“Have my plane ready with a flight plan to Laredo, Texas.”
EVENT GROUP COMPLEX
NELLIS AFB, NEVADA
The director of Department 5656, Niles Compton, sat on the small set of bleachers and watched the flag football game that was being played between the nuclear sciences division and the security department. The second in command of security, who was quarterbacking the muscular and far more physical team of security personnel, Captain Carl Everett, was starting to look frustrated as the larger men and women could not seem to shake the much smaller but far more agile scientists of Assistant Director Virginia Pollock’s nuclear sciences department. The former SEAL kept looking at the clock and was seeing that time was running out on their three-point lead.
The underground complex was built to house the greatest historical treasures, objects that had a defining moment in either the history of the United States or, more importantly, the world. Department 5656, known to a select few in the federal government as the Event Group, was tasked to find parallels in world history with the events unfolding in modern times to avoid the same pitfalls of our shared past. The artifacts stored in the Event Group’s ten thousand steel vaults represented spectacular finds in archeological history. Most would eventually find their way into the public domain after study, while others would be forever kept secret from the people of the world, due to either political, religious, or military sensitivities. The judge as to what constituted a top secret find is the president of the United States.
The massive complex was an underground labyrinth of naturally formed caves far beneath Nellis Air Force Base. The complex was built by President Roosevelt during World War II after the original site had been moved from Arlington, Virginia. Department 5656 is the darkest department of the American federal system and is solely answerable to the president of the Unites States. It had been that way since its inception in 1863 through to its official charter in 1917 by Woodrow Wilson, who brought the Event Group into legitimate being.
Director Niles Compton smiled as he was nudged by the computer sciences director, Pete Golding, who nodded at the clock as it continued to run down. The intramural games played by the sixteen separate departments were a needed relief used by the six hundred personnel inside the massive complex that ran eighty-nine levels beneath the desert sands of Nevada.
“Looks like the security force dominance may be finally coming to an end if Virginia’s people can get the ball back,” Pete said as he watched Everett and the rest of his offense take their time lining up for the snap in an attempt to take as many seconds off the clock as possible.
“Can you imagine the look on Jack’s face when he hears his department’s unblemished record could possibly be in jeopardy? God, I wish he were here,” Niles said as he watched Everett pointing to his favorite wide receiver, Lieutenant Will Mendenhall, who had thus far caught everything thrown his way.
“Well it’s really hurt security not having Jack at running back today,” Pete countered.
“Thank God he’s visiting his mom in Texas, and thank goodness he’s meeting Sarah there when she’s finished with the dig in Tamaulipas. Still, I think I’ll call him if security loses; I can’t pass that chance up.” Niles Compton eyed the clock and then frowned.
Everett called out the signals and the ball was snapped. Instead of running the ball, and thus running the clock out, the captain had decided to go for the nuclear science department’s jugular and win by ten. Mendenhall shot off the line and then sprinted past the science department’s defender. Everett heaved the ball as far as he could. The female defender, a nuclear regulatory specialist on detached service from Los Alamos, tripped as Will flew by her. In the bleachers those rooting for the sciences moaned as they saw the end coming right before their eyes. Niles frowned as he felt his wallet getting lighter due to the bet he had placed with Colonel Collins before he left on leave to see his mother.
Will smiled broadly as he saw the ball fall from the sky. His feet firmly planted on the athletic turf of the underground recreation arena, and only a foot from the out-of-bounds line, the ball was only inches from being laid into his hands. He was merely twenty yards from the goal line for a chance to keep the security department’s winning streak alive at ten in a row.
Unbeknownst to Everett, Mendenhall, and the rest of the security department team, they had been outthought. Virginia Pollock, the least likely of suspects, had placed herself at the goal line knowing that the captain would not be satisfied with a mere three-point victory. The tall lithe woman with the dark-brown hair sprinted in her sweatpants and shirt to the spot where Will Mendenhall thought he was alone, and just before the ball touched his fingertips she stepped in front of him and intercepted the pass. Her body nudged him just enough that Will lost his balance and went crashing onto the fake grass of the field, shocked because he had had no idea Virginia was in the area.
The security team, the people running laps on the track, and even the weightlifters working out on the side of the field were all stunned as Virginia sprinted down the field in the opposite direction. Carl went from jumping up and down as the vision of a fifty-yard pass play went flying from his thoughts to attempting to gain momentum to head Virginia off at the pass. He saw the MIT grad and former nuclear engineer from General Dynamics Corporation running free. Everett started his pursuit.
The spectators watching were on their feet as the older woman saw Everett approaching at an angle. She decided that, flag football or not, she could not allow Everett to catch her. She switched the ball to the protected right side of her body, and as Carl came into reach for her flag dangling behind her, she shot out her left hand and arm, catching him squarely in the jaw and face. It was a straight-arm the pros would have been proud of. Everett grunted and then fell face first onto the turf as Virginia sprinted by. As she crossed the goal line with the rest of the security department chasing her, Virginia raised the ball into the air and then spiked it to the cheers of all watching.
“I’ll be damned,” Everett said as he looked up from his prone position. He swiped at the blood that had come from the split lip he now had thanks to the assistant director.
Mendenhall came up out of breath and helped his boss to his feet, and as they both looked around they saw Pete Golding and Director Compton jumping up and down in the bleachers, high-fiving each other, enjoying the celebration as Virginia’s nuclear sciences division hoisted her on their shoulders. The 0–9 sciences had just pulled off the upset of the intramural season. Both men suspected the word would spread throughout the complex as fast as a lightning strike.
“The colonel is going to be pissed,” Mendenhall said as he tried to catch his breath.
Everett again swiped at the blood that was now not only coursing from his split lip but also the rug burn on his chin.
“And I’m going to tell him over the phone,” Everett said. “I’ll wait until he gets back from his leave; by then the humiliation may have calmed down a little.”
“Good idea,” Mendenhall said as he saw the victors winding their way toward the vanquished. “Oh, this is going to suck!”
As Virginia was placed on the ground she smiled in a purely female way and batted her eyes at Carl.
“That split lip looks bad. Did I do that?” she said as she placed her hand over her mouth in an “oh God, what have I done” falsity.
“I didn’t think you had it in you, madam A.D.,” Everett said as he straightened and then took Virginia in his arms and hugged her. “I have to admit, you got us.”
She smiled and pulled away and then someone handed her a cell phone and she punched in her security code for the supercomputer Europa so she could get an outside line.
“And just who are you calling?” Everett asked near panic.
“Why, Jack of course. I want to be the one to tell him.”
“Ah, Virginia, can we talk about this?” Everett said as he started following her as she tried to make the connection.
Across the field Niles
Compton was still smiling as he watched the two teams meet. He smiled even wider when he saw Everett and Mendenhall running after Virginia Pollock. He was about to go down onto the field and take some fun time for a change when he was approached by a blue-clad marine PFC.
“Excuse me, Dr. Compton, you have an emergency call from the security duty officer. He says he has our contact at the FBI in Washington on the line. It seems we’ve had trouble in Mexico—” the marine looked from Niles to Pete and then leaned in toward the director—“sir, we have people down.”
Niles immediately lost his smile. “Pete, run and catch Captain Everett and Virginia and get them to my office, ASAP. Tell him we may have gone Code One in Mexico.”
Pete immediately started running to head off Everett. He knew what a Code One was, as did all Event Group personnel—people in the field had come into harm’s way and may be down, or even lost.
Niles turned and left the athletic complex wondering how a university-sponsored field team in Mexico could have an emergency when Sarah was there only to validate the geological formation in which some old pictographs had been painted on a cave wall.
With Ryan and another security man with her, that was three Event Group staff that may be hurt, or even killed. Director Niles Compton knew at the very least there was big trouble in Mexico.
LAREDO, TEXAS
FOUR HOURS LATER
The man sat at the table at the Alamosa Chop and Steak House in downtown Laredo. He was well dressed in civilian attire, a charcoal gray suit highlighted by a bright red tie. His hair was cut short, but not as short as it had been throughout his eighteen years in the Unites States Army. His smile came easier to him since he had been reassigned after testifying against the army and the White House back in 2006 about interference of command in Afghanistan. At the time, Major Jack Collins had thought his career was finished as he was sent to the high desert of Nevada and literally buried underneath Nellis Air Force Base. That was where his tour of detached service had begun for Department 5656, the Event Group, as its head of security operations. Tonight Jack Collins was on leave. He was to meet the woman he had fallen in love with when she returned from across the border where she was involved in an archeological find in northern Mexico.
Jack smiled as he eased the cover of his cell phone closed and then looked across the table at his mother, Cally, who returned the smile as she placed her drink on the table before her. The woman would never be placed in the age category she claimed. She was young looking to be Jack’s mother. Her face and body belonged to that of a woman of thirty-four years and not the fifty-four years of age her birth certificate said she was. The brown-haired Cally looked from Jack to her youngest child, Lynn, who had come back into Jack’s life after many years of being estranged. Their careers had kept them far removed from the normal brother-sister relationships that most families share, Lynn’s with the CIA, Jack’s with the army.
“Well, Sarah’s not answering her cell phone, as usual,” Jack said as he reached for his glass of beer.
“She may be having a hard time getting through that damn border crossing. You know how rough it is since the border’s been exploding with the drug war over in Nuevo Laredo—she’ll be fine, you said she was quite a distance away from the trouble zone,” Lynn said. “From our reports at the agency, and also from the FBI and Texas Rangers, the drug thing seems to have sorted itself out. The border alert level has been downgraded significantly.”
Jack’s little sister watched him as he sipped at his beer. She had noticed a large change in Jack since he had become involved with Sarah. He smiled far more than she could ever remember her serious-faced brother ever smiling. His gait had a spring to it, and when she had seen him with Sarah the few times they had been together she could see Jack’s face light up. For the first time in straight-as-an-arrow Jack Collins’s life he was actually slowing down to smell the roses, and it was all because of the woman he called “small stuff,” Sarah McIntire. Lynn could see Jack was dying inside in his nervousness at Sarah meeting their mother for the first time.
“Yeah, you’re probably right,” he said and tried to push all thought of Sarah being late aside for the time being.
Cally Collins watched her son closely. She was happy for Jack. He had become a new man since his time on detached service, wherever that was. Her son had always been quiet about things in his personal as well as his professional life. After losing so many men in the field during his time in special operations, he had become detached, even secretive of his emotions and personal feelings. Now came along this woman she was here to meet. Sarah, that’s all Jack could talk about in his e-mails and his phone calls home.
She smiled as Jack talked with his little sister. He reminded her so much of his father, John, lost when Jack was only eleven in some far-off place that was never really described to her by the U.S. Army. He had been a colonel at the time, the very same rank and age of his son now. Cally suspected that in his position and rank he may have found out many more details about his father’s fate—far more than Cally herself knew, but if he had, her oldest child had never shared that information with her.
Cally realized many years before that she didn’t need to know anything other than what she had been told. If her husband’s death had been by any other means or circumstance than what the army had said, Jack would find a way to tell her. And she also knew her son well enough that if anything about his father’s death was darker than the army had told her, Jack would also fix it. It was enough to know that he was just like his father, honest to the point of pain, and that was good enough to tell Cally that their son turned out the way his father would have liked.
“Jack, with everything you’ve told me about her I feel like I already know Sarah. And if I’m right in my assessment of her she’s probably as scared as I am in anticipation of meeting each other. Believe me, anyone who won over your stubborn heart scares me with her womanly powers,” Cally said, smiling wide as she raised her martini glass.
Jack shook his head as his face turned red. He never thought of himself as a guy that was stubborn at all, but if his mom and Sarah, along with Lynn, Everett, Mendenhall, Ryan, and the director, say it’s so, it must be true. Jack raised his glass of beer and toasted his mother. Lynn laughed and joined her glass with theirs.
Cally excused herself from the table and Lynn waited until she had disappeared into the semidarkness of the restaurant before she smiled at her brother.
“So, what’s happening in spooksville these days little sister?”
“And why should I tell you? I still don’t know what you are doing and who you’re doing it with.”
“I am not doing anything and especially not doing anything with anyone of importance. You haven’t been prying have you? I would hate to have to sic Mr. Ryan on you—you know he had a thing for you.”
“Jason Ryan has a thing for anything that wears a skirt.”
“There you have it. How good an outfit can I be running if Ryan is a supervisor in my unit?”
“Touché,” Lynn said as she sipped her drink. She smiled as she lowered it and then her face became serious. “Since you asked, and since it’s no big secret at the agency, I have been handed something at the North American desk that’s strange to say the least. It seems we have a rumor of a rogue element inside the U.S. government, possibly inside either the FBI or at Langley.”
“Should you be telling me this?”
“Well, the information handed down to me from my boss in intelligence thinks this group was busted up by the FBI several years ago…” Lynn actually chuckled. “Believe it or not one of this group’s monikers was the Men in Black. Can you believe that?”
“Sis, why are you telling me this?” Jack said as he picked up his beer after spying his mother returning from the restroom.
“My report says that this group is comprised of ex-military. Since you seem to know any and all Special Forces operatives inside and out of our armed services, you may have heard something that c
ould help me.”
Jack paused before drinking his beer. He knew every detail of what it was she was talking about. He knew the Men in Black—the Black teams of the Centaurs Corporation, broken up by the Event Group after the incident in the Arizona desert six years before.
“I never heard of the Men in Black outside of the usual running jokes about them. And despite the rumors about me, I don’t know every mission specialist in the world,” he smiled, “just the Western world.”
“Ass!” Lynn whispered as their mother returned. Jack stood and pulled her chair out for her.
Collins looked at his little sister, wondering if she was heading into trouble. Because if the Men in Black, or the corporate Black teams, were being reformed, that meant that they just may have a rogue element inside either the Bureau or the Agency. He made a mental note to bring the subject up with Director Compton.
Jack sat back down and then sipped his beer while looking at his wristwatch. Sarah was now over an hour late, and unlike what he had told his sister and his mom, Sarah was never, ever late for anything. She had an inner clock and she prepared for everything ahead of time. And a meeting of this magnitude was not something she would have taken lightly as she had been asking to meet his mother for the past two years. Finally Lynn reached out and placed a hand over his watch.
Jack sat his beer back onto the white tablecloth. “I know she’ll be here, I just—”
“Jack,” Lynn said as she held his wrist while her eyes were on something beyond her brother’s vision, “Carl and Will are here.”
Jack’s heart froze when Lynn mentioned the two names. He turned around in his chair, and for the first time in his life after seeing the countenance of both of his men, his legs felt as if they were made of jelly. He swallowed and stood, absentmindedly allowing the napkin in his lap to fall to the floor as Everett hurried through the crowded restaurant toward their table.
“Well, what are you two doing here?” Jack said with a confidence and false levity he wasn’t feeling at that moment.
Ripper (Event Group Thrillers) Page 9