“Yeah,” said Jana. “And I get the feeling we’re not even going to order the food. My money says Loraine just shows up with two plates of something fried.”
Jana was thinking more clearly now. Her mind was once again working on the problem of how they were going to get the data into the right hands. It was a challenge that had to be met quickly. She was keyed up and still nervous about someone spotting them. The plan to give the data to Uncle Bill had been brilliant. He was someone that Latent trusted with his life. But now that Bill was dead, they had to come up with something else. Everything was going sideways.
Right on cue, Loraine arrived with plates of food stretched across her arms.
“Now y’all will have to forgive me. I couldn’t help myself. I took the liberty of ordering for ya.” She placed the plates on the table.
Jana was steeped in concentration and barely noticed. She was staring out the large window and onto the town square. Loraine looked at Jana’s gaze and stood, staring at her with a curious little smile on her face. A glorious aroma of homemade fried chicken and dumplings rose delicately up at Jana. It beckoned her senses and pulled heartstrings she’d long forgotten. Memories of being on her grandpa’s porch when she was seven years old flooded forward. She would sit on his lap, and the gentle man would reach his arms around her, cut the fried chicken, and put each bite into her tiny little mouth.
Jana glanced down at the plate and stared. It was exactly as she remembered it. When she finally looked up at Loraine, she instead saw her grandma. A little tear welled in her eye; the emotions were still raw.
“Aw, sweetie. Now somethin’s wrong. Now don’t tell Loraine any lies, I can tell. Somethin’s wrong with the food. Oh, I always do this! I get carried away and just order food and look at what happens. Oh now, don’t cry, honey, I have a strict rule in the Grits Café. Nobody’s allowed to cry alone in my presence.”
A tear rolled down Jana’s cheek.
“I’m okay, ma’am. I am. I had a tough night last night, that’s all. It’s not the food, honest. I thought I was back on my grandpa’s front porch for a minute.” Loraine pulled a handkerchief out of her pocket and touched it to her own eyes.
“Is there anything Miss Loraine can do for ya, honey? Well, I’m here, honey. If you need anything, I’ll be right over there.” Loraine sniffled and walked back towards the kitchen.
Jana said, “I’ve got to get a hold of myself. We’ve got to be much more anonymous than this. People need to see us then forget we even exist. Maybe I’m paranoid.”
“Are you okay?” said Cade.
“Look,” said Jana, “instead of being paranoid, let’s take action. Let’s take control of the situation. The situation is dictating us, and we need to dictate it. Let’s come up with a plan and let’s execute it.”
The two talked over lunch, but they weren’t coming up with what they believed was a safe way to get the data into the right hands. A few customers who were obvious regulars mingled in and out of the restaurant. Loraine chatted them up and they returned in kind. And the little doorbell swung back and forth, tinkling gently.
60
Jana reached behind her to pull out the stack of papers that she had taken from Rupert Johnston’s office. She’d almost forgotten she had stuffed them back in her waistline. But just as her hand gripped the papers, she stopped moving. She wasn’t sure why. Perhaps it was that his shirt looked out of place for someone from a tiny Georgia town. Or perhaps it was the unkempt hair. Something did not belong, and Jana was on edge. The stranger came across the road from the town hall and headed right for the diner. Jana’s heart jumped. The door swung open and he held it in place, the bell ringing gently overhead. Jana shifted her hand from the stack of papers and onto the grip of her Sig Sauer. The man stood there, staring at her. No smile, no friendly nod—nothing reminiscent of small-town-Georgia life. His eyes carried a look of blankness, and she knew this was trouble. CIA, she thought. The firearms instructor from Quantico’s voice piped up from somewhere in the recesses of her brain, Double-tap, center mass, then one to the head. It felt as if all the air had left the room. He was fifteen feet away.
The stranger walked forward; the door swung closed behind him.
Thirteen feet away . . .
Ten feet away . . .
Jana thumbed the safety off the holster.
Seven feet away . . .
Jana jumped up, her stainless steel chair flying sideways and crashing against another, her weapon drawn.
In her deepest voice, Jana yelled, “FBI, FREEEZE! Everybody down! Show me your hands! Show me your hands!”
People screamed and dove for cover, the sight of Jana’s gun blinding them to anything else.
The stranger stopped and stood there. There was a long pause, and then from within the blankness, a meek voice peeked out from behind the thick, grizzled beard.
“Miss Baker?” It was soft and disarming, almost like feathers. It cut the tension as easily as Loraine had cut into her lemon meringue pie.
Cade looked at Jana. Jana didn’t move. Whimpers could be heard from the corners of the restaurant, and somewhere in the kitchen, a plate shattered.
“Miss Baker, I’d really be appreciative if you didn’t kill me right here in front of these nice people. I’ve kinda had a bad day.”
“Bad day? Tell me about it. You flinch, and I’ll cut you in half. Who are you?”
“I’m William Tarleton.” The name meant nothing to Jana. “My mom always called me Billy. But in college, my roommate always called me Uncle Bill.”
“More information coming in now in what is being referred to as TerrorGate. Hello, this is Mike Slayden, WBS News. In a statement issued moments ago, US Attorney General Robert Ashton handed down sweeping indictments that include dozens of employees of the Central Intelligence Agency. Also indicted are several executives at Thoughtstorm Inc., an Atlanta-based company, who are believed to have been involved in a terror plot. For more information, let’s go now, live, to Buckhead, with correspondent, John Carden.”
“That’s right, Mike, in a prepared statement, Attorney General Ashton said that during a terrorist investigation of its own, the Central Intelligence Agency crossed the line and committed treason against the United States. An insidiae, as he referred to it, which is Latin for conspiracy. The allegations leveled against CIA officials indicate they were taking a page right out of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s playbook. The CIA operation, which was known as Operation Ladder, centered around funding a known terror organization that was operating within the borders of the United States. Their goal was to climb further and further up the chain of command of the terror group in a manner similar to the way the DEA breaks up drug rings. When asked for comment, the Attorney General stated, and I quote, ‘This is an insidiae that reaches the uppermost echelons of the US government. Earlier this morning, a Senate subcommittee met behind closed doors to hear evidence against the president of the United States over his possible knowledge of the CIA’s clandestine activities.’ Now, as of yet, Mike, the White House has no comment. But it is apparent that this case is far from over. Reporting live from Buckhead, John Carden, WBS News.”
“Uncle Bill?” said Jana. “Uncle Bill was killed right in front of me. How do you know that name? Who are you? Pop out some identification before I pop you a new asshole.”
“Miss Baker, please . . .”
“Who else is with you!” screamed Jana, looking over the man’s shoulder and out onto the street.
“Miss Baker, I am Uncle Bill. Look, I know what this looks like. I know, I’m supposed to be dead, right? That minivan must look like Swiss cheese right now . . .”
“That minivan was shredded! Uncle Bill would have been blown to bits. If you’re Uncle Bill, how come you weren’t killed? That chopper ripped the minivan apart,” said Jana, applying light tension to the trigger.
“I was monitoring the bureau’s frequencies the whole time. I heard them. I heard everything that was going on. They
knew they had incoming air traffic, and they knew it was hostile. When I saw that chopper round the corner in between the buildings, man, it was like I had a flashback to ’Nam. I was out of that van in a heartbeat. I was knocked unconscious when the missile struck it though. If I hadn’t dived down the stairwell to the MARTA train . . . man, I’d be toast.”
Jana was taking no chances.
“Bullshit! Credentials. Show me your credentials. I’m not going to ask you again.”
The man slowly pulled out a thin, black leather wallet. He held it forward—they were credentials identifying one William Tarleton, National Security Agency.
“Okay, if you’re Uncle Bill, tell me something about your college roommate that no one else would know.”
The restaurant was silent, all except the muffled sobs of Loraine crouching behind the counter.
The man looked down a long moment then said, “Well, Stevie always told me to never tell anyone how many times I’d held his head over the toilet while we were at Georgetown. He always had this idea that it would sort of curb his career ambitions. You know, FBI director and all that.”
Jana thought back to when she and Kyle were in the Atlanta field office, talking to Latent. He had said that exact thing. She lowered her weapon, never taking her eyes off of Uncle Bill. “Loraine, it’s okay now,” said Jana. “It’s over. It’s all okay. You all right?”
From behind the counter, Loraine stood up in trepidation and dabbed at heavy mascara pushing its way down her face.
“We should go now,” said Bill. “If I can find you, they can find you.”
“How did you find us?” said Cade.
Bill simply turned and looked back toward the door. Up above the tinkling little bell was a security camera.
“The police did a felony stop on the Ford Explorer you switched license plates with. Probably scared the hell out of the driver. After that, I started looking for a vehicle with a matching description with the other license plate. It didn’t take long. Hopefully, we have a head start over those assholes at CIA.”
Jana said, “Loraine, honey? You mind if we use the back door?”
“Oh, of course,” said Loraine, wiping mascara out from under her eyes. “But y’all take some of Loraine’s nice lemon meringue pie, now.”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Cade.
The three left out the back, jumped into Bill’s car, and were gone. Bill wove into the neighborhoods to avoid any more cameras.
“What’s the plan?” said Jana.
“I’ve got a he-lo waiting on us,” said Bill. “There’s a soybean field just up the road here. We’re going to Maryland, to Fort Meade. On board we’ll get to work on that data. But we have one stop to make first.”
61
The cargo van was white. It had no windows, less the driver and passenger sides, and those were tinted dark enough to cast a somber glow on the dingy interior. After making a straight fourteen-hour trek from Atlanta, it pulled into the sliver-thin driveway of Old Mrs. Neebody’s house in Queens, New York. Only little Jimmy who lived a few houses up noticed. The single garage door rose quietly then engulfed the van. As Jimmy rode by on his Huffy, he thought it looked like a mouth that had just swallowed a great big Tylenol.
As the windowless door swung shut, the garage was almost pitch black.
“We are here, Waseem,” said the driver from behind bloodshot eyes.
In the floor of the cargo van, a long, flat metal door popped upwards, revealing a secret compartment beneath. Waseem Jarrah rose from a horizontal position inside the hidden compartment, sat upright, and stretched.
“The time is close, my young friend,” said Jarrah. He placed his arm on the young driver’s shoulder. “Soon, we will be in the arms of Allah, and we will be hailed.”
“Death to the beast,” said the young apprentice. But his voice was timid and lacked conviction.
Bill’s car bumped across ruts in the recently scraped dirt road.
“How much longer?” said Jana.
“Oh, about ten minutes or so,” said Uncle Bill.
Jana pulled out Rupert Johnston’s handwritten papers once more.
“What cha got there?” said Bill.
“These were a stack of papers from inside Rupert Johnston’s office. I’m almost afraid to ask you. He’s dead, isn’t he?” said Jana, though she already knew the answer.
Bill just looked at her.
Jana replied, “He was burned up. Completely burned up. I’ve been trying to read these papers of his. I’m getting the impression he had no idea what he was getting into when this thing started. After that, he just couldn’t figure out how to get out of it.”
62
The front tire bumped the edge of a washed-out spot and began to rattle as the car’s tires thumped across the washboard-like dirt road, its ridges having formed after heavy rains.
“You’re going to want to study these, Bill,” said Jana. “I think these papers tell the whole story. There’s even details about the encryption.”
Plumes of dust rose from the dirt road behind them and drifted into the quiet rows of pines on either side.
“Hey, Bill,” said Cade. “There was something on the news this morning. I didn’t really catch the rest of it. It mentioned a car bomb? At first, I thought they were talking about the minivan you were driving, but they said it was in downtown.”
Bill stayed quiet.
“Bill?” said Jana.
“All right.” Bill sighed. “I was hoping to avoid this. Yes, there was a car that was blown up in downtown Atlanta last night.”
He paused, collecting his words like a kid trading bottle caps, wanting to be sure he got the best ones.
“It was the Apache helicopter. It was a surgical strike. The vehicle didn’t have a chance.”
Jana said, “What do you mean? What vehicle? Why did the Apache go after it?”
After a moment, Bill simply said, “It was a taxicab.”
The sentence hung in space for a moment.
“A taxi?” said Cade. “But why would they take out a tax . . .” Cade gasped as he processed the thought. “No, don’t tell me . . . it was my fault, wasn’t it? Oh my God, they killed a taxi driver because of me? Because of what I did?”
Bill again said nothing as Jana tried to catch up.
“What do you mean, Cade? What did you do?” she said. But then it hit her all at once. Their cell phones. They had placed their cell phones in the underside of the bumper of a taxicab. The Apache tracked their cell signals and assumed they were in the cab. The nightmare they were in didn’t seem to have an end. Jana looked out the window. And the pines passed and the tires rattled and the dust swirled behind them.
The rows and rows of planted pines gave way to fields of soybeans, cotton, and tobacco. Not as flat as Kansas, but close. The farm belt stretched wide. Hundreds of acres of fields were edged by a dividing line of tall pines. As they came up a very low rise, Jana saw a triad of tall grain silos in the distance. And there at the base, a whirlwind of dust circled. The squat-low Huey was waiting with rotors turning.
Adjacent to the grain silos stood an old wooden farmhouse tucked beneath three broad oak trees. The white paint had been flaking away for years. On the porch, an old man in overalls stood next to empty rocking chairs, arms crossed, his straw hat flapping in the wind.
“Man, you weren’t kidding,” said Cade. “You really do have a helicopter waiting. Hey, Bill, you said before we go to Ft. Meade that we had one other stop first? What was that?”
“We’ll get to that,” said Bill.
The man on the porch paid the approaching car no attention. He was focused on something high in the sky. When Jana looked up, she could see the faint outline of two military jets banking to the left. A low roar from their engines reverberated through the car.
“Those are for you,” said Bill.
“What do you mean?”
“F-18s, out of Dobbins. That Apache is still out there. We aren’t taking any chances.”
“You mean we’ve got air cover?” said Cade.
“Yep,” said Bill. “And as soon as we get on the chopper, Cade, I’m going to take that thumb drive from you and start working. My equipment is on board.”
“Got it.”
“Jana,” said Bill, “hold on to those papers tightly. I don’t want them spread across ten acres of soybeans while we board that Huey. I’ll need you to keep reading through them. There may be some clues we need to decrypt the data.”
Moments later, buckled into their seats and headsets on, the helicopter blades roared and whumped to life, kicking up more dust. Jana looked at the old man on the porch and saw he was still facing them, bracing against the wind. His face was defiant. It was as if he knew this was something important, something utterly important. Jana waved, and the man stood sturdy and proud, then nodded back. For the second time that morning, she catapulted back in her memory into her grandfather’s warm arms. Looking at the old man on the porch was like looking at an angel.
63
The basement was dark and dank. The back room, however, was brilliantly lit. The smell was something of a cross between an epoxy factory and an old high school locker room. Waseem was disgusted. On his first visit, he expected better. Things should have been in order and more cleanly in anticipation of his visit. Two decrepit couches lined either side of the box-shaped space, one man sleeping on each. Waseem glanced at them; his face twinged against the sharp odor.
In the center of the room, lying on a heavy hewn, homemade workbench, was the prize. It was cylindrical in shape, about three feet long, and twenty-five inches in diameter. On the left end was a heavy metal collar with handles surrounding an aluminum valve and threaded nozzle. Had it been smaller, it would have passed as a standard propane canister, the type found underneath every gas grill in America.
Spy Thriller: The Fourteenth Protocol: A Story of Espionage and Counter-terrorism (The Special Agent Jana Baker Book Series 1) Page 24