Back-Tracker

by Bob Blink

  “Nothing,” Laney muttered unhappily. “Maybe they aren’t returning tonight?”

  “It’s possible,” Carlson agreed. “There is nothing to say that they need to install one of their tanks in every unit. The amount of gas in place is more than sufficient to cause a panic.”

  “Don’t forget there were indications they had started an installation in one of the two remaining units,” Jake reminded them. “Something happened to cause them to abort that activity. It suggests they weren’t finished.”

  Jake knew that the group who had installed the other tanks would be back to finish the job. Despite not being able to see what difference it would make if he revealed this, he was attempting to stick with his plan of letting things unwind their natural way. It was a hard line to follow, and he’d already slipped a bit a couple of times.

  “None of the cleaning crew has gone anywhere near the roof entrances,” Laney noted.

  They had discussed how the large cleaning group with their equipment and barrels would have provided a reasonable cover for any group wishing to move around unnoticed. Jake couldn’t help thinking that the same ruse had been used to move Ray’s body a few months from now.

  By ten o’clock, the small army of cleaners had finished their task, and were regrouping near the underground service entrance. The building security saw them out, locking up the area after them. The cleaners would move on to another of the buildings on their list. They would work until the early hours of the morning, when they, and multiple groups like them, would have all of the buildings ready for another invading army of tourists in the morning.

  “That would have been too easy,” Carlson said, as she stood and walked around the room to stretch her legs. The screens continued to automatically shift between the dozen cameras they had in position, all showing static views of the areas of interest.

  Three more hours passed before one of the agents waiting topside called. “Movement,” he said. “Two vans are approaching the back service area,” he informed them. “They have some kind of logo on the sides. It looks like they are a heating and air conditioning service firm.”

  Laney looked at Jake and smiled. “Bingo,” he said softly.

  The vans parked in a carefully selected pair of slots. The vans were reasonably close to the service entrance, but positioned so that they were out of view in the garage from above, but also hidden from anyone looking out the service entrance into the underground area. Six men climbed out of the vans, opened the back doors, and extracted large toolkits on roller wheels that looked much like the luggage one would expect in any airport. The toolkits were all adorned with the same logo that was present on the side of the vans. Only a close inspection would reveal that two of the kits were several inches thicker than the others. Similarly, only someone already suspicious would have wondered about the way the doors were closed so that virtually no noise was created.

  The six men looked around, and then made their way to the building’s rear doors. One of them made a quick call on a cellular, waited, and then proceeded to the doors. He swiped a card, and then pushed the door open. All of this went unobserved by agent Carlson and her team. They had placed no cameras in this area, and the two agents watching from outside dare not risk trying to move closer to watch.

  “There they are,” Jake observed when the six men appeared in the video from the hidden camera they had placed so they could observe the access door that led up to the roof. The video system had frozen the scene of this area on one of their monitors as a result of the activity. This time they watched as one of the men raised his cell phone, waited, and watched as the locked light on the door went black. Peterson saw it first and pointed out the fact the system had been disabled.

  “They’ve hacked the system somehow,” Laney cursed.

  They watched as the men moved silently into place. They split into two groups of three, each group moving toward one of the two AC units that hadn’t been fitted with canisters. Over the next twenty minutes they watched as the men expertly installed one of the canisters in place. When they were done, they checked one of the units that had been modified the day before, and seeing the tank still in place and undisturbed, they grunted and closed everything up. The video feed showed them heading for the exit.

  “Let’s go,” Carlson ordered. She turned to Peterson. “After they’ve gone, make sure the doors are secure, and don’t allow anyone onto the roof until my people have removed those tanks,” she said.

  She, Laney and Jake hurried out of the small service area, and down the hall to where they had left their vehicle, an old Ford Explorer with scratched paint that shouldn’t attract undue attention. Carlson alerted the two FBI agents in their vehicles the trespassers were leaving. She told Laney to hurry ahead down the road the vans had used to approach the museum. It was likely they would leave the same way. The two other cars took up positions that would allow them to follow from behind, at least at first. Fortunately this was Washington, DC, and the roads were never empty, so their vehicles would not stand out.

  Laney, who was driving, pulled over and stopped a mile down the road. The two agents still waiting back at the museum would alert them when the two vans started their way. They didn’t want to get too far ahead.

  “Okay,” Laney said suddenly. “I guess I have to admit I believe you can do what you and Carlson have been saying. Too many things have happened in the last couple of days that I can’t see how you could have known about. But I’m still uncomfortable with the way you dribble out information. You knew exactly what was going to happen tonight. I could see it in your face. You were bored the entire night. Not like Carlson and I were bored. We had that edge of wondering if we were going to learn something. You knew. Why couldn’t we have saved all this drama?”

  Jake, who was sitting in the passenger seat next to Laney sighed, and said, “Imagine how I feel. I’ll have to live this way for the next six months. Even when I don’t tell her, Karin can sense when I’ve back-tracked and know what is going to happen. It drives her nuts. This time she knows I’ve sent back memories from six months in the future. I’ll have to be careful not to do something that might shift the flow of events.”

  “Why is that so important?” Laney asked.

  “Maybe it isn’t always,” Jake admitted, “but it’s hard to know. More than once I’ve taken action to save people and as a result I’ve inadvertently caused others, people who weren’t affected before my meddling, to be killed. I’ve had to loop back, adjust my actions to make sure I didn’t cause that to happen. Sometimes it has taken multiple attempts to get it right, where I accomplished my goal and didn’t cause collateral damage. Once I never found a way, and was unable to affect the outcome. Even this case has a little of that. More than a year ago I interfered with the attempt to kill Mark LoBue. As a result, Pati Ray was killed in a car accident. That was my fault.”

  “That isn’t your fault,” Carlson objected. “It is something those who wish to manipulate you fabricated. Your actions caused only a small change. She probably would have had an accident when the drones exploded regardless.”

  “True, but it probably wouldn’t have been fatal. The position of the construction vehicle is what made her momentary lapse fatal. A few seconds either way and she probably would have only had an annoying fender bender. No, I believe her death is related to my actions. I also know I’ll never be able to fix that situation. I’ve come back less than a third of the time, and I nearly died as a result. I cannot reach that time. I’ll have to live with the knowledge.”

  “But telling us about what is going to happen here isn’t quite the same,” Laney objected.

  “Yes it is,” Jake disagreed. They’d been over this before but Jake had learned from his friends how difficult it was for others to fully understand. “We are trying to save people from this act of terror. As yet we haven’t seen any bodies, but they are out there in the future. The timing of actions will affect the outcome. We need to find all of the canisters as well as w
ho is behind this. Since I’m uncertain of my ability to back-track, I have to try and be extraordinarily careful we follow the path that worked before.”

  “They are just entering the roadway,” the voice on Carlson’s cellular informed them.

  Laney pulled out onto the road and started moving, staying well below the speed limit. Soon he could see the lights of two vehicles approaching from behind. They were moving faster than he was, so he gradually increased his speed. Five minutes later a sleek new Camero sped past him, and Laney took the next off ramp, allowing the two vans to continue on without him. Once they had disappeared from sight, he continued back onto the freeway, now taking up a position well behind the two vans while the agent in the Camero followed from in front.

  The shifting of vehicles was repeated again later. The drive led them south, away from Washington proper, and soon they were approaching the outskirts of Alexandria. They continued through town, and twenty-three minutes after they had started, as they neared the southern edge of the city, the vans exited the freeway. Laney followed, the two FBI agents continuing on. Laney would tell them which route the van took so they could catch up and join the tail without being obvious as they would have been if everyone exited at the same place.

  The vans moved through the quiet of the evening toward an industrial area a couple of miles from the highway. They pulled through a mechanical gate, pulled into a parking area, and shut down the vehicles. By the time Laney found a spot that was suitable for observation without being obvious, the men were driving out of the gate in a number of personal vehicles, suggesting they were done for the night. More than a dozen vans like the two they had followed were parked in the lot. Carlson noted that while each of the vans had some kind of logo, at least four different companies were shown, and none matched the name on the building they were parked behind.

  They waited an hour. The building was dark with no sign of movement. Forty minutes after they’d arrived, another pair of vans pulled through the gates. As before, a number of personal vehicles departed soon afterwards. A single personal vehicle remained in the lot. It was unlikely that another group would be returning. Leaving the two FBI agents to keep watch until Carlson could arrange for relief, Laney drove back toward Washington.

  Chapter 31

  A very tired looking Susan Carlson led the daily meeting and informed the team about the discovery of the attempt to place Sarin gas in the Air and Space Museum the previous two nights. She detailed the resulting covert monitoring that she, Jake, Laney and the other two FBI agents had instituted, which had resulted in the discovery of the small, run-down laboratory in Alexandria. She had already informed the Director of their discovery, calling him at home in the early hours of the morning, describing the events of the previous evening, and requesting additional manpower for the task ahead. She also informed him the previous day of the added threat posed by the Sarin gas.

  “We’ve assigned a watch team for the next twenty-four hours,” Carlson explained, “but we need to significantly expand the number of agents assigned. I want a team of at least three agents on site at any given time. Even that number is too small given we might want to be able to follow any visitors to the facility who look suspicious. We will have to be selective on individuals, but anyone who makes a large delivery or pickup absolutely must be followed. Pictures and video are to be taken of anyone who visits the facility, with the results sent in at every shift change for the labs to process for identification through our recognition software. I want to know the names of every person that enters or leaves that facility. Even someone who seems innocent such as a FedEx driver. Starting this evening, when we believe they are most active, I intend to have sufficient agents on hand to allow us to follow each of the vehicles so we can determine the range of their activities.”

  “How many people are we talking about?” someone asked.

  “There were at least a dozen vehicles in the shed. We didn’t get a good look because it was dark and they didn’t leave the door open very long, but they appeared to be a mismatched group of delivery vehicles. For now, we have to assume that each vehicle requires someone assigned to follow it wherever it goes.”

  “We don’t have that many people,” the same agent objected.

  “The Director has authorized additional personnel. I’m not sure where they are coming from, but they were promised for close of normal business today.”

  “That number of vehicles hanging around is going to attract attention.”

  “There is a large used car lot several blocks away. We can gather there, with the onsite team alerting the trackers when a vehicle is departing,” Carlson explained. “We’ll work out the logistics in a planning session this afternoon. We’ll have satellite photos of the area by then, and be able to formulate an operational plan. We need to know everywhere they are putting this Sarin gas.”

  Then she looked around the room.

  “Brett, I need your people to find out everything you can about this company. How long they have been in business, what they normally do, how many people they normally employ, and especially who owns them. Everything.”

  Brett nodded his understanding.

  “Have we considered placing tracking devices on the vehicles?” Felix Chang asked.

  “We are looking into that,” Carlson acknowledged. “Access to the vehicles inside the parking area might compromise our secrecy, but once they leave, it might be possible to plant a tracker on them. Last night, a single man was assigned to stay with the vehicles while the others went inside the museum to install the gas canisters.”

  “We want to be certain anything we install won’t be detected,” Laney added from his seat to one side of Carlson. “We’ve asked supply to provide us with special units that gather information, but which don’t download it until a set time, or until they are properly addressed and requested to do so. That would make the devices passive and impossible to scan for. We’d be able to check and see everywhere a given vehicle had been after it is returned to the lot at the end of the evening. This approach also ensures a longer life since far less battery power is required since it isn’t continuously broadcasting.”

  “What about this factory?” another of the agents asked. “Do we have any idea whether it is an assembly plant, a factory that actually produces the gas, or simply a distribution center?”

  “My impression is that it isn’t equipped for producing something as dangerous to deal with as Sarin gas,” Carlson said, “but we can’t be certain. It is impossible to say what might have been installed inside, and they may be less concerned with safety than a normal facility.”

  Another question from the assembled group of agents, “Can we get someone inside?”

  “We are looking into that,” Carlson admitted, and shot a brief look toward Jake, who generally said as little as possible during the briefings. He didn’t need the agents thinking about him any more than necessary. He could provide his insights directly to Carlson, or through Laney.

  “It would answer an important question as to what the role of the facility is in the overall plan of these people. We have to be careful not to alert them that we have stumbled onto their efforts. Don’t forget, there could be enough of those deadly canisters already in place to create a major disaster, even if it isn’t as large as they are planning.”

  After completing her summary of their discovery, Carlson opened the floor to other members of the team so they could share what they had learned. Special Agent Kirby Shaw was the first to speak up.

  “We believe we have located the manufacturer of the canisters, at least the basic shell,” he said. “If the container is being made locally, it is probable the other parts are as well. We will continue to follow up on that.”

  “Where were they made?”

  “The company that made them is located just a few miles south of New York City,” Shaw explained. “They made a run for five hundred, and delivered them just shy of two months ago. There are no additional orders pending.�
��

  “Did you find out where the last order was shipped?” Laney asked.

  “Unfortunately the contract called for delivery at the shipping dock of the supplier,” Shaw explained. “The canisters were picked up by the buyer at the factory. They have no record of where they might have gone.”

  “Another dead end,” Laney said unhappily.

  “Nearly so,” Shaw agreed. “Apparently an initial test unit was produced as part of the pre-contract negotiations. Funding for the effort came from a bank rather than an electronic wire transfer. The owner of the factory was able to locate that information.”

  “Maybe someone at the bank knows something?” Laney suggested.

  Shaw was already shaking his head. “We checked. The account was open less than three months. Different people at the bank were involved in opening and closing the account, and each only vaguely recalls who they dealt with. The descriptions don’t match at all. The address listed for the business is, of course, a fake.”

  “There was nothing else useful?” Carlson asked.

  “Only that the bank used was located in Newport News,” Shaw replied.

  “Close enough it fits the activities we are observing, but too vague to be of any use,” Carlson observed. “Hopefully something else will help narrow the search.”