Patriot Lies (Jack Widow Book 14)

by Scott Blade

  Cameron reached over to a little tray near a desk lamp. She reached in and pulled out a card. She slid it over to Widow, across the table like in the movies.

  He picked up the card. It was a business card—her business card; only it didn’t list her title. It only said NCIS and Rachel Cameron.

  Cameron said, “That’s my direct number. Don’t be calling the emergency line anymore. Understood?”

  “Yes.”

  With nothing left to say, he stood up, ready to leave.

  Cameron stood up and nodded at him. She walked around the desk and gave him another big, warm hug. She backed up and held his arms, stared up at his face like his mother used to do.

  “You don’t be a stranger. Call me sometime. Let me know you’re alive. Okay?”

  Widow nodded. The feeling of betrayal was on his face, but he said nothing about it.

  “Yes, Chief.”

  Widow turned and walked out of her office. Gray followed.

  Twenty-Nine

  Widow followed Gray out of the office and back through Unit Ten’s workspace to the shared lobby, where they’d first met.

  The walk gave Widow time to move from a feeling of betrayal to one of anger and disappointment. He was angry that Cameron wouldn’t help him, although he knew her well enough to know that that decision was made because it was the right decision for her unit and her people. There were forces at work that Widow wasn’t privy to.

  In the lobby, Widow saw the same Marine lance corporal who had stopped him earlier. The guy was standing tall near the same wall as earlier.

  Widow headed for the exit, but he heard Gray from over his shoulder. She was still behind him—still on his tail.

  “Wait up, Widow.”

  Widow stopped and turned back to her.

  “Where are you going? I can walk myself out.”

  “Didn’t you come here in a taxi?”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I checked on it.”

  “You checked on it?”

  “I have a friend who saw you enter the Visitor Control Center.”

  “I did come by taxi.”

  “Sounds like you need a ride.”

  “You taking me all the way back to DC?”

  “Just follow me to my car.”

  Gray pushed past him and led him out of the building. He saw a sign that pointed to employee parking. But that wasn’t where she went. She led him through more sidewalks and past more grass. They headed to a parking lot that was surrounded by barbed wire fencing.

  She took him to a navy blue Dodge Charger. She clicked a button, and the car doors unlocked. She slipped in and fired up the engine.

  Widow walked around to the passenger side and dumped himself down on the seat. It was very roomy. He had plenty of legroom.

  “Seatbelt,” she said.

  Widow put his seatbelt on, and Gray gassed the vehicle like some people do when driving a sports car. The engine roared.

  She said, “I love that I get paid to drive this. You must miss getting a car like this.”

  “I’m not a car guy.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. What?”

  “You just look like the kind of man who is good under the engine.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Do you drive?”

  “I can drive just fine. I took the same combat driving classes you took. Just not a car guy.”

  She backed out of the space and drove to the service drive. Within minutes they were out of the base and on Interstate Ninety-Five, heading north to DC.

  Once on the interstate, Gray pushed the vehicle over the speed limit, which was technically a violation of NCIS protocol, when not in a high-speed pursuit or some kind of urgent business. But Widow wasn’t going to tell.

  After five straight minutes of silence, Gray finally spoke.

  “Sounds like you need some help.”

  “Why do you think I came to you guys?”

  “And Cameron turned you down?”

  “Yeah. You were there.”

  “That seems unusual.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Aren’t you the famous Jack Widow? The poster boy for our undercover unit?”

  “I’m famous?” he asked.

  “You are in certain circles.”

  “Good to know. But I’m nothing special.”

  “You were the first agent to infiltrate the SEAL teams. That’s special.”

  Widow stared out the window at the green and red landscape whizzing by like he was seeing it from a train.

  “I didn’t infiltrate them. I am a SEAL.”

  “You spied on them, right?”

  “It wasn’t like that. I didn’t spy on them. I was undercover. I hunted bad guys that were among us.”

  “You investigated them?”

  “Yes.”

  “You arrested a bunch of them over your twenty years in? Didn’t you? For us?”

  “Sixteen.”

  “You arrested only sixteen? In twenty years?”

  “I was only in the Navy for sixteen years. I don’t know how many arrests came out of my investigations. I didn’t count them all.”

  “I do. I know how many.”

  “How’s that?”

  “I studied them, all of them. Well, the ones I could get that weren’t classified beyond classified.”

  “You studied them?”

  “Yeah. I studied you. Only they don’t tell us your name. Or any names. Just vague examples of operations.”

  “So, how do you know it’s me?”

  “It’s you. We all know now. Everyone in the unit knows your name. Hell, even some agents not in our unit. You’re kind of a legend.”

  “That wasn’t my aim. I was just doing what was right.”

  “Putting away your brother SEALs? Didn’t it bother you?”

  “Only the bad ones. If they committed crimes terrible enough to be on my radar, then they weren’t my brothers. They were traitors to the platoon, the Navy, the country. Besides, most of my arrests weren’t SEALs. Most of the time, my investigations led me to external enemies.”

  “Such as what? Foreigners?”

  “Sometimes. Sometimes it was SEAL flunkies or Marines or sailors or just other citizens. It all depends.”

  Gray was quiet a long second. Then, she said, “I’m a damn good investigator, myself. You know?”

  Widow looked over at her. His anger at Cameron turned to sadness. He was more hurt by this point, than feeling angry.

  He asked, “What was your rank?”

  “I don’t have one.”

  “You did. Cameron said you were out of the Navy, like me.”

  “I was an O3 on my last tour.”

  Widow nodded. It sounded right. She looked to be about thirty, maybe thirty-one. If she had gone straight into the Navy after high school, plus four years of university and twelve weeks of officer school, then she’d be the right age to have made it up to lieutenant.

  The thing that didn’t add up was how she had been recruited to Unit Ten. He couldn’t figure it out. So, he just asked her point-blank.

  “How did you make it into Unit Ten?”

  “What? You already think I don’t have what it takes?”

  “Not that at all. Just you’re so young.”

  “Just turned thirty-one in August.”

  He said nothing to that.

  She looked at him and then back to the street. Her smile went flat, as if a painful memory was happening in her mind right then and there.

  She said, “After my last tour ended, I signed up with NCIS. I was brand new. I was green. And they treated me that way. They discouraged me from shining.”

  Widow looked at her. He watched her cheekbones and facial muscles as she talked. She was a beautiful woman. He was trying to stay hurt about Cameron’s rejection of his plea for help, but Gray did make a fine distraction.

  She said, “Cameron doesn’t think I’ll make it. I was pushed on her.”


  “By whom? Not a lot of people can force Cameron into something.”

  “By the director of the NCIS.”

  “The director? Are you his niece or something?”

  “Her. The current director is a woman.”

  Widow stared at her.

  “Bullshit! The NCIS has never had a female director.”

  “You don’t think a woman can be director?”

  “I didn’t say that. It’s just never had one. I know it’s been all men. NCIS isn’t that old.”

  “You’re right. But there’s a rumor that it might go to a woman this time. It’s being run by an interim head right now. The female deputy director is in charge.”

  “Stop changing the subject. Why were you pushed on her? How did you make Unit Ten?”

  “There was an incident,” Gray said.

  She stared straight, but Widow could tell she was reimagining it because her speed slowed to the limit, and she steadied the vehicle into the slow lane.

  “What happened?”

  “In my first six months of being in investigation, I caught an officer red-handed committing a horrible crime.”

  “What was he doing?”

  “He was trying to rape an underage girl. They stuck me on a task force that seemed hopeless. For five straight years, young girls were turning up dead in the regions around Camp Lemonnier. It’s near Ethiopia.”

  Widow said, “It’s in Djibouti.”

  “You been there?”

  A particular SEAL mission he had been a part of that took place in Yemen, but flew out of Djibouti came to mind.

  “Never,” he lied. “But I know where it is.”

  Gray said, “Anyway, they set up a task force. It was there long before I arrived on post.”

  She said it in a certain way that told Widow she was indifferent to it.

  “The rest of the team give you shit?”

  “The rest of the team acted like I was some hotshot coming in and running all their police work. But I wanted to solve the case. So, I went back through five years of investigation and I kicked up dust that was fully settled. I re-interviewed old witnesses and followed up every lead that had already been pursued.”

  “And?”

  “The locals claimed it was a US sailor doing the killings. Every local witness claimed that was the rumor. But there was no proof. Eyewitnesses were too scared to come forward. It was a dead-end assignment, according to the agents on the ground.

  “The brass believed it was just a group of pirates.”

  Widow asked, “But you didn’t buy that?”

  “It was no damn pirates.”

  “You know, because you caught the culprit?”

  “I know because I shot him.”

  Widow asked, “Really? Did you kill him? Who was it?”

  “No. He lived. He was a young officer. On his first command.”

  “That was enough to land you into Unit Ten?”

  “The man’s father is an admiral.”

  Widow stared at her. He already knew the story. It was on the news, at least in the Navy Times, which he still read from time to time.

  “Really?” he asked.

  “Yep. So, the pinheads in Washington wanted to stick me someplace where I would be forgotten. But they couldn’t send me to a post in Antarctica. Not when they’d just recognized me for it in public.”

  “They give you a trophy?”

  “Just an honor of recognition.”

  Which was big for an NCIS agent. It was like getting a new chevron on your uniform or a Navy Cross for distinguished acts of service.

  “They tried to recognize me all at the same time they wanted me to vanish from the limelight.”

  “So, they negotiated with you?”

  “They did. They dangled a better assignment for me. A better job. A better life.”

  “So, they offered you your choice of assignment? How did you know about Unit Ten?”

  “They offered me a spot in Unit Ten.”

  “Really?”

  “Yep.”

  “So much for secrets.”

  “I didn’t want the limelight anyway. I don’t care about trophies or recognition.”

  “You just wanted to be where the action is?”

  “I do.”

  “That’s why Cameron doesn’t trust you?”

  “She trusts me. She just doesn’t like that she didn’t get to pick me the way she did you.”

  Widow nodded and looked at the clock on the radio. It read two minutes to eight in the morning.

  He asked, “So, what was your first assignment with Unit Ten?”

  “You are.”

  He asked, “What?”

  “You’re my first assignment. Well, Eggers is.”

  “What is this?”

  “You need help, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So, I’ll help you.”

  “Is Cameron going to like that? She kicked me out.”

  “You didn’t think she was going to leave you hanging out in the cold, did you?”

  “She know about this?”

  Gray said, “I can’t answer that. You know how it is.”

  Widow thought for a moment, and then he said, “That’s why you were in the lobby? That’s why you had me sidelined until you could get there. She called you in and told you to help me, off the books?”

  Gray said, “Cameron’s priority is protecting the unit. She can’t have anything to do with this. Not on paper. But I’ve got nothing to lose. In fact, I’ve got an ace in the hole.”

  “Sleeve.”

  “What?”

  “It’s ace up your sleeve. Not in the hole. Least, I never heard that before except in poker.”

  “Whatever. So, where to? Where are we going first?”

  Widow thought for a moment.

  He asked, “Can you get a protection detail together?”

  “For who? You?”

  “For the lawyer who told me about Eggers. He’s got a wife and a kid.”

  “Do they need protection?”

  “They might. I told him to leave town. But maybe he hasn’t gone anywhere. We could get a team to protect him. That would be better than him going off on his own.”

  She repeated the question.

  “They need protection?”

  “Tunney, that PI I mentioned, someone nearly shot him in the head and tried to make it look like suicide.”

  “Over what?”

  “This,” Widow said, and he pulled out the flash drive.

  “What’s that?”

  “The video from the missing feed I mentioned.”

  “You have a copy?”

  “No. The original. I took it.”

  “Well, that’s obstruction of justice.”

  “I was planning on handing it over to Metro.”

  “But?”

  “I haven’t had the chance yet.”

  “Why didn’t you give it to us?”

  “I was about to before Cameron shut me out.”

  “Okay. Where’s he? The PI?”

  “Hospital.”

  “We should get a guy over there too.”

  “Agreed.”

  Gray asked, “You got any idea who’s behind this? Who’s the guy at the tippy-top, I mean?”

  “Nope. Whoever it is must be connected, rich, and desperate to cover it up. This means it’s someone with something to lose.”

  “Like what?”

  “Money. Power, maybe.”

  Gray pressed some buttons on her steering wheel, and a dial tone came up over the car’s speakers. She gave a voice command to her phone’s computer, which answered her back in a soothing female voice.

  She called someone from NCIS and gave her badge number and ordered two protection details. She stopped and asked Widow for names and exact locations. He gave the name of the hospital for Tunney and Michael Aker’s name and the address on his business card along with his cell number.

  The guy on the line said he would call him promp
tly and set the whole thing up. It was all done quickly and efficiently and professionally.

  Widow’s feelings of anger and betrayal and disappointment were replaced with gratitude and pride and the urge to drink another coffee. The last feeling came from his soul.

  After it was all said and done, Gray clicked off the call and returned to her high-speed driving. She bumped the car over to the express lane.

  She glanced at Widow.

  “So where to first?”

  “You got a computer?”

  “At home.”

  “Got internet?”

  “Of course.”

  “Got access to NCIS internal files from your home computer?”

  “I do. For what I’m cleared for.”

  Widow paused a beat and asked the most important question in the world to him.

  “Got coffee?”

  “Of course. I was in the Navy for eleven years. My house has a fully stocked kitchen. Plenty of coffee in the cupboards. Why?”

  “Sounds like we’re going back to your place.”

  “Pardon me?”

  “Your place can be our home base until we figure things out.”

  She paused a beat and said, “I’ve heard about you, Jack Widow.”

  “So you said.”

  “I mean, I’m not that easy. I’m not taking you back to my place that fast.”

  “Is that what you’ve heard about me?”

  Gray glanced at him. There was a hint of a smile. She said, “I’ve heard things.”

  Widow said, “It’s not like that. It’s morning time.”

  “You never heard of morning sex?”

  “I swear. It’s not like that. We need to find the connection here. Who’d want to kill Eggers? And who hates him enough to burn him alive? Who’s resourceful enough to get hold of that traffic camera’s feed? Make it disappear? Who can bribe and murder and act like it’s no big deal?”

  “I’m just kidding with you.”

  “Okay. I know that.”

  “Okay. Okay. But we also have to ask ourselves, who’s so bad at being a criminal that they bungle the whole thing?”

  “How so?”

  “You’ve got the evidence, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then, they might be resourceful, but also they’re not very good at crime.”

  “I wouldn’t say that. They just didn’t count on me.”

  “So back to my place?” she said with suspicion in her voice.