Unexpected Gaines

by S L Shelton

  “Yes, sir,” I replied with mock military crispness.

  “I’ll let you know if anything changes,” he said and hung up without saying good-bye.

  As soon as I hung up the handset, I noticed movement outside my office door.

  “Who’s that?” I asked.

  Bonbon poked her head around the doorway before coming into my office, followed closely by Storc.

  “What’s on TV, Scottmeister?” Bonbon asked with reserved knowing in her tone.

  I looked at her for a second before responding. “Apparently some sort of terrorist attack in LA,” I replied with a tone of concern.

  “Not just in LA,” Storc replied. “There’s two in Denver, one in Albuquerque, and one in Chicago as well.”

  Not possible, I thought. Gaines didn’t have that kind of time. He never stopped in Albuquerque or Denver unless he did it before he killed his sister's murderers. This feels wrong.

  I looked at the screen, seeing the new additions to the list of cities. Bonny must have heard John on speaker phone and looked for updates on her own.

  I nodded my acknowledgment as I stared at the screen.

  “Does this have anything to do with your ‘bicycle’ accident?” Storc asked.

  I looked at him and Bonbon for a moment, not wanting to lie, but resolved not to reveal anything—and slightly annoyed that the subject had come up again after my lecture.

  “Do you remember who we work for?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” Bonbon said snidely. “TravTech.”

  “Wrong,” I replied sharply. “As soon as that wall went up out there, TravTech is who we used to work for.”

  The expression on Bonny’s face went from stern resolve to placid reflection, to resignation in a matter of about four seconds.

  “So no scoop then,” she finally said, bitterness still tingeing her tone.

  “We work for the CIA,” I sighed. “We don’t do ‘scoops.’”

  She nodded stiffly before turning to leave, not happy with my response.

  “She’ll get it,” Storc assured me. “You know how she hates not knowing stuff.”

  I nodded. “I know.”

  “And I hope you gave a good beat down to that ‘runner’ who knocked you off the trail,” Storc said with a smile and a wink.

  I chuckled despite myself. “Go back to work,” I replied with a grin.

  He gave a lingering look at the TV on his way out.

  I refocused on what John had ordered me to work on—the movement profile for the missing nukes he didn’t know I knew about. I started plugging the data into an assumed matrix when Jo appeared in my doorway.

  “Bonbon was at my desk when your call from Langley came through,” she said. “If you are going to use the speaker phone, you should close your door.”

  I nodded my understanding. “Thanks, Jo,” I replied.

  “You should look at this,” she said, holding out one of the folders I had given her after lunch. “I think it requires immediate attention.”

  “I just handed that to you,” I said with an impressed smile.

  “It was an easy one,” she replied, walking it over to me. “I put an updated data file on the server if you want to look at it. The asset they were tracking didn’t have his credit card. A woman had it. That’s why the phone tag and the purchases didn’t match up.”

  I looked at her notes on the file. “A drugstore purchase?”

  “Yes,” she replied as I pulled the data up on my screen. “I hacked the transaction database for the pharmacy. Sleeping pills, wine, tampons, and rat poison.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Someone is about to have a bad night,” I muttered.

  “That’s what I thought as well,” she responded. “We should get this back to Langley as soon as possible. It looks like their witness is about to be murdered by his wife, if it’s not too late already.”

  I picked up the phone and dialed the contact number on the packet.

  “Close the door for me,” I said to Jo.

  She began to leave and close the door behind her.

  “No,” I called to her. “I need you in here.”

  She walked back over after closing the door. The secure phone indicator flashed green as soon as the other end picked up.

  “Europe West, Jane,” came the reply.

  “Jane, Hi. This is Scott Wolfe and Jo Zook over at TravTech,” I said.

  “Hello,” she replied. “How can I help you?”

  “The package you sent over this morning on your asset in London, how old is that data?” I asked.

  “Last night,” she replied.

  “You may want to check on him,” I said. “Jo found a pharmacy purchase on the card and researched the items. Sleeping pills, wine, tampons, and rat poison. He was where he said he was. Jo and I think his wife had his card last night.”

  “Shit,” Jane replied. “I knew that bitch was trouble.”

  “Yeah,” I replied. “Jo is going to send the file package back to you now, but you should give him a call.”

  “Thanks,” she replied abruptly. “Gotta go.”

  The line went dead.

  I looked at Jo and smiled. “I need you to find and hire a new office manager.”

  “I don’t understand,” she said with a confused look on her face. “I thought you were happy with my performance.”

  “Ecstatic,” I said quickly, heading off her doubts. “That’s why you are now my lead analyst.”

  Her normally stiff expression slipped into something that could almost be considered a smile.

  “I’ll go back to the list you hired me from,” she beamed, obviously struggling to keep her emotions in check.

  “Pick someone neither of us will hate,” I said as she opened the door to leave.

  “I’ll do my best,” she replied before disappearing around the corner.

  As soon as she was gone, I pulled the movement matrix back up and ran it in simulation mode. It would take more than an hour for it to calculate origins and probability statistics. I watched my screen as lines were drawn from end points to possible origination locations—set after set appeared and then were overlaid with new ones.

  I realized after a short time that I had zoned out and my mind had drifted back to Gaines.

  “Why?” I muttered.

  Why would you kill those people? In your state of mind I might even understand Buck Grimwall…but why the rest of them?

  And why the hell did you have teeny tiny non-explosive rockets if you already had massive amounts of explosive set in all those offices? It doesn't make sense.

  I tried to figure out what the victims had in common—other than the obvious—they were all media personalities. But they weren’t all even right wing. One of the TV guys in Denver was a lefty as well as one of the radio hosts in LA. And there was no way in hell he could have done the job in Chicago unless he had planted devices before his sister got killed.

  I sat back in my chair and let the names and locations of the attacks flow across the inside of my eyelids. Suddenly a thought occurred to me.

  The account list, I thought. Maybe they are all on there.

  I pulled up a spreadsheet and began entering the account and transaction numbers I had seen on the sheet before being interrupted by the mystery woman in Burbank. I had almost thirty transactions recorded by the time I was done.

  “Why couldn’t you have waited a minute longer?” I asked the memory of the hot, mystery woman. One more minute and I would have had all the account numbers and all the associated names.

  I saved the spreadsheet file and then dumped it to a thumb drive.

  When I was done, I sat and stared at the simulation that was still running. I wondered if John would be upset that I had figured out this was for the nukes the Serbs had stolen.

  Only if it doesn’t help find them, I thought in answer to my own question.

  I decided to add more data to my simulation and run it again. I added transport methods, size limitations, network s
ize, and then shielding and handling considerations for nuclear devices. I then took the movement data John had sent and ran a comparison to map data points.

  Dead end routes and loop backs were given less weight. I entered the new matrix and overlaid it on a map to match the routes to actual roads. I let it run for a moment and was surprised when it returned a large map segment in the Middle East and into the edges of Africa and eastern Europe. I forced the search to continue, wondering if it matched any other regions. After several minutes, it reached the end of its map-matching routine and returned no other results.

  “Middle East,” I muttered and sat back, wondering what else I could use to refine my travel simulation.

  What do they have in the Middle East? I asked myself.

  “They have wars in the Middle East,” I responded sarcastically before realizing that actually was a consideration. There were many factions in the region that would go to great lengths to get their hands on nuclear devices. The Serbs wouldn’t be using indigenous personnel for fear of word getting out. Which means they have to be there in person for a reason.

  “White faces aren’t easy to hide in the Middle East,” I muttered. “Arms dealers.”

  Jovanovich’s group was made up of mercenaries and arms dealers. Even without their leadership, they would probably stick to what they knew.

  I entered the new data into the simulator and set it running. It would be hours before the new simulation was complete. I took the time to do more research on the murders Gaines had perpetrated in absentia.

  Several hours later, when my simulation had finished, I dumped the findings on the encrypted delivery drive and marked the project as requiring review by Langley.

  It was after 7:00 p.m., so I stretched, shut down my computer, and left the office. Jo was still sitting in front of her computer.

  “Are you about done?” I asked.

  “Almost,” she replied without looking away from her screen. “I just have to type up the notes on the last project you gave me.”

  “I’ll have to give you something harder next time,” I joked.

  She grunted her acknowledgment.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow,” I said.

  She grunted again.

  I love working with talented people.

  **

  9:25 p.m.—Langley, Virginia

  NED RICHARDS walked down the corridor of NCS flanked by eight armed men carrying shackles and pushing a prisoner restraint cart. Several steps behind him were two DHS attorneys and a woman—Carrie Cantor from the Department of Justice—who was trying desperately to get Richards to stop walking.

  “You don’t have the authority,” Cantor said. “Gaines is a DOJ prisoner. You can’t just walk in and carry him away.”

  “Miss Cantor,” Richards smirked without breaking stride or turning his head. “You will find that not only can I, but I will, in fact, take Gaines away tonight. I have an order signed by Judge Gunlock making sure that neither the CIA nor you can do anything about it.”

  Cantor pulled out her phone and dropped back, letting the traveling troupe from Homeland Security walk away from her. Richards turned his head, noticing she had peeled off, and smiled to himself.

  When they arrived at John Temple’s office, Ned knocked on the door. “We’re here to take custody of your prisoner.”

  John glanced up, a look of confusion on his face. He lifted the blotter on his desk, opened and closed several drawers before turning to Richards.

  “Sorry,” he said patting first his pants and then his jacket pockets. “I seem to have misplaced him.”

  “Where is he?” Richards asked.

  “I’m sorry,” John said, coming around his desk toward Richards. “Who are you?”

  “Ned Richards, DHS with Director Raymond’s office,” he said. “I have an order signed by Judge Gunlock directing the CIA to turn Gaines over to us.”

  “How is Michael?” asked a voice from behind him.

  Richards spun around and saw an older gentleman leaning against the wall of the corridor behind the group.

  “Who’s asking?” Richards asked.

  The man raised an eyebrow, apparently feeling no introduction should be necessary.

  “Mathew Burgess, Director of the National Clandestine Service…CIA,” he replied, holding his hand out to shake. “Did Michael send you over here?”

  Richards’ eyebrows shot up briefly in shock—he knew the name. They shook hands before Director Burgess leaned in close to Richards. “You should have your storm troopers wait in the lobby,” he said. “They aren’t invited to the meeting.”

  Ned swallowed nodding nervously, suddenly realizing that marching armed men into CIA Headquarters might have been less impressive and more threatening than he had pictured in his head.

  “Go back up and wait for me to call you,” Richards muttered to the commander of the guard who had accompanied him.

  The man nodded and marched his men back out the way they had come.

  “How about we meet in the conference room next to my office,” Burgess suggested with a friendly smile, gesturing with his hand. The Homeland Security contingent followed Burgess down the hall.

  Richards looked over his shoulder to see John Temple walking the opposite direction down the hall toward Miss Cantor, who was still on the phone. He leaned over to one of his lawyers and whispered, “Call Judge Gunlock and inform him his order is about to be challenged.”

  The lawyer nodded and peeled off down a connecting hallway.

  When they arrived at the conference room, Richards saw a lavish arrangement of snacks and drinks on the conference room sideboard.

  They were expecting us, he thought.

  “Please, have a seat,” Burgess said, gesturing to the conference table before opening a connecting door to the room. “I’ll be right with you. Help yourself to refreshments.”

  As soon as Burgess disappeared into the office, Ned turned to the other lawyer.

  “Whatever he says, we have Gunlock’s order,” he said in a low voice. “We need to get Gaines out of here as fast as possible and to the transport plane. Whatever you have to do to make that happen, you do it.”

  The lawyer nodded confidently. Several minutes later, Richards watched as the other DHS lawyer wandered past the door of the conference room.

  “In here,” he yelled into the hall.

  The lawyer reappeared in the doorway and joined his colleague at the conference table. Several more minutes passed. Richards began to get antsy and started fidgeting with his pen, whacking it against the pad of paper in front of him in a rhythmic beat. Tap, tap, tap, tap.

  As more time passed, he got up from his seat and began pacing back and forth across the room, passing by the sideboard once before returning and grabbing a pastry from the stack. He took one bite and tossed it back on the table next to the platter.

  He paced more as the two lawyers began looking nervous.

  “What the fuck is taking him so long?” Richards asked to no one in particular.

  He looked at his watch and saw that it had been almost forty-five minutes since Burgess had left the room. He suddenly marched to the connecting door Burgess had disappeared through and knocked.

  “Mister Burgess,” he called through the door.

  No response.

  He knocked again, longer and louder than before. “Director Burgess,” he called.

  Again, no response.

  He heard voices coming from down the hall and poked his head through the door. Coming toward him he saw Burgess, Temple, Cantor, and two people he didn’t recognize—one in a Navy dress uniform.

  Richards quickly went back into the conference room and sat back in his seat. As the group approached the door, Burgess stuck his head in.

  “Just one more moment,” he said apologetically. “Trying to get some details tied up before the briefing.”

  “What? But—” Richards sputtered, but Burgess had already left.

  Richards slammed his hand down
roughly on the table, sending a spike of pain up his wrist. “Damn it,” he muttered as he began to rub the soreness he had just inflicted upon himself.

  Several more minutes passed, and Richards was steaming with impatience. He looked at his watch and saw that they had now been in the conference room for more than an hour. He pulled out his phone and dialed. Just as the phone began to ring, Burgess and the rest of his entourage entered the room from the hallway with two new additions. Richards closed his phone.

  “Sorry to keep you waiting,” Burgess sighed tiredly but with sincerity as the group began filing around the table. “I have to admit, you caught us a little off guard, and we had to do some scrambling.”

  “She shouldn’t be here,” Richards growled, pointing at Cantor.

  Burgess looked at Miss Cantor and furrowed his brow. “Miss Cantor, I believe you have an authorization?”

  “Yes,” she said, dropping a piece of paper on the table in front of Richards before seating herself as far away from him as possible.

  Richards picked it up and began to read it.

  “As I said,” Burgess continued. “We had to do a bit of detective work, but we think we may have located Gaines.”

  Richards continued to read the paper when Burgess’s comment sank in. “Wait. What?” he asked. “I thought Gaines was already in custody.”

  “Oh, he's in custody,” Burgess said. “But the transport was covert, so we had to wait for authorization to get the departure and destination points.”

  “Transport?!” Richards exclaimed. “Why would he be transported?”

  “Well, Mr. Richards,” Burgess said as if taken aback. “This is CIA Headquarters. You didn't actually think we'd be housing a dangerous criminal here, did you?”

  “So where is he?” Ned screeched, his face turning red in embarrassment and his voice an octave higher than it had been.

  “He’s in transit,” Burgess replied calmly. “Once you indicated you were to take custody, we had to replace the transport and detention orders. The transport team should get the new instructions in about six hours when they reach the secure facility. Then they’ll turn him around and take him to the Navy Brig in Norfolk,” he said, looking at his watch. “That should make him available for pickup around noon tomorrow in Norfolk, assuming there are no hang-ups with transport.”