On The Black: (A CIA Thriller)

by Theo Cage

  "Can you take me to Spokane?" she asked.

  "Why not.”

  "OK," was her only answer. She took her hand off the door handle and slunk down in the seat, her eyes still on the uniforms.

  "So I passed the test?" Rice asked.

  He could see her working hard not to smile. "Don't let it go to your head," she said. "I've been wrong before."

  CHAPTER 9

  Brimuell County, Washington

  DONALD SUMNER OFTEN REMINISCED about his St. Paul days, when he felt like an up-and-comer, a young FBI agent with a bright future, full of purpose and bravado - FBI talk for piss and vinegar. That kind of attitude almost got him killed a few times. And when his superiors realized that he wasn’t maturing, they began to fear for the other agents on the team and carefully began sliding him into roles where he couldn’t hurt himself or others.

  Sumner never really understood the forces rallying against him. Even the Minneapolis police expressed misgivings about him when he pulled out his revolver one afternoon and threatened a cab driver on Shepard Road because his first name matched a BOLO for a suspected terrorist. Mohammed. There were more Mohammeds living in St. Paul than cotton-heads retired in Miami.

  Sumner thought he was just doing his job. He got a quick transfer to Seattle.

  This morning he was seated in a black GMC Yukon rolling down highway 401, just outside of Brimuell County, about two hours east of the national reserve. In other words, nowhere. On monitoring detail. Which meant tracking a suspect. He was optimistic. The day was brightening, the rain dissipating, and the Yukon hurtled down the gently curving two-lane like a three-ton starfighter with cup holders.

  His target was a young woman legally named Adele Blum, but traveling under a number of aliases. How did she keep them all straight? If he was hiding from the mob, he’d keep things simpler.

  Currently she worked under the name of Addie Smith. While in Witness Security Program (WITSEC), she used a name provided by the Feds. One of the most violent organized crime families in America was hunting for her. He was surprised she hadn’t left the country. She had nothing to lose. The Ruffino family had cruelly dispatched her mother, father and brother, while they lived in Orange County, LA. And there was every indication that they used torture. They wanted the daughter badly. Snitches were bad news for organized crime. A bloody end to talkative whistleblowers was the Mafia solution. As far as the FBI knew, she was the last of the Blum bloodline.

  Sumner had kept an eye on her for the few weeks she worked the truck stop in Yakima, a hand-off from another agent out of Washington State who had tracked her from Seattle during a very wet winter. Sumner was curious like everyone else why they didn’t just bring her in. The other agent just stared at him when he asked.

  “You obviously have no idea how much we need to catch the Ruffinos red-handed. We have nothing on them now that her family is gone. And they are the most careful tribe in organized crime.”

  Sumner wondered if this case was so important, why was he the only one assigned to the stakeout. But the answer was probably simple accounting. No budget.

  Sumner had no family either, no wife to think about. So he almost felt a kinship with her. He had eaten at her truck stop more than once, despite the bad coffee and overcooked eggs, watching her out of the corner of his eye as she smiled at odorous long-distance truckers and lost tourists.

  Addie became his hobby. Watching her became an eighteen-hour day, seven days a week obligation. No overtime. He would have felt like an idiot if he weren’t so convinced he was destined to bring the most infamous crime family in America to its knees. And he convinced himself he could do it without harming one blond hair on Addie’s pretty head in the process.

  He had been in the coffee shop earlier that morning during the armed robbery. An interesting experience. He was an officer of the law and carried an FBI issued Glock series 9. It was more than likely his responsibility as an agent to attempt to arrest the offender. And he had no fear of a standoff. That was just Sumner. He just never thought about those things. But he just sat there and drank his coffee. Something told him she was never in any danger. The robber looked soft. Hard to define but Sumner had seen it before. Pointing a gun didn’t make you a warrior. And Addie never appeared the least bit stressed or frightened. Which he could understand, considering what she had been through.

  When the robber left, Sumner slipped out to avoid the police. He would have a hard time explaining who he was and why he hadn’t intervened. About twenty minutes later the local Sherriff’s blue and white arrived. Addie jogged across the asphalt parking lot, head down into the wind, and started walking towards the rigs parked under the gas canopy. She headed east. Her rented room was west. She wasn’t going home. No purse, no baggage and in a hurry.

  Sumner sat on the other side of the highway, his heart aching for her. If she hitched a ride, should he pick her up? What a great way to monitor someone, one seat over, sipping lattes together. Was that in the rules? Fuck the rules, he thought, forgetting immediately the danger in linking his license plate to the fleeing witness. But he knew the Ruffinos weren’t close. If they had picked up her trail, she would be dead already or worse. Much worse.

  As he began to turn across the divided highway, he saw her climb up into the passenger seat of an ocean blue Kenworth. She swung herself up into the passenger seat in one quick fluid motion and banged the door shut. Almost like she owned the truck. Like she knew the driver, no hesitation in her expression. Maybe a kind of acceptance, a willingness to just tempt fate. And he liked that about her. He would do the same thing in her predicament. Cinch up the bungee cord and just leap into space. But he still felt like he had missed the opportunity of a lifetime.

  CHAPTER 10

  Ghost Lake, Mt. Rainier

  IT TOOK BRENT THREE HOURS of difficult hiking to find his way down the ridge. He left his brother behind on the road and trekked south until the slope lessened, and the drop became a jumble of broken granite. Once into the thick of the pine forest, he identified a number of wildlife trails, barely visible depression tracks in the forest floor where deer walked to conserve energy. Always paths of least resistance. Trackers would follow these first, the deer having done the work of determining the quickest routes.

  Brent worked his way north to the base of the crumbling decline of rock that formed the ridge. He stood below the spot where Rice’s dilapidated cabin once stood. He thought about best routes. South ended in dense forest, no water that he could see on a map. Not a good place to run if you’re being tracked by infrared sensors. Which would be their next option.

  North went to civilization. But then what? Rice was a mountain man without a ride. He couldn’t go far on foot.

  Brent couldn’t imagine hitchhiking being an escape plan. Rice had years to make plans and he must have known he would be found eventually.

  Brent hiked north on the trail and noticed, after an hour, the trees starting to thin out and the route becoming more worn. More than a deer path now - more like a local hiking path. After another mile he came to a cluster of cabins. Places to rent for winter skiers. There were dozens of them, a few currently occupied, lights on in tiny windows.

  Brent kept going until he came to a convenience store and a gas station, a large one and a half-story shed tucked in behind. The store was still shuttered and unopened, so he pushed his way through the undergrowth to the shop.

  Walking the perimeter, Brent found one window. He shielded the glass with his hands and peered inside. The concrete floor was stained with patches of oil and lubricants. One spot was fresh, shiny. Several feet back from the end wall. Recent.

  Next to a workbench stood a red steel tool chest on top of a set of drawers. Not a hobbyist's toolset – a wide case made for industrial scale wrenches and air tools. The kinds used on diesels and commercial truck motors or construction equipment. And clean like it had just been used.

  A calendar hung above the bench. Two years old. The logo at the top read Kenworth.
They built the big rigs, the highway tractors and trailers that filled the freeways. Brent paced back to the industrial door and knelt down. Someone had swept the dirt recently. He could see the bristle marks in the fine sand. He stepped back and walked in the direction away from the loading door. Along a path a vehicle would follow out of the shop.

  Close to the gravel road leading back to civilization, a tire track was barely visible. A fresh impression in the powdered gravel. A jagged ziggurat. Wider than a car tire.

  A multi-ton truck had passed by here recently. It was a strange place to store an eighteen-wheeler. Inside an expensive shed at the end of the line, past a road closed in the winter and inaccessible six months of the year.

  Brent pulled out his Blackberry and speed dialed his brother. Trent answered, the signal weak but usable.

  “I think I know how Rice got out,” he said.

  CHAPTER 11

  Richland, Washington State

  A KENWORTH IS A THING OF BEAUTY, an audacious chrome juggernaut that hums like a B-52. With a control center like a 747. But the guy driving this Kenny was no pro. He’d missed third gear twice and the truck didn’t seem too happy about it. Addie kept her eyes on the road, wondering if she had just jumped from one ugly situation into another. My luck’s not changing anytime soon, she thought.

  The driver looked older than she first thought, but it was hard to figure his age. He didn’t have an ounce of fat on him and his eyes were as blue as a Mediterranean Sea. Not that she had ever seen a Mediterranean Sea close up. But she had seen it in movies and the electric blue of the ocean was mesmerizing.

  The driver wore a worn plaid coat that smelled vaguely of campfire, with a scrubby beard and long hair that hadn’t seen a professional haircut in years.

  “You from around here?” he asked.

  She looked at him directly and shook her head. “I know you’re not. You sound East coast.” She waited for an answer, but he seemed intent on his steering. “Is this really your rig?”

  The driver gave her a quick glance. “Boston.”

  “What?”

  “Grew up in Boston. As for the truck, I’m still learning.” He ground the gearshift into the next gear, winced, slowing for the turn as they twisted through the curves of the mountain road.

  “Just tell me you didn’t steal it,” said Addie.

  “The registration is in the glove box.” She looked at the door to the storage bin and almost took him up on his offer. But what would it prove?

  “You look a bit, uh, mature, for a first-time rig jockey.”

  He gritted his teeth and this time shifted quite smoothly up into fifth. “I answered two of your questions. How about answering one of mine. Are you from around here?”

  “I’ve been from around here for about eighteen months. Why?”

  “You work at that truck stop?” He pointed at the uniform peeking out from under her coat.

  “Past tense.”

  “Lousy tips?”

  “Didn’t meet my career expectations.”

  “So you’re looking for a job?”

  “Depends on the job description.”

  “I do export and import. I need an assistant.”

  She shook her head, her eyes on the road.

  “Not what you think,” he added. “You’d handle calls and track shipments. That’s it. I’m a happily married man. Two kids. Three cats. No funny business. What do you think?”

  “Is this the job interview?”

  “It pays five hundred a week, each week upfront.”

  She whistled. “And you haven’t even seen my resume yet.”

  “I got the feeling back there that you were done with that town. Don’t ask me what it was.” He took a few seconds to move the rig over and pass a local lumber truck. “Well?”

  She had two choices. She could ask to use the washroom at the next gas stop and run like hell. She had a stack of bills in her pocket and a lot more in a bank account back in Seattle. She would be OK. Or she could spend a few more miles unraveling this guy’s story. She’d seen his eyes. He wasn’t evil, but he wasn’t good either. Man, she could find ‘em. She believed he had a soul, or at least a partial one, something she paid quite a bit of attention to lately. Something else was missing though, but it wasn’t intelligence. Probably heart. That was it, something or someone had this guy’s heart in a vice. She could clearly hear it in his voice, in the pauses between words.

  Here was the kind of mystery she loved to unravel and it fell right into her lap. What else did she have to do? She had no real home to go to. But she had to teach him to start telling the truth. Everything he said about himself seemed polished or nuanced. But he didn’t seem to get a lot of pleasure from lying like some people did. Some dudes fed on lying like steak and potatoes. Like Jessie. This guy was practiced. A pro.

  Despite that, one thing he had told her she knew was a complete lie and she couldn’t wait to call him on it. That bit about the three cats? This was not a cat guy and she would bet her entire bankroll on it.

  He had also never asked for her name. In her experience, people who don’t ask your name usually don’t have one to give back. That gave her a momentary chill. What was this guy hiding that was making him forget who he really was?

  CHAPTER 12

  Gleed, Washington State

  THE RAZERS DID WHAT THEY ALWAYS DO BEST - fight. Every decision turned into an epic battle of wills. What vehicles would they use to track Rice? What strategy should they use? Where to pick up coffee? Brent had leaned heavily into his brother at the entry door to Elsie’s Eats, a roadside diner. Used his muscle a bit more than usual. Trent was an efficient killer but a prima donna when it came to breakfast.

  “An eighteen wheeler?” asked Trent.

  “It’s perfect. Half the vehicles on the road are semis. He’ll blend right in.”

  Trent ordered his coffee to go, not looking happy. The guy behind the counter looked more like a lumberjack than a barista.

  Brent gave his brother another private shove. “You’ll survive,” he nodded toward the scruffy guy pouring coffee. “He was probably trained in Paris.”

  “Yeah. Paris, Texas,” said Trent.

  “It took me about two hours to find the shop where Rice parked the truck. Assuming he left in a hurry, he has about a one-hour lead on us. Maybe ninety minutes max. The fastest he could travel on those switchbacks heading east is about thirty. So he’s at least fifty to a hundred miles ahead of us.”

  Trent took his coffee, sipped and grimaced. “That’s not good news. I looked at the map. He has two choices when 410 splits off to 12. He takes a left and goes south back through the Rockies. Or straight through to Yakima.”

  “He’s going east,” said Brent. They were out of the diner and heading to their vehicles, Trent holding his paper cup like he’d just found the Holy Grail.

  “How do you know?”

  “He’s had it with the mountains.”

  “Well, then great swami, where will he go from Yakima? Which is where he was about an hour ago.”

  “He’s heading north to Interstate 90.”

  “You guess wrong and we will lose him for good.”

  “Rice is the most cautious beast in the zoo,” said Brent, opening his truck door. “A sniper’s bullet killed his wife while she sipped a glass of wine on a private balcony in Greece. They had been in hiding for over a year. They say the bullet veered and hit the wrong target, if you believe that. Rice has been the invisible man ever since. But a very angry and dedicated invisible man.”

  Brent grabbed his cell phone off the dash and checked the batteries. “Remember what you said about him being tired of running? I think you’re right. Take a map and draw a line connecting the state of Washington to Washington, DC. Interstate 90 is part of that route. He’s on that track right now. He’s tried hiding. Now he’s hunting.”

  “You want me to tell Kreegar that?” asked Trent.

  “Let him connect the dots. So far this is just conjecture.�
��

  “OK. They’ve got a chopper picking me up in Ellensberg. I’ll be in Mountain View in about three hours to meet the big guy. I’ll give him the sit rep. You find Rice.”

  Brent jumped up into his Ram pickup, the chrome blinding his brother as he pulled away. Trent was flying to the CIA office in California to meet the man paying the bills. The former head of the CIA, George Kreegar. That was Trent’s job. Politics. Brent said he would quit if he had to deal directly with Kreegar again.

  As Brent pulled onto the 410 he wondered how hard it would be to locate Rice. He was going to have to check out hundreds of rigs. He mashed the gas pedal down, heard the HEMI roar. He had to make up the distance. That meant pushing the hell out of the speed limit. They had already asked Homeland Security to contact the highway patrol all over Washington State. If you see a red Dodge truck breaking the sound barrier, back off. Cops didn’t like taking orders from the Feds, but they couldn’t ignore HS.

  Brent’s phone rang. His brother again.

  “Say you find him. Then what? Force Rice off the road and take him into custody?”

  Brent snorted into the phone. “He’s in a semi that outweighs me twenty-to-one.”

  “He doesn’t want to raise any undue attention. I don’t think he would drive you off the road.”

  “I’m not so sure about that. For all we know, he could just call the police on his radio. It’s not like he’s an escaped felon. He has no record.”

  “The other option is to wait until he leaves the truck. To eat, or pick up a pizza. Hell, I could use a pizza right now and I haven’t had to wait ten years for one.”

  “Brother dear, I don’t think you appreciate the truck he has. They have full-size beds, freezer, microwave, flat-screen. He never has to leave.”

  “You’re telling me he will never leave the truck? For any reason?”