by Brad Taylor
Lover? Now a damn terrorist can see through me?
I ignored that comment and said, “You mean that? What you did was a mistake?”
The support team appeared inside the aircraft and the Ghost extended his shackled arms, giving them an easy vein. A man stuck in the needle and he flinched.
He turned from the man and looked me in the eye. “You and I are closer than you think. You are closer to the man I killed to save her than the man standing above me right now. You know it. I know it.”
I said, “I don’t kill people for an outcome. I kill people to prevent an outcome.”
He said, “Maybe. Maybe you do. But it’s only because of where you were born. Sheer luck. If you were in Mexico, the killing would be different. You’d still do it.”
“Bullshit. Don’t justify your pathetic attacks as part of a system of fate. You don’t even believe that. If you did, you would have let Jennifer die. It’s more than circumstances, more than a series of events, and you know it. You told me that you had to be yourself or risk losing everything. And in so doing you did lose everything. Why did you save Jennifer?”
His eyes began to fade from the medication. He said, “I honestly don’t know. Right now, I believe it was a mistake, but if I had to do it over again, I’m not sure I wouldn’t still be sitting here.”
I watched his eyes close and said, “That’s good enough.”
I let the support team finish their work, then motioned for the computer hacking cell to exit. Jennifer and I went last, meeting Kurt in the FBO lobby.
He shook my hand, then saw Jennifer and said, “Jesus. You really did get the shit kicked out of you.”
She had a black eye, butterfly bandages on her forehead, and a large gauze pad covering stitches on her right forearm. She said, “I’ll live.”
He shook her hand and smiled. “Sorry about the damage, but it looks like I don’t have to fire you now. Come on. I have a room down the hall.”
We entered a deserted pilot’s lounge with a row of La-Z-Boy chairs and a dining room table in the corner. He motioned to the table and took a seat. Before he could start I said, “I want to talk to you about the Ghost. I promised him a better cell if he helped with the mission. I’d like to honor that.”
“Why? He didn’t help at all. In fact, his premature alert almost caused a total meltdown.”
“He saved Jennifer’s life. That’s the only reason we have him in custody. He could have let her get sliced up by that nut job from Mexico, but he didn’t.”
“He’s still a terrorist.”
“I know that. I’m not saying let him go free. I’m just saying give him some amenities in his cell. That’s all. Make his time a little easier.”
He leaned back and remained silent. I said, “Look at Jennifer. He saved her life. The least you should do is give her a vote.”
He glanced over at her, taking in the damage again. He said, “He tried to kill you. You think he deserves a reward?”
She said, “He’s going to be locked up forever for that, but only because he saved my life in the first place. He’s going to die in that jail, when he could have gone free.”
He said, “We haven’t seen it in the Taskforce yet, but the budget crunch is coming and I’m not going to spend my money making a terrorist comfortable.”
I pulled out the digital token we’d taken off the hit man from Mexico and slid it across the table. “How about making al-Qaeda pay for it?”
After I explained about the bank account from the hit man and more prodding from Jennifer, Kurt said, “Okay, okay. You guys are relentless. Dumbest damn thing I’ve ever heard.”
I smiled and said, “It’ll only be dumb if the Ghost’s jail cell is better than the team’s. What’s the story with them?”
“They’ll be coming home today. Should be here by late afternoon. We hit a snag with NORTHCOM, but the SECDEF is sorting it out. We couldn’t get to the command before the police, and their first answer was ‘Never heard of those guys.’ The police held them a little longer until we could get someone on the phone who backed up the story.”
“So we’re clean? What about the dead hit man?”
“He’s causing issues. Luckily, he was killed while you guys were inside, so we have a pretty solid alibi, but the coincidence is there. The police have demanded names and addresses for follow-up questions, so those guys won’t be operational for a while. Especially with this YouTube thing coming.”
Great. So I’d left a dead man who was now causing my team to stop operations.
While we were getting both the Ghost and Booth secured in our car, another car had entered the lot. I’d left Jennifer guarding the two men and was dragging the hit man to the trunk when I saw the lights flash as it hit the speed bump at the entrance to the alley. I didn’t know if it was police responding to the Blondie’s disturbance or just another car full of patrons, but either one witnessing me dragging a dead body was bad. I stuffed it next to a pickup, and we’d left. Wasn’t anything else I could do, but the repercussions were now harming my team. Made worse by this YouTube video coming out.
I said, “Where do we stand with the video thing?”
“Nowhere. We’ll get Booth behind a computer and see what we can find, but it probably won’t help unless he personally knows the guy, which he won’t. It’ll take too long to go through all of the leads. Right now the hacking cell is spending their time covering Taskforce tracks, including connections to Grolier Recovery Services. I feel like Ollie North ordering Fawn Hall to start shredding documents. Destroying evidence, and trying to keep this thing to a twenty-four-hour crackpot story.”
“What about Creed? All that shit he located? None of that panned out?”
“Creed? You mean Bartholomew Creedwater? He’s been helping you.”
“Yeah, and while Jennifer and I were running around trying to find Booth, he was rooting through Booth’s home computer. By the time we picked him up for the flight he’d been at it for four hours. He’s already done the homework, and he brought the computer with him.”
80
I drove past McLean Central Park to the Dolley Madison Library, my designated linkup point. Ironically, our target’s house was about two miles as the crow flies from the headquarters of the CIA, in McLean, Virginia, home of the rich and powerful. The library was close enough to the target to allow the team to penetrate without delay, but far enough away that the meeting would never be correlated with the follow-on break-in. My only complaint was that Kurt wouldn’t let me do the high adventure.
Earlier, after hearing about Creed and his research, Kurt had practically flung him out of the building, taking him to Taskforce headquarters, leaving Jennifer and me at the Dulles FBO. Ordering us to stand by until he returned. Since Grolier Recovery Services already had plenty of nefarious digital connections to the headquarters, there was no way we were going to make matters worse by going there in the flesh. I decided to stay right in the comfortable pilot’s lounge until we had an answer.
Jennifer had watched him leave and said, “Well, what do you want to do now?”
I curled up in a La-Z-Boy and said, “Get some sleep. I’m bushed.”
She got in the chair next to me. “Looks like we get the same room together for once.”
I laughed and said, “I don’t think our secret is much of a secret. I think everyone on the team knows. Kurt is probably the only one still in the dark. Well, him and Creed.”
She absently picked at the bandage on her arm. “You think that’s a bad thing? Are you still wondering about me being in the Taskforce? On your team?”
I put my arms behind my head and said, “No. It’s not a bad thing. I’ve thought about it a lot, and I’m good with you on the team. More than good. Mission-wise, we click, regardless of how we feel about each other. Or maybe because of how we feel about each other. I don’t know. I have to get o
ver some protective caveman stuff, but we work well together. We’ll see what the team thinks of our relationship, but I’m more concerned about the command. If Kurt finds out about us, he might hammer me just because of the implications. This sort of thing is illegal in the military.”
She smiled, liking the answer. “Then I guess we’d better not let him find out.”
“Does that mean we’re not doing anything in our first Taskforce single room?”
The smile melted into a frown. No sense of humor. I pushed her buttons some more.
I said, “Kurt won’t be back for hours, and these chairs are comfy.”
She threw her water bottle at me, barely missing my head. I batted it away and said, “Okay, okay. I get it. No single rooms on the Taskforce paycheck. Let’s get some sleep.”
She gave me her disapproving-teacher look and said, “You’re working on no single rooms period.”
I closed my eyes and thought maybe a minute had passed when I felt someone prodding my shoulder. I said, “Jennifer, you had your chance.”
I heard, “Chance for what?”
I looked up and saw Kurt Hale. Way to go, bumble brain.
My watch told me I’d been out for five hours, which amazed me. I said, “Chance to get some sleep. What’s up?”
“We’ve found the guy, but it’s not pretty. The Oversight Council is working through options to mitigate the impact of the YouTube video given the information we now have. I need you and Jennifer to get back to Charleston and start doing normal things. Act like normal citizens in case someone comes around with questions. We think we can stop the bleeding fairly quickly, but not with you in Washington. Too many questions to answer.”
“Who is it?”
“It’s the son of an influential lobbyist here in DC. Unfortunately, a lobbyist working for the other party, against the administration. He made a career as a political aide, then took his skills to K Street. His son is the one doing the hack. A twenty-five-year-old loser. Apparently a genius who went to MIT and dropped out. Now he spends his time aggravating his dad by being a social leper, running around with Occupy Whatever Street and protesting economic summits. Lives in the basement of his father’s house in McLean.”
“He’s here? Right here in DC? Shit, sir, let me go after him. We still have time.”
“How? You think you’re going to kidnap the son of one of the most powerful lobbyists in DC? Then what? Throw him in the Cloud? If it was some lone-wolf loser living in a trailer somewhere, maybe I’d let you kick his ass for a lesson, but not here. We’ll leverage the folks inside the Oversight Council to mitigate the damage. Get the father to play ball using what he knows well—political capital.”
“Sir, that’s crazy. He’ll smell blood in the water and get the very investigation we don’t want. He’ll use the video as a weapon. We need to do it preemptively. Like the congressman from Egypt. Remember him?”
“Yeah. Of course. He had a hand in my father’s death.”
“We do the same thing here. He went to prison for child porn instead of taking the heat for treason. Took the jail time instead of the death penalty.”
“That’s just it. The kid hasn’t done anything, other than help Booth dig into our digital signature. He’s posted a video saying he’s going to expose an illegal government spy operation. Which is exactly what we are. We’re the ones breaking the law. We’ve got nothing to pin on him. The council isn’t too keen on a domestic operation like that. I tried earlier. They said I was acting like Los Zetas.”
Now they get skittish.
My mind working at ninety miles an hour, I said, “He’s a hacker, right? He’s hacked more than just our systems. Surely he’s done something illegal.”
“Yeah, Creed’s found a ton of stuff, but we can’t very well charge him without exposing how we got the information. We might as well put up our own YouTube video.”
“The father’s political?”
“Political as they come.”
“Okay. Get me into his house. The senator agreed to the child-porn thing so we wouldn’t give him the death penalty. Let me do the same thing here. I’ll put child porn on his computer. Then we send a tip to the police through Anonymous.”
“What?”
I began to pace, saying, “This will work. One of the things Anonymous does is expose child pornographers by hacking their systems and sending it to the police. About the only good thing they do. I’ll get porn on his computer, and our hacking cell will alert the police, posing as Anonymous. They take him down.”
“Did you hear what I said earlier? The Oversight Council isn’t going to approve a frame like that. The congressman was a traitor and responsible for American deaths. This guy isn’t. They want to work it from the inside, using politics. Anyway, that’s only half the battle. That video is still going up.”
“Wait, I’m not finished. You—or someone on the Oversight Council—engage the father. Somehow, get it in the father’s head or his lawyer’s head that his son was working with Anonymous to expose a child porn ring, and that’s why the evidence is there. He’ll jump on that like a hobo on a ham sandwich. He’ll go for the lesser charge of hacking over the child porn, and he’ll owe us big-time. We can get him to manage the video. Keep it from being a weapon. The kid gets a slap on the wrist and we get political control of the fight.”
Jennifer was looking at me in awe. She said, “You mean you’re going to plant child porn on his computer, then alert the police posing as Anonymous, then have him get out of the child-porn charges by admitting he was attempting to expose other child pornographers by breaking the law working for Anonymous?”
I said, “Yeah. That’s about the size of it. He gets charged with what he actually did—illegal hacking. We provide help to the lobbyist through the administration, and that video goes nowhere. No follow-on evidence. Surely the Oversight Council will agree to that.”
She said, “Where has that been hiding? Have you always been that devious?”
“Oh yeah. I got you to agree to Grolier Recovery Services, didn’t I?”
It was a joke, but she scrunched her eyes, now wondering. I said, “Sir, let’s do it. All I need is Creedwater. Jennifer and I can handle the B & E. He can handle the computers.”
Kurt looked at me much like Jennifer, probably reviewing every past decision he’d made involving my team and wondering if I had manipulated him. He said, “I have to get sanction for that. Obviously. But I like it.”
I said, “Hell, it’s only ten in the morning. We can’t get in until nightfall anyway. You do your work, and I’ll do the reconnaissance. Just tell me if it’s a go.”
81
Apparently, the Oversight Council liked my deviousness, because twelve hours later I was sitting in a library parking lot about to pass the intel from our reconnaissance to the inbound team. Well, the council liked the plan but had really hated the idea of me doing the B & E. Too close to the flame for them. I guess it made sense. No matter how good I thought I was, every operation has a chance to go sideways. We were trying to defuse the YouTube video, and having the owner of Grolier Recovery Services arrested breaking into the house of someone who was about to post an exposé on Grolier Recovery Services wouldn’t do much to shorten the news cycle.
Didn’t mean I had to like it.
I saw the flash of headlights, and a car pulled in right next to us, killing the engine. I recognized the driver but went through the stupid dance of bona fides required by some Taskforce James Bond regulation. Eventually, the driver entered our car.
I said, “Hey, Spanky. Long time no see.”
His face broke into a grin. “They told me you had done the recce, but I thought for sure they were full of shit. Since when do you pull support? Why aren’t you going in?”
“Oversight Council. Jennifer, give him the data.”
For the first time, Spanky noticed wh
o was sitting next to me. Well, noticed she was female. Honestly, I was unsure how this would go, as Jennifer was still a little bit of a novelty due to the cellular structure of the Taskforce. Most members had never seen her, much less operated with her, and I knew that plenty of people despised her because of her gender alone.
He said, “Wow. So I’m getting briefed by a celebrity. Jennifer Cahill. Aka Koko. In the flesh.”
I saw hesitation flit across her face and knew she was unclear on how to proceed. I felt the same way, wondering if he was paying her a compliment or about to piss me off. I opened my mouth to clear the air when he continued. “I heard about that call in Mexico. Gutsy shit.”
That was it. Not much in the way of words, but all he had to say. The Taskforce was like a high school in many ways, with rumor and innuendo flying through its ranks due to the secrecy embedded in its construction. Made up of humans—very, very smart humans—who didn’t like to be kept in the dark, it was tribal, with tales passed by word of mouth at the shooting range or on the combatives mat. He’d just told me that Jennifer’s word of mouth was better than good.
She nodded tentatively, then said, “You want the rest of the team to hear this? It’s a little complicated.”
“Yeah. It’s just two of us, with a computer geek as a snap link. Bring the laptop to my car.”
Twenty minutes later and she was done, back in my vehicle. I waved to Spanky and pulled away, hating the fact that we weren’t playing.
Jennifer said, “He’s pretty nice. I thought that would be harder.”
“Why? You had all the information they’d need. Did they agree with your plan?”
“Well, yeah, I guess they had to. I didn’t have another idea. He asked a couple of questions like he didn’t want to execute a climb, but that’s what I’d do. I guess I should have made a plan based on no skill.”
I broke into a grin, wondering if I’d ever get the chance to stab Spanky in the eye with that comment.