”
“Yeah,” she responded.
“Did he take our guys’ weapons?”
Drake shook his head.
“No, he said he didn’t, but Jay, back to canceling. This could be huge.”
“Yeah, I mean, they probably won’t cancel without more intel. You know how people react when it’s just intelligence but nothing going boom beforehand. No one wants to take responsibility to cancel something and then have nothing happen. Do you have more evidence that it’s going to be the target for sure or where they’ll put the bomb?”
Havens spoke up. “We believe they may be using busses with kids somehow.”
“Shit.” Jay paused. “Still, they have all these barricades like city trash trucks at the intersections, they close off feeder streets, there’s a ton of cops, and no bus is getting within a good few blocks of the place. It’d be pretty tough crashing through or getting anywhere near the event. I’ll still raise it up to the JTTF,” he said, referring to the local FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force. “They can ping the NCTC, too.”
The National Counterterrorism Center, or NCTC, had a local Office of the Director of National Intelligence representative assigned to help coordinate and collaborate items of an intelligence matter that were shared across the community to avoid analysis gaps.
Halliday searched the two operators’ facial expressions for any further sense of guidance. Both men shrugged. “Okay, Jay, I’ll send you the location of the auto shop where we found the materials. There’s a couple dead bodies that were there before we arrived.”
No one could see Jay, but the silence was indicative of his displeasure of their activities. His cursing before responding further cemented the notion. “Look, we do a pretty good job of keeping things safe in Chicago. And we don’t do shit like you guys are doing without being coordinated and collaborating with Chicago blue. Don’t go fucking up things here in the city for us. It’s taken us a long time to get here. We’re a pretty well-oiled machine when it co
mes to incident response, joint raids, and running down special event threats. I’m not cool with this, so, maybe just go on back to DC. This is our field office, and you’re really making a mess of things. I’ve heard about you, and what I heard before I didn’t believe when I met you. Now I firmly believe the stories. Go home, Halliday, and make sure you return the weapons you all stole. You violated our trust. You’re violating the law. Don’t call me again, please.”
Halliday disconnected the phone. “I’m pretty sure you guys don’t plan to go home any time soon, correct?”
“Correct,” Havens answered. “Whizzo, you about ready to get high score on a game or what?”
Drake looked up from the distraction of his device again. He closed out of his hacking tools and the device he had been monitoring and downloading content from. “We probably can’t do much until daylight. Why don’t you guys go get some rest? I need to go somewhere.”
“Where could you possibly need to go at this time of night?” Halliday asked.
“Hear that? This is how it’s going to be in the future with her, Woolf. Remember she said it here first when we were hunting terrorists. What happens when you want to go out and get a beer with me and the baby’s crying?” Havens tossed a Powerbar into Woolf’s lap and one at Halliday. “She’s locking you down.”
Halliday wasn’t amused. “Don’t be stupid.”
“True, Drake would probably say that when you wanted to go get a beer with me.”
“Damned straight,” she muttered, “but I can handle solo just fine.”
“I need you to drop me off up north, Sean. Looks like up Lake Shore Drive to Diversey Parkway on Pine Grove, it says.”
“Do I want to ask?” inquired Havens, knowing Drake was fixated on something and he probably didn’t want the team involved for their own good.
“I just need a ride. I can get back to wherever you are. Best I go it alone. I need to make two stops. Second is close to the first.”