by Jason Briggs
“Where can we find Sergeant Treadwell?” Brad asked.
Spam leaned back in his chair and tossed his hands out. “I wondered the same thing. And the answer is, I don’t know. He has no living relatives and five months ago he went dark. No job, no banking transactions, and no cell phone. He broke the rental contract on his house and fell off the face of the earth.” Spam leaned back in, snatched a flash drive off his desk, and handed it to me. “Everything’s on there. Including everything I could find on him. Maybe you can find a nugget in there that I missed.”
“Thanks, Spam. This is really great,” I said. “Do you have the computer?”
“Yes.” He leaned down and grabbed it off the floor near his feet. “Here you go.”
I thanked him again and Brad followed me down the hall, past the lab, and to the evidence room. I scanned my badge on the reader and went in, found an empty locker, and placed the computer inside. The electronic lock hummed as it moved into place and I entered a six-digit code on the keypad. No one would be able to access it without the code.
We left the secure room and started back down the hall. I punched the elevator’s call button and stepped in when the doors opened. “What do you think all that means?” Brad asked. “You think that maybe whatever Dr. Parker came up with at DARPA ended up being administered to our guys in the field?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I think that’s a fair bet. Nothing else makes sense.” I could think of no other reason why McCleary would have been looking into Marcus Treadwell. Something had happened in Afghanistan, and someone thought it best to keep it hidden away beneath a top-secret designation. We reached the stairwell and started up. “I think our next step is finding out where he disappeared to,” I said.
We reached the second floor and had just stepped out when Kathleen appeared in her office doorway and motioned us over. We stepped inside and she told us to shut the door. We did as we were told and then watched Kathleen remove her glasses and rub at her eyes with the heels of her hands. She returned her glasses to her face and gave us a hardened smile. “I’ve got some news you’re not going to like,” she said. “So I’ll just get right to it. My boss just called me from D.C. The Homeland’s deputy director ordered him to have us stand down from the investigation. He said it’s being moved beneath the purview of another agency.”
My fingers slowly curled into fists.
“How does anyone that high up even know we’re on this case yet?” Brad said. “It’s only been a couple of days.”
“Probably because they had to clean up two different bodies and a car wreck for me last night,” I said. “And Kathleen booked me a charter back to Miami.”
“Oh.”
“And because you’re logging your case reports. Right, gentlemen?”
“Yes, ma’am,” we lied in unison.
“So to clarify,” I said, “you’re saying we can’t work this case anymore. I just walk away from what we clearly know is a conspiracy that someone is doing their damndest to cover up?”
“Officially, yes. That’s exactly what I’m saying. You both are off the McCleary case. Don’t work it in any way.”
I’d worked with Kathleen for two years now and I knew that she would be just as angry as I was about a decision like that. No one likes a hot case to be ripped out of the hands of one of their investigators.
I also knew that the odds were that her boss, or even Homeland’s deputy director, was in on the cover-up. He was simply another Washington bureaucrat who was getting political pressure from someone above him to turn the other way. He wouldn’t be complicit, only negligent—failing to follow up and ensure that the case really did get picked up by another agency that was dedicated to seeing justice and truth prevail.
Officially… That’s what Kathleen had said. I looked her square in the eye. My jaw was set hard, my tone angry and clipped. “But unofficially?”
“Unofficially, you sure as hell better wrap all this up and make some heads roll.”
I relaxed a little in my chair.
“Kathleen?”
“Yes, Brad?”
“Since you’re not married, would it be wrong for me to kiss you right now?”
“Yes. So don’t try it.” She was clearly keeping a smile under wraps.
“I think he’s trying to tell you that we love you,” I said.
“If either of you fails to tread lightly, if I get a call from my boss because he’s heard rumors that you’re still on this case, it’s your heads that are going to roll. Don’t make me look like a fool with this.”
“We won’t,” I said. “That’s a promise.”
“Get out of here and get to work.”
I knew we were going to have to watch every step we made from here on out. Even without the FID’s support, I was as committed as ever to bringing an end to this chaos. My singular focus was unchanged: I needed to find Marcus Treadwell. And I needed to do it soon.
I had just returned to my desk when I heard Kathleen’s angry voice ring out across the floor. “Brad!”
I paused and looked at him. “Tell me you didn’t put that stupid iguana in our boss’s desk.”
He grinned nervously. “Maybe?”
I gathered up my laptop and headed back toward the elevator. “You’re on your own there, brother.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
U.S. Army Major General Benjamin Sheldon listened half-heartedly as Rear Admiral Samuel Jensen continued to wax long about the merits of increasing the contingency operations budget. Sheldon looked around the conference table and was not surprised to see the room offering the Admiral only half its attention. Greta Sinclair was studying her fake, perfectly polished nails; Harry Custer was losing an obvious fight to keep his eyelids more than halfway open; even Colonel George Merryman was giving the table a long stare. These individuals were but a representative portion of all those in desperate need of stimulation, stuffed into the guts of the Pentagon, where windowless conference rooms were as common as classrooms in your average elementary school.
Sheldon stifled a yawn and checked his wristwatch. If the Admiral didn’t put a lid on it within the next three minutes, then Sheldon was going to dismiss himself. Some forms of torture could not be endured. And soon enough, he wouldn’t have to anymore. He had only seven months until he turned sixty-two, the mandatory retirement age for a two-star general. After that, the only meetings he would ever sit in on again would be those for the board of directors of a major corporation.
The meeting finally broke and after shaking a couple of hands, the general left the room. The heels of his black dress shoes echoed across the long corridor of the Pentagon’s “E” ring. He turned into an open, outer office where his secretary was typing at her desk. She looked up over the rim of her glasses. “General.”
“Lydia. I have a lunch meeting to get to. Colonel Wilson should be stopping by with my notes for the press briefing tomorrow. If I miss him, let him know that I’ll follow up with him tomorrow.”
“Certainly will.” She returned to her typing.
General Sheldon went back down the corridor, took the elevator to the ground floor, and exited the world’s largest office building through a side entrance where his Jaguar XJR575 was parked in a reserved space. The car was a charcoal gray, and its assertive styling perfectly matched his personality. The vehicle featured an imposing, upright front grille with mesh detail, full LED headlights, and eye-catching tail lights with a distinctive pinstripe.
Sheldon got in and set his foot on the brake pedal. He pressed the button to start the car and the 5.0-liter supercharged 575 horsepower V8 roared to life, echoing back the sense of power that he craved from life.
He backed out of the space, drove out past the security checkpoint, and finally merged onto
Interstate 395, where he took it southwest into Alexandria. He was home in less than ten minutes, pulling into the stone-paved semicircle that sat proudly in front of his stately house.
The house was the one thing that he had
gotten out of the divorce. It was the only thing he had really wanted; he let Margie have the condo in Honolulu and seventy percent of their sizable investment portfolio. The house was beautiful, and one that, after more than three decades of moving with the military, he finally considered to be home. It was built in the old Colonial-style: deep red brick, a pediment supported by two pilasters covering the porch, and double-hung windows accented with black shutters.
Margie had left him two years ago for a man ten years younger, only a few months after his Senate confirmation had placed another star on his shoulder, giving him his current position at the Pentagon. At the time, Margie’s lover was running for Indiana senator. The chump had lost the race to the incumbent by more than a twenty percent margin. But Sheldon, he won out big. He didn’t have to listen to his bitter hag of a wife peck his ear off anymore. The last two years had been the quietest of his life. He was a single man now, with retirement right around the corner and a deliciously ripe retirement plan on the horizon.
If his associates didn’t screw it up.
A white Mercedes S-Class and a royal blue BMW 3 Series were already parked in the circle, and as Sheldon stepped out of his Jag and started walking toward the house, he noticed that the front door was open. He went up the steps and entered his foyer, then shut the door behind him. Low voices were coming from his office in the back of the house, and he made his way there.
Two men were in the study, both smiling as if Sheldon had just missed the end of a hearty joke. The first was a tall, well-built man with model good looks and the confidence to match. His hair was perfectly trimmed in the style of the day and he wore light gray trousers and a pink dress shirt with the top two buttons undone. John Brooks was forty-six years old and up until two years ago had been the general's brother-in-law. Even though Sheldon was nearly two decades Brooks’s senior, the two men had always gotten along well, enjoying time together at the golf course or duck hunting in the Dakotas. When the divorce finalized, it did nothing to change their relationship. If anything, it served to strengthen it; Brooks was not a fan of his older sister either.
The second man was the youngest of the trio. Army Major Ted Dodson was, unlike the general, not in uniform. He wore blue shorts, a tropical shirt with a palm tree pattern, and tasseled loafers. His dark hair was cut short to military regulation and his eyes were set back deep beneath his brows. He sat on a leather couch with one leg crossed over the other. He had a drink in his hand.
Sheldon stepped across the rug and poured himself a scotch from the decanters sitting atop the sideboard.
Brooks was facing one of the well-stocked bookshelves built into the wall. His head was cocked to the side as he surveyed the titles. Sheldon had never been much of a reader. He had been in his early days, back when he thought they were helpful tools in a quest to rise in the military ranks. But by the time he had reached the rank of Lieutenant Colonel, he’d realized that a continual move upward rested solely on his political savvy. And he didn’t need any books to hone that.
“I hope you don’t mind, but I let myself in,” Brooks said, still surveying the books. “Ted was already waiting outside.”
Sheldon himself was a large man: wide shoulders, thick neck, and legs like tree trunks—a linebacker’s body. He wasn’t in the mood for banter and he didn’t see how Brooks was in the mood to offer it. “I would like to know what’s so funny,” he said through gritted teeth. “If I knew you both had come for comedy hour, I would have rescheduled.”
Brooks’s lips drew a hard line. “Look, Ben, we—”
“No,” Sheldon interrupted. “You look here. Both of you. This entire thing has gotten way out of hand. For nine months now everything has been fine. We cleaned up the whole Afghanistan mess and everything returned to business as usual. But now some guy at DARPA starts asking questions again and this entire thing starts to look like it’s about to detonate in our faces.” He extended his glass and shook it at Brooks. “You said you were going to fix this. And what do I get wind of? I hear that your man executes the rat in a public park. A public park for crying out loud!” Sheldon’s face was taking on more red by the second. “And then he not only ends up dead in the offices of the very man he killed the night before, but his associate is shot up in a car chase. I could have picked one of a dozen former ex-special forces soldiers, each with a broken moral compass, to get this job done. But you said you had a guy you trusted. And look where we are now.” Sheldon threw back the rest of his drink and started to pour another. “I’ve made sure that the team from Homeland was taken off the investigation. For now, we’re in the clear. But if there are any more screw-ups...let me just tell you right now that I’m just about to run dry of political favors.”
“Ben,” Brooks said, “I know it looks bad. And you’re right. My guys screwed it up. I don’t know how someone started to work the angles so fast.”
“Well, I do,” Sheldon growled. “The someone is a Ryan Savage, an agent with Homeland. He was friends with that investigator. What was his—”
“McCleary,” Major Dodson offered.
“Yes. McCleary,” Sheldon said. “Savage doesn’t think McCleary’s death was an accident.”
“How could he think that?” Brooks asked. “My guy inside the Miami PD said that the detective is going to rule it an accident.”
“That doesn’t matter,” Sheldon said. “The reality is, if we don’t keep a low profile we’re going to lose everything we’ve worked toward these last two years and we’re all going to end up in prison. Now, I don’t know about you, but I didn’t get into all of this to go to prison. Did we get McCleary’s computer?”
“No,” Dodson said. “It’s at a firm in North Miami called GRM. We’re trying to find a way in without raising any more suspicion. It’s a high-tech research lab and security is pretty tight.”
“Just leave it,” Sheldon said. “Even if they find Dr. Parker’s work they can’t tie it back to us.” He looked to Brooks. “Can they?”
“No. Absolutely not.” Brooks said. “Besides, what they have is the previous version of the research. The one that went...wrong. Since you have the effects of that experiment buttoned up, we’re in the clear.”
“Okay.” Sheldon took another long sip of his drink and seemed to cool. “What about the new formula?” Sheldon asked. “Where are we with that?”
“Good,” Dodson said. “Parker said he’s gotten all the kinks worked out and is ready to test it again. I’ll fly out to Iraq next week and plan on administering it to a team of Green Berets.”
Brooks was watching Sheldon’s facial reaction. “It’s fine, Ben. This time, he’s got it. I’ve seen the lab tests myself. He knows where the science was wrong last time and has addressed the issues.”
“If this fails,” Sheldon said, “I can’t cover up another body count like that. I don’t care what Dodson’s medical reports say.”
Brooks smiled easily, the result of the bourbon settling into him and the bravado that came with being the senior vice president of MercoKline. “It’s going to work, Ben. And when it does, we’re all going to be extremely wealthy.”
“And just so we’re clear,” Sheldon said, looking over at Dodson. “We’re only testing it on three soldiers this time. Not six.”
“Right. Also, I’m on leave all this week. I need to know if we’re still on for our fishing trip, or if I need to reschedule.”
“For now, yes, we’re still on,” Sheldon said. “But if I catch wind that someone is snooping around again, I’m not going fishing while the house burns down around us.” He looked to Brooks. “I want to meet personally with Dr. Parker on my way to the Keys. I want him to look me in the eye and promise me that this time, there will be no mistakes.”
“I’ll set it up.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
It was just after eleven in the morning by the time I crossed the line into Orange County. I drove for another half hour before merging onto State Road 15 and taking it into Conway, a community southw
est of Orlando. A sign up ahead read “Rosie’s Diner” and I nudged the brakes and turned into their parking lot. I’d spent nearly five hours on the road and was hungry, tired, and ready to stretch my legs.
I got out and was quickly embraced by a hot blanket of humidity until walking into the diner where the heat was easily done away with by an overactive air conditioner. I waited at the front for someone to seat me. An older lady with a hard, weathered face finished taking a table’s order and returned to the front.
“How many?”
“Just me,” I said.
A stack of menus sat on top of a glass display that presented slices of fresh cherry pie, blueberry cobbler, German chocolate cakes, and a pan of banana pudding topped with vanilla wafers. The waitress grabbed a menu. “Come on then.”
She led me to a booth that looked out onto the parking lot. She set the menu down and slid it in front of me. “Breakfast is on the left; lunch is on the right. Today’s lunch special is country fried steak. It comes with your choice of three sides and a roll or cornbread. You want something to drink?”
“Coffee would be great. And a glass of ice water.”
“Lana will be over in a minute to take your order.”