Sam’s turn at the scanner came. She tossed her cell phone, badge, and keys into the tray, placed her coat and shoes on the conveyor belt, and did her best not to scowl at the lumpy security guard as he waved her forward.
A buzzer sounded.
“Ma’am, do you happen to be carrying any unauthorized electronics on you? Music player, non-government cell phone, beeper, garage door opener?”
Sam shook her head.
“Do you have any unauthorized electronics in your personal effects?”
“If so, it’s news to me,” Sam said, glancing toward a growing crowd of technicians huddled around the conveyor belt beyond the scanner, all of whom seemed enthralled by her raincoat.
“Are you sure, ma’am?”
“Is your question rhetorical?”
The guard’s tone became decidedly officious. “This way, ma’am.” He motioned for her to step out of line.
“I don’t have time for this,” Sam muttered.
A technician left the scrum of security people huddled around Sam’s coat and approached her. He held up his thumb and forefinger, displaying a small object clasped between them. “Do you recognize this?”
Sam squinted at his hand. “I’m no expert, but it appears to be a fabric button.”
“This object tripped our unauthorized electronics scan,” the security guard said.
“Congratulations. I’m sure we’re all much safer now,” Sam said.
“It was in your coat pocket, ma’am.”
“I don’t recognize it.”
“I’m afraid I’ll have to confiscate the item, ma’am.”
“Knock yourself out.”
“I’ll have to ask you for some information as well.”
“Are you sure your new scanner isn’t malfunctioning?” she asked.
She could tell by the look on the security guard’s face that he wasn’t sure about the new machine, but he was duty-bound to follow procedure. Sam sighed and played along. Nearly two decades in federal service had taught her that some things couldn’t be fought.
The guard wanted her name, address, duty title, supervisor, office phone, personal phone, whereabouts during the last twenty-four hours . . . Sam felt like she was applying for a mortgage or taking a lie-detector test.
Thirty minutes later, her heart rate not yet recovered, she walked into Homeland Security Director Evan Kent’s office. It was a familiar place, as Sam had been there before. Once, in fact, a lengthy and deadly investigation had culminated in a tense showdown in the director’s office. She had apprehended the traitor and criminal at gunpoint. He was tried, convicted, and executed, but not by a jury of his peers. The man was handed over to the Central Intelligence Agency, who took care of things on their own terms.
The furniture had been replaced and the carpet redone, but the view of the DC skyline was as impressive as she remembered. The office was even larger than she recollected. Evan Kent rose from his desk, extended his hand, and put a sad smile on his face. He was tall, gaunt, hunched, gray, and wrinkled. “Thank you for coming, Sam,” he said, his voice low and gravelly from years of DC schmoozing over cigarettes and scotch.
Sam nodded but didn’t speak. What was there to say?
Kent gestured toward a sitting area situated between his desk and a large conference table. Four chairs upholstered in soft blue leather surrounded a low coffee table. Sam sat in the nearest chair and crossed her legs in front of her. She still wore her funeral attire. The drizzle had pasted her hair to her head. The tears had smeared her makeup even though it was supposed to be waterproof. She imagined she looked like hell, but she wasn’t in any mood to fuss over her appearance for Evan Kent’s sake.
Kent took the adjacent chair. Right out of the management handbook. Don’t deliver bad news across a table. Position yourself on a diagonal to the victim to reduce the odds of a confrontation. He got right to business. “It was admirable of you to attend Sarah Beth McCulley’s memorial,” he said.
Admirable? Sam didn’t know what to make of that comment. What else would anyone in her shoes have done? In what universe would it have been okay to miss the girl’s funeral?
Her confusion must have been evident. “I just mean that it must have been…uncomfortable for you,” Kent said. “Under the circumstances, I mean.”
Sam eyed him for a long moment. Was he goading her? Or was he just socially inept? “It wasn’t pleasant,” she said, working to keep the annoyance out of her voice.
Kent’s eyes were intense and blue, but shrouded behind an unruly brow. “Nobody is here to second-guess you,” he said.
A weary smile crossed Sam’s lips. “Mr. Kent,” she said, “there’s no need to patronize me. I’ve been in this business a long time and I know how this works.”
Kent sized her up. If he was embarrassed to have been caught in a lie, his features didn’t show it in the least. “In that case,” he said, “we should just get right to it.”
Kent nodded to someone standing behind Sam. She hadn’t heard anyone else enter the office, so she was surprised to see Homeland’s chief legal counsel, Hamilton Essex, appear from behind her shoulder. Essex handed her a glossy blue file folder with the Homeland logo emblazoned on its cover. He also handed her a Montblanc pen. Nice touch, douchebag, she thought.
Sam signed the suspension paperwork without reading it. She dropped it on the coffee table along with the lawyer’s overpriced pen and rose to her feet.
“Don’t you want a copy?” Essex asked.
Sam shook her head. “Drop one in the mail.”
“As of now you are on unpaid administrative leave,” Essex said. His voice had a grating, condescending quality that made Sam fantasize about breaking his nose.
“So I gathered,” Sam said.
Essex was unfazed. “Please exit the facility without delay,” he went on. “You’ll be summoned for questioning in the matter under investigation. Please make yourself available, but do not return to the premises until asked to do so. Please don’t leave the district until you’ve been cleared to do so. Do you have any questions at this time?”
Sam shook her head. She didn’t look at the lawyer. Instead, she looked at Evan Kent. The director kept his seat and held her gaze.
“Anything else?” Sam asked.
Kent shook his head and raised an arm toward the exit.
Sam held herself together all the way to the women’s room on the executive floor. There, she locked herself in a stall, buried her face in her hands, and cried.
4
Sam let the tears flow until there were no more. She heard a couple of women enter the bathroom at some point, but they must have heard her sobs and elected to do their business elsewhere. Sam had the marble-and-chrome monstrosity of a water closet to herself.
When the flow of tears stopped, she righted herself, straightened her dress, and walked to the sink. She cupped her hands beneath the ornate faucet and splashed cold water on her face. Only then did she venture a look in the mirror.
“Balls,” she said, pulling at the purple pouches beneath her eyes. “You don’t look a day over ninety-two.” She took a few more minutes to compose herself before she left the bathroom.
Against the director’s orders, which had been to vacate the premises without delay, Sam stopped by her office on the fourth floor to pick up a few items. She’d be damned if she was going to let a bunch of slack-jawed desk jockeys paw through her things, especially her investigative notes.
She looked around her office and sighed. She’d spent far too many hours in this room over the past decade. Stacks of paper littered her desk. A University of Maryland diploma hung on the wall, crooked as always. It didn’t matter how many times she righted the damn thing.
Her eyes gravitated to a framed photo of Brock. He wore a green flight suit and he had one foot on the ladder of his F-16. The photo was easily five years old, but there was something about the look in his eye that kept her from replacing it with a newer one. God damn, I love that man, she though
t with a lonely sigh.
Sam took a last look around the office. There was no telling when she would be back. There was no guarantee she would ever be back, depending on how Homeland’s inquisition went. Would she miss it? Would moving on really leave as big a void in her life as she’d feared? Had she been foolish to dig in her heels with Brock over her career? No answers came, and she didn’t have much energy to search for them.
She turned to leave and smacked into a stocky, muscled man. “Dammit, Dan, you scared the hell out of me.”
“Nice to see you too, boss,” Dan Gable said with a smile. “This place is dead without you.”
Sam managed a weak smile as her deputy released his embrace. Dan was built like a bowling ball, except made of muscle. He stood half a head shorter than Sam, but twice as wide. He had thick shoulders, thick arms, and thick fingers, which were murder on a computer keyboard. Dan had worked for Sam before either of them knew heads from tails. He had saved her life countless times, and he had once kept her alive for ten minutes after her heart stopped. Dan was one of the good guys and Sam loved him like a brother.
“I’m not exactly sparkling company these days,” she said. “You’re definitely better off without me sulking around.”
“Debatable,” Dan said, “but a little work might take your mind off things.”
Sam shook her head. “Not an option. I’m officially persona non-grata.”
Dan frowned. “Suspended?” Sam nodded. “Bastards,” he said.
“I don’t think they had any choice in the matter. It would have been bad enough if she were a random girl off the street, but the daughter of a senate chief of staff? I’m lucky I’m not chained to a stake.”
Dan grimaced and nodded. “Things definitely could have turned out better.”
The silence grew awkward. “What are you still doing here?” Sam finally asked, suddenly cognizant of the time. “Shouldn’t you be home by now?”
Dan shrugged. “Tying up some loose ends.”
“You should stop hiding from your wife.” Sam said with a halfhearted punch to his arm.
“You should mind your own business,” Dan retorted with a sheepish smile. “Besides, things are much better at home now that I’ve hidden all the knives.”
“Good thinking.”
“Actually, I was on my way out when I got a call from the security people downstairs. Somehow my name ended up on their technical consult list.”
“Your nerdy reputation precedes you,” Sam said absently, slinging her bag over her shoulder.
Dan chuckled. “The call was legit, though. Some idiot tried to smuggle a listening device into the building.”
“No way,” Sam said, looking around her office with a frown, searching for her coat. “Nobody’s that stupid.”
“Somebody evidently is that stupid. Went to a lot of trouble, too. The bug was fancy and expensive.”
Sam grunted, not listening, still searching for her coat, but then quickly realized that it had been confiscated by security. She stopped. “What did you say?”
“I feel less valued when you don’t listen to me,” Dan said, faking a hurt expression.
“Seriously. About the bug.”
“High-end,” Dan said. “Pricey and tough to get. Made to look like a coat button.”
“Oh shit,” Sam said. “We may have a problem.”
Sam explained the kerfuffle at the security checkpoint. Dan listened with a troubled expression on his face.
“That’s not good,” he said when Sam had finished. “Any idea who it might have been?”
Sam shook her head. “I was at the memorial, then I walked around in the rain for a couple of hours. I probably crossed paths with a thousand people.”
Dan nodded. “We need to get Mace involved. I don’t want this to add to your troubles.”
Mace McLane was Sam’s immediate boss. He ran Homeland’s covert operations directorate. His employees included spies, counter-spies, and, increasingly, a horde of computer-savvy millennials battling evil one byte at a time. McLane had been in the job a couple of years, which was something of a record. Both of his predecessors had wound up dead.
Sam had deep-seated authority issues in general, but Mace McLane had won her trust by leaving her alone to do her job and by backing her up when she needed it. He was more politician than operator, but he was smart enough to know his limitations and he made it a point to stay out of his people’s way. McLane worked hard and rarely left the office before nine or ten in the evening. He was also a nice guy, rare in Sam’s experience for someone in his position.
Sam and Dan marched up to McLane’s office, which was a hundred paces and a million miles from Homeland Director Evan Kent’s lair. McLane’s office featured a full-length window with a similar view to the director’s, but it was sparsely appointed. There were dusty photos of two grown kids with families of their own, but there didn’t appear to be a woman in McLane’s life and he didn’t wear a wedding ring. Maybe that was related to the hours he kept.
“God, Sam, you look like hell,” McLane said. He stood and walked around from behind his desk and wrapped his arms around her.
“Thanks,” Sam said. “Same to you.”
“Are you taking care of yourself?”
“Somebody has to,” Sam said.
McLane let a small laugh escape. “No argument there. Lord knows I’ve tried, but when the White House calls with their panties in a wad . . .”
Sam nodded. She understood the physics all too well: shit gathered momentum as it rolled downhill.
McLane nodded toward the listening device perched on his desk. Evidently security had delivered it to him shortly after it was discovered. The device was small, the size of a button, with a smooth black surface. “Old friends or new ones?” he asked.
Sam shook her head and shrugged. “I thought it was just the new scanner malfunctioning. The whiz kids are sure it’s really a bug?”
“Sure as sunrise,” McLane said.
Sam shook her head. “Could have been anybody. My head’s not really in the game right now.”
“Understandable,” McLane said. “We’ll let Dan loose on it, see what he can sniff out.”
“That’s what I’d do,” Sam said. “In the meantime, if it’s all right with everyone here, I’m going to go home. It’s maybe the worst week on record, and I need some sleep.”
McLane nodded. “I’ll call security and make sure you’re not hassled on the way out.”
Sam left the Homeland building and caught a cab. It was half past seven in the evening. It seemed like eons ago that she had left her house to attend Sarah Beth McCulley’s funeral. Her eyes burned, and her stomach growled in discontent. She’d barely eaten anything in the days since the incident. Her muscles were weak and she looked forward to a hot shower and a long night’s sleep.
She took the cab all the way to her house in Alexandria, not bothering to fetch her car. It was still parked near the church where the girl’s memorial service took place earlier in the day. She didn’t want the reminder.
She had the vague sense that the cabbie was eyeballing her in the rearview mirror, but she didn’t much care. Her disregard was resigned, not reckless. She didn’t have the energy for operational alertness, despite the poignant reminder of the need for continuous vigilance that someone had dropped into her pocket earlier in the day.
Her tired mind churned. Who might have been responsible for the listening device? What did they possibly hope to gain? Sarah Beth McCulley’s death had made national headlines. Sam wasn’t yet mentioned by name, but it wouldn’t take much insight into the Tariq Ezzat incident to make the connection. As was Homeland protocol in such cases, she was suspended and off the investigation. Anyone eavesdropping on Sam would be disappointed by what they heard: lots of tears and very little interesting conversation.
To boot, Ezzat hadn’t survived the encounter. Milliseconds after Ezzat fired the fatal bullet that struck Sarah Beth McCulley, Sam’s team opened fire on him.
He died before the ambulance arrived. His secrets died with him and the investigation—dubbed the “Doberman case” by the Homeland team after a pair of stone dog statues standing guard at the entrance to one of the criminal organization’s safe houses—stalled completely.
She still couldn’t believe how violent things had turned. Before that day in the park, the case had been little more than a somewhat routine terror financing investigation. Ezzat was a mid-level guy in a loose affiliation of petty criminals who sent a portion of their illegal proceeds overseas to fund jihad. She had trouble wrapping her mind around the tragic turn of events.
The cab pulled up to her Alexandria brownstone. She paid the driver and headed up the walkway. A noise grabbed her attention. The neighbor kid futzing with his car again, one of those cheap imports tricked out with shiny rims and an exhaust pipe the size of a storm culvert. It sounded like the world’s largest swarm of houseflies. Her jaw clenched. That little bastard had woken her up at least a dozen times over the past few months, zipping around the neighborhood, revving the engine to an ear-splitting whine.
She shook her head, put the key in the lock, keyed the alarm code, dropped her bag and coat on the entryway floor, kicked off her shoes, and sank into an easy chair in her living room.
The big, empty house made big, empty sounds. She had invested wisely over the years and had rewarded herself with the mortgage-free acquisition of much more house than she needed. Brock came into her life around the same time and before she knew it, they were picking out colors and finishes and appliances for an extensive remodel. Brock’s touch was in every corner of the place, and spending time at home while he was stuck halfway around the globe was a source of both comfort and unease. She loved him but hated missing him.
She dialed a lengthy series of numbers on her phone and heard the hiss of static and the clicks and clunks of half a dozen relays as her phone tried to connect to the one in Brock’s quarters on the other side of the planet. Brock’s location was classified, and the call routing was electronically laundered to keep his location secret. The call failed, which was not unusual. Four out of every five attempts to reach Brock over the past several months had ended in frustration. As much as she wanted to hear his voice, Sam didn’t have the energy to try again. She dropped the phone in her lap and stared at the wall.
The Blowback Protocol Page 2