Blackout

by Nance, John J. ;

  “Well, if not your agency, then who? You and I both know the Defense Intelligence people, DIA, are definitely not capable of such field operations. Nor is National Reconnaissance Office, or National Security Agency. That leaves only Central Intelligence, and I know CIA isn’t a candidate.”

  “Oh, wonderful! My main media man can’t believe the spooks at Langley could go out of control, but he believes the FBI could turn renegade.”

  “I just know a lot of people at CIA, okay? And I refuse to believe—I hope I don’t believe the CIA could commit such atrocities.”

  “Robert, listen to yourself. You hope you don’t believe? That tells me you do believe they’re capable of murder.”

  He shook his head and looked away, but she maneuvered into his line of vision, drawing him back. “Robert, remember I said this feels more corporate than governmental?”

  “Yes.”

  “I hate to say it, but neither my own Bureau nor Langley would be sophisticated or coordinated enough for such an operation. We couldn’t set up and pull off what these people have accomplished, whatever their purpose. There are simply too many managers, too many rules, too many constraints on money, and too many approvals to get, even for covert operations.”

  “In other words?” he prompted, his arms folded.

  “You asked who’s chasing us? Not government or military, that’s for certain.”

  “And that’s raw speculation,” he countered.

  “So, what else do we have to work with?”

  SEATTLE, WASHINGTON

  11:45 P.M. LOCAL/0745 ZULU

  The head of the team dispatched from Vegas to Seattle hung up the phone and smiled. A single line of computer code had solved the mystery. The hours of connection with Kat Bronsky’s Internet provider had gone through some clever filtering, but it had all originated from the Holiday Inn in the south Seattle community of Renton.

  Getting the others to the Holiday Inn parking lot took another fifteen minutes, but creating the unquestioning reaction that four deadly serious FBI agents would trigger in a couple of hotel desk clerks justified the coordination. The frightened, wide-eyed night manager and his one assistant led the way to the back office instantly.

  “What do you guys want us to do?” the young man asked.

  “First, has either of you seen any of these people?” The pictures of Kat and Robert were laid on the desk, then one of Steve Delaney. The two employees studied them before shaking their heads.

  “No, Sir. But we only came on duty at ten P.M.”

  “Who was on the desk before?”

  They passed over the names, addresses, and phone numbers of the off-duty desk crew, with the caution that two of them were headed out of town.

  “We need a printout of every guest you have tonight, and every scrap of information on them, along with all the registration cards.”

  The two jumped to comply, standing aside quietly while the pseudo-FBI agents methodically combed the list. One stood at last and motioned the leader over.

  “Three possible couples. All three registered this afternoon, paid cash, and indicated a one-night stay. This is my prime candidate. Room four-fifteen. John and June Smith, for Chrissake.”

  The leader shook his head. “Smith? You’d think she’d be more creative. Okay, let’s go,” he said, motioning to the others before turning to the night manager. “Say nothing to anyone of this operation. Stay in the office, and do not involve the local police, no matter what happens. This is a federal matter. You help us like you’ve been doing, you’re heroes. You fail to follow instructions, you could be obstructing justice.”

  “No problem, Sir!” The manager said.

  Two more teens raced down the hall outside of Robert MacCabe’s door. Inside the room, Kat paced around, trying to get used to the platform shoes. She moved to the peephole and looked out, wondering if there was any adult supervision of the group. She saw two of the teens stop suddenly at the ninety-degree bend at the end after running into several dark-suited figures who were striding around the corner. The two groups sorted themselves out and the men continued walking in the direction of Robert’s door, swimming into view in the tiny fish-eye lens. They stopped two doors down across the hall.

  “What’s going on?” Robert was asking from behind her, but Kat held her left hand out to quiet him. A cold feeling crept into her stomach as the men positioned themselves on each side of room 415. She pushed her eye closer. The men were pulling guns now, and one of them inserted a card key in the door. He turned the knob, shoved the door inward, and all of them charged inside amid shouted commands.

  Kat turned and motioned Robert toward her, then put her eye back to the peephole and whispered frantically out of the side of her mouth. “Go to my door! Put on the chain and the double lock and watch this.”

  “What?” he asked.

  She explained what she’d just witnessed, noticing when she looked back that a small crowd of teens had gathered at the far end of the hall to watch the show. There were shouts from within the assaulted room and one of the men appeared, dragging a protesting woman in a skimpy nightgown into the corridor. A naked man followed, held between two of the intruders. The fourth one looked at papers in his hand and then at their faces.

  “They’re not the ones,” Kat thought she heard him say.

  Suddenly the man and woman were pushed back into their room, and the door closed in their faces. All four men regained the corridor and marched in Kat and Robert’s direction. They reached the door and continued without breaking stride, passing the peepholes at full speed and disappearing down the opposite hallway.

  Kat turned her back to the door, breathing hard. Her eyes betrayed a rising panic as Robert rounded the corner from the adjacent room in a similar state of upset. “Jeez, Kat,” he began.

  “They’ve found us. God knows how, but they’ve found us.”

  “They’ve found the hotel, but …”

  Kat looked at him for a second. “Get packed. Quickly. We’ve got to find a safe way out of here.”

  He nodded and turned, but Kat stopped him suddenly.

  “Wait, Robert. That was one couple in one room. They’re looking for the wrong combination. We may have a few minutes before they figure out the possibility that we’d be in two rooms.”

  There were loud voices in the corridor again and she looked back through the peephole, unsurprised to see several of the teens talking animatedly about what they had just witnessed. Two of them were almost alongside her door. Kat licked her lips and turned to Robert to whisper, “Quickly, get in the other room.” He complied as she threw open the security lock and opened the door.

  “Boys, excuse me,” she said, in as relaxed and sexy a voice as she could manage. Her appearance stopped the young men in their tracks as they looked at a beautiful young woman in a micro-miniskirt, with incredible cleavage, actually beckoning them into a motel room.

  “Yes, Ma’am?”

  “Could you two strong young gentlemen step in here just a second?”

  They gave each other a lottery-winning look and popped through the door, jostling each other in the process. She closed it behind them. Both stood in the alcove and turned to her, the tallest one keeping his eyes focused on her breasts.

  Kat reached out and cupped his chin, raising his eyes.

  “I’m up here, Darlin’.”

  The boy blushed, and his companion snickered; his eyes were equally engaged in mentally recording Kat’s feminine features in intricate detail. “Sorry, Ma’am.”

  “Well, I’m flattered you like them, but the rest of the lady needs your help.”

  Their eyes grew wider. The chance to help a gorgeous, sexy female in distress, with unknown rewards on the other side, was impossible to resist. “Sure! What do you need?”

  “Well, those men who just embarrassed that couple? Did you see that?”

  “Yes, Ma’am,” they said in unison.

  “They’re looking for me.”

  “Why? What�
��d you do?” the shorter one asked.

  “I couldn’t pay all my federal taxes on our farm down in Ellensberg. Lost my husband last year. I’m gonna pay, but I need more time and they want to arrest me.”

  “They can do that?”

  “Sure can. Look. All I need is a diversion to give me enough time to get out of here. Think you two could divert their attention without letting anyone know?”

  The taller of the two grinned. “Yeah, I guess we could do that.”

  “What’s your name, Sugar?”

  “Ah, I, ah … Billy Matheson … of Yakima.”

  “And you, Babe?”

  “I’m Bobby Nash. I’m from Yakima, too.”

  “Billy and Bobby from Yakima. Matheson and Nash. Your families listed in the phone book? Can I find you that way to thank you later?”

  Two heads nodded enthusiastically.

  “Okay,” she said, putting an arm around each of them and walking them farther into the room in a huddle. “Here’s what I need you to do.”

  The leader of the group of four checked off one of the names on the printout in his hand and leaned against the interior corridor wall, well aware that time was running out. The assaulted couple in 415 would undoubtedly call the police. Perhaps thirty minutes, maybe an hour, but it would happen.

  “Sir?”

  He looked up and into the pimply face of a tall teenager. Another teen stood nearby. The tall boy was wide-eyed and upset, his eyes darting back and forth as he looked back at the parking lot.

  “The desk clerk? He said you guys were really FBI. Is that right?”

  “Why?” the leader asked.

  “My—my truck … they stole it … right outside!”

  “Son,” he interrupted, “you’ll have to call—” He stopped himself. “Wait a minute. When and where?”

  The teen was practically hyperventilating. Lord, the leader thought, he’s going to start crying any second. He glanced at the other boy, who looked scared, but wasn’t saying anything.

  “Out … there … we just pulled up in my father’s pickup—it’s a blue Toyota—and … and this man and woman pulled me out of the seat and yelled something about commandeering my truck for the FBI, and took off. I never saw a badge. I don’t think they really were FBI. Were they?”

  It was the leader’s turn for raised eyebrows. He glanced at his three men and back at the kid. “What did they look like?”

  The teen recited the description he’d been prompted to give of Robert MacCabe, and of Kat Bronsky with chestnut-brown hair and a pantsuit.

  “Show me the direction they went!” the leader commanded, and propelled the teens toward the door.

  “How many do you see?” Robert asked, as Kat peered through the partially opened curtain.

  “Four. All piling into a van of some sort. Young Billy must be doing an Academy Award job.”

  “That was grace under fire, Kat.”

  “It was sex under fire, helped by raging hormones ignited by this outfit.” She turned back into the room. “Okay. Make the call. We have to make sure there were only four of them.”

  Robert phoned the front desk. “Those FBI agents who were here. I need to speak with one of them.”

  “They’ve gone, Sir.”

  “All four of them?”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  Robert nodded to Kat, who was already in motion toward the door. “Thanks,” he said, putting the phone in its cradle and following her out.

  They slipped out a side door and Robert unlocked the car as Kat spotted the two boys, still standing in the parking lot.

  “Thanks, fellows. I owe you one.”

  “No problem, Ma’am,” said the taller of the two. “They went down the street that way, southbound.” He pointed to the right. “You’d better get going.”

  “You, too. Stay in your rooms tonight.”

  She plopped into the driver’s seat and waved good-bye, accelerating onto the main avenue in the opposite direction, passing an oncoming black sedan with U.S. Government tags as it pulled into the drive and headed for the motel office.

  When it became apparent that they weren’t going to catch the blue pickup, one of the four men called 911 to report its theft and its license number, identifying himself as FBI and asking for the local radio dispatch frequencies used by the police. With a handheld scanner programmed to the appropriate channels, they headed back to the motel, maintaining a fruitless vigil and almost missing the three cars that had gathered near the office, each of them dark-colored sedans with black sidewalls that screamed government.

  “Jeez Louise! We can’t go in there!”

  “Turn around. TURN AROUND!”

  The driver wheeled back onto the street as a city squad car turned in the drive.

  “So now what?”

  “Back to the jet while we try to figure their next move,” the leader said, his face a study in frustration and anger.

  chapter 41

  INTERSTATE 5,

  SOUTH OF OLYMPIA, WASHINGTON

  NOVEMBER 16—DAY FIVE

  1:45 A.M. LOCAL/0945 ZULU

  “I thought it was the cellular call I accidentally answered,” Kat said as they watched the headlights on the road ahead and tried to keep each other awake. “But now I think they traced back the series of numbers we were using for Internet access, and that boggles my mind. That should have taken days, at best.”

  “They’re crafty, Kat, but not infallible, or we wouldn’t still be here.”

  She shook her head. “This must be Supermob. I’ve never even heard of such technological and logistical capabilities in any known terrorist group, so it’s obvious we’re not dealing with a bunch of rednecks trying to blow up the government.”

  “You’re reinforcing my worst fears, Kat—that we’re somehow dealing with an arm of the U.S. government.”

  The Centralia city-limit sign appeared in the headlights just before 2 A.M. They had already made the decision to drive straight to the Portland, Oregon, airport and sleep in the minivan. There was a Horizon Airlines departure to Sun Valley, Idaho, around noon, and Kat had made reservations from a pay phone along the way, using purposefully misspelled variations of their real names.

  The temperature outside was in the upper forties, somewhat mild for a mid-November night. Sleep without the van’s heater was all but impossible, but keeping the engine on would make them far too visible on an otherwise empty airport parking lot. Robert suggested a truck stop, and before crossing the Columbia River into Oregon, they nestled the car anonymously into a vast parking lot of idling eighteen-wheelers.

  “Kat?” Robert asked at one point, when she felt she was just about to drift off.

  “Yes?”

  “Are you numb?”

  “No, I’m warm enough. How about you?”

  “I don’t mean temperature. I mean emotionally. I’m approaching the ‘whatever’ zone.”

  “You have even more of a right to feel that way, considering the crash and all.”

  He took a deep breath. “You think they’re okay up in—where is it?”

  “Stehekin?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I have a hard time remembering that name.”

  “Yes. I have to believe they’re okay. But I’m …”

  “Scared?”

  She looked over at him and smiled thinly before nodding. “Yeah. Unbelievably.” She sat up and rested her head on her hand. “Robert, I don’t know how this is going to end.”

  “Beg your pardon?” he said softly.

  “I mean”—she readjusted herself in the seat to sit completely upright—“what I normally investigate, it’s simple. We identify the crooks and go out and find the crooks and catch the crooks and turn them over for prosecution. Everything’s clear. No shades of gray. Well, for the lawyers, of course, but for the FBI it’s really simple. This … this is a trackless jungle of unknown conflicting interests and loyalties.”

  “You haven’t lived in the Beltway, have you?”

 
She shook her head no.

  “Well, life in Washington is like this. Nothing but shades of gray. No one sure from day to day who’s on what side, what faction is going to turn around and sabotage someone else’s hard-won issue.”

  “You’re talking politics.”

  “And this isn’t? Kat, if Carnegie’s only half right, the forces we’re facing may not even be associated with the terrorist group that shot down my flight. They may be doing nothing more than trying to protect the political interests of whatever branch of government, or the Pentagon, they’re representing.”

  “With murder and kidnapping and …”

  “I know. It’s bizarre. Where does one group end and the other begin, if it’s compound.”

  “Robert, are you suggesting that an arm of government is protecting the terrorists that stole government lasers and used them for mass murder?”

  “I’m not sure what I’m suggesting, aside from the fact that we represent a threat to the interests of at least a couple of scary organizations.”

  “You think this Dr. Maverick can help? I mean, what if it turns out he wasn’t even Walter’s deep throat?”

  Robert shook his head. “What choice do we have? Even with Walter’s file, all we’ve got is speculation and hearsay. If we can’t find Maverick, or get hard information from him, I don’t know. Who can we trust in D.C.?”

  “Jordan James is the only one I know,” Kat replied.

  STEHEKIN, WASHINGTON

  “That’s enough,” Dallas muttered to herself. “I’m certifiably awake.”

  She looked at her watch, which said 6:30 A.M., then slid out from beneath the covers of the lower bunk bed and pulled on an oversized sweater she’d found in the closet—one that fell with sufficient modesty below her hips to be worn alone. Hugging herself against the chill of the room, she moved over the cold pine-plank flooring to the bedroom door and walked to the kitchen.