Oracle's Hunt

by A. Claire Everward

  “Agent Pierce.” Intelligence Specialist Lea Gallo, a member of the tracking team assigned to him, motioned him from the workspace they were working in. Donovan walked over, but Gallo didn’t wait. “We found him, we found Elijahn. I mean, we don’t know where he is now, but we know he came into the United States two months ago.”

  Donovan reached her. “Where?”

  “Florida.”

  Rather far from IDSD, Donovan thought. But then, Elijahn wasn’t stupid.

  Intent on the holoscreen before him, Intelligence Specialist Cy Lehn already had the trace results ready. He got right to the point, not taking his eyes off the screen. By now Donovan wasn’t sure the guy ever did. Lehn was one of IDSD’s best trackers, Gallo had told him. Nothing else interested him, and his social skills were lacking, although after seeing what Lehn was capable of, Donovan didn’t mind. The guy was good, and Gallo was a natural at handling him—and communicating with others for him.

  “He didn’t even bother to change his face,” Lehn mumbled. “We identified him at a remote airport in Venezuela.”

  “Venezuela?”

  “Haven’t found anything before that, not yet that is. Not yet. We know he landed there in a private plane, though, that much I can tell you. Money buys anonymity in some places. Yes. Good place to get lost in, too. From there to Bolivia, by land I bet, no air travel that I can see. So, got a first sighting of him in Bolivia a week later. Then he lay low for a while, then we have him again in Argentine, and from there he came into the United States in an organized tour group on a South American airline, right there in plain sight.”

  That was one way to do it if you didn’t want to draw attention to yourself and if you knew no one was likely to look for you because they thought you were dead. And Elijahn was, after all, arrogant. “And that’s it?” Donovan asked.

  “Not a thing between Chad two years ago and Venezuela.”

  “So he hid well, not to mention patiently, and we know he spent that time preparing. We need to find this guy.” Donovan looked at the closeup of Elijahn’s face taken on his arrival in Florida. “Anything about people he would have brought here? He’s got to have combat-ready people, and some damn good hackers. Money moving? Firearms?”

  “Nothing yet. And I mean nothing.”

  Donovan knew what Lehn was saying. This was IDSD. These people’s way of doing things and the contacts they had in both friendly and unfriendly territories meant that if they found nothing in the international arena, it was either well hidden, so they would need more time, or there simply wasn’t anything to find. And anything that wasn’t there internationally meant it likely came from inside the United States. Like firearms. It made sense that Elijahn would prefer to procure whatever he needed here instead of risking capture and exposure when crossing borders.

  “Okay. Keep looking,” he said.

  “You want us to trace this guy’s footprint in the United States?” Gallo asked.

  Donovan didn’t. Their experience and resources would best serve his search if they would continue to look outside the United States, try to find anything they could about Elijahn’s whereabouts and actions between the raid on his base and his arrival in the country. Here, it was he who had the best. This was USFID’s home turf. And his.

  An internal comms beeped, and Lehn reached for it. “Vice Admiral Scholes is asking for you,” he said, never taking his eyes off the screen. “The plane he used to get to Venezuela is an oldie. I wonder who you belong to,” he said to the aircraft on the screen, already absorbed again in the hunt.

  “Niiice,” Gallo said, following his line of thought.

  Donovan left them to it. These two would be busy for a while. They would use the plane as the center of a new search sphere, and dig for any clues that would lead to useful information. It’s what he would have done.

  As he walked to Scholes’s office he could see into Lara’s. It was empty. Walking on, he saw her standing, surrounded by uniforms, in one of the enclosed workspaces. He couldn’t hear the discussion, but he could clearly tell it was somber.

  “Donovan.” Scholes waved him in. He was holding a pen, writing on a traditional paper pad. Donovan didn’t know many who still did that. He himself jotted down a note here and there. He liked the feel of it, just like he still liked to read a real book, rather than use a screen for it. Sometimes there was comfortable simplicity, a quieter focus, in the tangible ways of the past, was the way he saw it.

  Scholes saw him look and let out a self-conscious laugh. “Hell, I still find it easier to concentrate with the old-fashioned pen and paper. And as long as Celia, my aide, puts up with it, I intend to continue in my oh so ancient ways.” He put the pen down. “So. I understand we have a confirmation it’s Elijahn, no more doubts.”

  “Yes.” Donovan sat down across from him.

  “What now?”

  “My investigators will focus on tracing his steps from Florida to DC, including to identify equipment and weapons purchases and if he hired any locals. This will also help us find out if he contacted any domestic groups with anti-IDSD or anti-Internationals agendas, which would allow him to tap into their resources if he wants to bring about other forms of attack. Although I doubt it, from what I understand from the intelligence on Elijahn he is single minded and wouldn’t care to further someone else’s agenda, or risk his own. In any case, our main focus is on finding where he is.

  “Your trackers, in the meantime, will go backward, see what they can find about his whereabouts since the raid on his base, until his arrival here. They are best positioned for that. We need to know what this guy has been doing all this time. Where he hid, who he has on his side, what kind of resources he has. This would throw a light on his current capabilities and plans, and, in the worst case, could help us track him faster if he manages to get away, leave the United States again. And while they’re at it, they’ll see if they can identify any of his people who he might have sent here, although, since we’ve got nothing about them, names, biometrics, nothing, I doubt they’ll find anything within our time limits.”

  Scholes nodded. Donovan’s plan seemed to be leading where he wanted it to. As the investigator had explained to him when he had asked for the trackers, he was after two things. The first was to make sure beyond doubt that they weren’t wrong and that it was in fact Elijahn who was after Oracle, that they were profiling the right perpetrator. Until Donovan had substantial proof, it was all circumstantial as far as he was concerned—Elijahn wasn’t the only one who was hit by Oracle, and if information about it leaked out once, it could have done so again. Even the dates targeted in the second data theft, from IDSD’s administrative system, didn’t sway him. Information about two other missions had been taken in the data center break-in, and their dates were targeted too. There was no way to know if the perpetrator might have deliberately searched for these missions. Elijahn could be working with someone connected to them, or he could have been killed in the raid on his base after all, and someone else could have taken his place. Maybe someone connected to one or both of those other two missions, who knew all about the Chad raid.

  And then there was the second thing Donovan had wanted to make sure. That Elijahn wasn’t planning anything else besides getting to Oracle, or, as his most recent theft from IDSD’s administrative system indicated, to whoever he thought might be connected to Oracle.

  “You’re still assuming Elijahn would conclude that Oracle is a technology that coordinated the raid on his base,” Scholes said. Technology being the key here—technology, not a person.

  “Just like I did,” Donovan said. “It’s simple really. There is no way Elijahn, or anyone else for that matter, would think Oracle is a person. It’s an impossibility. She’s an impossibility. I mean, I know she is Oracle, hell, I’ve seen her at work, and I’m still having trouble wrapping my mind around it.”

  Scholes nodded. That, he could understand. He’d seen Oracle grow and develop, and even he was still at awe of what she was capable
of.

  “And say he does go in a different direction, and think Oracle was a group of people working together, disguised behind a uniform computerized voice, although that’s a bit more cumbersome conclusion to reach, all in all. It would still leave us exactly where we are—with Elijahn targeting the same people whose names he had taken from your administrative system.” Donovan’s eyes were thoughtful. “But we’ve got to keep our minds open when it comes to this guy, we can’t discount his tenacity. Look at his comeback two years after the destruction of his base, his dedication, the resources he must have put into his plan. I want to make sure he’s not preparing some major firepower—arms and people. That he’s not employing some militant group after all, perhaps domestic—there are enough here who object to you and to the alliance.” Even in the United States, there were still those who thought every nation should focus only on itself, no matter how badly that had turned out in the past. And yes, there were those who would do anything for the right amount of money. That never changed, never would.

  “What about the people you think he might have brought with him?” Scholes asked.

  “We know Elijahn himself came here two months ago. He would have sent others here at about the same time. And he must have sent people before him, as far as a year ago even, at least whoever had been watching the data center, looking for a way to break in. Both my investigators and Evans’ people have been looking, especially at the area closest to the data center. So far we’ve got nothing, no suspicious activity or surges in electronic activity or hacks, but then, we know Elijahn has to have used someone good.

  “Thing is, at least with Elijahn we had some past intelligence and a face to help find him. The assumption right now is that every one of his people who you knew about had been killed in the raid on his Chad base, so that anyone he is using nowadays is a complete unknown, someone who wasn’t at the base at the time or who might have joined him later. Time would bring us the type of information we want, but time is the one thing we don’t have.”

  “Seems to me you’ve thought about everything,” Scholes said.

  “Yes, well, you have to in my job.” Donovan said. “Anyhow, I’ll be going back to USFID soon. Looks like between your people and mine the search for Elijahn is covered, but there are some contacts I’ll be needing to talk to myself.” Donovan fell silent and contemplated the man before him.

  Scholes knew where this was going. “I can’t.”

  “You have to. Especially now that we’re sure it’s Elijahn. He’s got every reason to want to kill her.”

  They were continuing the discussion they had started after Scholes told Donovan who Oracle was. Donovan wanted Lara in protective custody. They had settled then for the protective detail she hadn’t been told about yet, but Donovan still refused to let the matter go. Especially now.

  “Elijahn could strike at any time,” he said.

  “I would have to make all those whose names he took from our administrative system disappear,” Scholes said. That would be the only way to protect Lara without letting on that of all the names Elijahn had, and who might be mistaken as being connected to Oracle and targeted by him, she was the one he was looking for and therefore the only one being hidden. So instead, every one of them now had a protective detail like Lara’s watching them. To protect them while also keeping the identity of the real person behind Oracle unknown.

  “Why not? We don’t know who he’ll go after. They should all be protected. And you should be, too, Frank. It was under your command that Elijahn was hit.”

  “We can’t halt IDSD Missions’ work.”

  “How much of IDSD Missions would be left if Elijahn succeeds?”

  “Be that as it may,” Scholes said, “we will not, cannot give in to threats. And you know I’m right. If it were you you’d say the same thing.”

  “Yes,” Donovan said. “But this isn’t about me, is it?” He got up to leave. There was nothing else to be said.

  “Donovan.”

  At the door, Donovan turned back.

  “Can you find him?”

  “Yes. The question is if it would still matter.” Donovan turned his back to him and left.

  He knew he wasn’t being fair to Scholes. There was more than just IDSD’s people at stake here. But he didn’t care. Elijahn was an imminent threat, and he had to be protected against before anything else.

  He headed to Lara’s office. The outer office was empty, and the door of the inner one was closed. He introduced himself to her aide, although he was sure the young man, who introduced himself with the same cool formality he’d exhibited earlier, would know who he was, by association to Lara. “Is Lara in there?” he asked him.

  “Ms. Holsworth is working on mission data, sir. She cannot be disturbed.”

  Donovan glanced thoughtfully at the closed door. “Yesterday’s mission?”

  Aiden said nothing, and Donovan turned to face him. They contemplated each other.

  “You’re loyal to her,” Donovan stated.

  “Sir.”

  “Good.” Donovan reached into his inner jacket pocket and took out his phone. He brought up the aide’s IDSD number—given to him by Scholes when he’d asked Donovan to put an eye on Lara—and sent him his own number along with a code. Aiden’s phone beeped on his desk and he picked it up and glanced at it, then at Donovan.

  “That’s my priority number. Program it in along with the code and you’ll be able to get directly to me at all times. If you think anything, anything, is wrong, if she is in any trouble, call me.” At Aiden’s frown, he added, “We both have her best interest in mind.” And with this, he turned away and returned to the trackers.

  Aiden contemplated him as he walked away. Aides at his level were hand-picked according to strict attributes and trained from their first day at IDSD not to miss anything, to anticipate, to ensure that the people they were assigned to would have all they needed so that they would not find it necessary to focus on anything but their jobs. And Aiden also liked who he was assigned to. She was a good person. He saw the things she could do, saw what it did to her, saw that she went through it alone.

  And now he saw this man’s eyes when he talked about her. As far as he was concerned, anyone who had that look in his eyes when he talked about Ms. Holsworth was fine by him.

  “Well?”

  The hacker jumped up so abruptly that his chair flew backward. He scrambled to pick it up and sat down again, trying in vain to get his hands to stop shaking. The man who had come up behind him did not bother to heed him, instead watching the three screens.

  “They are all at the IDSD complex. Miles first, then Holsworth, then Edwards an hour later.” The hacker had barely slept. He didn’t dare leave the screens that showed the locations of the targets Elijahn had chosen. The man was becoming increasingly cold, increasingly . . . scary, yes, that was it, and the hacker wanted to make sure he would still be considered useful in his eyes.

  Elijahn watched the screens in silence. The hacker tried to remember a prayer. Any prayer.

  After what seemed to the hacker to be an eternity later, the big man turned and walked away, and, still not daring to move, to breathe, to take his eyes off the screens he was ordered to watch, the hacker heard him open the door to the training area, where he could hear the rest of the men talking.

  Satisfied that the IDSD trackers—joined by a US Global Intelligence officer and an IDSD Intelligence officer, both of whom had been involved in tracking Elijahn and his group before the raid on his Chad base—could continue on their own, Donovan was ready to leave. He went by Lara’s office again. Her inner office was now open, and he walked by Aiden, who made no move to stop him.

  Lara’s office was spacious, and clearly designed specifically for her. A multitouch desk stood not far from the window that spanned its back wall, a high-backed chair between them. On Donovan’s left, in the far corner, stood a comfortable-looking recliner. Something someone could sleep on, he noted, and wondered how many times she
found herself sleeping there while working on a mission, and if that was another way for her to be alone. The upper halves of the walls on both his sides were screens, and he saw that the tinted glass in which the door he was standing at was set had the telltale signs of glass-to-screen technology. He looked at the window, saw it there, too, and imagined she could close the door and surround herself with uninterrupted data, images, whatever it was she needed when she worked. This was, in fact, a miniature Mission Command disguised as an innocent-looking office.

  He turned his eyes to the woman herself. She was leaning back in her chair, watching him.

  “Okay, yes, I’m curious.”

  This made her laugh, and he felt his heart give in. He masked it by sitting down on one of the two chairs she had on his side of the desk and settled back. He then returned his gaze back to her. “Are you okay?” His tone mirrored his eyes.

  She nodded.

  “Your aide out there wouldn’t give out any info, but I’m assuming you were analyzing your latest mission.”

  She knew what he was getting at. She nodded again, reassuringly, a bit of wonder in her smile. Yes, she was fine. And he had a lot to do with it. Normally she would fight to deal with the consequences of her work herself, deal and hide, which would only take more from her and prolong the strain. But this time was different. It felt different. And as a result, she was rested, focused. Ready for whatever would come.

  She watched him now, watched the eyes that watched her back.

  Aiden coughed politely, and they both started and turned to look at him. “Would anyone like coffee?”

  “No, thank you.” Donovan got up and nodded to the aide to acknowledge the gesture. “I’m going back to USFID, need to check out some leads,” he said to Lara while Aiden retreated discreetly.