Breach of Protocol

by Nathan Goodman

  “Well, he’s going to an awful lot of trouble to point us here. The soil-toxin profile on all four items points to crops grown right here, not far from San Francisco. The figs, wheat, and barley, the olives, and even the grapes used to produce the wine were all grown right here.”

  “You could be right,” Kyle said, “and I hear what you’re saying about trace elements found in the soil, but all this stuff points back to the Middle East as well. Think about it. Everything so far could symbolize that region.”

  “But there’s one more thing that points Sheriff Chalmette’s murder to San Francisco,” Knuckles said. “The bullet itself had traces of something else on it. Chlorophyll, chlorophyll from the leaf of a plant, a fig plant. The same fig plant.”

  “Drawing us away,” Jana whispered.

  “What did you say?” Cade said as he put his hand on her shoulder. There was no reply. “Jana, you’re shaking like a leaf. Stand up, maybe it will help if you move around a little bit.”

  Knuckles continued. “And the glass bead found at the scene was a little different as well. The bead was coated in sulfuric acid, apparently used to cover any trace evidence on its surface. This one contained a figurine of a man riding a horse, but this time, the horseman wasn’t carrying any weapon. He was carrying a set of what appear to be scales. We’re assuming at this point they represent the scales of justice.”

  Jana stood but her shoulders rounded over. “Why would he bother with the sulfuric acid?”

  “What do you mean, Jana?” Kyle said. “He’s covering any trace evidence that we might have found on the exterior of the glass beads.”

  “That’s my point. Why bother with that when you’re telegraphing exactly where you want us to go? He’s placing figs and wasps and olive oil and all kinds of shit right in our hands for us to analyze. Those things are pointing us to California. And then there’s the other things, the stone from the Camino trail, the chicory coating everything found in Gilda, and now this flea. One set of evidence is pointing us to California, the other set points from one murder victim to the next. Then there’s the glass beads. I still don’t know what they point to. So why bother covering up trace evidence?”

  “I hadn’t considered that,” Bill said as his fingers found their way into the depths of his beard. “Anyone care to advance a theory?”

  Even Knuckles looked like a lost puppy. At last, Jana looked directly into the monitor. “We’re forgetting about the other assassin. We knew Jarrah must have had help. After all, Stephen Latent was assassinated at the same time Jarrah was with me in Spain.” Her eyes trailed off, out one of the airplane windows. “When he murdered Gilda and stuffed a glass bead and a fig leaf into her chest.” She knelt to the floor and continued squeezing her arms around herself as she rocked back and forth.

  Cade knelt with her.

  “The assassin,” Bill said. “The assassin was covering his tracks, not Jarrah’s. The assassin wouldn’t want anything to trace back to him. That’s why he used the sulfuric acid.”

  “Well,” Knuckles said, “we know nothing of him. Nothing. And even that is an assumption. Calling him a him, I mean.”

  “He’d be a contractor,” Kyle said. “A hired gun with the kind of connections to be in association with Waseem Jarrah.”

  “There was that one guy from the last time,” Cade said. “Remember? When the investigation trailed the source of the nuclear weapon that detonated at CIA. There was mention of a contractor Jarrah had likely used. His name was Rafael.”

  “Right,” Knuckles said. “Rafael. More of a ghost than anything else. There’s not even a photo of him. We don’t even know if he’s real.”

  “He’s got to be real,” Uncle Bill said. “Even if our intel is wrong on his name, there was definitely a contractor involved last year in transporting the suicide bomber and two nuclear warheads. One of the bombs was shipped to North Korea, and the most likely originator of that shipment was a contractor known only as Rafael.”

  Jana said, “So that’s it, three dead people, three separate sets of clues. Bill, how are we going to know when he’s finished?”

  Bill looked over his glasses. “Finished? You mean finished giving us evidence?”

  Jana nodded her head. “There would have to be a start and a finish. It would lead us right up to his main event, whatever Jarrah has planned. How are we supposed to know if he has finished delivering evidence to us?”

  Kyle added, “Evidence in the form of fresh bodies.”

  “Well,” Knuckles said, “we’ve got a lot to work with here. Three assassinations, three glass beads, all with a figurine of a horse with a rider, carrying something. I guess I’m saying I don’t know when we will know if he’s finished.”

  Through the video monitor, the trio watched as a woman in the NSA command center with soft brunette hair walked toward Uncle Bill. “Sir, I think you should look at this,” she said.

  Bill studied the paper, then rubbed his eyes. “Not three assassinations, four. This one out of Atlanta. It looks like he’s taken out the director of the Center for Disease Control.”

  “What?” Jana yelled.

  Bill flustered. “The director of the CDC was apparently murdered. Don’t shoot the messenger.”

  A flood of emotions overwhelmed Jana and she began to sob. “I can’t take it anymore. I can’t take it.”

  Cade held onto her. “Jana, what’s wrong? Do you know the director of the CDC?”

  “Kathy. Her name is Kathy Whelan.” She shook her head then choked out, “She was my mom’s college roommate. I remember her coming to the house a lot when I was a kid. But it was later, after mom died, that I remember her most. She and mom were really close. My mom’s passing devastated her. After that, Aunt Kathy, as I used to call her, kind of looked after me. My grandmother had passed away and I had no women in my life. She did her best to fill that gap. She even loaned me the money to go to college. I didn’t finish paying her back until about the time I went to training at Quantico.”

  No one spoke as they all tried to comprehend the enormity of Jana’s losses.

  “I am going to kill him,” Jana whispered.

  Bill looked back at the paper. “No gunshot wounds, knife wounds, or anything else that looks like violence. No apparent cause of death.”

  Knuckles walked to him. “The director of the CDC? I know she’s connected to Jana, but how do we know this is related, or even a murder, for that matter?”

  “Because of this,” Bill said as he turned the paper toward the video monitor. It was a close-up image of a small glass bead. The image was detailed enough to clearly depict the figurine of a man riding a horse. In his hand, the rider carried a sickle. “We may not know how she died just yet, but I’m pretty sure we’ll find out soon enough. And to Jana’s point, I’m betting it has something to do with the flea found at the sheriff’s murder scene. That’s the one clue that hasn’t fit yet.”

  “That’s four,” Knuckles said as he rubbed his neck. “Four people assassinated, four glass beads. All of them with a guy riding a horse. Now what the hell are these damned horsemen supposed to mean?” Knuckles began to pace the floor and speak to himself, entranced in a line of thought. “It’s got to have a lot to do with the beads. But not the beads so much, the guys riding horses. So what do we know about that? Four horses, four men riding them. Each carrying something. Four horsemen.”

  Jana sat upright. “Say that again.”

  “Say what? Which part?”

  “You said horsemen. Four horsemen.” Jana stood. “Were all the horses different colors?”

  Knuckles scowled at the monitor. “Different colors? What does that matter?”

  “Were they?” Jana was almost yelling.

  “Yes, each horse was a different color, so what?”

  “What were the colors of the horses?”

  “I don’t see what that has to do with—”

  “Tell me!” Jana screamed.

  “All right, well, yes. Let me look at the evide
nce sheets again. The first horse at Director Latent’s crime scene was white. The second, found inside of Gilda’s body, hold on, where is that one? Okay, yes. The second horse was red. The third one, found at the scene with the sheriff in Louisiana, that horse was black. This last one—”

  Jana said, “Let me guess. The fourth horse, found at the scene of Kathy’s murder, that one was pale white, or possibly pale green, am I right?”

  “Pale green.” Knuckles stared at her. “How did you know that?”

  “And there were dead rats or mice at the murder scene, weren’t there? Some kind of rodents?”

  “Yes, Miss Baker,” Uncle Bill said as he read the evidence report in his hand. “There were several dead rats found at the scene. They don’t know what that means. I’d be very interested to know how you knew that.”

  Jana closed her eyes and her voice became monotone. “The apocalypse. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. It’s from the Bible, the book of Revelations. Pale green was supposed to symbolize the putrid color of death. Each glass bead contains one of the four horseman of the apocalypse. Dammit, why didn’t I think of this earlier? And the rodents. Pestilence. I’d bet anything they find some disease or plague to be the cause of death, and it was probably transmitted by fleas. Remember how Jarrah asked me if I went to church as a child? He’s taunting us. He’s taunting us with our Christian Bible.” She looked at the others. “None of you ever studied the Bible? Look, my grandfather taught Sunday school. The book of Revelations is the last chapter in the Bible. It foretells of the end of the world. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are unsealed to more or less announce the coming of the end of the world, each bringing with it a different type of death. Jarrah assassinated these four people in four separate ways, each corresponding to one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse. He’s finished. Jarrah is finished giving us evidence. There were only four horsemen in the Bible. We have to piece it all together and figure out what it means, before it’s too late. He’s ready to start his final act right now.”

  Kyle slumped into a chair. “You’re right. My God, you’re right. When I was a kid we learned about it in Sunday school, but you hardly ever hear about the book of Revelations in church anymore.”

  “Don’t look at me,” Cade said. “I never went to church as a kid.”

  “But, Jana,” Kyle said. “Even though there were only four horsemen, they all had symbolic meanings. Each of the Four Horsemen was released one at a time, as Jesus opened another seal. The opening of the seals announces the end of the world, but they were foretelling how it would happen. Hold on, let me pull up the Bible passage in the YouVersion app on my phone. Okay, here it is, Revelations 6.”

  Kyle read from the passage. “‘When he opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature say, “Come!”’ . . . ” Kyle looked up. “Jana, Jarrah said that to you on the phone.” He continued. “‘And I looked, and behold, a pale horse! And its rider’s name was Death, and Hades followed him. And they were given authority over a fourth of the earth, to kill with sword and with famine and with pestilence and by wild beasts of the earth.’”

  Jana said, “Pestilence. The fourth horseman’s name was Death. How very appropriate, coming from Jarrah.”

  “‘And hell followed him,’” Kyle added. “Jarrah wants to send us all to hell.”

  “To kill with a sword,” Knuckles said. “Jarrah killed Jana’s friend with a sword.”

  Bill scratched his chin through his beard. “To kill with a sword, famine, pestilence, and beasts of the earth. Perhaps we have all that to look forward to.”

  Kyle read further. “When the fifth seal opens, it mentions an altar, filled with the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God.”

  “Yeah,” Jana said, “these were souls that were martyred for God. They want their revenge but are told to wait because more martyrs will come, and then their numbers will be right.”

  “Perhaps Jarrah is stacking up the bodies of martyrs,” Knuckles said. “In his mind, the numbers will then be right.”

  “There were four horsemen, but a total of seven seals, right?” Uncle Bill said. “What about the other seals, Kyle?”

  Kyle read, “‘When he opened the sixth seal, I looked, and behold, there was a great earthquake, and the sun became black as sackcloth, the full moon became like blood, the stars of the sky fell to the earth as the fig tree sheds its winter fruit when shaken by a gale.’”

  “There’s the fig tree,” Jana said. “And it specifically says an earthquake.”

  Kyle continued. “‘The sky vanished like a scroll that is being rolled up, and every mountain and island was removed from its place.’” He looked up. “Listen to this part. ‘Then the kings of the earth and the great ones and the generals and the rich and the powerful, and everyone, slave and free, hid themselves in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains.’”

  “Jarrah would love that,” Bill said. “Making us and our leaders hide in fear.”

  “The seventh seal opens with silence,” Kyle said. “Then more destruction. The end of times as we know it.”

  “The detonation must be what Jarrah would consider the seventh seal,” Jana said.

  “Uncle Bill?” Knuckles said. “I’m looking at a corresponding passage in the Koran. It says a lot of the same things. It sounds like the Bible and the Koran agree about the end of the world.”

  “Okay,” Uncle Bill said, “let’s start working down this path. I want everyone to break out a Bible and go through it. And look up any hidden meanings to anything related to these horsemen. But that’s not all, we’ve still got all these other clues that are pointing us to the San Francisco area. What is he telegraphing? Remember, he’s got one nuclear device left. If he detonates inside of San Francisco, and we could’ve stopped it, I’ll never forgive myself. We’ve got to know where and when he intends to detonate.”

  Jana looked at Knuckles. “The nuclear device? The ones Jarrah has his hands on. Does it have the same blast radius as the one that took out CIA?”

  Knuckles answered, “Yes. All ten original warheads came out of a single Russian ballistic missile. Each has a blast radius of one mile. It would cause utter devastation in downtown San Francisco.”

  “Okay,” Bill said. “You’ll be in the air for a while. Let’s regroup in an hour. Let me get my people working on it on our end.”

  “All right, Bill. Talk to you in a bit.” Jana disconnected the video call.

  “I just . . .” Jana paused as she looked at Cade. “I don’t think Jarrah would stop at that. Think about it, this is his last nuclear device. Detonating inside downtown San Francisco wouldn’t be enough for him. It’s devastation, sure, but it’s not enough. How is he going to black out the sky and make the moon look like blood by destroying San Francisco? We not only have to know when he’s going to detonate but I still say we’ve got to determine where.We need to think about what would be the best place to detonate. Like he said, the place that would cause the most destruction and death.”

  “More death than would occur from the blast radius itself?” Kyle said.

  “Yes. He’d want to detonate in such a way that the blast would be magnified.”

  “I’m not sure I follow,” Cade said.

  “I don’t know. I think I’ve been inside his head for too long. It’s starting to get to me. Hey, bring up that map of California that Knuckles was looking at. What else could he hit in that area near San Francisco, where all of those pieces of evidence, the grapes, olive oil, wheat, figs, all that, were grown. Is there anything out there? Any target? I know the entire area is heavily populated, but what are we missing? Where could he detonate and get a magnified effect?”

  They all studied the map.

  “Well,” Cade said, “there are a lot of strips of farmland. These look like grape orchards, and the figs, those are only grown in a tight region. They grow in this area here.”

  “What’s that line running north-south on the map?” Kyle
asked. “It borders the whole area we’re talking about. Is that a river?”

  “Oh my God,” Jana said as her eyes widened. “That’s no river. That’s the San Andreas Fault line.”

  31

  LEADING TO ANYWHERE

  Gulfstream Six. Altitude 18,116 feet. Airspeed 796 knots. Twelve nautical miles south-south-west of Las Cruces, New Mexico

  “The San Andreas . . .” Jana said. But as the thought played forward in her mind, a cold chill ran up her spine. “What if he detonates somewhere along the fault line? Could he set off an actual earthquake that way? The Bible mentioned an earthquake. That’s not possible, right? Sounds like something out of a science fiction novel.”

  Cade said, “I’m pretty sure that wouldn’t work. A nuclear explosion is huge, but the San Andreas Fault runs for something like seven hundred miles. I can’t imagine you could set off any type of man-made disruption that could cause the fault line to shift. The thing is enormous. No, I say if he’s telegraphing us to San Francisco, we should stay focused on that. Let’s not get distracted. We need to look at the city itself and figure out where the most effective place to position the weapon would be.”

  Kyle said, “We shouldn’t leave anything off the table. But you’re right about looking for the best location in the city. My biggest concern is that even if we have a good idea of the location to detonate, I’m not sure we could stop him anyway. Remember, these weapons are small enough to fit into a large backpack. They weigh about eighty pounds, plus maybe a few more for a detonator device. A person wearing a backpack could just walk down the street, or get on one of the streetcars that are so common in San Francisco, and detonate. By then it would be too late.”

  “Pilot?” Kyle yelled. “Take us to SFO.”

  “Roger that,” the pilot replied, then spoke into his radio. The plane began a slow turn to course-correct toward the San Francisco area.

  As the minutes ticked by, the group focused on multiple points across the city of San Francisco that would make excellent targets. A nuclear device with enough yield to create a blast radius of one mile in diameter could wreak havoc on anything in its wake. There didn’t seem to be a logical place in the city that would be more effective than others.