Deep Cover

by Traci Hunter Abramson

  She thought for a moment, unable to come up with a reason to say no. Her parents obviously trusted him. “I guess I could do that. Which house is yours?”

  “Number seventeen.” He speared another piece of pancake and used it to wipe up some of the syrup on his plate. “And while you’re over, we can figure out what cooking supplies I should borrow while you’re without a kitchen.”

  “I’m not going to just walk into your house anytime I need to use a kitchen sink.”

  He arched a brow. “It’s either my house or the Hendersons’. If you have a couple of hours to hang out and chat with Patty Henderson every time you want to microwave a hot dog, feel free.”

  Kelsey might have been away for a decade, but she remembered Miss Patty well. The woman should have been pictured in the dictionary next to the term long-winded. “I’m sure the Martinezes wouldn’t mind an occasional visitor. I bet I can even score some of Miss Maria’s enchiladas.”

  “Sorry. They’re stationed in Okinawa for another year,” Noah said. “Looks like you’re stuck with me for now.” He finished his last bite of pancake and then carried his plate to the sink to rinse it off. “I’d better get going. I’ll see you around six.”

  Chapter 5

  Noah felt the tension settling back into his shoulders as he approached his boss’s office. This morning’s run-in with Kelsey had helped take his mind off of last night’s events. The shootout had lasted mere minutes, but it had been long enough to put one of his fellow agents in the hospital. Carter Evanston had taken a round to the left shoulder and another bullet had grazed his rib cage. Two more inches to the left and he would have ended up in the morgue.

  The government vehicle Devin and Carter had been driving was in even worse shape than Carter. Forty-three bullets had penetrated the body of the car and shattered the driver’s side windows. One of those forty-three had also lodged in the engine block.

  Noah still couldn’t believe he had stumbled onto the operation in the first place. For over a month, he and his associates had been watching the other warehouse. Their investigation had confirmed that Ruben Medrano’s fingerprints were on the door to the building where they had set up their original stakeout. They had also identified the presence of explosive residue on the premises.

  After loading Carter into an ambulance, Devin and Noah left the forensics unit to process the scene and went to search their initial surveillance site. The warehouse was completely empty, except for a thick layer of dust. The location had apparently been abandoned weeks earlier.

  So how had Medrano known to relocate? Noah had to assume he had spotted the agents watching his operation, but if that was the case, why hadn’t they relocated farther away?

  Devin was already in Burt Powell’s office when Noah arrived. Burt waved Noah inside and motioned for him to close the door.

  “I read your after-action report from last night, but I’m confused on a few details.” Burt’s dark, bushy eyebrows drew together. “Like how you identified Medrano’s new location.”

  “It was pure luck,” Noah admitted. He could feel his cheeks flush when he thought of the reason he had been running late to work, that moment when he had burst into Kelsey’s house. With some effort, he tucked that part of his memory into the corner of his mind and skipped forward to the events pertinent to his boss’s question. “I got caught in some traffic on my way to Lorton. In order to avoid a red light, I cut over on an access road. That’s when I noticed Medrano’s trucks.”

  “You were in an industrial district. There are trucks everywhere. What made you suspect those particular vehicles?”

  “I’m not completely sure.” His shoulders lifted. “They didn’t have markings on them, which made me curious about what company they belonged to. And both vehicles were running, but no one was in either of the driver seats.”

  “That’s it?”

  Noah tried to remember any other details to explain his suspicions, but he couldn’t put them into words. “Yeah. The warehouse didn’t have any signs, and I remember thinking that it was far enough off of the main road that it would be a good location for someone to stay out of sight. When I called Devin and he told me there wasn’t any activity at the other site, I asked him to run the license plates. I didn’t really expect anything to come of it.”

  “So this incident last night happened because of a whim.”

  “I guess you could call it that,” Noah said. “Or luck.”

  Burt turned his attention to Devin. “Why didn’t you wait for backup?”

  “As Noah said, the trucks were already idling. We knew they were preparing to move,” Devin told him. “And they didn’t give us much of a chance. They opened fire on us as soon as we arrived.”

  “You were in an unmarked car. How could they have known you were FBI?”

  “I don’t think they did. It looked to me like they were prepared to take out anyone who got too close.”

  “That doesn’t make sense,” Noah interjected with a shake of his head. “They didn’t shoot at me when I drove by. They had to have some way of knowing who you were.”

  “I don’t know how,” Devin said. “Unless someone knew we were at the other warehouse and saw us head their way.”

  “Or someone let them know you had run their license plates. If they have someone working for them inside the government, they could have set up some kind of alert.”

  Burt plucked some papers off his desk and held them up. “The men killed in the exchange have been identified. Both men are foreign nationals, one from Libya and the other from Abolstan. We have been able to trace payments back to an account we know belongs to Medrano.”

  “What about the inside of the warehouse? Was there anything of interest there?” Noah asked.

  “It had been mostly cleaned out. Forensics is still processing what they found, but other than a few toiletry items and some random office supplies, there wasn’t much.”

  “Any sign of weapons?”

  “We found evidence of explosive residue consistent with what was discovered at the other warehouse but no bombs.”

  “Which means they could be planning to strike anywhere at any time,” Noah said in frustration.

  “And they made sure they didn’t leave anyone behind who could give us any clues,” Devin said with equal frustration. “We were so close.”

  “Again,” Burt added. He waved toward the door. “I had the locals looking for the trucks, but nothing has popped up yet. I want you two to stay on that and see if you can figure out where they disappeared to after they left Lorton.”

  Noah and Devin nodded and left Burt’s office.

  As they started toward their desks, Noah grumbled, “I’m getting tired of always being a step behind these guys.”

  “Don’t tell me you’re buying into the mole idea too?” Devin asked.

  Noah shrugged. Almost six months before, Ruben Medrano had relocated his operation only days before a scheduled sting operation, resulting in rumors about a possible mole within the FBI. Internal Affairs hadn’t been able to identify any suspicious activity involving any of the agents involved, but as a precaution, case loads had been shifted and this operation had all new agents assigned to it except for the two who had been handling it since the beginning, Carter and Devin.

  Devin’s jaw tightened. “I’m starting to wish I had been reassigned along with everyone else who started on this case two years ago. I’m going to end up being accused of being Medrano’s inside man before this is all over.”

  “No one thinks that,” Noah assured him. “But Medrano has us wired somehow. We need to figure out how he’s getting his information before someone else gets hurt.”

  “And before those weapons end up in the hands of some terrorist in Abolstan.”

  “You still think that’s where these weapons are ending up?”

  Devin nodded. “I read a brief just yesterday about NCIS’s investigation into some weapons stolen out of Norfolk. A few months ago, we connected their theft to
Medrano’s operation. Some of the weapons they had tagged popped up in Abolstan.”

  “You couldn’t pay me enough to go over there,” Noah said.

  “I guess it’s a good thing you joined the FBI instead of the CIA.”

  “Do you really think the CIA still has people over there?” Noah asked. “I thought we pulled everyone out of that region.”

  “We may not have anyone over there admitting to being American, but someone’s been feeding us information about Medrano, and it sure isn’t the rebels.”

  “Has anyone ever considered that the leak might be from someone at the CIA?”

  “It’s possible. I’m sure our counterparts at the Agency are already looking into that,” Devin said with certainty.

  “How can you be so sure?” Noah asked.

  “Did you see that article about the businessman who was killed in Abolstan last month?”

  “The Canadian who was shot and killed?” Noah asked. “I saw something about it, but I didn’t pay much attention to the details.”

  “Gregory Bealton. He had been living in Abolstan for over two years without any problems.”

  “How did he manage that? Abolstan’s borders have been closed to foreigners for over three years.”

  “Most foreigners,” Devin corrected. “People who are of use to the rebels tend to do just fine over there. In fact, they do better than fine. They thrive.”

  “You think this Gregory Bealton was working with the rebels?”

  “Either that or he was intelligence.”

  Noah’s eyebrows arched. “CIA?”

  “I don’t know if he was one of ours or not, but it doesn’t make sense that after two years, he all of a sudden ends up dead, especially shot execution style. If someone hadn’t wanted him over there, he never would have lasted that long.”

  “You think he was working undercover and the rebels found out.” Noah’s eyebrows drew together. “Has anyone been able to confirm any of this with the CIA?”

  “Not that I know of. That kind of information is way above our pay grades.”

  Chapter 6

  Kelsey tried not to be intimidated by her surroundings or the man sitting across from her. Lewis Tate, the deputy director of operations for the CIA, was the man responsible for her undercover assignment with Salman Nassar’s family.

  She listened as Lewis updated her on the latest information on Salman then proceeded to outline his plan. It was insane, insane enough that it might actually work, assuming it didn’t get her killed. She fought back a shudder and tried to ignore the ball of dread forming in her stomach. She needed time, time to find herself, time to remember what had caused her to get trapped undercover in the first place.

  Trapped. That was exactly what her last assignment had felt like. Her freedom had been taken from her in the name of national security. Now that she had a taste of normal life, she wasn’t sure she was ready to lose herself in a burqa and niqāb again.

  She knew that using her as bait to capture Salman was a viable option, but the method the Agency had in mind was definitely unorthodox. Not that their plans normally followed any specific pattern.

  Before leaving Italy, Kelsey had undergone several days of debriefings in which she had passed along the information she had gathered during her time living in Abolstan. When she had first joined Salman’s household staff, the Agency had known Salman was a major arms dealer. What they hadn’t realized was that he had also been prominently involved in planning a number of terrorist attacks, including a bombing outside a London hotel. Twenty-seven people had died in that incident, including nineteen American students who had been on a study-abroad program.

  While Salman’s motivations weren’t entirely clear at first, Kelsey had suspected that they were rooted in the loss of his first wife and oldest son. From the various conversations she had overheard in the women’s quarters in Salman’s home, his oldest son had chosen to attend college in the United States. Only a few weeks after arriving in the US, he had been killed by a drunk driver.

  Distraught over the loss of her son, Salman’s favored wife had ultimately blamed him for allowing their son to go where he would face such evils. In the end, she had taken her own life. Kelsey suspected that Salman’s shift from arms dealer to terrorist had happened shortly after those two traumatic events.

  Kelsey had known the Agency would investigate the suspicions she had shared during her debriefings in Italy, but she hadn’t anticipated getting called into headquarters as soon as those suspicions had been validated. And she certainly hadn’t expected to find a car waiting for her when she finished her physical therapy appointment this morning.

  She wasn’t officially due back to work for another two weeks, yet here she was at CIA headquarters, a cane in one hand and her new agency ID hanging around her neck.

  “Do you really think this plan is going to work?” Kelsey asked.

  “It has to,” he said simply. “Lives are at stake, and the clock is ticking.”

  She absorbed his words and forced herself to ask, “Has something else happened?”

  “There has been some chatter that there may be an impending strike here on American soil. When we were looking through your debriefings, we found some indications that Salman’s group could be involved.”

  “What does that have to do with me?”

  “We need to know everything you know about Salman and his association with Ruben Medrano.”

  “I’ve already told you everything I know.”

  “You’ve told us everything you think is important,” Lewis corrected. “You have intimate knowledge of Salman’s household, and we’re going to need access to that. We also need to figure out how Bealton’s identity was compromised.”

  “You think someone gave away his identity?”

  “That’s exactly what I think. Either Salman or Medrano has a mole somewhere in intelligence, and we need your help to find out who it is.”

  “How do you expect me to do that? I’ve never worked in Internal Affairs or conducted an investigation.”

  “No, but you have the best chance of recognizing the players.” He leaned back in his chair. “We’ve had our people looking into this since the shooting, and all we’ve been able to do is make lists of suspects. While we have been able to narrow down that list, it’s still way too long.”

  “That doesn’t explain why you would want me involved.”

  “You have the most at stake,” he said simply. “Salman still has people looking for you, and we believe he’s come to the conclusion that you were kidnapped from the hospital. If necessary, we’ll drop some clues to make it look like rebel forces are holding you for ransom.”

  Her eyebrows lifted. “Do you really think he would buy that? I was only a tutor.”

  “A tutor who had access to sensitive information.” He stood up. “For now, I’m putting you back in your old office under Graham Endicott. He’s expecting you.”

  Despite the disappointment settling in her stomach, Kelsey slowly stood. “I’ll go check in with him now.”

  “Kelsey, I shouldn’t have to tell you that your last mission is still considered need-to-know.”

  “I understand.”

  * * *

  Noah stared at the video feed from the traffic cameras in Lorton, Virginia. He could only shake his head in frustration when he found what he was looking for. Only two nights into their surveillance at the warehouse, three men had slipped inside unnoticed by the surveillance team. He still wasn’t sure what they had carried out, but one thing was certain; Medrano had known they were there.

  Noah rolled this new information over and over in his mind. The possibility that a mole existed within the Bureau was no longer a theory but a reality. Someone was definitely feeding information to Medrano, a man known for supplying terrorists with weapons to be used against the United States and her citizens.

  With a couple of keystrokes on his computer, he started a search of the last-known cell phone records for Medrano to see
if he could identify any connections between him and any Bureau personnel. Unfortunately, the phone hadn’t been used in months, as though he had known the FBI was monitoring it. Somewhere, the information existed that would prove who was feeding him information. Somehow, they were going to find a way to stop him and the men he was supplying.

  He started a list of the people who had firsthand knowledge of this latest operation. Then he started digging through information about a previous stakeout also believed to have been compromised. According to Devin, only he and Carter had remained on the Medrano case since the beginning, but there had to be somebody else.

  Noah wasn’t about to believe that Devin was involved, and Internal Affairs had already deemed that Carter had been in the hospital with appendicitis when the previous information had leaked. The travel support staff had been cleared since both of these stakeouts had been local, and no other administrative personnel had worked on both cases.

  With a shake of his head, he shifted his keyboard and typed in a new search. The news articles on the businessman killed in Abolstan didn’t reveal much information. Gregory Bealton’s body had been discovered outside of Khalar. A little more digging showed that the area surrounding Khalar had been relatively stable for some time, indicating that it was unlikely the Canadian had been killed as a result of the civil war taking place in that country.

  A single gunshot wound to the head usually meant an execution. So why had this man been allowed to live in peace in Abolstan at a time when foreigners were rarely trusted, only to be executed two years later? Unless he really had been a spy. Or someone had at least believed him to be a threat of some sort.

  He tapped his pen on his desk. The answers were out there somewhere, and he was starting to believe Devin’s theory. Maybe the leak wasn’t coming from within the Bureau. Maybe it really was originating from the CIA.

  * * *

  “I didn’t expect to see you in here for a couple more weeks.” Graham studied Kelsey. They had worked together four years earlier, when Kelsey had first been assigned to the field office in Saudi Arabia. During the time Kelsey had been undercover in Salman’s home, Graham had returned to the United States and risen to become the division chief over the Middle East.