Calculated Contagion

by K. T. Lee

  “Dani. My name is Dani. Thank you for saving my life.”

  * * *

  With Dani tucked into the small relief in the rocks, Cam climbed the small rise in the terrain to check the valley behind them. Their pursuers approached the entrance to the deep bowl in the landscape about a half of a mile distant. Behind him, the helicopter landed in the clearing. They were going to make it. He returned to the overhang and pulled Dani into the open to meet their ride. Gunshots rang out, their pursuers acting either as indiscriminate killers or out of anger as they realized the helicopter was taking their prize away. Or maybe it was some combination of the two. Cam kept Dani in front of him to protect her in the unlikely event a stray bullet would hit her as they ran towards safety. Cam checked the area to ensure he’d left nothing behind before following her into the helicopter.

  The helicopter rose from the ground before they were completely secure in their seats. Tyler handed Dani a pair of headphones to block the noise once they were fully airborne and headed back to the airport. She stared at Tyler with raised eyebrows and wide eyes. He gave her a wink and brief salute. Cam snapped her into a seat and her eyes scanned the inside of Tyler’s helicopter, as if cataloging the contents. There were no identifying markings on the helicopter or on either of the men. Based on her obvious scan of the helicopter and subsequent tapping of her finger against her leg, Dani hadn’t missed that detail.

  The rest of Cam’s team was located near an airport in Satu Mare, Romania, and they would join them shortly. Now that they had extra cargo, Cam wasn’t sure what they would do about it, but like everything in the CIA, there was a procedure they had to follow. First, he had to find out the American woman’s identity and determine how she ended up getting captured and taken to a camp in the Romanian mountains.

  6

  Watchman? Green Eagle? Who were these people? Dani stole a glance at her rescuer, sitting comfortably next to her in the helicopter. He had his eyes forward and elbows on his knees. He bantered easily with the pilot through the microphone attached to his headphones. Hers were just noise-cancelling, and the thudding of the rotor and roar of the engine were muted as she studied her surroundings. From what she could see in the dimly lit helicopter, the pilot looked amused. In contrast to Cam’s short beard and mussed brown hair, Green Eagle’s face was clean-shaven and his cropped black hair was one step away from a military buzz cut. He looked back and met her eyes, smiling easily at her as he continued his conversation with Cam. It was so surreal, Dani forgot herself for a moment and smiled back.

  Green Eagle competently navigated the helicopter through the darkness, all while chatting easily with Cam. The men were not overly animated or nervous. In fact, they seemed unaffected by what she considered a terrifying escape. The helicopter ride took less than an hour, but it felt like longer to Dani, who began to wonder if what was coming would be an answer to or escalation of her problems. After the helicopter landed, her shaking hands fumbled with the buckle. Cam reached over to pull on the clip that loosened the straps, giving her a hearty pat on the shoulder as she threaded her weary body out of the complicated seatbelt. Cam helped her out of the helicopter as the blades slowly rotated to a stop. The pilot flicked several switches before removing his headphones. It looked like they were at an airport, but the lighted words on the nearest building were in a language she didn’t recognize.

  Cam said without preamble, “Romania.”

  “I’m sorry?” she replied.

  “You looked confused. We’re in Romania.”

  “Wait? The country?” Dani knew they had crossed a few borders but she hadn’t expected that. It didn’t make sense. Why would someone kidnap her and take her to Romania, of all places?

  “Yes, the country. I’m afraid we need to talk. I know you’ve had a long day but we’d like to debrief you. We have a house nearby that’s safe that we can take you to.”

  “I’m sorry, a house? Who are you? How do I know you aren’t going to hurt me?” Dani began to slowly back away, looking for witnesses. She probably would have been less confrontational if she wasn’t hungry and tired and just coming off the worst day of her life, but she could only take so much.

  The pilot walked up behind Cam and slapped his hand on his back. “What Mr. Congeniality is trying to tell you is that we’re the good guys, and we want to help you get back home. We’ll get it straightened out, just give us a few minutes to call it in.”

  “Call what in?”

  Cam rubbed his forehead. “Let’s start with this–what’s your name?”

  “I told you. It’s Dani.” Dani crossed her arms and stared at Cam, who let out a frustrated sigh.

  “Look, I know you’ve been through a lot. But, here’s the thing. I was at the camp on a recon op and stuck my neck out to save yours. We’re going to have to go on faith until I can get some ID. I don’t have it on me in case I got caught and needed to be someone else to stay alive. I know it sounds crazy, but that’s all I’ve got. I’m here with the US government. I’m afraid I have to get permission to say more than that from my boss.” Dani looked back at the unmarked helicopter. “I know what it looks like, but the helicopter couldn’t have any identifying markings. Look, we’re at a public airport. You could scream and get help in an instant. However, in return for getting you out of trouble, we’d like a few minutes of your time to learn more about your kidnappers.” Dani wavered and studied the two bulky men on either side of her.

  She met the pilot’s eyes one more time. Green Eagle nodded at her before sweeping his eyes along the perimeter of the airport. Then he said, “Dani, he’s a pain in the ass. But you can trust him.”

  Despite her situation, she snorted out a laugh before giving them a tiny nod. She had no ID, no money, no cell phone, and no idea where she actually was. The men looked military and seemed trustworthy. Realistically, she had no other options. Steeling herself to face whatever situation was coming, she followed the men to a waiting car and settled into the backseat with Cam. Green Eagle sat in front with the driver, who seemed to know she was coming.

  The driver of the car held a phone towards Cam and he hesitated. It was the first time he’d showed anything close to uncertainty since she’d met him.

  Before accepting the device, Cam said, “Morgan want to talk?”

  “You bet your ass, Cam. You’ve got some explaining to do.”

  Looking towards Dani for a moment, Cam shrugged and put the phone to his ear. “Ma’am?”

  Dani could only hear Cam’s side of the conversation but could figure out the gist of it from the tense tone of the unintelligible words on the other side of the line. Cam’s back straightened as he subconsciously snapped to attention and responded to the angry voice.

  “Yes, ma’am. One package. No ma’am. I did not call it in to protect my cover. You pay me to make judgement calls. Yes, ma’am. She saw the inside, and we’re going to bring her in to talk to her and get some more information for you. Permission–. Yes, ma’am, I understand that. Permission to–. No ma’am. Negative. She’s an American.”

  Cam went silent and relief passed over his face.

  “You’re welcome, ma’am. All in a day’s work serving my country. Permission to present ID and debrief. Thank you, ma’am. Yes, ma’am. I’ll see you back at the ranch.”

  Cam ended the call, turned to Dani, and stuck out his hand. “As I said before, my name is Cameron. I work for the CIA. My friends call me Cam. I’ll get you some ID momentarily.”

  “Did I…get you in trouble?” Dani asked.

  “No, ma’am,” Cam said. “My boss wasn’t upset about the extraction, just that I didn’t call in for backup. Good thing you’re American or she’d nail my hide to the door when I got back home.”

  * * *

  “She might nail it to the door anyway.” Tyler was still amped up after the high-pressure extraction and couldn’t help but give his buddy a hard time, even if they had company. The woman, Dani, was shivering like a scared rabbit and could probably use a
distraction right now.

  The car pulled up to the safe house and the three CIA officers exited the vehicle. Dani continued to stare forward in disbelief, and Tyler opened her door. He offered his hand and snapping out of her distraction, she took it. Her hand was cold, in contrast to the warmth of his own. He shrugged out of his jacket and gave it to her. Dani gave him a small smile in response, put it on, zipped it up to the top, and shrank into it.

  Cam jogged up to the door where a fellow officer waited with a small wallet with Cam’s credentials. They would show only “Cameron M,” but the quality of the documentation was something that couldn’t be created on short notice. The CIA went to great lengths to create covers, and even though this civilian rescue was an extraordinary circumstance, it wasn’t extraordinary enough for any of them to provide their full names. Cam retrieved the wallet and handed it to Dani, who studied it carefully under a streetlight before sticking out her hand.

  “Dani Christensen. My friends call me Dani. Thank you for saving me from whatever they had planned.”

  “The Dani Christensen? As in Daniel Christensen’s daughter?”

  Dani nodded and Tyler let out a low whistle. Cam was going to hold that over Morgan’s head for a while. Dani’s father wasn’t exactly a celebrity, but he was a well-known businessman and generally respected, even if the events of the past day suggested that his appeal might not be universal. He had largely shielded his family from media attention and it therefore wasn’t a surprise they didn’t recognize her face. The men did a quick visual sweep of the street and ushered a curious Dani into the house.

  7

  “With all due respect, sir, you’re kidding me.” FBI agent Parker Mitchell crossed his arms and leaned back against his chair to frown at Patrick Sandhill, Parker’s unit chief and “Sandy” to his direct reports. Sandy had called the meeting with his team in the Chicago field office to strategize for their next assignment, fully prepared for Parker to balk at the prospect of more bureaucracy.

  “I don’t kid, Agent Mitchell. You are aware of that.” Sandy’s voice was carefully flat. He had years of practice dealing with FBI agents and Parker would come around once he understood the details. He looked up from the paper in front of him over the top of the reading glasses his wife had given him the previous week. The damn things made him look old, so they should at least do him the favor of helping him stare down his agent. He’d managed the FBI agent sulking in the chair in front of him for countless aliases, including the latest, Parker Landon.

  Parker and his team had garnered the right sort of attention from their friends at the CIA, and the formation of a cross-agency task force would be a valuable learning opportunity for them all. However, a man like Parker wouldn’t consider the paperwork that came with it to be anything but an annoyance, especially since his team had been selected as a result of their skill in the field. Of course, the bureaucrats who formed the task force were blissfully unaware of the fact that the qualities that make a good field agent were not synonymous with making a good paperwork jockey. But, the higher-ups all thought it was a great idea, and orders were orders.

  “Why do they want to meet with us?” Alexis asked. Alexis Thompson had a gift for sensing the emotions in a room and had been leaning against a wall, watching the scene unfold with amusement. Alexis pushed up to stand behind her team lead and good friend. The move was an obvious stall to give Parker some time to come around, and Sandy’s eyes softened a fraction. Good job, Alex. Sandy gestured at the door to his office. Mike, who had been standing in the doorway, moved inside the room and shut the door behind him. Mike Moretti didn’t say much, but when he did, the team listened.

  Sandy said, “Because you guys nailed it on your last investigation. You did everything by the book and you caught the guy in his own country before the CIA could do it. They probably don’t like you one-upping them and want to know how you did it.”

  Sandy didn’t voice his other theory–some of the directors at the CIA probably wanted to borrow his people to use on occasion and maybe even recruit them over full-time. For years, he had been talking up the ways the two agencies could collaborate to anyone who would listen. Until this meeting was scheduled, he thought he was wasting his breath. What Sandy didn’t realize was in pushing his cause, he had created an opening for CIA management to poach his well-trained all-stars. He might have to recruit some folks to help fill in the gaps when the CIA realized how good his team was. It was unfortunate, but also unstoppable. It wouldn’t be the first time he had to train rookies. He’d just make sure he got the funding he needed in return before he let any of his people moonlight for the CIA.

  “They have the reports,” Mike said with a shrug. There wasn’t any opposition in his tone, just a statement of fact.

  “Mike, you’ll do it. I’m not asking.”

  “Of course, sir. Not in question. Who do they have us meeting with?”

  “One of their best operations officers. You and Alex met him in Ghana. The CIA calls him Watchman, but they thought you guys needed CIA-issued background checks before they gave you a name. They’ll probably send a couple of his people to even things up.”

  “Interesting. I thought one of them looked familiar, but I still haven’t been able to place him. We barely said three words to either of them–apparently, we made an impression,” Alexis said, tapping her finger against her lips.

  “Evidently. I’ll let you know when the meeting gets scheduled.”

  * * *

  Parker waited for Sandy to mention the final member of the Ghanaian team who wasn’t standing in the room, but he appeared to be done talking. Now a fully-vetted FBI consultant, Dr. Ree Ryland had shot the enemy agent in Ghana and incapacitated him before he could launch missiles in the attempt to assassinate his country’s president. In addition to teaching mechanical engineering courses and working in a lab at Indiana Polytechnic, the professor who had been roped into the investigation by accident was also a hell of a good shot. And she was now also Parker’s girlfriend. Parker had filled out the significant relationships form a few days prior, but Sandy hadn’t said a word. He cleared his throat. “Excuse me, sir, but where does Dr. Ryland fit into all of this?”

  Sandy raised the phone he’d lifted off the receiver in the air.

  “Oh, do you want me to call her, sir?” Alexis asked from the doorway.

  “That’d be great, Alex. It’d save me a few minutes, and she trusts you.”

  Parker said, “Before she comes up, you should know…” Parker stopped his explanation short at the sight of Sandy’s knowing smile, a rare moment of showing his cards.

  “That you guys are dating? Yes, I received the significant relationships paperwork. Are you going to insult me by thinking the first time I knew something was going on was when that paperwork hit my desk? Really, Parker, I’m old but I’m not stupid.”

  “Sir?”

  “Whatever is going on with you two has worked for us in the past and until there are signs of trouble or it threatens an investigation, I’ll use it to my advantage. Now, do you have anything else relevant to this topic?” Sandy asked.

  “No, sir.” Parker rubbed a hand down his face. It was awkward enough to tell his boss their witness turned consultant was now his girlfriend. The fact that Sandy knew about it already somehow made it…worse.

  Alexis didn’t bother to mask her grin and called after Parker as he beat a strategic retreat from Sandy’s office, “If we’re comparing notes, Mikey and I called it months ago.”

  Parker shook his head and kept walking. One thing about working so closely with your friends was that there weren’t many secrets between them. He’d just wait for Ree’s call after Alexis talked to her. Ree had taken to the work like a duck to water. There was no doubt as to what her answer would be. Even though Parker would rather keep her safely out of harm’s way, Ree had eagerly volunteered to help the next time she was needed. It was a small price to pay to date someone with the one-two punch of tenacity and heart.

&n
bsp; * * *

  A few hours away, Dr. Ree Ryland studied materials samples under the microscope, sliding the final sample into place. Nearly all had fatigued in a way she expected, but this sample had fractured differently than the others. Turning the fine-tune knob to focus the lens, she confirmed the graduate student who had prepped the samples had oriented the material in the wrong direction before cutting it. Ree sighed, pulled the sample off the microscope, and compartmentalized her annoyance.

  Ree was almost finished with this research project, her first real assignment since her move to the propulsion laboratory, and one of the grad students had goofed up the samples. Thinking the direction of the cut didn’t matter in this material was an undergrad mistake. Maybe she could use the data for the sample as an example of what not to do. Or she could use it to explain how the properties changed with direction in one of her lectures–lemonade out of lemons or something like that. Ree retreated to her desk to retrieve a piece of chocolate and reminded herself to be grateful for the relatively tame frustrations that came with testing samples in a research laboratory.

  The memories of working on a more stressful assignment were still fresh in her mind. Ree had recently been drawn into an FBI investigation when the FBI followed the trail of missile control system components to a grad student at Indiana Polytechnic. He had disguised the parts as test equipment and delivered them to her lab. Initially, she was a suspect, but after she was cleared, the FBI roped her into helping out. Because their culprit had been smart and only acquired the small pieces and parts in the US, it took a long and terrifying month to figure out what was happening and who was responsible. More than one coworker had been a suspect, and Ree was happy to no longer be working among people keeping such big secrets. The undercover work had satisfied her sense of adventure for the foreseeable future. She had also fallen for the guy leading the team, and it turned out, the falling was mutual. Parker and Ree had been dating long-distance since the conclusion of the investigation a few months prior. They kept in regular contact, to the extent it was possible when he occasionally worked undercover.