It was somewhat ironic to him that his own house was located a mere ten miles northwest of the operations house. He lived in McLean, so he could actually go home for a quick meal and be back on duty in a little over an hour, if he weren’t on such a high-priority terror event. McLean was an enclave of million-dollar homes, typical of what director-level government employees could afford. Because of his intel background, McGrath had accumulated far greater financial resources outside the government, but he had maintained a modest level of living commensurate with his salary so he wouldn’t attract unnecessary attention.
He considered the coincidence of his current location. In the year since he’d organized the TER Agency, he’d set up five TER teams in operations houses across the country, though he’d never had an operation this close to the Capitol.
The current terror event was very perplexing. It was a high-profile snatch-and-grab, rather than an actual attack. It was an intricately planned kidnapping too, far beyond the capabilities of what one would expect of a Mexican drug cartel leader. McGrath wondered how a mid-level drug cartel bully had garnered the financial and intel resources to plan and execute such a daring operation on US soil.
Of course, McGrath himself had helped Alfonso Reyes escape by pulling all his resources away from DC and concentrating on Albuquerque to deal with the man he now knew was Carl Johnson. If the president ever needed a fall guy when the event went south—and it seemed increasingly likely that they were going to lose the girl—Aaron McGrath knew he had just served up his own ass on a big presidential platter.
His decisions had allowed Alfonso Reyes to flee the country with his captive. Now his TER team had the nearly insurmountable task of trying to recover the girl. But first they had to find her, and in eleven days she could have been moved anywhere in the world. The manner in which he had bungled the operation frustrated him deeply, but a deep breath was all the reaction he allowed himself in case any of his team members were watching.
In his peripheral view he saw Nancy Palmer enter the living room operations center to resume her shift. She stood in the doorway watching him for a moment, and he thought she was going to walk over and make him justify his decision to use Johnson’s son as bait again. Or maybe she was going to point out, in her subtle way, how badly he had managed the investigation. Instead, she did something even more disturbing. She ignored him. She sat at the management workstation and began her review of the latest shift updates.
He had tried to go back to sleep after the deadly event at the interrogation center last evening, but rest eluded him. He kept replaying the video in his mind, watching Johnson attack his men over and over again. Then he watched the man’s tirade in his cell.
How the hell did he learn Pete’s name? Or mine for that matter?
About midnight it was clear that he wasn’t going back to sleep, so he finished out Palmer’s night shift and told her to report in at oh-nine-thirty.
Like most operators in the intel business, Aaron McGrath had come up through the ranks in the CIA, and his four-decade career in clandestine operations had culminated in his appointment by the president to run the Terror Event Response agency. There was no time for training, cultivating, or mentoring agents, though. The agency had to hit the ground running with fully trained operators and experienced analysts.
He culled his analysts from the very best candidates of the FBI, the NSA, and the CIA. Most of his operators came from covert departments within the CIA—units that specialized in wet-work activities where discrete killing or assassination was necessary. Nancy Palmer and Pete Klipser, however, came straight from the military Special Forces. Nancy came from the first Navy SEAL training class that included women warriors, and Pete came from an army elite Delta unit.
Palmer came on board first in a command capacity. Pete Klipser, on the other hand, was one of the most effective and deadly operators who had ever served under his command. The agent was a relentless killing machine and a superb tactical commander when he had terrorists in his sights. He was a perfect operator for the new covert counter-terrorist agency for which the rules of engagement were virtually non-existent.
“Aaron?” Palmer said. McGrath turned away from the window. He nodded and she said, “Johnson went into the emergency room a few minutes ago. As soon as he’s logged in by hospital staff, assuming he uses his real name, the FBI is going to move on him again because he’s still red-flagged as a Tier-Three terror threat. For this to work, we need him to be off that list.”
“Agreed.”
When he said nothing further, Palmer stepped closer to him and said quietly, “I’m having second thoughts about this plan.”
“The president has given me broad latitude to deal with terror threats however I see fit. Are you on board with the plan?”
“I know the evidence says this guy is hip deep in this mess, but this event just doesn’t fit his profile. I’ve been over his records forward and backward, and I just can’t make it fit. I think it’s a mistake using his son like this.”
He nodded. “The president is insulated from our activities and can claim no knowledge. But I can’t think of a better plan right now, and we have no other leads on Melissa’s whereabouts. If there’s a chance that Johnson can lead us to Reyes or his people, we have to take it.”
The TER analysts had snagged the computerized employment records of every job Johnson had held in the last twenty years, along with federal records regarding his various security clearance investigations. McGrath mentally reviewed all the new information about the man.
Johnson joined the Air Force in 1976 at the age of eighteen. Because of his high scores on the military placement exams, he was placed in the electronics field. He was always rated proficient or higher by his supervisors and advanced rapidly in rank and responsibility, receiving all the regular commendations for good conduct and time in service.
According to his career counselors, Johnson said that when he watched the first Space Shuttle launch in 1981, he decided on the spot that the Space Shuttle program was his ticket to achieve his childhood dream. He confessed that, like most young boys, he had always wanted to become an astronaut.
He applied for and was accepted into the Air Force’s officer training program. He earned his college degree in laser engineering, then took an assignment to Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where he continued to do the kind of research and development required to get into the Space Shuttle program as a mission specialist. He was methodically checking off all the boxes needed to achieve his goal.
Up until 1990, Johnson was a model officer with a stellar career trajectory, but his application to the space program was declined after he failed his physical. More precisely, he never actually took the physical. Johnson related to his commanding officer at the time that the doctor had closed his file folder and laughed at him as soon as he walked into his office, saying he couldn’t get into the space program because he wore glasses. Corrective eye surgery was not yet an authorized medical procedure.
A year later Johnson mustered out of the military after nearly eighteen years, when the Air Force began offering cash separation incentives after the first Gulf War. Apparently, his entire motivation to stay in the Air Force evaporated when he became ineligible for the Space Shuttle program.
Throughout his Air Force years, Johnson got married, had a son, got divorced, got married again a few years later, and got divorced again. After the Air Force, he took a series of high-tech engineering and project management jobs with government contractors, each garnering more responsibility and pay than the one before, but he never stayed with a job for more than a year, sometimes less.
A common theme in his evaluations was that, though he was a brilliant problem solver and project manager, he never really played well with others. His personnel evaluations indicated that he was a loner, not a team player—unless it was his team—and he became labeled as having a defiant attitude. Still, he was too valuable to terminate. He contributed to his emp
loyers’ bottom lines in big ways, so the companies he worked for kept him on.
Finally, in 2006, his last employer annotated his records upon his voluntary resignation, stating that he professed to have had enough of the bureaucratic bullshit. He walked away from two hundred grand a year with all the perks and a pending promotion to Operations Director of a major defense company. He moved back to Albuquerque and got his real estate license, making a meager income as a commission-only self-employed worker.
Carl Johnson was the real deal. The only question in McGrath’s mind now was how this man had become involved with a drug cartel leader who happened to pull off the biggest celebrity kidnapping in US history. So far the government had been able to keep the kidnapping secret. If the world ever found out, it would be bigger than the Lindbergh baby and bigger than Patty Hearst.
McGrath repeated his earlier declaration. “We have no other viable options at this point.” He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Because he was aware that the two analysts seated in front of him were trying to listen without appearing to do so, he spoke loud enough for them to hear.
“We’ll proceed on the assumption that Reyes recruited him as a deception and has some hold on him that we’ve yet to discover. We’ll keep his son under surveillance and see who he makes contact with. We’ve already put out the word through FBI channels and on the underground intel network to all relevant government informants, especially in Mexico and Albuquerque, that Mark Johnson is going to voluntarily surrender to the FBI in two days and give up evidence on Reyes’s cartel.”
An analyst’s station pinged. “Look who popped up on Facebook a few minutes ago!”
The young man tapped some keys and a side view of Carl Johnson’s naked body filled the center monitor. The picture quality was poor and shaky, obviously from someone holding a medium-quality cell phone. Johnson was facing away from the camera, and a big bearded man had just used a knife to cut his plastic cuffs. Then Johnson glared at the camera, and McGrath had the distinct impression the man was looking right at him. He didn’t look like a defeated man who just endured eleven days of severe interrogation.
McGrath’s encrypted cell buzzed in his pocket. He pulled the device out, and when he saw who was calling, he pivoted to leave the room. He touched his Bluetooth ear piece to activate the call.
“Yes, Madam President.” He had just passed through the living room archway into the hall when Palmer called him back.
“Aaron, you need to see this!”
When he turned back, he saw why the president was calling. On a wall monitor was an email to the White House specifying ransom terms for an unidentified American girl.
Jimmy, the big-Afro analyst, said, “The Defense Department’s voice analysis algorithms show Mr. Johnson just made a cryptic phone call too, right before we received this email. He called an associate in Albuquerque whose phones we’re monitoring.”
McGrath growled aloud. “So he really is behind all this.”
Chapter 19
0922 EST Wednesday
Arlington Heights, VA
After a few minutes wandering a couple hallways and not seeing a single doctor or nurse, Carl simply walked into a treatment room. The dull throb of pain after his initial contact with the street suddenly flared into a full-blown, fiery ache that seemed to envelop his entire body. He was aware of the pain, but he stashed it away in that dark corner of his mind where he had recently learned to put Klipser’s torture. He felt the pain, but he endured it while his mind considered other things.
Carl closed the door behind him. The treatment room held only a standard padded exam room gurney and a swivel chair where the examining nurse or the PA would sit. There was no pillow on the gurney.
He turned, opened the supply cabinet near the sink, and scanned the shelves. There were lots of creams and supplies like bandages and gauze wraps. He grabbed a handful of the supplies and dumped it all on the counter beside the sink. He ripped open the paper packages, then set about cleaning the dirt and pebbles from his scrapes. He spread antibiotic cream over all his scrapes, mostly on his knees, both elbows, and wrists.
He wrapped bandage gauze over his multitude of scrapes and taped everything in place. He didn’t bother to tidy up or put his supplies back. Instead, he just stood in the middle of the room and tried to figure out what the hell he was going to do next.
That’s when he saw a white smock hanging on a hook on the back of the closed door. It looked just like the one his torture doctor wore. He hesitated for a moment, then shook off the ridiculous fear that almost made him reject the covering. He shrugged his way into the garment.
He looked through the drawers and cabinets again for some kind of pain killer, but he found nothing. He chuckled at the thought. After what Agent Klipser and his doctor had done to him, it wasn’t like he couldn’t bear a little road-rash pain all goddamn day.
He thought about the doctor for a moment. Then it hit him. He had actually killed a man, and he did it with intent. The thought that he was actually a killer filled Carl with a mixture of emotions. He only attacked the doctor because he wanted to grab something from the table to use as a weapon to go after Klipser. He wanted the agent to kill him, but if Carl had been weaponless, Klipser would have just kicked his butt and put him back on the table.
At the moment when Carl grabbed the doctor, though, he’d felt a sudden eruption of rage. So, instead of merely pushing the man out of the way, Carl pulled him forward and slammed his face against the table. He had not realized the electro-shock control box with all the wires was in the way, but he felt elated when the man’s face struck the metal box. He felt an almost orgasmic pleasure when he saw the man’s eyeball burst. So he slammed the doctor’s head down a second time.
Suddenly the door opened, and a woman in blue scrubs took two steps into the room, clearly not expecting to find him there. She stopped with a gasp as she noticed him. A twenty-something young man holding an injured left arm across his belly hesitated in the doorway.
The attendant glanced up and down Carl’s naked frame under the open smock and seemed to instantly understand he did not belong in the room. Or maybe she just knew he had not been processed in through the normal reception area, as all patients should be.
“Wait right here,” she said. “I’ll get you a doctor.”
Carl knew immediately she wasn’t going to call a doctor because his taped scrapes didn’t require that skill set. She was calling security, and he wasn’t yet prepared to deal with that kind of confrontation. He wanted to think through what his next move ought to be.
He buttoned the smock, but hesitated in front of the mirror again. He wondered what day it was. He stepped closer to the mirror and was surprised at how gaunt he appeared. He’d lost a lot of weight, true, but he’d lost something else too.
As a salesman, he made it a point of always walking around with a smile on his face, because one never knew who might reciprocate with a greeting or a smile of their own and become a client. But now he saw an emptiness in his eyes, and he found himself wondering if he’d ever be able to smile again, now that he knew the true nature of what humans were capable of.
How do you smile again after being tortured or after killing a man?
His reflection wore several days’ worth of graying whiskers on his face and neck. He rubbed the razor stubble on the back of his head also, though the top of his dome was still smooth and hair-free.
Carl turned his head slightly and studied his reflection. He noticed his ear hair and shook his head. Can’t get shit to grow on top of my head, but it’s practically bursting out of my ears and nose!
All in all, he was an unkempt shocking sight to look upon. He reflected on how short his captivity must have been. If he’d been tortured for several weeks as it seemed, he would have had more than an inch of hair on his jaw, instead of the scruffy growth he saw. As he rubbed the razor stubble on his jaw, he figured it might have been only a week, maybe ten days, max.
He shook
off the thoughts with a shudder and left the room. He instinctively headed back toward the empty hallways that he’d traversed near the Emergency Room. Along the way he started feeling anger mix in with the pain of his road rash.
They dumped me out of a moving vehicle! What the hell were they thinking? He could have been run over or he could have cracked his skull open on a curb. Even being dumped at the emergency room wouldn’t have helped that outcome.
Evil bastards.
His anger quickly turned to thoughts of revenge. He wanted to find them and...what? Maybe he could try to get all Rambo on their asses. Find their headquarters and hose it down with a mini-gun or a couple RPGs or something. Unfortunately, he didn’t have the knowledge or the tools or the skills to get revenge on the likes of those government bullies.
The agents were in the business of forcing their will upon other people, and he knew he wasn’t their first target. He wouldn’t be their last either, and there wasn’t a goddamn thing he or anyone like him could ever do about it.
He was simply a victim, and somehow he’d have to figure out how to live with that new reality. He was a victim of a secret part of the government composed of covert agents that did whatever the hell they wanted, and they didn’t care whose life they fucked up in pursuit of their mission.
The rational part of Carl’s brain accepted that what had happened to him wasn’t personal. The government wanted something from him, and they either got it or they didn’t, and then they released him. It was over. All he could do was accept his ass-whipping like a man, tuck his tail between his legs, and go home. Somehow try to get on with life and pretend the last few days never happened.
Then he realized he was two thousand miles from home, with no way to get himself cleaned up and presentable. He had no money, no debit card, no cell phone, no identification, and...no clothes. He thought of various possible courses of action. He could call his best friend Randal and have him wire some money to a nearby bank or Western Union, but that wouldn’t solve his ID problem.
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