Stop…
But it was difficult, that ingrained need to classify and categorize those she came into contact with. Label them harmless or dangerous. That instinct might still serve her well in everyday life, but not here. Not with this woman just trying to get through her shift.
“All I taste is the bitterness,” Emily added, explaining her aversion to the beverage she’d been offered.
“No problem,” the waitress said, smiling brightly. “Those eggs and sausage will be right up.”
And they were, less than a minute later. Emily ate quickly, finishing the dry scramble and four pork links in five minutes. She needed to be done by nine, and was, her check paid with a twenty left on the table as she stared out the front windows of the Idaho Falls eatery, watching for her ride.
A blue Camry will pull up at nine sharp…
That was what the courier had said, along with a precise set of other instructions that were meant to get her securely to her departure point. From there she’d be hooded and would be taken to meet Simon Lynch.
Hooded…
Like some prisoner arriving at Gitmo. Maybe this Simon Lynch was as special as the Los Angeles SAC and her towering cohort had led her to believe at their graveyard meeting. They were certainly putting her through at least the pretense of security measures to keep her from being followed. All to ostensibly protect an autistic savant.
It was two minutes to nine by the clock face showing on her phone screen. Emily gave her mouth a last wipe with the napkin and drained what little soda remained with the melting ice at the bottom of the glass.
Do not go outside…
She wasn’t, though that was her natural inclination when knowing that she was about to be picked up.
When you see the Camry, exit the building and get in the front passenger seat…
It was a step by step protocol, she’d been told. One that had to be followed to the letter. Jefferson would have done the same, she assumed, wolfing down a meal after a night flight, waiting for his ride as she was—
Pudgy man…
She hadn’t noticed him before, but a quick glance away from the window brought the rotund customer into her field of vision. He sat at the counter, belly pressed against its edge, sipping coffee and reading something on his phone.
He was on the redeye…
Emily was certain of that. He’d been the last one to board, and had taken a seat behind her. Four or five rows back, she recalled. Magazine open on his lap as he slept.
And now he was here. With her.
She shifted her attention quickly off of him, tracking his actions in her peripheral vision as she waited for a blue Camry to pull up.
Why is he here? Just a coincidence? Two travelers to the same city grabbing a bite at the same restaurant? There were three places of lodging on the block, including her motel. He certainly could have checked into one.
Could have…
Beyond the widow she saw a blue car come around the corner and approach, angling toward the curb. She slid from the booth, chancing a clear look at the pudgy man as she stood. He paid no attention to her, whatever was on his phone holding his attention, as the breakfast on his mostly cleaned plate must have before that.
Coincidence…
She walked to the door and left the diner, thinking that, if not fully believing it. As instructed, she opened the passenger door and slipped in, the female driver next to her saying nothing as she stepped on the gas. Within seconds they were gone.
As he had on the airplane, the pudgy man waited to give his full attention to Emily LaGrange until she had little to no chance of seeing him do so. He caught sight of the ass end of the plain Toyota sedan zipping away, but that was all he needed.
He looked back to his phone, no item of universal interest on its screen. No witty Facebook post. No cat video on YouTube. Just a text message waiting for a reply. Not even a word to look at. Just a symbol.
?
He smiled at the question mark and typed his one-word reply, about as short as a word with meaning could be—GO.
Nine
“I may have been followed,” Emily said as the driver steered them through a residential neighborhood, the woman seeming uninterested in the mild warning. “Did you get that?”
“Not my concern,” the driver said. She gestured toward the glove compartment. “Put your phone in there. Turn it off first.”
Emily knew this was coming.
‘You’ll be stripped of all electronics. And then you’ll be stripped.’
The former didn’t bother her. The latter, an invasive strip search to be performed before heading out to meet Simon, did. But the courier had explained back in Minneapolis that the rules were non-negotiable.
Five minutes later, after a leisurely drive through neighborhoods and boulevards lined with businesses just opened for the day, the Camry pulled into the parking lot of a grocery store and stopped in front, almost perfectly between the two automatic doors that faced the lot. The driver looked to Emily and waited.
“Thanks for the lift,” Emily said, opening the passenger door. “And the conversation.”
She stepped out and closed the door. The Camry pulled casually away and out of the lot. Emily looked toward the store, a mid-sized location of a regional chain.
‘Enter through the door on the right.’
She let the instructions tick off mentally as she followed them, entering the store as instructed and making her way down the first aisle away from the meat and deli counter, butchers at work stocking the trays of beef and pork and chicken for the day’s customers.
‘Walk down the short hallway at the back where the restrooms are located.’
There was no difficulty finding that, a sign above the corridor marking the customer bathrooms with man and woman symbols. Emily walked down the hallway and didn’t stop at the woman’s restroom, or the men’s.
‘Go through the swinging door past the restrooms marked Employees Only.’
She did, pushing the barrier inward and finding herself in a sort of stockroom, with boxes stacked and merchandise ready to be moved to shelves. She also found herself not alone.
A worker turned as she entered, a short knife in his hand, box of toilet paper half open in front of him. He stared at her for a moment, reacting to her presence no more than that, then turned back to the box, slicing open the other half of the lid to free the contents.
‘Turn right and proceed to the loading dock.’
A quick walk past pallets of canned goods took her there, a pale green van backed into the space, rollup door in front of it closed.
‘Get in the waiting vehicle.’
There was only the van, no other choice of transportation to take. Emily started to walk toward the front of the van, but stopped when one of the back doors popped open.
If that’s not a hint…
She moved quickly to the back and climbed in, a fortyish woman waiting for her.
“Close the door, please,” the woman said.
Emily did, the lock setting as soon as it was shut. There were two bare metal benches in the back of the van, running along each side, facing each other. No windows let in a view of the outside, and there was no apparent connection between the cargo area and the cab.
“Have a seat,” the woman directed Emily, her manner pleasant but direct.
As soon as Emily was seated, the van’s engine started. A grinding groan from beyond the cab indicated that the door blocking the vehicle was rolling up. Seconds later the vehicle began to move, pulling out of the loading dock and making a right turn.
“A few bumps right up ahead so hold tight,” the woman cautioned.
The van rolled over a series of speed bumps. Emily rode out the terrestrial version of turbulence, her gaze scanning the bare interior, noting the bright dome light above and the oddly reassuring minder sitting across from her.
“The ride will smooth out in a minute, and then we’ll get started,” the woman said.
Emily didn’t bother asking what would be starting, but she didn’t have to wait long to find out. In a few minutes the van sped up, seeming to follow some ramp, and then they were cruising swiftly along.
We’re on the interstate…
But heading which way. Emily had never had that innate sense of direction. The kind where one could be spun around and around and still know which way was north once they stopped. Regardless, it didn’t appear that Simon Lynch was in Idaho Falls. If he was, they were leaving him behind in a big hurry.
“Okay,” the woman said. “You’ll need to take off your clothes.”
Emily eyed the minder. She knew this was coming, but that didn’t make stripping for a stranger, even one of the same gender, any easier.
“You can hand your clothes over as they come off and I’ll check them,” the woman instructed.
Emily knew that hesitation was pointless if she wanted this assignment to proceed, so she reached to her jeans and popped the top button.
* * *
Thirty minutes later, after the minder had searched both her clothes and her person, Emily LaGrange was dressed again when she felt the van slow. It had left the interstate a few minutes earlier, after what seemed like a route which had it doubling back partially along the way it had travelled, and had driven at a more moderate speed along a road with very few vehicles on it. She’d heard no horns, no braking, no acceleration as she had on the interstate.
We’re outside the city…
She was imagining that they’d feigned leaving Idaho Falls, then come back part of the way, and had then headed into farm country not far from the city. That knowledge, if correct, meant little to her. It could not be spent as currency in some barter for other information. All it was was a useless data point that she had middling confidence in.
The van turned off the road and onto some sort of earthen surface. Gravel clicked off the wheel wells. Emily looked to the minder seated across from her. The woman smiled.
“Don’t bother trying to figure out where you are,” she told Emily. “You won’t even be here in a few minutes.”
So this was just one leg of a trip that would, presumably, take her to Simon Lynch. The precautions were impressive, but not without fault.
“I told the driver who picked me up that I may have been followed,” Emily said.
The minder’s face shrugged. “I doubt that.”
“Why would you ignore a possible security issue?”
“Honey, we’ve been doing this quite a while,” the minder said, dismissing the concern. “We know what we’re doing.”
They’re complacent, Emily thought.
Time at a task would do that. Especially if nothing upset the process. Everything hummed along without fail.
Until it didn’t.
The van slowed even more, crossing a minor bump before stopping a few seconds later. The engine shut off and the doors at the front of the vehicle opened and closed. Emily looked to the back doors, waiting.
“You’re much less of an ass than your predecessor,” the minder said.
She’d known Jefferson. Emily wondered if the same strip search procedure had been performed on him by this woman. She didn’t really want to imagine such a thing.
A flurry of footsteps sounded before the twin back doors opened, the space beyond dim, but not dark. Two men stood there, each in khaki pants and crisp blue shirts that made them look like Midwest insurance salesmen. The one thing that gave away their true role was the black fabric hood the brown-haired one held in his hand.
“Agent LaGrange, you can step out now,” he said. His similarly dressed but bald colleague remained silent.
Emily followed the instructions and climbed from the back of the van, the minder following her.
“Just one more hop before you reach your destination,” brown-hair informed her.
And it was clear how that last hop was going to be made. The four Blackhawk helicopters that sat beyond him in the large hangar made that very plain. Each was painted a light grey, and nowhere on any of the aircraft did she see any markings. Not a letter or number. No flag of the nation. The four choppers were nosed toward a massive closed door on the far side of the hangar, the van she’d arrived in having come through a smaller portal just behind. Smallish aircraft tugs were attached to the front of each, drivers seated at the controls, ready to move the helicopters out of the building so they could make their way into the air.
“Decoys,” Emily said.
Brown-hair smiled tightly. “It’s really best to not even bother thinking about the ‘how’ of all this. You have your job, and we play our part getting you to where you can do it. Does that stack up okay for you, Agent LaGrange?”
It was more than complacency, Emily realized. It was cockiness. A belief that they had everything dialed in just right so that their well-oiled machine never as much as hiccupped. She hoped, for everyone’s sake, that turned out to be true, by luck or by design.
“I’m fine with it,” Emily told the man.
He smiled and nodded and gestured toward the third Blackhawk in the line of choppers. “Your transportation, Agent LaGrange…”
She walked toward the third helicopter, passing the second on her way, letting a hand run across its metal skin.
“Have you ridden in a helicopter before, Agent LaGrange?” Brown-hair asked, he and his colleague following as the minder stayed with the van.
‘Have you ridden in a helicopter?’
‘Lifeflight Five inbound with a gunshot patient…’
‘Dammit, Emily, why did you shoot…’
‘We’re losing him…’
Emily stopped at the side door of the number three Blackhawk and closed her eyes for just a second before turning to face her escorts, the triggering query and its effects come and gone.
“I have,” she said.
“Good,” Brown-hair said. He held the hood out to her. “You’ll need to wear this from this point until you’re inside the facility. If you remove it or attempt to look from beneath it, the helicopter crew will abort and your involvement with this project will be over.”
He spoke with authority. Or with the authority granted by another. That would be the NSA, Emily knew. What had the minder said about her predecessor? That he was an ass? She wondered what he’d done, how far he’d pushed the boundaries, to earn that label.
“I’m ready,” Emily said.
Brown hair handed her the hood and she slipped it on.
* * *
The hangar sat at the middle of a twenty-thousand acre farm. On most days its massive west-facing door would open and a collection of crop dusters would emerge, taking to the air to spray fertilizers and insecticides on the surrounding fields of potatoes and beans. It was the only place where the United States government, through a series of front companies, made a profit selling crops.
Twice a month, though, the nimble crop dusters were absent, sent to a distant field for most of the day. On those days, days like this, the hangar door rolled up and four unmarked UH-60 Blackhawk helicopters were towed into the open. As soon as the tugs withdrew to the cover of the hangar, the aircraft’s rotors would spin up. Then, one by one, they would lift off, all gone from the farm within ten seconds of each other.
Ten
The twin-engine aircraft flew a racetrack pattern twenty miles southwest of Idaho Falls, orbiting at an altitude of five thousand feet on what was reported as a flight to check out engine repairs.
It was not that at all.
“Scan now,” the grey-haired man in the passenger seat said, a computer open on his lap.
“Scanning,” the technician acknowledged.
The cabin of the Beech had been hastily converted to hold instrumentation and sensors, large black hard cases strapped to the four passenger seats aft of the cockpit. Over one bulky electronic suite the technician hovered, squinting at a display, thin green lines rising and falling, creating a mix of spikes and valleys as data came in.
“Are you getti
ng anything?” the grey-haired man pressed. Next to him, the pilot focused on his job—keeping them over a fixed point of earth. That was vital. They needed that reference point to determine which target was going to be the actual target.
But they also needed data. Good data. And they weren’t getting any yet.
“Just scatter,” the technician reported. “I’m still reading the track from the airport to the motel, motel to diner, the diner to the store, and the store to the farm.”
“Lock in on what we need,” the grey-haired man prodded. “Now.”
The technician glanced out the left side window, fixing on a slender black tube fixed to the underside of the wing. The sensor was still there, rock solid, and it was detecting the HDN from the subject who’d been dusted. But only from her previous movements. If the helicopter she’d been loaded into was air tight, they were going to have a problem.
“Got one,” the technician said. “It’s not north.”
The man in the passenger seat brought a satellite phone to his face and pressed a button. A few seconds later the unit beeped.
“Scrub north,” he said into the phone. “Hold for more.”
“West is clean,” the technician added.
“Scrub west,” the grey-haired man said into the phone.
The technician leaned closer still to his display, typing in commands, refining the data being relayed from the outboard sensor. It was a marvel of technology, he thought. The marriage of electronics and physics and chemistry which allowed a person who’d been ‘dusted’ to be tracked from afar. But only for a while. After 24 hours the HDN would be half as effective. In a week, half as much as that, decreasing exponentially until its usefulness was degraded entirely in fourteen days.
HDN…
High Decay Nuclides. Some Nobel laureate had come up with that little gem to be used in medical radiology. Some way to mark tumors. But eggheads working for the spooks had seized upon the very same marriage of scientific disciplines and figured out a way to mark a target for surveillance. The sensor mounted on the wing scanned the space around the aircraft, and was sensitive enough to get a solid reading within ten miles, which it had done so far on two potential targets, excluding both after not enough HDN was detected trailing from them as they flew away from the farm. The woman they were trying to zero in on had been close enough to those helicopters to leave a trace amount of HDN, but not enough for a lock. So it was two down, and one to go.
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