by Trevor Scott
“I understand. Will she go visit her sister?”
“Yes. She’ll leave within the hour. Just needs to pack a bag.”
“You want to wait for her? That’s a pretty long drive on bad roads.”
“She’s been driving these roads all her life. And she’s got my dad’s truck.”
“Where is your dad?”
“Don’t get me started.” She let out a heavy sigh. “He’s somewhere in Costa Rica. A whitewater river guide.”
“Seriously? Isn’t he a little old for that?”
“I have no idea. He left my mom about five years ago and I haven’t heard from him since then. Not sure if I want to at this point.”
Knowing not to push the subject any further, Jake turned over the engine and started off toward the airport. On the way there, he first dropped off his weapons at his storage unit. He couldn’t fly with them. While he did so, Lori called the airport and got them each a ticket on a flight to Denver and then on to DC.
19
Jake and Lori had traveled most of the day, getting into DC in late afternoon, just as the sun receded past the Beltway. He said his goodbye to Lori, who was picked up by her wary driver. Jake guessed the guy was still pissed at him for putting him into a sleeper hold and then stuffing him into the trunk of the limo. Lori had seemed somewhat subdued by their separation, saying again that she didn’t really want to spend the rest of her break on an official junket to South Korea. They agreed to stay in touch but Jake didn’t think they would. Sure they had connected on some level. Perhaps that was based on their past. Maybe there had been a spark of some sort. He might never know for sure. She was back to her job in Washington and he was back to. . . That was the problem. He wasn’t sure about the direction of his life anymore. Despite what had happened in Montana, Jake was certain that this case wasn’t over. Besides having to drop off Professor Tramil’s research to his old friends, he would still have to find out who was trying to steal the man’s work. Who had kidnapped him and killed those people in Montana. He guessed they had only kept him alive in DC so he could lead them to Tramil. And he had. Kind of.
Now, after hanging out and drinking a couple of beers at a Dulles Airport bar, Jake took an airport shuttle bus to the Ritz-Carlton in Tysons Corner by McLean, Virginia. After staying in a remote cabin, he felt the need to pamper himself.
He took a shower and then settled onto the comfortable bed, waiting. But he didn’t have to wait long. He might have caught twenty minutes of rest before he heard someone approach the door. Then there were two quiet knocks, a pause, one more knock, a second pause, and then two quick knocks. He smiled and went to the door, not even looking through the peep hole.
Standing in the hall, a subdued smile on her face, was his old friend Toni Contardo. They had worked together years ago in the CIA, had been lovers on and off, and now were. . .well, he wasn’t sure. But he guessed they were just friends. Toni was now working special projects directly for the CIA Director, Kurt Jenkins.
Toni glanced in both directions in the hallway. “You gonna let me in?”
He let her pass and she plopped down on the crumpled bed, feeling the sheets. Her eyes scanned the room. She hadn’t lost a step in her training. She was seeing if he was alone.
After closing the door, Jake stood in the center of the large room and asked her what he already knew. “How’d you find me?”
She laughed. “You left a trail of bread crumbs like a civilian.”
“I am a civilian.”
“Yeah, right. You couldn’t be a civilian if you tried.” Hesitating, her eyes bore right into him. “You booked the flight with one of your real Visa cards, and this hotel room with the same card.”
“Which you had flagged.”
Toni shrugged. “You could have just come by my office in Langley.”
“You have an office now? I thought you were just special projects.”
“You know what I meant,” she said.
He paced across the room and stood at the window, checking out the glow of the city in the distance.
She got off the bed and looked in the mini-bar. “Wow, that’s some top shelf booze. You’re living right now, Jake. But I guess you can afford it.”
Jake knew she knew what he had made on a few of his last cases. Yeah, he could afford a nice hotel once in a while, but that really wasn’t him. He preferred a mountain lodge over any city hotel. Which is why he had stayed at his apartment so long in Innsbruck. But now even he wasn’t sure where he belonged.
“You got something for me I understand.”
He turned to her and said, “What, no small talk? How have you been?”
“I think I know how you’ve been,” she said, stepping closer to him. “Fishing in Patagonia, followed by testifying before congress and becoming an internet sensation, and then traveling to Montana with the U.S. representative from that state, where you killed a man.”
“You left out getting kidnapped here in DC.”
“And your appearance on The O’Reilly Factor. That wasn’t smart.”
“Maybe not,” he said. “But I had a feeling the right people would be watching.”
She studied him carefully, seeing if she could still read him as she had in the past. “You let them follow you to Montana?”
Jake shrugged. “They had me cold. Could have killed me. They made it far too easy for me to escape. So yeah, I let them follow me for a while.”
“And then you asked a friend at the NSA for help finding that man who had kidnapped the professor in Montana. You could have asked me.”
“I didn’t want to bother someone at your level,” he explained.
Toni looked frustrated with him. Like she had been too many times in their past. Perhaps that was why they were not still together. “You think we don’t know what’s going on here? It’s a lot more complex than you might know.”
“It always is, Toni. Let me guess, you’ve been tracking this technology for quite some time, along with Professor Tramil at Oregon State. Just waiting for the guy to break through. Then you caught others interested as well. Why didn’t you protect the man?”
“We tried, Jake. They were both offered positions with DARPA. Neither wanted that.”
“But you were going to get this technology one way or another,” Jake said with an edge to his raised voice.
She said nothing, which revealed a lot.
He continued, “You hired the man I killed in Montana to take this technology.”
“You’re crazy,” she yelled quietly, her chest rising with anger. “That’s not the way we work.”
It was a bad idea to imply she was behind the murder of that professor, and Jake felt like shit for doing so. But Toni was telling him a lot less than she knew. “I’m sorry. I just don’t understand how the Agency could stand on the sidelines with this type of technology out there. Tramil’s work could change the way we operate. The way our military operates. The way your Agency operates. You’ve got to admit it makes no sense to hold back protection of those two Oregon State professors.”
Toni sat back onto the bed, her shoulders slumped. “We had some intel that others were interested in the professors, and especially Tramil. As you know we are not supposed to work within our borders.”
“Yeah, I know. But that hasn’t stopped you before. Why wasn’t this turned over to the FBI?”
Toni considered that and leaned back onto her arms. “Trust is a fragile thing, Jake. This is bigger than the FBI. And it’s still evolving. There could be a number of State actors involved, which is our concern.”
Jake knew how this worked. Neither organization wanted to trust the other until it was absolutely necessary. “What about the video I sent you? Who are those two Bozos?”
Sitting up again, Toni said, “That I can share with you. The bald guy is a man named Danko Boskovic. And the one with long hair is Alex Yaroslav.”
“Sound like Ukrainian or Russian,” Jake said. “Maybe Czech.”
“Good guess
. Boskovic is former GRU from Odessa, and Yaroslav is from Prague. He was an agent for the Russian CVR and was paid by the BIS.”
The BIS was the Czech Security Information Service. Jake had worked with them a few times. “Who are these two working for now?” Jake asked.
Toni shook her head. “Good question. That’s what we’re trying to find out.” She hesitated. “Do you have the professor’s work?”
Jake shoved his hand into his pocket and pulled out the flash card, which he threw to his old friend.
“You could have just zipped the data, encrypted it, and uploaded it to me.”
Smiling, Jake said, “I know. But maybe I still like to do some things old school. Besides, I thought it was best to make sure the congresswoman got back to DC all right. But it is encrypted and password protected.” He told her a series of fifteen numbers and letters he had used for the password, knowing she would find significance and remember it within seconds.
She got up and put the flash card into the front pocket on her slacks. “She is quite pretty.”
“That has nothing to do with it,” he assured her.
Looking toward the door, Toni said, “What will you do now?”
“I should be in Tierra del Fuego right now catching sea-run Browns,” he said. “I might just grab my gear and head back to the end of the Earth.”
“Or. . .”
“No fucking way,” Jake said. “I’m not working for the Agency again. Besides, you can’t afford me.”
“Jake, come on. You know you can’t retire. Fishing is for young boys and old men. You’re not there yet, my friend.”
She was so full of shit. His passion was with dry flies and nymphs. If he wanted to wade chest high in a freezing mountain stream with morning mist rising off the crystal clear water, he sure as hell wasn’t going to be goaded into working for the government again. “You know how I like my independence, Toni. I don’t like others telling me what to do or when to do it.”
Toni smiled at him. Yeah, she knew this. “I think I might know you better than anyone else on this planet. What if I can guarantee you autonomy?”
“And if I get jacked up like in Tunisia, you’ll still be there to bail my ass out?”
She raised her arms like Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro. “Have I not always been there for you, Jake?”
Yes, she had. And that was the problem with turning over the professor’s data directly to Toni. She knew that he would have a hard time saying no to her. Maybe Jake should have just uploaded the research to her. “What can I possibly do that your people can’t do?”
Her brows scrunched down with contemplation. “I can trust you, Jake.”
“And you can’t trust your own people?”
“We have a leak somewhere. I’ve been trying to plug it for a while, but no luck.”
He’d worked with leaks in the past. It was never fun. Maybe that’s why he worked alone now. “You always seem to have a leak. So, what do you need me to do?”
Toni came to him and gave him a big hug. “I knew I could count on you.” Pulling away and holding his arms, she continued, “The actors in this could be State players, but it could be companies that want this technology.”
“Like we found with the Hungarians years ago.”
“Right. Yet, it could be both. We could have companies paying for the op, using these former intel officers to divert attention away from their own country.”
“That’s what I would do,” Jake agreed. “If I’m China I’d use former French agents. Maybe Canadians.”
“So you’re not buying this Czech and Ukrainian and Russian cabal?”
He shook his head. “Not really.”
“Me either.” She started toward the door and stopped.
“You’re forgetting something,” Jake said, a huff of laughter in his words.
Turning to him, she said, “Right. Where do we go from here.”
She knew exactly what she wanted to tell him, Jake knew. Toni was very good at her job, and her job was to use the best people to reach the best result. And she had probably orchestrated this entire conversation. She also knew that Jake would acquiesce to her before she stepped foot in this Ritz-Carlton. But, since Jake knew what she was doing, it wasn’t like he was being manipulated. He was simply a willing actor in her play.
She explained what she wanted from him, obviously leaving out almost as much as she told him. Compensation would flow directly to his bank account in Luxembourg, and Jake knew it would probably come from some obscure internet porn site. Toni had a great sense of humor.
“Korea?” Jake said. “You want me to babysit a congressional delegation?”
“Not officially, Jake. Someone from that delegation is part of our leak.”
“Well, I guarantee that Lori Freeman is not the leak,” he assured her.
“I know that. We think it’s from the other side of the aisle.”
“How do you expect me to look into these people with Lori there? She’ll see me and know something is up.”
Smiling, she said, “Let me worry about your cover. You need to get on a plane immediately and get there before them.”
“Military transport?”
“Good guess. Be at Andrews at zero three hundred. There will be a pouch and bag waiting for you.”
“Hopefully a gun.”
“Two. Identical Glock 19 gen-fours in 9mm.”
“Nice guns,” he said. “I own a few Glocks.”
“I know. But both of these are registered to a guy from Texas who has been dead for five years.”
“Standard fifteen round magazines?” Jake asked.
“Yes. But I’ve given you four extra magazines. Besides, I don’t expect you to use them.”
It was never expected, Jake thought. But shit always seemed to happen.
“But I just checked in here,” Jake said.
She went to the door and turned back. “You can still get a couple of hours.”
Toni left him alone to consider his current situation. Yeah, he could get some sleep. But now all he could think about was this case. What in the hell had he gotten himself into this time?
●
As Toni walked to the elevator, her emotions fluctuated from longing to disgust. She had just lied to the only man she would probably ever love. Yet, somehow he seemed to know she was lying. Jake could always read her, and that continually pissed her off. Just once it would have been nice to be able to deceive him like her training and experience allowed with other men. Perhaps her love for him was the problem. She couldn’t allow herself to be totally deceptive with Jake. Others were merely targets.
She got into the elevator and pushed the button for the garage. The doors closed and she gently felt the flash card in her right front pocket. Somehow Jake had gotten the information they needed without much trouble. Well, he did have to kill that man in Montana and release the kidnapped professor. That was something. But in the short time he had been with the professor he had convinced the man to turn over his research—something the government had tried to do though coercion and persuasion ever since they had found out about his ground-breaking discoveries.
Getting off at the garage level, Toni smiled as she walked casually to her car. A part of her wished she could go to Korea with Jake. To be together with Jake one more time. . .no, that wouldn’t work. Or could it? They had been good together.
Before she reached her car, she stopped for a second, as if she had forgotten something and was considering going back inside. In reality, something felt wrong. She wasn’t sure what, though. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up and tickled her, as if a cold breeze struck her briskly from behind.
Instinctively, she switched the car keys from her right hand to her left as she clicked open the driver’s door. Then with her right hand, she drew her 9mm auto handgun from inside her leather jacket and turned swiftly toward a slight shuffling sound behind her.
A man with a gun lowered himself behind the back of a car, giving h
er no shot. She crouched down low, her gun aimed toward the hostile.
Suddenly, a sharp pain struck her in her right butt cheek, followed by a jolt that knocked her from her feet. She found herself flopping around on the cold, hard concrete ground and thinking about the last time she had been struck by a Tazer, with fifty thousand volts passing through her body. She was helpless. A completely unfamiliar feeling for her.
Her head against the concrete, the clicking sound of the Tazer still zapping her muscles into a bundle of flaccidity, she was aware of the sound of high heels coming toward her. As her eyes focused on this new sound, she smiled when she saw the most beautiful shoes she had seen in years. Rising up from those heels were extremely fit ankles. And those were her last thoughts before the second wave of volts coursed through her body.
20
Jake considered it a sin to leave his luxury hotel room in the middle of the night to catch a flight on a military aircraft at zero dark thirty. He wished he had a buck for every time he had strapped himself into a web seat on a C-130, or inside a Blackhawk. But he had gotten to Joint Base Andrews and found out he would be riding on what looked like the private jet of a spoiled Hollywood actor, a Gulfstream G550 or the military version C-37B, he was relieved somewhat. He knew they could make the entire flight from DC to South Korea on one tank of fuel. And if he had to fly, this was one helluva way to do so.
After some thirteen hours in the air, with nearly everyone aboard sleeping most of the way, they finally touched down at Osan Air Base, South Korea, some 45 miles south of Seoul. As he got off the plane and onto the tarmac, he couldn’t help thinking about the last time he was at Osan, where he had been strapped into a pod in the bomb bay of a B-2, and then was later dropped off into the Russian Far East. Not too many happy thoughts with that mission, other than his brief relationship with Chang Su.
At the operations building, a slight Korean man wearing an oversized black business suit, his close-cropped hair speckled with a touch of gray, smiled broadly when he saw Jake enter with his pack over his shoulder. Jake had heard a man would meet him here, but he had just gotten a name without a description.
