by JT Sawyer
“Cassie was an amazing lady. I’m sorry for your loss, Cal.”
He turned to see Colonel Ryan Foley standing in a tan trench coat and brimmed hat. Foley and Patterson were the co-founders of the SD units, and the man had been his commanding officer since Patterson was medically retired from field agent status. Foley had been a legend in the Special Forces community for over twenty years, getting recruited by the agency for the Special Activities Division in his early forties over fifteen years ago. A few years later, he and Patterson formed the two search and destroy units, recruiting Shepard as one of the earliest members.
“Colonel, I didn’t know you were back in the States.”
“I just got in actually.” He moved closer, giving Cal a firm handshake then patting him on the shoulder. “I can’t imagine what you’ve been going through, son.”
“Thank you, Colonel.” Though none of the upper command elements in SAD used terms of formality, Shepard and the other operators still referred to Foley as “colonel” out of respect.
He looked at Shepard, whose lips were trembling from the cold. “I saw you standing here for a while. If you need more time I can…”
“No, I’m fine, thanks. I appreciate you coming.” He pried himself from the side of the grave, feeling like a part of his soul had been shorn away and had tumbled into the ground next to Cassie.
Cal walked towards the large oak tree for a respite from the deluge. He looked past Foley towards the nearly vacant curb.
“Patterson had to leave, so I told him I’d drive you back home or wherever you want to go.”
“Go?” His head was still in a fog. Where was there to go now but back to his empty home to stare at the walls?
“I remember there being a good diner a few miles from here.”
He realized, once again, that he had skipped another bout of meals and his stomach was rebelling. “Yes, something to eat… That, uhm, would work for me.”
Cal pushed his empty plate aside then sipped on his black coffee, staring out the window of the nearly empty diner at the gray skies, wondering if the sun would ever rear its head again.
“So, what brings you back to Langley?” Cal said, looking at Foley, who had just finished his last forkful of pancakes.
“Our two SD units are in between missions right now, and I have something brewing on the horizon that required my attention back here.”
“That sounds ominous.”
“Hardly. I just can’t go into details right now. I’ll know more in a few days when things get hashed out, but I will say that it’ll be a step above and beyond anything we’ve been doing with the SD units.”
Cal flared his eyebrow. “Really? And here I thought we were your pet project.”
“And you and the teams always will be. We’ve done great things, but it’s time for me to pass the torch of leadership on to someone else. With this new task force, I will have a lot more, shall we say, leeway with operational protocols.”
Cal stroked the side of his coffee cup. “Damn, now I’m really curious.”
“Good. You were at the top of my list of recruits, but I was also going to wait until the time was right to approach you.”
A black-ops unit under Foley that appears to be without much, or any, oversight… Who the hell is he working for?
“Is this a private contracting firm?”
He smirked. “Hell, no. It’s ours, but I can’t tell you more than that just yet, and unless you’re in, so think it over and get back to me when you’re ready.”
Cal nodded. At any other time in his life, he would be signing on without hesitation, but he felt like a rudderless ship, uncertain where the shoreline was even located.
“Thanks, Colonel. I’m honored, and I will let you know one way or the other.”
They paused their conversation when the waitress returned to replenish their coffee cups and place the bill down. After she left, Foley leaned forward, resting his meaty forearms on the table. “Patterson filled me in on what happened at the Burke place and the few breadcrumbs the Feds have on what unfolded. I just want you to know that if you need anything, day or night, you call me, you hear. Even if it’s just to talk. And when you find out who was behind this and don’t want anything to be traced back to you, then you call me about that too.”
“I will keep that in mind. Thank you.”
The thought of Foley stepping beyond the law wasn’t anything new, but generally it wasn’t something that was applied to his presence on U.S. soil. Where Patterson was the more subdued aristocratic figure who adhered to protocols before getting his hands bloodied, Foley was never one to conceal the wolf lurking beneath the surface and was always eager to kick in some doors to get what he wanted. He was tactful but blunt, with only a veneer of civility cloaking the predator beyond his smug grin.
Both men were mentors and respected commanders, and he wasn’t surprised that Foley was plunging deeper into the dark waters of off-the-books operations.
But right now, Cal had his own operation to organize, and the battle plans were about to be drawn up.
18
Alexandria, Virginia
On the rear patio of the Portside Coffee Shop, Michele Henderson was furiously typing on her laptop, only pausing long enough to brush her blond bangs aside and take another sip of her triple espresso.
Henderson wasn’t sure if it was the excessive caffeine surging through her or if it was the thought of the generous bonus her boss, Adam Hunley, would be paying her for her forthcoming masterpiece, which was about to make a splash on the internet.
She arched her chin up, trying to ease the kink in her neck from sitting in the café for the past two hours, feeling like her twenty-eight-year-old body was shrinking in stature from too many years behind a keyboard.
Armed with the doctored information from the satellite images extracted from the flash drive provided by Ian Landis, she had assembled all of the background data on the veteran CIA operative turned contract killer, Terrance Shepard, and the fabricated history of his corporate espionage efforts against Burke Enterprises.
This guy’s going to be buried so deep in some government black site that even God won’t be able to find him.
She sifted through the falsified documents a third time, knowing she had to be utterly thorough in making a case against Shepard so the media, public and law-enforcement agencies would see him as a ruthless mercenary twisted by greed—someone who was even bent on using his wife as part of his deeply embedded cover story in order to steal cyber-technology to sell to the highest bidder on the black market.
Incriminating someone in a heinous crime or scandal so their credibility was destroyed was nothing new for her, but Henderson was accustomed to only employing the tactics with politicians, not secret agents.
While Hunley paid her exceedingly well, she viewed herself as an artisan who used the internet to weave chaos, delighting in the long game of seeing rival corporations succumb to public-relations nightmares that had their origins at her fingertips. Better yet was playing a part in swaying election outcomes in third-world countries that Hunley was investing in.
“I’m an IGW expert,” she had proudly stated after first meeting with Hunley nearly twelve months ago, referring to internet guerilla warfare, which was a battlefield that was waged on a far greater scale than any government had been involved with during the past ten years. She detested the term “hacker,” which conjured up images of a chubby, pimply-faced teenager rattling away on a cheap PC in their parents’ basement.
Through her behind-the-scenes efforts, Henderson had bolstered the public image of the Roth Corporation, increased his social media presence abroad with environmental causes, and destroyed the careers of politicians and business leaders opposed to the expansion of Roth’s empire.
Once she was done with Shepard, she would disappear for a few days then continue with intensifying the online campaign efforts for Ernesto Rimaldi.
Between the targeted Facebook ads, blog postings on
numerous regional forums, and the bi-weekly online edition of Spanish newspapers in Venezuela whose reach far exceeded anything the incumbent had undertaken, she knew that Rimaldi’s presence would saturate the countryside.
She heard Hunley’s wise words echo in her head from their recent conversation:
Impoverished voters will go to any lengths for a candidate who nurtures their hopes, soothes their fears, and rationalizes their shortcomings while helping guide their arrows towards the fissures in their rival’s armor.
Henderson grinned, marveling at her boss’ grasp of politics and psychology. Damn, he’s a wizard. If I can stick it out with him for a few more years, I’ll never have to work again.
When she finished typing her last sentence, she glanced at her watch.
Thirty minutes left.
Once Henderson had completed the fabricated articles, she edited them to match the journalistic style of the targeted newspapers, forums and social media sites, then she saved the files and closed her laptop.
Swigging down the last of her beverage, she packed up her belongings and headed outside, walking the three blocks back to her Volvo, which was parked in the shadows beside a derelict furniture store.
Once inside, she slid on latex gloves then opened her laptop and transferred the first news files onto a newly purchased tablet, then put it on hibernate mode for twenty-four hours. Henderson slid it into a pre-paid FedEx envelope addressed to the Times. Then she did the same with corresponding articles directed to the Baltimore Republic and several prominent Virginia newspapers until eight tablets were uploaded.
It was Friday, and she had orchestrated everything for this weekend so that the newly arrived packages would be sent down to the newspaper’s mailrooms, where they would sit untouched for a few days. Once inside, the tablets would automatically exit their dormant mode on Saturday evening, insinuating their malware into the building’s Wi-Fi, after which the articles would be uploaded onto the company’s computers and disseminated on Sunday morning.
She sealed up the last of the packages then programmed her dark web account to release the other online articles and social media posts at the same time in thirty-six hours. She saved one file for last, triple-checking the contents then attaching it to a pre-scheduled email sent to the director of the FBI.
Come Sunday, Shepard will think the universe itself is conspiring against him.
Exiting the programs on her laptop, she inserted a metallic flash drive then initiated a file-deletion program followed by her own version of malware to destroy any remnant traces. Henderson rolled her window down then removed a small flask of muriatic acid, carefully pouring the caustic fluid into the side ports of her laptop then over the keyboard. She slid the laptop into a trash bag then removed her gloves and flung them inside.
Henderson started her car, heading for two miles to a drop box outside a FedEx facility, where she deposited the eight tablets. Afterwards, she drove north of Alexandria on the interstate, stopping briefly at a roadside park to drop the laptop into the swift-moving waters of the Potomac River.
19
Langley
Neil Patterson was awaiting Shepard’s arrival for their 10 a.m. meeting as he scrolled through his emails, his mind barely focusing on the subject lines as his thoughts drifted over the catastrophic events of the past few days followed by Cassie’s funeral.
The sweet-natured woman had been a dear friend and someone that Patterson checked in on whenever Cal was deployed, even taking her out for lunch on occasion.
Now she’s in a box in the ground, goddammit.
With thirty-plus years working at the agency, Patterson had never had the time or inclination for being a father, and Cassie and Cal had become like a surrogate family.
Patterson knew that the loss he had suffered with Cassie’s death paled in comparison to the soul-shredding experience that Shepard was going through.
He’s beyond devastated. What will come of his life now? What a fucking waste.
Beyond the grief and anguish, he also knew that Shepard had to be questioning what had gone wrong and who was behind the explosion.
All the senior staff at Burke’s being killed in one spot on the completion of their research…this was no fucking gas leak. He had spent enough of his career orchestrating killings to look like coincidences to know that this was a staged attack.
He had his own team of analysts looking into the forensics at the crater that had been Burke’s home, but he already knew what the answer would be.
It had to be a surgical strike to take out everyone who worked on Perseus before the software could go live. But only a handful of people knew what Perseus was really about, and most of them are dead now. Did Burke’s discovery with the simulated run over Caracas this week cause this, or were there events already set in motion before that? Is there some kind of covert strike that is about to unfold abroad amongst our troops or embassies or in Venezuela itself?
He swallowed hard, his gaze turning towards the skyline outside the window.
Or here, God help us.
He heard a knock on his office door, followed by the sight of Shepard entering. The man looked emaciated, the bags under his eyes accentuated by his pale skin, as if he’d just emerged from a month in a cave.
“Mornin’, Cal. Thanks for coming in. I’m sure this is the last place you want to be right now.” Patterson stood up, patting him on the shoulder as he walked to the small table near the window and grabbed a pitcher of water and two glasses.
It was a far cry from the celebratory drink of bourbon they’d had at their last meeting when toasting the completion of the Perseus project.
Shepard put his helmet on the desk then slumped down into the leather chair. “Sure beats staring at the walls in my living room right now. I feel like hopping on a plane and disappearing…flying to some undiscovered mountain valley and shacking up in a cabin for the rest of my days. To be honest, that’d be just fine with me.”
He took the glass of chilled water from Patterson, sipping on it then cradling it in his hands. “So, have you uncovered anything about what happened at Burke’s?”
“My team has been shadowing the FBI agent in charge, Amanda Carter, and her forensic investigators out there, and so far the only thing that turned up was the presence of Symtex residue in the kitchen.”
Cal gave a knowing nod. “I wondered how a gas explosion could turn a place into a volcano like that. Symtex was my first thought as well.” He leaned back in his seat. “That means that whoever did it wasn’t too worried about completely covering their tracks. They just needed Burke and everyone else out of the way long enough…but long enough for what?”
Patterson sat on the edge of the desk. “At Burke’s meeting with us at the Pentagon that afternoon, he indicated that the test run he put Perseus through a week earlier had turned up an anomaly. It was connected with satellite footage over Caracas and the presence of a former death-squad commander, Carlos Montoya, who had emerged after a long time being off-grid. Burke thought this might all be related to an upcoming presidential election in Venezuela. Our case officer down there, who joined the briefing, Milo Gardner, also indicated that two political journalists were killed in recent months.”
“This sounds like Project 284 all over—remember that scenario that was put together by the joint DOD-CIA think tank a few years back to simulate a non-invasive overthrow of a South American government?”
“Yeah, I was on the advisory panel, since I spent my first five years with the agency down in Chile.”
“Slowly eliminate the dissenting journalists and mid-level political opposition using hidden-hand mercs from outside the area of operation while trickling in funds to aid groups, then use sleeper agents to disperse the majority of funds to the media supporting the puppet we wanted in charge of the country.”
“Nothing new, really—that’s been the SOP for a century or longer with the dominant nations of the world, but the network has just gotten larger and more complex w
ith geopolitical entanglements.”
“Not to mention the expansion of the internet and the reach of social media and the dark web.”
Cal leaned forward. “I wonder if Burke fed the data for Project 284 into Perseus? Some of that was open-source material. All the things you mentioned happening in Venezuela…Perseus was designed to identify and form connections with intel like that.”
He set his glass on the desk, standing up and walking to the window. “But now you’re telling me Symtex was found at Burke’s… Who was in the know on what he was doing?”
“Only a handful of people at the highest levels in our clandestine agencies and anyone Burke brought into the picture from his own staff. Any thoughts on who that could have been? His head of security, maybe—the guy in the hospital?”
Cal’s face grew even more grave. “In the morgue. He died yesterday.”
“What? I thought his condition had improved.”
“That lady Carter and her lapdog were at the hospital when I dropped by to check on Reggie. Nurse said it was probably an aneurysm related to his skull fracture, but here’s the kicker—the Feds said that someone paid Reggie a visit and left in a hurry shortly before he flatlined.”
Cal rubbed his chin. “Thing is, the suspect exited the rear of the hospital in a hurry…on a motorcycle. He had it all planned out down to a staged exfil route and knowledge of the camera locations. And Carter indicated Reggie had received a ten-grand payment into his bank account last week from an offshore account. Must have been paid off to disable the security cameras at Burke’s and look the other way when the mercs from that catering van arrived.”
Patterson pursed his lips. “The caterers…you sure it was them? There were some senior staff of Burke’s who didn’t make it to the party.”
Cal shook his head. “There was something about those guys—the driver in particular—that just seemed out of place. Maybe, if I hadn’t been so preoccupied that afternoon I would have…”
