by Brandt Legg
Tess studied the list of attack locations for the hundredth time since her first cup of coffee at three-twelve AM. She had stopped keeping track of how much—or rather how little—sleep she’d gotten. Last night it had been maybe four hours, just not all at once. The list taunted her.
—Crystal City, Virginia
—Seattle, Washington
—Austin, Texas
—Cincinnati, Ohio
—Albuquerque, New Mexico
—Chapel Hill, North Carolina
—Huntsville, Alabama
—San Jose, California
—San Francisco, California
Six of the sites were some kind of tech companies, two were in aerospace, and one made auto parts. She’d read transcripts of FBI interviews with each of the companies’ CEOs. None of them could figure a connection to more than one or two of the others. Government databases and bureau computers had also failed to find a definitive link among the list. “It’s as if the bombers are phantoms,” the FBI agent in charge had told his supervisor during the last briefing.
The FBI had units coordinating with CIA and NSA and two dozen other agencies, exploring theories ranging from Chinese sabotage to economic terrorism and scores of other far-fetched ideas. The form of explosives used was new and highly advanced. Prior to the first attacks, the US Military had believed they were the only ones with knowledge or access to it. It presented one of the many desperate questions which stole her sleep:
1. How are they destroying buildings with a relatively small amount of explosives?
2. How are they choosing their targets?
3. What do they want? What are they trying to achieve?
4. Who are they?
5. How do we stop them?
For three weeks, Bull and Lenny had been arguing about how to handle “the find,” as they called it. Each passing day had made it more valuable, and exponentially more dangerous.
“We’ve got to sell it,” Lenny said, trying not to shout, as he found Bull in front of her computers with a video window open to a news report of the latest bombing in Huntsville. “We’re running out of time.”
“How the hell do you know?” she snapped back. He could tell she hadn’t slept. Whenever Bull pulled an all-nighter, her face scrunched into a permanent squint and her voice took on an edgy-whiney pitch instead of her normal lilt.
“They’re gonna figure it out,” he responded tensely. “And then we’ve got nothing . . . except maybe some trouble.”
“F that! It’s up to me. You forget, you make the deals, but I make the product.”
He thought she sounded like a drug kingpin. However, this was by far the most serious game he’d ever played in, and that was saying something. He and Bull had dealt with the mob, blackmailed a state senator, sold banking info to hack houses, even done a contract job with the Russians once, but this—the find—made all that look like shoplifting at the local convenience store. This meant millions, or the morgue.
“We gotta move this,” he tried again.
Bull stared at the screens for a long time—numb, oblivious, concentrating, lost . . . Lenny didn’t know what. Finally, she spoke. “Call that dude, the one you know, the convict.”
“Why him?”
“Cause I’m too young to die.”
The beeping noise gave Chase an instant headache. He and Wen had just returned from a naked swim in a waterfall, and the piercing din emanating from his pack in the corner of their bedroom felt like an assault on his bliss.
“Are you going to answer it?” Wen asked, combing her wet hair.
Chase retrieved the offending device, looked at the scrambled satellite-phone as if it were an armed intruder, then glanced back at Wen, still nude. “It’s not a scheduled call. It can’t be good news.”
She nodded, pulled on a loose tee-shirt, and instinctively looked at the day pack she’d taken to the waterfall that now lay on the bed, containing a QSZ-92 semi-automatic pistol. Her preferred Glock 19 was under the pillow. She blew him a playful kiss, but her eyes showed concern. Guns made Chase nervous, ever since his best friend accidentally shot himself in elementary school.
“Yeah?” Chase said into the phone after seeing it was Flint Jones, his security chief. Flint, a fifty-six-year-old former CIA agent, was one of only a handful of people who knew how to reach them. Chase’s brother, Boone, his business partner, Dez, a convict at Lompoc Federal Prison—a man called Mars—who also happened to be Chase’s oldest friend, and a mysterious math savant known as “the Astronaut,” were the others.
Flint was the last one of those insiders that Chase ever wanted to hear from.
“We have a problem,” Flint said.
“Tell me something I don’t already know.” Although billionaire status did nothing to his ego, Chase’s life was not what it used to be. He’d been forced to hide his funds around the globe and live like a fugitive with a price on his head, all because he wanted to make the world a better place. Even in his snarky reply, he wondered which pursuer was onto them. He looked back at Wen, a woman he’d nearly died to save, knowing he wouldn’t hesitate to do it again. But Chase realized she’d be the one more likely to be saving him, as he recalled watching her kill two men on a runway not that long ago when they were actively trying to save the world. “Who’s coming?”
“You are,” Flint said. “You’ve got to come home immediately.”
Four
After their quiet existence on the island, the hectic bustle of the 1.5 million-square-foot Jeppesen Terminal at Denver airport left Chase feeling disoriented. The fact that, at Wen’s insistence, he also had a handgun concealed in his waistband under his shirt furthered his uneasiness. If Chase had known that several people were intently watching his every move, he would have already been running.
Wen and Chase had taken a small plane from Nuku Hiva to Tahiti, where they boarded Chase’s new $74 million Bombardier-8000 private jet. He’d reluctantly had to liquidate his beloved customized Gulfstream since it could be traced to him—the new plane was registered to a foreign shell company. He didn’t like the Bombardier as much. It lacked his personal touches, but it had excellent range, and they were able to fly directly to Denver from Tahiti. Their luggage was safely stored on the plane, except for a backpack Wen wore, which held their most valuable possession.
Wen didn’t like airports, and had repeatedly told Chase, “It’s an insane idea, too public, too much exposure.” As usual, Wen carried two weapons, but she knew that in these types of surroundings, it would be her MSS training and field experience that would be more important to their survival. She kept looking behind them, but with thousands of travelers moving in every direction, it was impossible to tell if they were being followed.
Flint claimed the CIA had requested their presence. “Not really a request, though,” he’d said. “A commanded performance.”
A man wearing casual business attire but looking like a battle-hardened military vet walked far enough back to go undetected. He struggled to keep Chase and Wen in sight. “I have them,” he said, speaking into a bluetooth headset. “We are in the terminal, level five.”
They had left Nuku Hiva immediately after the call with Flint, and had been constantly on the move for more than sixteen hours. For most of that time, Wen had cautioned against attending the meeting at all. “Testing Flint’s loyalty is not smart,” she’d said. “If he fails the test, we’ll be in prison, or dead.”
Chase agreed, but also believed being on the wrong side of the CIA would mean running forever. And how far will we get? he thought again, as they wove in and out of the pushing crowds.
Adding to his stress, as they got off the plane, Wen had confided that travel fatigue could cost her the edge needed to handle whatever might come.
“It’s impossible to defend in a busy airport.”
“Nothing is going to happen,” Chase said. “Flint is okay. Mars vouched for him.”
There was no one in the world Chase trusted more than Mars, a man h
e’d known since childhood. Although now serving a long prison term, he had a network that wielded stunning power and influence in both the criminal and noncriminal worlds. Mars often claimed, “Everything and everyone is connected to the underworld whether they know it or not. Everyone is a criminal, at least by association.” Mars had used that knowledge and those connections to make a fortune for himself and, more recently, to aid Chase in his bid to disappear.
“I wish I could see Mars on this trip,” Chase said to Wen as they scanned the throngs of travelers, looking for Flint.
“Too risky,” Wen said tersely. They’d already had that conversation twice before during the long flight.
“There’s Flint,” Chase said, resisting the urge to point at his security chief who stood next to a large bronze statue of aviation pioneer, Elrey Jeppesen.
A man in a leather jacket, leaning against the wall twenty yards away, saw Flint, too. He stuck a piece of gum in his mouth as he watched Chase and Wen approach the statue.
Chase introduced Wen to Flint. Wen, normally a quick judge of character, couldn’t decide if she liked him or not. That fact kept her on more of an edge than usual.
“Where’s Tess?” Chase asked, still annoyed to be meeting the head of the CIA’s most secret division, Corporate Intelligence Security Section—CISS—which had been formed four years earlier. The division, a joint operation of the CIA, NSA, and FBI, had a mandate to prevent war between corporations. The Department of Homeland Security created CISS, reacting to a World Economic Forum report showing that only thirty-one of the top one hundred global economic entities were countries, with the other sixty-nine being corporations. The shocking trend, expected to continue, meant that in the next fifteen years, ninety-five conglomerates would dominate the list with only five countries remaining. A secret government study concluded that a shift from nation states to corporate states made the likelihood of major conflicts—or “wars”—erupting between corporations and countries highly probable as the world entered a new phase of decentralized power. CISS’s mandate was to keep the peace, or, at least, make sure the “right” side won.
“Tess will be along any minute,” Flint said, motioning them to begin walking. “And remember, be nice.”
“Me?” Chase said. “I hope you’ve told her the same thing.” The last time he’d seen Tess, she’d had him detained and interrogated on an airport runway. He was not a fan. Still, Flint had convinced Chase that he owed his continued freedom, at least in part, to Tess. Wen saw things differently, believing Tess was working to protect the interests of various corporate powers that wanted Chase out of the way.
The bluetooth man continued to follow. However, the man chewing gum headed in the opposite direction, toward the up escalator.
“We are walking into a trap,” Wen said to Chase. “Whether Flint knows it or not.”
Flint ignored the comment. “Unfortunately, this little reunion will have to be a bit shorter than we’d planned,” Flint said, ushering them around the back of a long escalator. “Just before you arrived, she texted me. An emergency requires her to return to Washington right away. We’ll only be able to speak with her for a few minutes.”
“We just flew halfway around the world for a meeting that we should have been able to do over the phone, and now you’re telling me we’re not even going to have that meeting.”
“You had to come back anyway,” Flint said as they passed a gift shop. None of them had noticed the two people following them, or the third man now watching them from behind a rack of the latest paperbacks.
Five
Chase, suddenly more worried, grabbed Flint’s shoulder to stop him. “What happened? Why did we need to come back?”
“Because you can’t do what you have to do from some little speck of land in the middle of the ocean,” Flint said, carefully scanning the crowd behind them instead of looking at Chase. “Have you heard about the Fire Bomber?”
“What’s a Fire Bomber?” Chase asked.
“You don’t see any news in paradise?” Flint asked, astonished, as they started walking again.
“That’s by design,” Wen said. “We dropped out. Or at least we were trying to, until you called.”
“The Fire Bomber,” Flint began, as they dodged a family of six, each of whom pulled their own luggage, “is a person, or persons, some sort of terrorist group, we don’t really know. They’ve bombed seven corporate targets in the United States over the past three weeks. No one knows why.”
“Which companies?” Chase asked.
“What’s this have to do with us?” Wen asked at the same time. “We’re not wanted for those crimes, too, are we?”
“Tess will explain,” Flint said, nodding toward a woman with long auburn hair.
Chase followed Flint’s gaze and immediately recognized the woman whose personality, in spite of her jeans and faded gray leather jacket, did not match her attractive and laid-back appearance. She’s more like her snakeskin cowboy boots, Chase thought, recalling what he’d learned since their first meeting. Tess Federgreen had risen through the ranks of the NSA with an impressive list of Washington contacts, and knew more than her share of secrets. She ran the CISS in the way J. Edgar Hoover had run the FBI—as if accountable to no one and willing to do whatever necessary to achieve the desired results.
The bluetooth man slowed down. The gift shop man, who’d moved into the terminal, also stopped, as if checking his boarding pass.
Tess and a towering African American man greeted them. For a moment, it looked as if Tess might hug Flint, but it passed in a hurried awkwardness most people would have missed, but Wen would ask Chase about it later.
“Thanks for coming,” Tess said to Chase. “Sorry, but we need to have this conversation while walking.”
The man with Tess extended his hand to Chase. “Travis Watts. I’m very glad to finally meet you.” Travis smiled. “I’m Director of Field Operations for CISS.”
Chase shook his hand and stared into his eyes. “You’re the Yang.”
Travis raised an eyebrow. “Seems our friend here has been doing some homework.” Tess and Travis were co-directors of CISS, and many of their colleagues referred to the pair as “Yin and Yang.”
“Yes, I have,” Chase said. “You’re thirty-six, born in Atlanta, the eldest son of Nigerian immigrants. University of North Carolina. Officer Training School. Army Major. CIA recruited you. Officially, you began your career as an analyst, since you’re fluent in four languages, but unofficially you were a member of the agency’s dark ops.”
“Classified research, even,” Travis said, impressed, as they kept walking, trying to outpace the seemingly endless flow of people.
“I’m not going to ask what you found out about me,” Tess said, her eyes—the color of wet jade—flashing in anger.
“Good idea,” Chase shot back.
“We’re all on the same side here,” Flint said as they went under a bank of Departures monitors.
“Are we?” Wen asked.
“We’d better be,” Tess said, checking the time, then picking up her stride. “Which brings me to the reason we’re here. I need your help, Chase.”
Her words surprised him. Up until then, he’d believed he might be in more trouble. “Last time you said that I almost died. In fact, I would have died if it wasn’t for Wen.” Flint shot him a just-shut-up-and-listen-for-one-minute look. “Okay, I’m listening.”
The bluetooth man was now only fifteen feet behind them.
“You are, no doubt, aware of the Fire Bombers,” Tess said.
“More than one?” Chase asked, as if he’d been following the story from the beginning.
“Have to be. Nine sites in three weeks, no casualties, no witnesses. No single person could . . . Anyway, I want you and Wen to find out who’s behind this.”
“Why do you need us?” Chase asked, astonished. “Isn’t the FBI investigating?”
“Of course.”
“And what about CISS, or the rest of the
CIA?”
“Yes, we’re working on it, too,” Tess said. “But I’d prefer you find out who it is before the FBI does.”
“Why?” Wen asked, just as a loudspeaker called a passenger back to a gate area.
“I have my reasons,” Tess said. They were passing a busy cafe and the rich aroma of fresh-ground coffee mixed with a cocktail of cologne from the nearby duty-free shop made Chase squint his exasperated eyes and look at Wen.
The gift shop man, thirty feet behind and struggling to push through the rush of travelers, looked to the upper walkways, as if expecting someone, or something to happen.
Six
Wen continued searching the airport crowds for threats. The more she heard from Tess, the more she believed they shouldn’t be there. It seemed beyond crazy that this powerful woman from the CIA would be asking for their help—an engineer and a former Chinese agent. It could only be a trap. They were walking so fast, it was difficult for Wen to sweep the entire area, but her training told her the most important places to look—ahead and above
“What can we do that the CIA or FBI can’t?” Chase asked, his tone incredulous.
“We have certain limitations,” Tess said. “And you have none.”
Chase scoffed. “Now you’re really insulting my intelligence. That’s ridiculous!”
“What’s in your pack, Wen?” Tess asked, tapping Wen’s backpack. “Something you aren’t supposed to have?” Her mouth showed a smile. Her eyes did not.
Wen considered taking Tess down and then running.
“Something she shouldn’t even know about?” Travis added.
Wen ignored them. Her eyes continuing to roam.
“She does have quite a past,” Tess said as the group momentarily got caught in an overflowing line at a car rental kiosk. “We need someone objective. And you—”