The Alberta Connection

by R. Clint Peters

  Mark laughed. “The FBI didn’t have Doug to chase down financial records. He will find something if there is something to find.”

  Mark picked up his cell phone and sent a text message. He also composed an email on his laptop.

  “When Doug is in crisis mode, you have to contact him using both email and text messaging. Sometimes he is so deep in his laptop, he doesn’t check his email.”

  For the rest of the day, Mark, Ryce, and Tanya searched for additional information on the FBI agents. A few minutes before they departed the conference room, Mark received an email from Doug.

  “Mark,

  I found a joint account for the FBI agents with $800,000.00. I will let you know when I find more.

  Doug”

  While they waited for the elevator, Ryce looked at Mark. “Does it seem like we still have more questions than answers?”

  Chapter 9

  Ryce and Tanya arrived at Suite 425 nearly an hour early Friday morning. Ryce had been working in the conference room for most of the week. He thought it was time to set up his office so he felt comfortable working in it.

  Relocating the office desk was the first item on the list. After Ryce moved the desk three times, it stood exactly where it had been when he started.

  As Ryce relaxed in his office chair, he heard a faint laugh coming from the doorway, and then Tanya walked into the office.

  “I am really sorry I didn’t think to bring my video camera. The last ten minutes have been very revealing.”

  She walked over, sat in his lap, and kissed him. “I moved my desk only once.”

  Mark arrived at the conference room at his normal time. Ten minutes later AP walked into the room followed by two men dragging mobile whiteboards.

  AP laughed at Ryce’s expression. “Doug thought you could use the whiteboards. I was happy to get them out of my office storage room. John ordered too many. I think he put the decimal point in the wrong place.”

  When Ryce walked into the conference room, Mark was busy writing on one of the new whiteboards. Across the top of one of the boards, he had written, “We Need Answers!!!!!” and below the heading Mark had scribbled several questions.

  Ryce picked the question he had been fighting with for five days: Who are the three killers at the cabin?

  By 4:00 PM Friday, Ryce had reached his saturation point. He was accessing driver’s license databases. An average search took more than thirty minutes, and each database had to be searched three times. Ryce had concluded his third state without success. He was certainly ready for a weekend.

  Ryce and Tanya attended the Pendergast Family dinner in the chow hall as requested. Ryce thought for a moment. It had been more of a requirement than a request. He chuckled. He and Tanya might not be actual family members, but O2 made it clear he would be applying for a formal adoption. Ryce had, as O2 reminded everyone within hearing distance, saved his butt in Afghanistan.

  The dinner conversation centered on the Joint Border Task Force. John could see Ryce was less than pleased with his success for the week. Additional information had been discovered about the FBI agents, but still nothing about the three executioners. How could they disappear so completely? Suddenly, Ryce had a thought. Perhaps he was looking in the wrong country. Ryce made a mental note to send an email to Dexter Reynolds, the head of the JBTF in Canada. Perhaps Dexter had some of the same resources to research the pictures. Any information was better than no information.

  Ryce was very anxious about Monday morning. Karen indicated at lunch on Saturday that numerous applications to the Joint Border Task Force had been submitted. With a slight smile, she had clarified the statement.

  “I think lots of people want to get away from Doug.”

  With so few successes, John had asked Doug to expand his search to include those who had been arrested on Trans-Canada 1. So far, Doug had found no connections between the Canadian participants and their American sources. There were not even connections between the Canadian members of the groups.

  Doug was quick to admit not having names for the three at the cabin made connecting them to anyone significantly difficult.

  Mark looked across the room. “You, my dear sir, are very perspicuous.”

  When Tanya looked at Ryce, he laughed and told her that Mark had just told Doug he had an amazing grasp of the obvious.

  This was a perfect blind operation. None of the participants had any common connections. If anyone was picked up, they could not provide any information. Had the groups been put together for the single purpose of running the corridor? They picked up the packages delivered from Montana, drove across Canada, and then disappeared back into the shadows. How they got the packages and who they gave them to were the million dollar questions.

  Before Ryce and Tanya left the chow hall, John requested Ryce follow him to the chow hall computer center. John closed the door as soon as Ryce walked into the room.

  “I have gotten some excellent reports of how you and Tanya are progressing. What I am going to tell you now does not leave this room.

  “When you leave here in four months or maybe sooner, you will likely be the new Director of the Joint Border Task Force, US branch. Remember, these are just rumors I am hearing, but my sources are good. They are so good, I would put some money on it in a Las Vegas casino.”

  John returned to the family table. Ryce sat in shock for several minutes, trying to absorb the conversation.

  Tanya walked into the room and asked, “What are you looking so dazed about?”

  Ryce just shook his head. “Can’t tell you, yet.”

  Ryce awoke before his alarm clock broke the silence. He watched the digits slowly creep upward. Three seconds before the alarm was scheduled to go off, Ryce pressed the button, and then snuggled back into bed. For some reason, the alarm clock did not get the message. Something was shattering his morning. Ryce realized the clamor of his cell phone had replaced his alarm clock. He picked up his cell phone.

  “This is Ryce.”

  “Ryce, this is Matt. I know it is excessively early for the phone to ring, but the four men who were executed were discovered this morning in the lake near the cabin. The bodies were not weighed down. Just popped out of the water. Scared the hell out of the Park Service employees who were cleaning the campground. I just wanted to let you know. Tell Tanya hi for me.”

  Ryce’s cell phone went dead. He looked over at Tanya, who had been sleeping when Ryce’s cell phone had alerted him he had a call. She was no longer sleeping.

  “Who was that? Any chance I can disable your cell phone? Or can you

  just change the ringtone?”

  Ryce pulled Tanya close, and kissed her.

  “The ringtone is some angry chickens. It reflects how I feel when the cell phone wakes me up on Saturday morning. I used to have Darth Vader on it. I have no idea how to get more ringtones. I think those ringtones were ones you loaded onto my cell phone.”

  He chuckled. “So I think you are responsible.”

  Ryce smiled as he slid off the bed, walked in the bathroom, dropped his clothes into the hamper, and opened the shower door. He thought he heard the shower door open and close while he was rinsing the shampoo out of his hair. He tensed in anticipation of the water getting hotter. Instead of hotter water, he felt arms encircle his waist.

  “OK, big boy, what do you have planned for today?”

  Ryce completed rinsing his hair and then said, “O2 will be over around 10:00 AM. John is taking his boat out on the lake, and we have been invited to ride along. O2 said John wants a shot at some more fishing points.”

  John did not win any fishing points. Marge caught the first fish, which was also the largest. Ramona caught the most. As soon as the boat docked, Marge added her numbers to the tally board mounted prominently on the fence. She was ten points ahead of Ramona, who was five ahead of John.

  When Ryce and Tanya returned to the apartment, he checked his email. Karen had sent the interview schedule for Monday morning. The fir
st interview was after lunch. He would have all morning to study the applicants’ files.

  Chapter 10

  Ryce and Tanya arrived thirty minutes early on Monday morning. Today was officially the first day of the Joint Border Task Force research team. Ryce had the interview schedule, but no personnel files to which he could refer, and no applications or resumes. He smiled. He was the blind interviewer.

  An hour after he arrived in his office, a service cart stacked high with folders was brought in. When the folders were unloaded on Ryce’s desk, they created two stacks each more than a foot tall. Three typewritten pages were clipped to the top folder.

  Ryce picked up the sheets. There were 117 applicants. Karen had signed the note with, “Here’s everyone from Pendergast Holdings and the District who applied. At least the ones John allowed to apply. Doug tried twice. Once with John, and once with Marge. Have fun. Karen”

  Ryce checked the system clock on his laptop. His first interview was in four hours. He pulled the first five folders off the stack labeled “Marge’s Recommendations,” walked to Tanya’s office and handed them to her.

  “Karen left an interview schedule on the stack of applicants. She has some notes on the names that John, Marge, and Doug have suggested we take a good look at. These folders are on Marge’s recommended list. I want you to look at them and give me your impression. I am looking at five recommendations from John. I will be in my office.”

  Ryce turned and walked back to his office. As he picked up a folder, he did a quick tabulation. At this rate, just checking the applications would take four hours.

  Tanya returned to Ryce’s office at 9:15 AM with her pile of folders. “I put a yellow sticky note on the two I like.”

  Ryce smiled and handed her the next set of five folders.

  The last interview was finished late Wednesday. Eighteen applicants had passed. One of those who was asked to join the JBTF-US was Lynette, one of Mark’s assistants. She had made it clear to Ryce it was time to move on. She had learned everything she could from Mark.

  During the family dinner, Marge asked if Lynette had passed the interview. Everyone at the table turned to look at Ryce. Ryce chuckled.

  “Yes, she did.”

  John laughed. “That is going to put a kink in Mark’s production. I think his two assistants are doing three times as much work as he.”

  The first project on Thursday morning was to assign the new team members to work groups. Tanya was given six members for her group. Because Marge, John, Doug, and Mark had recommended Lynette, she was given a team to lead with five agents. Ryce took the remaining six agents. Each group was given an office suite and one of the three occupants of the cabin as a research assignment.

  As soon as Ryce handed out the assignments, he started toward his office, followed by Tanya.

  “OK, how are we going to do the research with eighteen people but only four spare laptops? And I thought we couldn’t find anything on the three at the cabin.

  Ryce smiled. “Doug told me to give him a call with the number we have hired. We did not find anything, but maybe they can. It took me all day to get through three state driver’s license databases. We have eighteen people. That is less than three states per agent. I have already gone through Alabama, Alaska, and Arizona. Print out a list of the states and wander through the work centers.”

  Doug was waiting for Ryce’s telephone call. Within thirty minutes, two technicians wheeled two service carts into Suite 425. An hour later, all of Ryce’s agents were busy with their new laptops.

  Mark returned to the JBTF offices twice on Friday. The first time was to see if Ryce needed anything, and the second, to say goodbye to Lynette.

  Ryce overheard part of the conversation Mark had with Lynette. When he asked if she would be interested in coming back, she had smiled.

  “I don’t think you can match what Ryce offered me.”

  Ryce sat at his desk for several minutes wondering what Lynette had been offered. He had her personnel file in hand when she was hired and had offered nothing more than what was in the file. He stood and walked into Tanya’s office.

  After he recounted the conversation, Tanya started giggling.

  “She was just jerking his chain. There is a lot more in the relationship than meets the eye.”

  AP was waiting in Ryce’s office when Ryce walked through the door. AP looked up and smiled.

  “I have two additional mobile whiteboards for each office suite on the way over. If you can take another fifty whiteboards, I will be able to see the back wall of my storage room.”

  Ryce was happy someone was reading his mind. The whiteboards provided an easy way to keep track of the information they had discovered. However, when the teams departed at 5:00 PM, all of the whiteboards were empty.

  Chapter 11

  The alarm clock on the table started buzzing at 5:00 AM. Ryce looked over at Tanya, smiled, and then headed for the bathroom. He adjusted the water in the shower and smiled again when he heard the shower door open.Ryce and Tanya arrived at Suite 425 at 6:30 AM. Ryce walked through the offices and found almost half of his team had arrived and were busily working on their laptops. By 7:00 AM, all of his agents were busy.

  At 7:30 AM, Ryce returned to his office to compose an email to Doug. Almost all of the state driver’s license databases had been accessed without success. The three men at the cabin continued to be unanswered questions. Mark had mentioned John had possible access to the military service record databases. Did Doug have any news on that front?

  Ryce wandered through the work centers after sending his email. He was getting jittery. The three most important research projects of the Joint Border Task Force were stalled.

  Ryce decided a few hugs from the most significant woman in his life would likely cheer him up. However, after the third long kiss, he realized he should return to his office before he locked her office door.

  As Ryce returned to his office, he heard voices coming from the conference room. Reversing his course, Ryce walked into the conference room. Sitting with Doug were a man and a woman with FBI nametags. Doug looked up from the open laptop in front of him.

  “John asked me to ask you if you’d include these two FBI agents in the JBTF.”

  The male guest stood and shook Ryce’s hand. “My name is Roger Twills. The lady on my right is Dylene Kent.”

  Dylene stood and shook Ryce’s hand.

  Ryce asked if they could be split up and suggested Roger join Lynette’s team, while Dylene would join Ryce’s team. Doug agreed with the assignments.

  Ryce accompanied the two added agents to their new work centers, introduced them, and then returned to the conference room. He needed some answers from Doug, and he needed them now.

  When Ryce walked back into the conference room, Doug held up both hands. Ryce pulled an invisible pistol out of his pocket and shot him. Doug laughed and then confirmed he had received Ryce’s email, but was still waiting for an answer from John.

  As Ryce reported the lack of information on the three at the cabin, he had a thought.

  “I have the license plate numbers on both vehicles at the cabin. I am sure we have access to motor vehicle licensing, but I have been using only the photo recognition software.”

  Ryce could hear Doug chuckling. “I think we can find something. I’ll send Mark over with a flash drive.”

  Mark must have been close. He arrived in Ryce’s office within five minutes and handed Ryce a flash drive.

  “The program on that drive will get you into every DMV in every state. John doesn’t want this program getting any legs. Use it only under your personal supervision, or better yet, only you or Tanya. You got any questions?”

  Ryce shook his head “no,” and then found a USB port on his laptop. After loading the program, he checked the pictures he had taken of the license plates. When he enlarged both pictures, he was able to see where each had been registered and selected those states for his research.

  Ryce plugged the infor
mation from the license plate on the Dodge into the program. It was from Wyoming. After he pressed enter, the program thought for a few moments and then reported that the tags had been expired for five years.

  Ryce studied the picture of the license plate again. According to the tags, the plate had four more months before the expiration date. Ryce checked the serial number on the tags. The tag serial number did not belong to the license plate. Ryce enlarged the tag and carefully inspected it. The special glue on the tags made removal from a plate extremely difficult. The job done on this plate was remarkably good. It belonged on a VW Beetle that had been totaled in a collision six years earlier. Ryce began to get the feeling that this particular research project was not going to turn up anything reliable or accurate.

  He turned his focus to the Suburban that the four men had arrived in. It had been stolen in Seattle four days before it arrived on the road below Ryce’s position on the mountain. It was not going to provide any new data, either.

  Tanya walked into Ryce’s office a little after 11:00 AM. When she sat down, Ryce wondered if there was a lock on the door. He immediately rejected that thought. Doug likely had the key.

  Ryce noticed that Tanya had a slight smirk on her face.

  She looked at him, and then said, “The three teams are working wonderfully. They are all going to lunch at 11:30 AM. I just checked the thermometer. If you are serious about getting me pregnant, right now would be an excellent time.”

  By the time she finished expressing her thoughts, Tanya was a brilliant beet-colored red. Ryce got up from his desk, walked to where she was sitting, pulled her out of her seat, and gave her a long wet kiss. After the kiss, he took her hand, and they walked out of the office.