One Last Scent of Jasmine (Boone's File Book 3)

by Dale Amidei

  She remembered the pair of heavies she left leaning against the tires of their Tahoe, awaiting her return. What am I supposed to do with those idiots? Kill them in cold blood? Boone knew for sure she was finished with the scene. The final outcome of the rest of her transgressions would be determined once she was back outside. With any luck, they froze to death waiting for me.

  Exiting the server room to the warmer outer office and then the hallway, Boone turned right as she remembered from Kemp’s tour, toward the fire door and the building's exterior. Not bad for your first week on the job, Boone honey. Terry’s going to shit in his chair when we debrief.

  She moved down the hallway, cautiously on the lookout for any sign she was not alone. None came. Hitting the fire door at the end of the hallway, Boone was relieved to see a concrete walk leading from the exit toward the front of the facility. Good. No footprints either.

  Stepping along at a brisk pace, she strode toward the front corner of the building, nearly rounding it before she realized something was wrong. Didn’t I leave a Tahoe out there in the parking lot? Little Swiss appeared from under her jacket once again, and she tactically cleared the corner low and carefully, just in case the two meatballs and their shotgun were waiting somewhere ahead. The good news was the pair seemed to be gone. The absolutely horrid news is they’re not only gone, but know who I am. Buttered bollocks in hell.

  Chapter 6 - Give and Take

  Boone was certain of one thing … she no longer felt in need of her hazelnut-accented morning brew. The drive back across early morning McLean was one punctuated by a tactical awareness verging on paranoia. They know who I am. They knew why I was there. Did they know about Rex, too? And who are they?

  In bad enough shape to perform a discreet tactical reload while she waited at a traffic light, Boone exchanged the partially expended magazine still in Little Swiss for the fully charged spare hanging under her opposite arm. Her mind tallied the load-out of the team she had just encountered. Ketamine: two hundred bucks a dose. Taser loads: five for eight hundred bucks. Short shotgun: fifteen hundred once you pony up for the federal tax stamp. Saving your patron untold billions of rubles in development costs on an invulnerable missile defense system—assuming he could have ever accomplished it in the first place—bloody priceless.

  Regardless of her caution, no opposing force made itself known between DARIUS and her hotel parking lot. Boone, nevertheless, parked in front of the main entrance and directly under a light pole. This way, at least my assassination will look great on the security cameras. But again, no one was waiting. Her entry—this one a hurried walk into the building with her hands once more seeming to clutch herself to stay warm rather than ready—occurred without incident.

  The halls and the elevator were likewise clear. She had been prepared as only a trained combatant could be, should it have proved otherwise. Instead, she arrived at her hotel room door alive and unmolested.

  Once more inside her dimly lit room, ODNI's Senior Case Officer saw with annoyance neither the beep of her room card nor the sound of the door opening and closing again had been enough to rouse her slumbering guest. She strode over to his side of the king-sized mattress. “Terry. Wake up.” Boone found she actually needed to shake him.

  “Hmmph. You coming back to bed?”

  “Early morning, Mister Bradley. Up and at ‘em.”

  Her boss opened one eye. “It’s still dark.”

  “That’s because it’s zero-five-hundred hours. Get your ass out of bed, Mister Bradley, sir. We have business.”

  It seemed his other eye opened unwillingly. “You’re back. Find anything?”

  “Not here, Terry. Get up.”

  “Okay ... okay,” he acceded.

  She dragged his naked—and still rather luscious—body out from between the sheets. I will have to leave a note and a bigger tip letting the housekeepers know I want the linen changed today.

  “God ... I feel like a truck ran over me.”

  She did not recall Bradley's transition to morning being so difficult in the past. “That’s because you were Boone’d to within an inch of your life.” It leaves you two inches short of the dead meat in the DARIUS server room. Boone pulled him toward the front of the bed. She noticed a distinctively male look appear in his eyes. Oh, no. “Don’t even think about it, Terrence Bain Bradley. Into the shower with you. Make it a cold one if you have to,” Boone said, pushing him toward the bathroom. “I’ll do what I can to make your clothes presentable in the meantime.”

  “Fickle woman,” he groused in a groggy voice. More importantly, he did what she told him.

  Sighing as he enclosed himself in her bathroom, Boone looked around. His clothes—and hers as well—were strewn on the floor around the single king as neither of them had been in a mood to fold the items last night. She picked his business wear out of the jumble, laying out and accounting for what he would need this morning. Maybe Edna will buy the idea he pulled an all-nighter in the office instead of my bed.

  Boone swung down the padded board from inside the closet, picking the hotel’s iron out of its nearby holder. Great … this is just great. Now I’m ironing his shirts, too.

  Just under an hour later, after an awkward time of it in her room and a nearly silent drive in, the two of them were the ones opening shop in ODNI. It was two hours ahead of schedule. Boone went to her office to secure the documents from her inside jacket pocket into an evidence bag while her boss started his coffee machine.

  ODNI’s Senior Case Officer sat in her chair just for a minute, careful to keep her gloves on while she handled the access and identification cards. Why, oh why did I ever remove these from the scene? The answer was self-supplied and immediate. It happened because even you can sometimes be susceptible to panic, Agent Hildebrandt.

  Once the cards were sealed inside the plastic, with no hair or even a skin cell along for the ride, she could relax at least a little. Enjoy the feeling while you can. She looked through her doorway at the hall—one leading past his office too—and knew her brief respite would not last.

  Boone sighed. He thinks I’m mad at him. He has no idea why I should be, and right now is marking it up to the vagaries of the female psyche. If I don’t get in there soon, he will come down here, wanting to make things right. This conversation needs to take place in his office, not mine. She got up and removed her driving gloves, laying them on her desk. The evidence bag was already tucked back inside her jacket. Okay, Boone, let’s do this.

  Entering with a graceful swivel, she kicked up the stop and closed the door he had just propped open. He was standing by his window, looking out at the lights of the Liberty Crossing campus while he waited for the java to stream into readiness. Boone approached him, not quite closing into his personal space, though.

  “Terrence, dear,” she began, “we need to talk.”

  “I know, Boone … about last night—”

  Oh dear God. I only wish it was the most we had to worry about. “Oh, yes, last night … we both know it would be better if last night never happened, the usual stellar performances all around notwithstanding.” Hoorah, as the Marines say.

  As he turned around, she could see a wry smile forming on his face. At least he knows now I’m not planning to be pissy about it.

  Boone continued. “But, you beautiful man, we do need to make another of our long series of understandings.” Her hand, she realized, was on her hip. Expectant … assured … what a Senior should be. It seemed to be working.

  “We deal every day with things happening on a need-to-know basis, Boone. It will be all business in the office. If you have me in your bed again, I’ll know what to expect there. I don’t doubt you will return the consideration when you’re on the job.”

  She nodded, biting her lip with her best businesslike expression on display. “Done, sir.” He turned for his coffee machine, with what she was sure he had perceived to be the difficult business of the morning finished. So … here comes the surprise of the day. “All being
said, we still need to talk … about what I found at DARIUS,” she informed him as he poured. She approached his desk.

  “Ah, yes. What did you find?” he asked, sipping as he moved to his Director's chair and sat.

  Reaching into her side jacket pocket, Boone palmed the three 9mm empties nestling there, and plunked them down onto his blotter. He knew what they were, of course. He put his coffee down onto the same pad.

  Good, she thought. I don’t need to make this a spit-take.

  “Boone … what did you do?” he asked, his eyes on the cartridge cases.

  “I killed a White House staffer and another technician in the DARIUS server room as they were rigging an external data transfer, probably straight to Moscow. The guards those two anesthetized are awake by now. It’s only a matter of time before someone checks the data racks and finds my mess.”

  Boone had seen Terrence Bain Bradley without words before, but usually it was because she had been keeping his mouth busy with one pleasurable task or another. He took a moment to digest the information. She was certain he wanted to stop dreaming and wake up.

  “I assume you had a damn good reason.”

  “They were going to Taser me, just as they had the night guards. The technician was out of his ketamine syringes by then, but the staffer had a Beretta that would have put me to sleep even faster.”

  “Exposure?” Bradley asked, reaching for his coffee once more, all traces of the morning’s emotions extinguished.

  “None … on-site.”

  “Elsewhere?”

  Rolling her eyes, she admitted, “Players on the exterior. Big, well dressed. One sounded like a New Yorker. I assumed they were DARIUS security when they followed me into the parking lot.”

  “Boone … no. You didn't.”

  She grimaced. “Oh, they’re still alive. One tried to crack my head open with a shotgun. They were served concussions and contusions, but nothing life-threatening.” Boone clenched her jaw and sighed again. “Terry … they knew me. They followed me onto the site, and when I came back out of the building they had managed to regain consciousness, free themselves, and disappear.” She watched him take another sip of coffee. It all came on fast, and he’s thinking it through.

  “This was in the works before Rex’s accident,” her Director concluded.

  Boone sniffed. You don’t believe it was accidental any more than I do. “Before Rex died, anyway.”

  As he thought, Bradley’s hand went to his face and then to his freshly shaved chin. “They left the scene. It means they’re covert players. That in turn speaks to an insufficient level of authorization … as I interpret it, anyway.”

  “I had a similar thought once they tried to fracture my skull. Terry, we should call in FBI CID.” Boone was more than aware Bradley knew the jurisdiction of the Criminal Investigation Division every bit as well as she. She also knew he was not going to go for the suggestion.

  “Not yet. Not until we have assessed the scope of the operation and the implications,” he pronounced.

  She blew an exasperated breath and went so far as to lean into his desk. “Terry, the freaking White House was going to upload DARIUS missile defense straight to the Kremlin. We can’t sit on this.”

  “Boone, sit down,” he said in his DNI voice.

  Oops. Forcing a recovery, she sat in his leather visitor’s chair with contrition consciously evident on her face.

  He sipped again. “Agent Hildebrandt, I do not disagree with your assessment, only your perspective. Until I’m able to quantify the totality of what is happening … we will sit on it. This situation potentially involves criminal activity on the part of the Executive Branch, affecting national security. I am, therefore, opening a Level Zero case file to which you and I will have sole access. It will, at least, serve to demonstrate due diligence should the need arise. I expect your full report to appear in the folder ASAP.”

  “Yes, sir. Understood.” This means there is no one else in the United States government who we can trust right now. It also means I will not give you the evidence I collected on the site. You’re in the government too, Terrence Bain Bradley.

  Boone sat alone in her office, in the silence of the greater and still-darkened Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Head. Heart. Duty. Conscience. Every day now—unless I am mistaken—is to be a challenge in a course I will run the remainder of my life. She felt Thibaut’s crucifix again next to her skin. It was one of the few items—like my journal—she would never willingly expose to the risk of theft or loss. Win some, lose some and recover to try again? Your challenge is accepted.

  To produce a complete report had been Bradley's order. Her account, potentially incriminating in complete narrative, would be modified for the sake of practicality with respect to the removal of evidence from the scene. Complete could be interpreted to include the Who, What, When, Why, How and Action Taken of the incident in question. The fact each necessary component in her report would not be as complete as it could be merely yielded, in her mind, on the side of discretion. And the USIC is all about discretion.

  Boone worked into the morning as the federal alpacas—she chided herself for thinking of the administrative staff as stock animals—began to appear. What troubles did you guys have last night? Kid threw up? Dog jumped the fence? Did someone ding the door on your Toyota? Let’s hear all about it now. There was a reason for Rex to have positioned his monitors so as not to expose them to visitors at his office door. This was surely a good day to maintain the arrangement.

  As far as Boone could tell, Bradley's door remained closed. Hers, as usual, was not. Presently, Edna popped in after enough of her staff had appeared and her maternal sense of order was satisfied in other regards.

  “Good morning, Boone. I see you managed a change of clothes sometime last night,” she observed.

  “Good morning! And yes, though I might make it an early afternoon at the Director’s discretion.” Yeah, right. “We both logged some extra hours on the job last night,” ODNI’s Senior Case Officer explained.

  “So his note said. Cairo resolved, as I heard on the news,” Mrs. Reese commented, making polite conversation.

  I will take polite. Friendly is still a goal rather than an expectation. “Fortunately. The DNI is cloistered if you need to ring him.”

  “I was about to ask. Have a good day, Doctor.”

  “And you, Ed.” Never, ever antagonize this woman again. You and Terry have too much at stake now.

  Edna Reese left Boone alone with her thoughts once more. So many things are at stake for everyone, everywhere, all the time … faith and conscience being not the least of those. The ODNI operative brushed her hand against the evidence bag inside of her short leather jacket, a garment she had not yet removed in the coolness of her office space.

  Boone broke away from her draft report and flipped screens to the matrix of agencies under the umbrella of the United States Intelligence Community. One of those was the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s National Security Branch. As her global SITREP—Situation Report—summed up the state of those items deemed most significant on a broad scale, so did each agency’s more narrowly focused summation. The document was continuously updated for each successive shift or in a live feed as appropriate.

  Just as I thought. It took a while to find the stiffs in the DARIUS data center. From what she read, the guards had indeed recovered from their anesthesia to summon the Fairfax County PD, which only a short time ago had notified the Feds of an incident occurring on the campus of a top-level Defense contractor. The whole scene is undoubtedly locked down and taped off this morning. I’ll never get near it.

  Digging into the CID case assignments, she hoped to see a familiar name. There. They gave it to Eddie Catania. Awesome. Boone knew she would have to wait until lunch. The timing would present a perfect opportunity to run into an old friend. I chat up an old buddy, and then put the evidence back where it belongs—in the hands of the FBI. After I’m done, it’s just a matter of wa
iting to see if the Bureau has the stones to run the ball all the way into the White House West Wing.

  La Mangiatoia Ristorante

  McLean, Virginia

  I tell my supervisor all the time: Man, you gotta eat to think. A brain your size runs on food, not willpower. Eddie Catania did not have a problem knocking off for lunch, even on a day like this. The coroner had carted the stiffs out of the DARIUS headquarters, and the scene was now in the hands of the Forensics guys. Someone—and we’ll have a hell of a time figuring out who—had laid the two intruders out at close range, nice and neat, before the pair could pull off their nefarious act of data burglary.

  No identification was found on the bodies. Not much remained in the decedents’ pockets at all, except a magazine, keys and a needle case for the empty syringes they had used on the guards. Those security guys can’t even tell us anything. The one at the front desk at least saw it coming. They zapped his buddy before the man even knew they were there. Eddie Catania needed food if he was to make any sense out of this one. Real food. That meant Italiano.

  Fortunately, La Mangiatoia was less than half a mile away from the crime scene, albeit across the busiest road leading out of McLean. Catania sat at one of their tables now, and he was thinking as well as he could until his ziti showed up. A glass of a nice Sangiovese would have been perfect, too—if it wouldn’t get me fired by that tight-assed supervisor of mine.