Allen smiled after reading his quotes. They read well in print, and he was glad Ken Leonard had quoted him accurately.
The article also stated how the once respected reporter had skipped town and later issued press releases claiming the sniper mentioned in the story was actually alive and was tracking down the shadowy organization that was plotting against the two men.
The story only had a couple paragraphs about the gunning down of Nick Woods's -- err, Bobby Ferguson's wife -- then a bit about how the two names were the same person, and how Nick Woods had shot down FBI Agent Jack Ward in retaliation for Anne’s gruesome and unexpected murder.
And now, Allen Green was willing to go on the record and claim that Nick Woods had gunned down U.S. Marine Col. Russell Jernigan at Camp Lejeune as part of the recent news involving a massive shootout at the sprawling base. Green also said Nick had been responsible for the death of the men (called “militia,” for now) from the shadowy group who were protecting Jernigan.
The article reported that the Marine Corps refused to confirm or deny whether a Col. Russ Jernigan was involved in the shoot-out until the investigation was concluded.
Amazingly, much to Allen's delight, Ken Leonard had interviewed a former CIA official (while not naming him) who said that while the claims by Allen might seem outlandish to most readers, the truth was they rang pretty accurate, according to the former agent.
"It can get pretty mixed up while you're in there serving," the former CIA agent had said in the story. "There are times when you won’t be picked up after completing a mission. Sometimes, weather interferes. Sometimes, deals get made. And since we’re all trained to be skeptical, sometimes we see conspiracy when no conspiracy exists. And sometimes conspiracy exists right before the public’s eyes, and they have no idea."
Allen stared at the screen a few more minutes and leaned back in his chair. He pulled a cigarette out of his pack and lit it. And as he smoked it -- slowly -- a conclusion ran through his mind.
Son of a bitch, he thought. We're honest to God going to nail these bastards. The media -- with its vast powers and resources -- has the story in their sights.
Allen smiled as he considered the warpath the media was about to embark on. We’re going to get Whitaker and whoever is behind it all, he thought.
Chapter 50
While Allen Green enjoyed the story and tasted the first moments of victory, Whitaker and Texas Sen. Ray Gooden made their countermoves.
Whitaker called Sen. Gooden the moment one of his men alerted him to the story, and Gooden didn't even waste time reading the report.
"What's it say in a ten-second nutshell?" Gooden asked.
"It's bad," Whitaker admitted. "Pretty much tells the whole story. Accurately."
"I've got to chair the Armed Services Committee tomorrow and still need to review some material. I don't have time for this shit."
"I know, sir. I have a plan for dealing with it."
"You damn well better," Gooden hissed through his teeth.
He listened to Whitaker's plan and then made one phone call. It didn't matter that it was nearly midnight, and it didn't matter that his request broke about twenty different laws -- all felonies.
Gooden called the Deputy Director of the National Security Agency. When the man answered, groggy from sleep, Whitaker said, "Bruce, hate to wake you, know it's after midnight, but I've got a national security emergency. I need you to alert your staff on duty that I've got a man on the way to your front gate, and he needs some quick research done on a crucially important matter. Feel free to wake up the Director if you want, but he's aware of this situation. We'd hoped we wouldn't have to drag you into this, but the situation turned south on us in a hurry."
Bruce, the Deputy Director of the NSA, had said no problem and picked up the phone to call the night staff at headquarters to make it happen. Since he trusted Sen. Gooden, he never bothered to confirm with his Director whether he was indeed aware of the situation. No need to wake him.
Instead, he intrinsically trusted Sen. Gooden. How could he not? The man had been running things on the Senate Armed Forces Committee for nearly thirty years.
This was a good thing since Gooden had just told one of the most dangerous lies he'd told in more than a decade. And as Sen. Gooden ended his call with the Deputy Director, somehow managing to hide his anger at Whitaker and just able to swallow down his fear as he related the lies to Bruce, he decided that if Nick Woods didn't kill Whitaker, he would do so himself.
Whitaker, with all his mistakes, had jeopardized decades and decades of work. But first, he'd use Whitaker to get that damn reporter, Allen Green, and see if he could stop Nick Woods. And while Whitaker worked to make that happen, Sen. Gooden would be looking for his next commanding officer. Because if something didn't drastically change, he'd be burying one man and bargaining to retain a new one in the very near future.
Chapter 51
Whitaker stood behind a goofy looking man who sat in front of three computer monitors, completely focused. Barely a pound over ninety, the guy had curly hair and ear phones that ran down intermingled with the mesh of wires scattered on top of the desk. Whitaker had assumed the ear phones were work related until he'd followed the cord to their destination, which was an iPod on the far corner of the desk.
Whitaker had never been around some of the top computer geeks employed by the NSA. He usually just received data dumps and intel files electronically, but tonight was an exception. A major one, he thought, wondering how far past midnight it was now.
The computer geek kept working, ignoring the man standing behind him. Whitaker closed his eyes and rubbed his temples. The past two days had been complete hell and reminded him of fierce combat in other war zones he'd encountered across the globe.
Whitaker remembered how confident he'd been just prior to Nick Woods dropping Col. Jernigan. He then recalled how that confidence had been shattered by the brutal ambush of Team 4. The shooting had barely stopped before he was scrambling and making frantic attempts to get his men who'd survived off the base, but he'd had no luck. The MP's had swarmed, and there were more generals and officers involved in the situation than he could possibly get around.
Whitaker wasn't even sure how many men from Team 4 were dead and how many were hooked up to machines in the base hospital. And as soon as he'd realized it'd be impossible to get the men off the base, he instructed Tank to order his best available sniper in the states to get to Camp Lejeune. And fast. The man had collected his gear -- he'd been training on a sniper range in Quantico -- and jumped on a waiting private jet that Whitaker had arranged to land nearby.
Whitaker had spent the next few hours planning the mission with the sniper and getting his Marine Major on the phone so that the sniper could get on base, which currently was under heavy security.
"Where do you think he'll be?" Whitaker had asked, looking at a topographical map of the terrain around Col. Jernigan's house.
The sniper, who'd been studying the map for nearly an hour while Whitaker worked the mission's logistics, said nothing at first. He continued his analysis of the map, evaluating the lines that indicated elevation and the colors that portrayed heavy vegetation. He tried to put himself in the shoes of Nick Woods. What would he do? Would he have hauled ass after the shot? Or would he have buried himself deep in a hide until the pandemonium ended?
The sniper had an "x" placed on the map where the shot and resulting ambush had occurred. And around that "x" he had measured one mile in each direction -- north, south, east, and west. Then he'd drawn a curve connecting all four points until he had a circle on the map exactly one mile out from the shot.
Then, he'd repeated the task for two miles, three miles, four miles, and finally five miles.
The sniper knew Nick Woods was within those circles since the shot had been just a few hours earlier. He also knew Nick would pick the same evasion route as he would since they'd been trained identically. Thus, he studied the map a couple more minutes and recogni
zed precisely where Nick would go.
The sniper estimated the pace he would move at if he were Nick, added some extra distance to be safe, and then looked for the nearest insertion point. He wanted to be in position and waiting when Nick came by.
The sniper looked up at Whitaker and pointed to the map. "He'll be here,” the sniper stated. He then moved his finger toward another mark. “And I need to get a ride and be dropped off here."
Whitaker nodded and assured him he'd make it happen. After setting up the insertion of the sniper, Whitaker struggled to maintain his sanity during the next two days. He tried to focus on his other teams that were deployed and the training of teams not deployed, but he couldn't stop worrying about whether his sniper had nailed Nick Woods. Since the man purposefully carried no radio, Whitaker was in the dark.
After two days, the article had broken on The New York Times and he'd spoken with Sen. Gooden, who'd set him up -- pulling who knows how many strings -- with the NSA. While the agreements worked their way down from the top of the NSA to its operations center, Whitaker had been aboard a private jet flying straight to a nearby airport.
Now, still standing behind the geeky NSA operator, he tried to let the worries about his sniper and Nick Woods go. He couldn't control that situation. Right now, he had a single focus, and that was Allen Green.
"How long should this take?" Whitaker asked.
"Depends on how complex and paranoid our friend Ken Leonard is," the NSA guy replied.
"What do you mean?"
"Well," the man said, his fingers still typing, "it depends on how complex his password is. Whether he used numbers in addition to letters. Whether he used punctuation and symbols. And whether he used a longer password than most."
"Is there any way you can't break this?" Whitaker asked.
"No. Just a matter of how long it will take."
The geek, who Whitaker found rude, certainly knew his business. He'd broken into The New York Times server in less than ten minutes though Whitaker thought the geek had purposefully taken longer than normal. Whitaker suspected they hacked into The New York Times regularly, but they didn't want to give that piece of intel away to a man they didn't know.
Now, the annoying little nerd was attempting to crack into Ken Leonard's personal email account. From there, they hoped to find the e-mail address from Allen Green, which would ultimately expose the reporter’s IP address. Once they had that, they would use national security requirements to get the hosting company to give up the specific address -- and not just the city or general area.
Once they had that location, then Allen Green was a dead man.
"One more question," Whitaker added. "Give me a best case and worst case scenario."
"Best case?" The geek glanced up from his screens and tapped his chin. "An hour to break into his e-mail and four hours to work the approvals to get the exact location. Worst case, maybe four hours to break into his e-mail, plus the four that follows it."
"Great," Whitaker said. He stepped away from the computer workstation and pulled out his phone. He ordered his on duty officer at his operations base in Fredericksburg to alert Strike Team Three, which was on light training following a difficult deployment to Afghanistan, to mobilize and await further instructions.
Whitaker hadn't caught any breaks yet but taking Allen Green out would end the real threat. Without Allen Green's skills and connections to other reporters, he'd just be dealing with a barely educated sniper who lacked any outside resources. And with luck, that barely educated sniper was already dead.
Chapter 52
Nick Woods moved through the forest. He followed low ground, as much as possible, and stayed in dense, impenetrable cover. Yet even in such impossibly thick brush, he moved like a ninja.
He crept along in a crouch, each footstep half as long as a normal stride. With the shorter stride, he was able to keep his balance and place his toes down in spots free of dry leaves or twigs. He'd add weight to his toes, then bring his boot down along its outer edge, slowly increasing weight and pressure. Nick knew that this slow, precise movement was the best way to minimize sound. Once all his weight was on the front leg, he'd lift his back foot and repeat the process.
In his pocket, the fired brass cases were cold, no longer putting out heat as they had hours ago. He congratulated himself on remembering to grab them after the unexpected ambush. And now just hours after the shooting, he slipped -- very s-l-o-w-l-y -- toward his extract point with the kind of confidence and potency you might find in a jaguar sneaking through the jungle.
Nick smiled to himself as he crept through the woods. Wonder what Whitaker is thinking now, Nick thought. He's probably not feeling so cocky, having missed his best chance to nab me. He knew I was coming, and he still missed.
Unfortunately though, Nick had never seen the van coming. And in truth, had he not stolen the sniper rifle prior to the op, they would have successfully guessed his location and buried him back there.
That thought did trouble him a bit. Whitaker had guessed where he'd fire from with his hunting rifle, hid his men for nearly two weeks, and executed an impressive counter attack. Just in the wrong spot.
This idea brought Nick up short. Never underestimate your enemy, sport, he reminded himself. After all, Whitaker had been cautious enough to send the FBI to round him and Anne up after Allen Green broke the story. And he'd done this despite the near certainty that Col. Jernigan had leaked the info, not Nick.
And he'd also flawlessly nabbed Allen Green from his very office, in a very public building, in a very public city. He even had the tenacity and discipline to go after Nick and his spotter after the Afghanistan ops, and he'd done that just to be safe. Just so he could tie up a couple loose ends. Loose ends involving two of the best-trained Marines America had. There would have been no chance that Nick or his spotter would have leaked the info. They were too professional for that.
But this guy Whitaker, if that was his actual name, he didn't take chances. And he didn't lose very often.
Nick slowed his pace a bit more.
So, what would you do, he asked himself, if you were Whitaker, and you were trying to nab a crazy, well-trained sniper at the one opportunity you'll have. The last possible opportunity you have. You’re a man in charge of this great organization, facing a serious internal threat, and you have one chance to save your ass. What would you do?
Nick had a knack for figuring out what the enemy would do. It's what had saved him from the Soviets and what had protected him in countless other situations.
Think, Nick, he commanded himself. What would you do?
He admitted the idea for a strike team rushing in by van was good. Then Nick stopped mid-step, and a cold fear hit him. Sweat broke out on his forehead, and his heart pumped blood faster and faster through his veins.
Because at that moment, Nick knew damn well what he'd do if he were Whitaker. He'd send in a sniper to back up the assault team. One not in the op area, since that wouldn't be necessary. Instead, he’d stage one in a trap to cover Nick's evacuation route in case the assault team missed him.
And with that thought, Nick got the eerie feeling that he was being watched. He'd come to the most open and dangerous part of his route -- the perfect place for a sniper to cover -- and as he instantly dove to the ground, fearing the shot he knew was headed his way, he thought of Allen Green and knew that if he were truly Whitaker, he'd do more than send in a sniper as back-up to take out Nick.
He'd also find a way to track down Allen Green and take him out at the same time. Because Allen Green, with his contacts and research capabilities, presented every bit as large a threat as Nick did.
Chapter 53
Whitaker's Strike Team Three had assembled at their warehouse compound in Fredericksburg, Virginia. They had their camouflage packed and stood around waiting in various forms of civilian attire. A couple looked like rednecks in jeans. Others wore sharper, preppy clothes. Each carried concealed firearms.
The main goal
was for them to avoid looking the same. Their camouflage and heavy weapons were packed in containers in two work vans that would be driven by support members. They'd be riding in three SUVs, each driving with about two minutes distance between each other, with the two work vans in the middle of a widely spread-out convoy.
They'd be following speed limits, and each carried legal permits for their handguns. However, in the event that one of the two vans got pulled over and searched, they knew they might have to take down a state trooper before back up could be called.
That had never happened, though, in all the history of the teams.
The team members didn't know anything about Nick Woods or Allen Green or the grand conspiracy story. Whitaker maintained a strict "need to know" protocol, and in his mind, none of these men needed to know.
All they knew was the following "situation:" a middle-aged man in his fifties, located near Jacksonville, N.C., needed to be nabbed. Their mission outline stated the man had been selling military secrets to the Chinese from the nearby Marine base at Camp Lejeune.
Some knew it was bullshit, most didn't. None cared.
However, they did believe they were acting as a part of the country's vital national security defense, and that was rewarding in its own right. Not to mention, their over-the-top pay and constant excitement settled any other questions they may have.
They stood by their SUVs, each different in color and brand to help camouflage their unit. They waited impatiently for their commander. The support men waited by themselves near their vans. They knew they didn't fit in with the actual trigger pullers on the Strike Team and had given up trying to long ago.
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