Plan B.
Turn!
Sam spun the Swift right, into a yard, between a rusty fence and a palm tree. To her right was a pastel-blue wooden shack with a veranda that needed more than just a coat of paint. To the left of the shack was a drive that led to a shed at the rear. There was a car-width gap between an industrial-sized gas bottle and a wreck of another car - which Sam didn’t recognise because it was missing most of its front.
A Toyota Corolla?
She sped into the gap and then mercilessly twisted the car right behind the house and threw on the brakes. There were four old fridges to her front and another dismantled car to her left - the rest of the yard was overgrown with head-high shrubs; the odd tyre here and there adding to the obstacle course.
Sam reached for her rucksack and was out of the car in no time. It took her less than a second to make one of three choices: back fence (looks too high for a clean jump); side fence (too much undergrowth?); the back door of the shack which was ajar (who knows what’s inside?).
In security terms what people fail to realise is that you can, pretty much, do anything once - providing you do it with confidence and/or speed. It’s when you set a pattern that you open yourself up for discovery - and likely attack.
She was about to put that theory to the test.
Sam rushed the back door, closing it behind her. Inside she found a kitchen which matched the state of the shack; but it was tidy. On the only chair, seated at a wooden table, was an old man with an open bottle of rum and a half-filled glass in his hand. If he were surprised that a younger white woman had barged into his kitchen, he didn’t show it.
He mumbled some words which were drowned out by a mechanical screech and the sound of metal hitting metal that she assumed was her tail’s Cube discovering the Swift.
Get a move on.
Sam had fished out her wallet from[RJ56] her waist belt. She took out a $50 note.
‘Hi.’ She placed the note on the table as close to the man’s free hand as she could reach.
‘I wasn’t here.’ She raised a straight finger to her lips. And, using the universal signal of quiet, she blew a ‘shhh’.
She gave the man a split second to register what she was asking. He shrugged his shoulders, picked up the note, looked at it and raised his glass to his mouth.
Then she was gone. Out the other side of the house, into the front yard and left, back the way she had come.
She sprinted, keeping low for the first 30 yards in case snakeskin-belt man was looking her way from the backyard. All pretence of ‘dumb female’ was gone. She was a fugitive on a small island, tracked down by people she didn’t know or understand.
As she ran, sweat came like a shower. She had kept herself in shape and the rucksack was no issue. But the heat was impenetrable. She was soaked from head to foot.
Within a minute and a half she was back in the road she had come from. She dropped the sprint to a jog, turning left - north, towards Nassau centre. She took the next right at a corner signalled by a huge cotton tree, its roots starting well before the trunk hit the ground, spreading out but still married to the tree by thin webs of bark.
She was jogging and looking. She needed to regroup.
A bar. Well, a ramshackle green, red and yellow wooden building with a sign proclaiming it was ‘Mike’s Club’. There were a couple of locals sitting at an outside table. More rum. Behind them was a door leading to the bar’s innards.
Sam slipped inside, trying to control her breathing. There was a single window at the back and two Formica-covered tables and associated chairs. Behind a makeshift counter was a middle-aged local - and a refrigerator. He looked at Sam as though she were something that had crawled out from under a piece of furniture.
‘What do you want, white girl?’ His accent straight from the Bronx - all muscle and pride.
‘Erm.’ What Sam wanted was a shower and time to rethink her strategy. This place was the next best thing.
‘Fanta?’ She asked with her strongest possible voice.
You can do anything once.
The man nodded suspiciously.
‘Sure. Why not?’
He reached for the fridge’s handle.
Chapter 8
Communications Suite, Westgate Las Vegas Resort, Las Vegas
Austin stared at the screen. He was numb; bereft. Lost. After he’d given a statement to the cops in a room a short stroll from his son’s private bed, he’d been asked to leave the hospital. The cop (Austin couldn’t remember his name) had taken his cell number and asked that he stay in Vegas for the meantime. They would get in touch with him; at some point he’d be called to formally identify Rick’s body. When he asked if he could see his son now, the cop had said ‘no’. Apparently forensics were all over the room like spilt paint. He’d have a chance[RJ57] to see him at the identification procedure at the morgue.
Identification procedure.
Morgue.
He’d left the hospital in a daze and checked into the nearest hotel.
Austin felt his shirt pocket to make sure he had the cop’s card. He did.
The call to his wife was the worst experience of his life. She was crying even before he completed his first sentence. It must have been the tone of his voice. She knew straight away, and she was inconsolable. She didn’t scream or shout out, like the mother he’d been to see to tell her of her son’s death in training. His wife just sobbed and sobbed.
And he wasn’t there to console her. So, he just let her cry. And cry. It broke his heart.
He’d decided not to mention that Rick’s death was suspicious. That there were more cops in the building than patients and staff. And that, before he had died, Rick had led him to a flash drive in his jacket pocket, having muttered a single word: ‘report’.
His son’s last word.
Report.
What could it mean? Why was it so important to him?
He took his eyes off the screen and looked at the lime-green flash drive that was beside the keyboard. He picked it up. Examined it as if it were a piece of fine jewellery or an expensive watch.
What are you?
He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. And then placed the drive in a USB slot on the front of the computer tower.
An inset popped up.
Installing new hardware.
Then a separate box.
Removable Disk (H:)
It disappeared. Austin clicked on ‘Computer’, then ‘Removable Disk’ and a new box appeared with an icon showing the flash drive. He double-clicked on the icon. A vertical list of files, photos and documents appeared. It was alphabetical - it filled the page and there was clearly more. Austin wasn’t a digital native, but had enough nous to know what to do to find the report.
He found the icon that sorted the files by date and pressed it.
There it was. At the top of the list.
Report 1487…01/11/2017...Word Document...1.2MB
His index finger hovered over the left mouse button. It wavered as if it were practising[RJ58] how to click.
Click.
Austin stared at the screen. The title of the report was on two lines:
Reaper 1487 Mission Stray Report 1-11-17
Significant Findings Within Imagery Catalogue
Austin’s eyes shot to the very top of the screen. In the document’s header were the words: USAF SECRET - NOT TO BE DIVULGED.
That rocked him. He quickly looked behind to see if someone was looking in his direction. No one at the moment. His hands became clammy.
He scrolled through the document. It was 14 pages long and contained eight images and two tables. At the end was a signature block:
Rick Rodgers
Lieutenant USAF
432d Operations Group
USAF Creech
Austin scrunched his eyes together and opened them again, hoping that he wasn’t looking at a top secret document on an unclassified pen drive that his son had taken off base. Austin was cleared to SECRE
T and had dealt with a good number of documents and images at that level of classification. He knew that it was a courts martial offence to take classified documentation off base; even worse: off a secure computer system and store it on an unclassified memory stick. What his son had done was illegal. He would have signed the DSA (Defence Secrets Act). He would have been trained and briefed accordingly.
What Austin had in front of him transgressed boundaries that he would never have crossed. What was Rick onto? Why had he knowingly taken an e-copy of a top secret document off base? A document written by him?
Austin was already breaking numerous laws by looking at the document on an unclassified machine. It would leave an imprint on the computer. Somebody could find it.
What is in this report?
Then he thought of his son; lying rigged up to various machines he didn’t understand. Torn to pieces by two bullets. His last few words. His hopes. His passion. His love of life. All of which were now gone.
Austin took another glance behind him and then closed the report - and closed down the machine. He removed the pen drive and stared at it for a second.
What are you?
He stood and looked around the suite. In one corner was a vacant machine where the screen was less visible to passers-by.
He picked up his stuff, walked across to the small buffet and poured himself a coffee, adding a touch of sugar. No cream. He was on autopilot. On another mission. He may never had made the rarefied ranks of the officer corps, but he had led soldiers into battle. He’d lost a couple but brought many, many more home. He’d done everything to the best of his ability. He’d worked tirelessly and, he thought, intelligently.
What doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger.
He strode purposefully to the oblique screen.
Thirty minutes later Austin had read the report three times. It had taken him a while to decipher some of the technology, and a couple of the USAF acronyms. But he had it now. And he thought he had grasped the significance of what his son had written. Rick, and his Sensor Operator, a Captain Lance Travis, had flown a Reaper over the Venezuelan jungle searching for ‘new activity’. The definition of ‘new activity’ was: roads, buildings, infrastructure - anything that hadn’t been previously mapped.
Last week, on their 17th mission, their bird had self-corrected by some 13 miles mid-flight, caused by its GPS signal going out of sync[RJ59] with the internal gyroscopes. That jump took the aircraft into Colombian airspace, an action from which the USAF received a formal rebuke from the Colombian government. It was not clear if the Venezuelan government were aware of the infringement into their neighbour’s airspace - or that they knew they had a Reaper flying over their jungle. Venezuela was a country in meltdown; on the brink of civil war. Its government and civil-service were hardly operational.
As the pilot, Rick had been blamed for the mistake and was given two and a half days to the find the cause.
The report, with the aid of images and tables, went on to describe how the Reaper was just about to fly over a new site, deep in the jungle and very close to the Colombian border. The pictures were grainy, but Rick seemed confident that they showed two buildings, a big satellite dish and a vehicle moving towards the site along an unmapped road. There were no detailed pictures because, and this was the crux of Rick’s report, the Reaper veered away from the complex just before it was in a position to take decent imagery. And, as a result, had strayed into Colombian airspace.
Rick’s supposition, which Austin sensed required a leap of faith, was that the Reaper’s GPS signal had been tampered with - thus veering the aircraft off course, and away from the new site. His son had described it as if there were a ‘GPS forcefield’ around the complex.
The report had not elaborated on how the Reaper’s GPS system may have been tampered with. Or who the tamperers might have been.
Austin scrolled back up to the top of the report. It wasn’t clear who the report may have been sent to - if indeed it had been sent anywhere. He guessed it would have been an attachment to a secure email, probably to someone in the senior hierarchy at Creech.
Before he closed the report he congratulated Rick posthumously on a good piece of work. It was well-written, logical and covered the bases. Key to a good military report was that a layman could understand it. Austin gave him a big tick for that.
He closed the report and disconnected the flash drive. As he studied the lime-green casing one more time he caught sight of his own reflection in the computer screen. His wife said he looked like Morgan Freeman, his face potted with acne marks from when he was teenager. He had a short, grey beard and ‘crew cut’ curly hair, which was also tinged grey around his ears. He thought that if there were any resemblance to Morgan Freeman, it was that they were both old and getting jowly.
Austin put the pen drive back in a side pocket of his beige cotton trousers. This time he’d chosen a pocket with a zip - he couldn’t afford to lose it.
Where had the report been sent?
Had it been sent? Who had read it? Were the contents so explosive that they had forced someone to attempt to murder his son in the street - and then finish him off in his hospital bed?
He closed his eyes again, rubbing them with a hand. He fought back tears.
Now what? He had to do something. He had to keep himself busy. Should he hand the report to the police? The military could hardly courts martial his dead son, although he wouldn’t put it past them giving it a shot. Should he speak to the base? Dig a little? Act stupid - and see whether anyone slips on a skin? What other options did he have? He had an ex-Bureau fishing buddy who might be interested in the story. He trusted him?
Think.
He’d phone the base.
Austin typed 4...3...2...n...d into the search box and the Google people at Santa Clara County did the rest, offering him Creech Air Force base’s website. He clicked on the phone directory and found the command post number.
He checked his watch. It was 3.30 pm. He dug out his phone and dialled; it rang three times.
‘Creech Air Force Base, how may I help you?’ It was a woman’s voice.
Austin stammered. He had not thought through what he was going to say.
Fool.
‘Can I speak to the commander’s office of the 432nd, please?’
‘Who am I talking to?’
Shit. He hadn’t thought that through either.
‘It’s Command Sergeant Austin Rodgers. I’m from Camp Blanding.’
There was a pause.
‘But you are phoning from a cell, sir.’
‘That’s right - who am I talking to.’ He was going to ignore the woman’s obvious security concern and take the initiative.
‘It’s Airman First Class Bell, sir.’
‘Nice to talk to you Airman Bell. Is there someone in the commander’s outer office that I can talk to. Maybe a junior commissioned officer?’
‘Let me look, sir.’ There was a further pause. ‘May I ask what it is you are calling about?’
Austin swallowed.
‘It’s about my son; he is, sorry, was, a Reaper pilot. Master Sergeant Rick Rodgers.’
If the name rang a bell with the airman, she didn’t acknowledge it.
‘One second, sir.’
It was longer than a second. After about 20 seconds there was a different voice on the phone: male; east coast.
‘Command Sergeant Rodgers, this is Major Frank Digby II. I’m glad you phoned, sir. I’m so sorry to hear about your son.’
Austin pulled the phone away from his face and stared at the phone.
They know.
He brought the phone back to his ear.
‘Thank you, major. Is it possible to meet with the commander?’
It was now the major’s turn to pause.
‘I’m sorry, sir, that won’t be possible.’
A hint of irritation rose in Austin’s throat.
‘Why’s that, major? Surely my son and I deserve at least that amount of re
spect?’
‘That’s not the issue, sir. It’s just … the commander’s not in the office.’
This is tough.
‘When will he be back, major?’
‘He won’t be, sir. He’s been relieved of command as of yesterday. I’m afraid seeing him is out of the question.’
Headquarters SIS, Vauxhall, London
It was a Saturday. That was four out of the last five Saturdays Jane had been in the office. The place was quiet. A couple of her staff were in, including Frank. None of them was expected to be in unless she called a lockdown. Technically they were all working overtime, but there was no overtime. There was just time. And not enough of it. She had a pile of work to do - including a key brief for C on Yemen which needed to be on his desk for first thing Monday. It was completely natural to anyone in Babylon that the boss signed letters and emails with the single letter ‘C’. But she guessed it would be a bit Ian Fleming to anyone who came across it for the first time.
Seeing Frank reminded her that he’d sent her a secure chat message late yesterday which she’d not got round to reading.
She opened it.
Sam in The Bahamas. Air ticket booked via unknown third party. Am on it. F
What? The Bahamas?
That was so Sam Green.
Using a ticket booked by someone else - what was she up to? Chasing The Church of the White Cross? In The Bahamas?
What was the latest Jane had seen - was it as far back as September? A CIA report that they reckoned The Church had up to $2 billion still unaccounted for. And that money was probably in offshore accounts. Likely to be The Bahamas.
She stood, reaching for a notebook and a propelling pencil. She was halfway to her door when she spotted Frank getting up from his chair; he was heading in her direction.
She opened the door theatrically. In waltzed Frank. Same jeans, a different t-shirt. It was a blue and white ‘ape-to-human’ evolution t-shirt, starting with a chimp and ending up with a jumping rock-star with a guitar in his hands.
For Good Men to Do Nothing Page 15