by Brad Taylor
She lay back down, keeping her eyes on him. The guard approached, showing no fear. The routine had been performed seven times this day alone with the passengers, and he held a Czech Scorpion pistol. Enough to cause the timid hostages to back down.
He prodded them to the stern of the boat, where the backpacks were laid out on a bench, the toilet to the left, adjacent to the gunwale. They both stopped, looking suitably timid. The guard nodded, and Knuckles advanced to the door. He put his hand on it, then Brett leaned over and grabbed his stomach, groaning. The guard showed concern and Brett let loose a bout of flatulence that caused the guard to reel back, holding a hand over his face and cursing.
Brett flung Knuckles to the side in an apparent desperate effort to access the toilet. Knuckles fell toward the bench, snatching the cell phone knapsack as he dropped between the row of seats. He heard the toilet door slam shut and began digging in the darkness, not even bothering to look behind him. If he were discovered, it was the endgame. Knowing the guard had seen him snatch the bag mattered little at this point. He had either succeeded or he’d lost. He rapidly dug through the phones, waiting on a shout. None came. He located his, slid it in his pants, and replaced the bag.
Brett staggered out of the toilet, holding his hands to his stomach. The guard stayed back, waving his hands in front of his face. Knuckles rose, looked at him, and saw no suspicion. He waited for approval and the guard, standing away from Brett, nodded.
Knuckles entered the head, locked the door, then ripped the phone out, powering it up. Waiting for it to boot, he tapped his foot, aggravated at the time, glancing at the door, sure the guard would break it down for no reason whatsoever.
Finally, the screen cleared, and he brought up the music app. He went to a particular song, hit play, waited a beat, then shut the phone down again. The beacon would transmit now whether the phone was on or off.
He relieved himself, exited the head, looked at Brett, and gave an imperceptible nod. The guard waved his machine pistol at them, and Brett bent over like he was going to launch another volley of gas, holding his stomach and groaning. He pointed at the toilet and the guard turned his face away, nodding his head. Knuckles sidled to the right, until his back was over the bag on the bench. He reached behind him, raised the flap, and dropped in the phone.
A few minutes later, Brett exited, wiping sweat off of his forehead. He said, “I’m sorry. That fruit you gave us is not good.”
The guard shoved them both forward, back to the center of the hold. They sank into a bench and he left. Brett looked at Knuckles and said, “So?”
Knuckles smiled and said, “So, Prometheus Five is now transmitting.”
The woman on the floor woke up, staring at them. Knuckles smiled at her, and she locked eyes with him, saying nothing. Studying him. He winked and saw her eyes grow wide. He put a finger to his lips, and she nodded, then sagged back into her makeshift blanket of clothes, snuggling with her son.
Brett caught the movement. He waited until she was down again, then leaned in and said, “I think she’s a fighter. Nobody else on this boat is.”
“I agree. Something to consider.”
Both were thinking about the endgame. It was coming, one way or the other. They both knew that situations like this never ended peacefully. After a moment of silence, Brett said, “You think anyone is going to get that call?”
“Yes. I don’t know how long it’ll take, with the shit storm going on in D.C. right now, but I’m pretty sure that it’ll get to Pike eventually. Even if the Taskforce is on stand-down, Pike will come.”
Brett lay down on the seats, curling his arms under his head, and chuckled, saying, “Oh, goody. We get the wrecking crew. Can’t wait to see how that works out.”
Chapter 18
I listened to Shoshana’s report, then said, “So you think it’s worthless to stay any longer?”
It was getting close to 11 a.m., the check-out time at the hotel, and our target had yet to return.
She said, “Yes. He’s not coming back.”
Aggravated, I snapped, “Okay, go ahead and crack the room. Get what you can, but don’t take anything. Extract any digital stuff in place. If you need additional kit, call me back. We’ll get it to you.”
I heard, “Hey, I’m not making up bad news just to aggravate you. No reason to get cranky.”
I rubbed my forehead and said, “I know, I know. Sorry. Just enter the room and get what you can. I’ll see you back here.”
Last night I’d sent Jennifer racing back to the Restoration Hotel, meeting our new teammates Aaron and Shoshana. I’d waited in the bar drinking a rum and Coke—because I’d damn well earned it—and somebody had finally found the bodies. There was an enormous police response, which wasn’t surprising. For Charleston this was like a Mexican drug cartel rolling heads into a disco in Cancun. It had exploded on the news, and this morning I’d learned that the police were on that very track. They believed that bad elements from the Caribbean were attempting to smuggle drugs through the port of Charleston, and some sort of feud had caused the deaths. Which suited me fine.
The Israelis and Jennifer hadn’t had any time for pleasantries, and since they were the only ones not currently burned for surveillance work, she’d given them Nung’s keys to his room, the access code for the Alexa hack, the description of our target, and told them to burrow in, waiting. If Mr. Clean showed up again, they were to take him down, calling us for backup and exfiltration. Alexa was the trigger. Any noise that occurred in that room would be heard by them.
Aaron had balked, not wanting to start an operation on such a shoestring bit of information—not even knowing why—but Jennifer had told him we didn’t have the time because the target could return any second. Surprisingly, Shoshana had agreed, and Aaron had reluctantly assumed the mission. She’d left them, then met me at the Grolier Recovery Services office, where I’d begun planning for our trip to Brazil while waiting on a jackpot call that never came.
Jennifer stuck her head into my office and said, “What happened?”
“No joy. Aaron and Shoshana are headed back here.”
“And the room?”
“Don’t know yet. They’re going through it now.”
She nodded, then hung in the doorway. I said, “What?”
“Nothing. Just wondering how you’re doing.”
I smiled. She was always more worried about others than herself. If she offered you iced tea, and then your house started burning down, she’d ask you if it was too sweet. Right before she put out the fire.
I said, “I’m fine. Really. But we’ve got a lot of work to do before we fly.”
She said, “Maybe leaving here right now isn’t such a good idea.”
I sagged back into my desk chair and said, “Come on, Jennifer. We’ve been over this. Kurt’s death leads to Brazil, and we already have our visas ready from the original mission.”
“Aaron and Shoshana don’t have visas.”
“They don’t need them. They’re from Israel.” I tapped my temple and said, “Always thinking.”
She grinned at me and said, “Pike, we have no thread, and we have a lunatic Russian on the loose. Do you really think it’s smart to leave Amena and Kylie here alone?”
I paused, then said, “Are you telling me you want to hunt him?”
She looked embarrassed, then said, “Well, yeah. Bird in the hand and all that. We need to eliminate the threat here, then go forward.”
That was a little bit of a revelation.
Before I could say anything, she said, “We can get his digital trail from the room. There’s bound to be something inside it for a thread. We find that, then we hunt his ass. Eliminate that threat before going to Brazil. What do you say?”
I put my hands behind my head, leaned back, and said, “I say that’s a damn good idea, little Jedi. How do we stand with the safe house?”
Before she could answer, we heard, “Hello? Anyone home?”
Jennifer stuck her head outs
ide my office and said, “Back here.” She turned around and said, “It’s Kylie and Amena. Take care with what you say.”
I started to reply, and Amena pushed through Jennifer, running to me and giving me a hug. I hugged her back, and saw fear in her face.
I said, “What’s up, doodlebug? Why the long face?”
She said, “Why are you making me move out?”
Thinking of Kurt’s final words, I misunderstood what she was asking. I said, “Wait, what? You aren’t moving out.”
She said, “Then why are you making me pack clothes? Pack a suitcase?”
It dawned on me she was talking about the safe house.
I laughed and said, “Nobody’s making you ‘move out.’ You’re just relocating here in Charleston for a few days. That’s all.”
Her arms still around my neck, she looked into my eyes, trying to sense a lie. She said, “Why would we do that?”
I glanced at Jennifer, and she was giving me the stink-eye, not wanting me to tell the truth, but I’d learned that Amena could smell subterfuge a mile away. And she’d understand why, based on her past life.
I put my arms around her and gave her a hug, saying, “There are some bad men looking for me, and I don’t want them to find you.”
Jennifer said, “Jesus, Pike! Is that necessary?”
Amena glanced from me to her, then back to me. She sighed, the relief evident on her face. She sagged into me and said, “That’s the best news I’ve heard all day.”
I chuckled and said, “Don’t worry. You aren’t getting rid of me that easily. I just want to make sure you’re safe.”
She sat up and said, “Why are bad men always finding you? What did you do?”
I sat up and said, “Me? Seems like the last time it was you.”
She frowned and I laughed to defuse the situation, saying, “Just kidding. Someday I’ll tell you, doodlebug. But not today. Just pack a bag and enjoy the beach house.”
She grew concerned and said, “What if you don’t come back? How bad are the people looking for you? Is it like Switzerland?”
I glanced away, not wanting to think that my life was now more important to others than it was to me. She said, “What?”
I said, “Don’t worry about me. I’m going to hunt them first.”
She said, “Was the man in the car working for you? Is that why he’s dead?”
And I felt the blackness again. A deep pool of tar dragging me down. Jennifer stepped in, taking her hand and saying, “Come on, honey, we have a lot of work to do, and you need to pack.”
Amena realized she’d touched a scab and didn’t resist Jennifer’s pull. She stood up, and Kylie entered the room. I hadn’t seen her since Kurt’s death.
She looked at me with loathing, and I rose, walking to her.
She said, “Don’t . . . Don’t.”
But I did. I wrapped her in my arms and said, “Kylie, I’m so sorry. I’ll find them. I promise I will.”
She started crying, saying, “Why’d you leave? Why did you run?”
Unspoken was the blame that I’d killed her uncle. The man she revered more than any other. I rubbed her back and said, “I had to. The same reason you’re taking Amena to a different house. It’ll be okay. I promise, it’ll be okay.”
Veep entered the room, saw the display, and stood, awkwardly shifting from one foot to the other. I broke my embrace with Kylie, brushed her hair aside, and said, “Veep will take care of you two until we get this resolved.”
Nicholas Seacrest—aka Veep—was supposed to be traveling to Brazil with me, but that was no longer in the cards because of the Taskforce stand-down, which worked in my favor. A member of Air Force special operations, he was the youngest on my team and looked like a Boy Scout, but looks could be deceiving. His callsign VEEP came from the fact that when he’d joined my team, his father had been the vice president. The national command authority had tried to force him into a safer military occupational specialty because of his family, and he’d refused, instead coming to me. I routinely kidded him about his millennial creds, but underneath the Boy Scout façade lurked a killer. Now his father was the president, and I was going to use him to protect what I held dear.
I kissed Kylie’s forehead and said, “It’ll be okay. I can’t bring Kurt back, but I can find out why he was killed.”
She nodded, brushed her hair out of her eyes, looked at me one more time, but said nothing. And then she left the room. Veep waited until she was gone, then said, “So take them to the new place?”
I said, “Yeah. It’s probably for nothing, but it’s better this way. Take them back to my house, get whatever you need, and get out. Don’t return there until you hear from me.”
He nodded and turned to leave. Amena left Jennifer, ran to me, and wrapped her arms around my waist, saying, “Don’t go. Come with us.”
Veep left, embarrassed at the display.
Chapter 19
Answering emails in his office in Crystal City, Virginia, Clyde Marion saw a notification from the WhatsApp manager on his computer desktop. Surprised, he closed out of his email manager, clicked into WhatsApp, and saw an instant message from a man who was never supposed to contact him in the United States.
He hesitated to answer. The man on the other end of the line was firewalled from every other contract he conducted, relegated to a partition of the company known as “Deep Purple” because of his associations.
Monte Cristo Analytics had grown from a little backwater social media advertising influencer for housewives trying to sell skin care products to a full-blown player in the world of manipulating public thought. Named after the famed gold mine in the San Gabriel Mountains of California, it was both a tribute and a middle finger directed at the squalor of the trailer park where he’d grown up, a decrepit shadow of the promises the mine once held. The name now assumed a double meaning because of the data mining the company conducted, cloaking what Clyde truly represented, just like Alexandre Dumas’s Count of Monte Cristo—and not unlike Clyde himself.
Born Gregori Utkin in the Soviet republic of Kazakhstan, he had fled with his family to America after the collapse of the USSR, living hand to mouth in a trailer park. Clyde had despised his given name, having been bullied relentlessly because of it in that dusty, broken Californian town. As soon as he was old enough, he’d fled the trailer park and legally changed it to Clyde Marion—a name that worked much better in Silicon Valley than his foreign-made one.
Clyde checked to make sure the door to his office was closed, then clicked on the WhatsApp icon, seeing a chat request. He hesitated, checked the door again, then initiated a conversation.
-Why are you contacting me here? You know I’m in DC.
-I need some help. Something only you can do.
-I’m doing everything I can in Brazil. We’ve flooded WhatsApp with messages, and have a positive response rate on all of our Facebook work. The campaign is working. There’s nothing else I can do, and you said my hands should remain unseen.
-It’s not the campaign. It’s your contacts. Do you still have the contract with the Pentagon?
That gave Clyde pause. He did, in fact, have a contract with the Pentagon to study the effects of disinformation on the future capabilities of warfare, both offensive and defensive, but he didn’t advertise that he was using the very thing he was studying for an election in Brazil.
He typed,
-I might. Why?
-Don’t worry. I don’t want to infect our relationship with a Russian disease. I just need some information.
-What?
-There is a colonel named Kurt Hale. Have you heard of him?
-No. Should I?
-He works in the division that has your contract. J3.
Clyde frowned. Surely he wasn’t expected to know every single man on the joint operations staff at the Pentagon. There were literally thousands.
He typed,
-No. Never heard of him. Why?
-He’s dead. Made the news.
-So?
-I want to know what he did. Where he worked. Can you check that?
Clyde hesitated. Working for various foreign governments and independent actors was one thing, but this could constitute actual spying. The man on the other end sensed the hesitation.
-I’m not asking you to hack his computer. Just look him up in the Pentagon directory. It’s open source information.
Clyde paused, then typed,
-It’ll cost you.
-It always does. Put it on the bill for Brazil.
-Stand by.
Clyde minimized the chat room and whirled his chair to another computer, one hooked into the Pentagon’s secure database. He spent five minutes typing, then furrowed his brow. He dug deeper, but came up empty.
Strange.
He turned his chair back to the other desktop and pulled up the chat window.
-You still there?
-Yes. What did you find?
-He works in J3 SOD. The Special Operations Division. But he doesn’t have an office listed. In fact, he’s got nothing listed. He’s just a name in a phone book. I can’t find a single thing in the database that he’s had a hand in. Nothing. What is he?
Clyde waited for two minutes, getting nothing back. He typed,
-You still there?
-Yes. Can you dig deeper? Find out what he’s doing?
-I thought you said he was dead.
-Okay, WAS doing.
-No. I don’t work with SOD. I have no contacts.
-It would be lucrative. Very lucrative.
-I just told you I have no contacts, and my contracts with the Pentagon are already lucrative. What is this about?
-I think he was part of something secret, and it’s affecting our operations in Brazil. I need whatever group he was involved in to back off.
Clyde released the keyboard like it was molten. He leaned back, wanting to delete the entire thread. He saw,
