Breach of Protocol

by Nathan Goodman

  The sounds from that day’s echoing gunfire reverberated in her head. As her feet pounded the hillside, Jana’s mind descended deeper and deeper, back to the scene. In her mind’s eye she could see the muzzle of the terrorist’s handgun as the barrel flashed, then flashed again as he fired at her. She relived the feeling of the bullets as they slammed into her chest, smelled the acrid gunpowder, and relived the shock of blue sky she saw as her head slammed into the hard ground.

  Here in an all-out sprint to stop Jarrah, Jana’s vision began to blur and although she did not know it, her breathing accelerated. She was falling into a post-traumatic stress episode, and she had no control over it. Roaring sounds from the nearby river began to escalate in volume—she was nearing the waterfall.

  Her feet pounded faster, the periphery of her eyesight faded further, and darkness descended upon her. It was then that she ran straight into a solid object, taking the strike at throat level—the effect something like running in a full sprint into a taught clothesline.

  Her head and neck wrenched backward and her legs flew out from under her. She crashed onto her spine, and her head slammed into a rock. The wind left her lungs and her spine screamed in agony against the rifle strapped in place there.

  The shockwave of pain snapped her away from the washy etchings of her PTSD episode and back to reality. Her mouth hung open but no sounds emerged. She gulped in an effort to bring oxygen back into her lungs. And standing above her was a man, a man named Waseem Jarrah.

  50

  THE DEVIL’S DEN

  The top of Tower Fall, just above Devil’s Den, Yellowstone National Park

  Jarrah laughed so hard that he braced his hands onto his knees. “Ah, Miss Baker. How pleasant it is to see you again.”

  Jana coughed, then spit out more blood. Her chest heaved under the exhaustion of pushing her body to the breaking point.

  “I wish I had been able to video that. Not that anyone would have ever seen it. Not after I complete my final objective, that is. It looked rather painful, Miss Baker. Was it?” He laughed again.

  Jana wheezed and started to realize the enormity of the situation. She tried to sit up but knew she had cracked at least one rib and possibly a vertebra.

  “Why don’t you go fuck yourself,” she choked out.

  “You apparently did not learn respect from my friend Rafael. I made it clear to you, the female will bow to the male, as you do now. How you escaped Rafael’s grip, I do not know. But I no longer care.”

  “Rafael squealed like a little girl when I killed him.”

  He reached underneath her and pulled against the rifle barrel, wrenching it free as Jana screamed in pain. She coughed blood, which splattered out around her mouth and chin.

  He checked the rifle’s chamber to ensure a round was in it, then placed his boot on her ribs and leaned his weight into her. She struggled to breathe and reached to her holster, but Jarrah slapped her hand away, then removed the Glock.

  “You will have no need for this now.” He flung the handgun over the edge of the gorge and watched it disappear into the mist pouring up from the bottom of the falls. He then rested the butt of the rifle on his hip.

  “Devil’s Den, they call it. Over a hundred feet straight down, Miss Baker. Makes a wonderful place to drop a nuclear bomb, don’t you think? The explosion will originate much closer to the supervolcano that sleeps just below us.” His grin widened.

  Jana reached behind herself to rub the agony screaming in her back, and she groaned under the pain.

  “Perhaps you would like to join it when I drop the backpack over the edge? Maybe when you were a little girl growing up on your grandfather’s farm, you wondered what it would be like to be a bird? And perhaps even now, you would like to learn how to fly? Come, Miss Baker. Let’s see if you can fly.”

  As he leaned down and grabbed the neckline of her shirt, Jana plunged a knife deep into his chest. Jarrah recoiled and fell to his back, then Jana rolled onto her hands and crawled toward him.

  Jarrah’s mouth and eyes opened wide and Jana straddled her legs over his abdomen and pinned his arms underneath her weight. Blood dripped from her mouth onto his sweat soaked shirt. She locked both hands around the handle of the ancient knife, it’s blade still buried in his chest, and watched as fear and shock built in his coal-black eyes.

  “Remember this?” Jana said through clenched teeth. “The knife that belonged to the Prophet Mohammad?”

  Jarrah’s eyes locked onto the knife handle and his chest heaved.

  “You wanted it put to good use, as I recall. You wanted Rafael to use it to skin me alive, is that right? Like I said, Rafael squealed like a little girl when I killed him, just like the other terrorist pricks of yours I killed.”

  Jarrah gritted his teeth as anger and terror boiled within him.

  “But you won’t get the chance to squeal like they did,” Jana said. She yanked the knife out of Jarrah’s chest and blood spurted from the wound with each beat of his heart. She raised the blade to her side and slashed it across his throat. The razor-sharp edge sliced the soft flesh and trachea, spraying blood across the pine needles that covered the ground. Jarrah’s throat lay open as he thrashed underneath her.

  “You’ll not be meeting Allah this day,” Jana stammered. “You’ll be visiting the Devil’s Den!” She plunged the knife into Jarrah’s chest again. “Want to learn how to fly?” she said as she belly-rolled Jarrah over the edge of the cliff and watched his body plunge one hundred thirty-two feet onto the rocks below.

  51

  HALO

  Top of Tower Fall

  A helicopter gunship swung into the mouth of the Devil’s Den gorge, and an FBI sniper leaned out the open door. Jana was seated upright against the base of a pine tree and watched the chopper hover at eye-level to her. The thumping rotor sounds reverberating out of the canyon were so loud they drowned out the roar of the waterfall. The sniper was focused on something at the bottom of the falls and his hand closed into a fist, signaling the pilot to stop and hover.

  He raised the rifle and aimed through the scope, but upon seeing the lifeless, blood-soaked body of Waseem Jarrah, torn and contorted across the rocks, he saw no need to fire. The man was dead. He and the other three operators in the gunship raised binoculars to scan the rim of the canyon.

  When one made eye contact with Jana, she raised her forearm. It was the most she could do without causing a cascading shockwave of pain to shoot from either the broken ribs or vertebra. The chopper pilot increased his elevation and moved into a position just above the treetops over Jana’s head.

  First one operator, then a second, rappelled from the open chopper through the canopy of pine boughs and branches.

  The man shouldered his automatic weapon and knelt beside her. “Agent Baker? Is that our suspect at the bottom of the gorge?”

  She nodded her ascent.

  “Is the device in that rucksack?”

  She nodded again. The second HRT operator ripped open the large backpack and began to inspect the contents.

  “How badly are you hurt?”

  Jana looked at his face, but sunlight pierced through the trees from behind and silhouetted him into a glow. She put a hand on his cheek.

  “I can feel your face,” she said.

  “Yes, ma’am?”

  “Sorry. Had to check if you were real or an angel.”

  A backboard was lowered from the hovering craft.

  “Oh, I can assure you I’m real. And certainly not an angel.” He almost laughed. “Going to get this neck brace on you, all right? Then you’re going to take a ride on this stretcher. Let’s get you laid flat. But first, how about we get a little morphine on board? Should take the edge off.”

  She felt a sharp sting in her thigh as he squeezed the bolus of morphine into her leg.

  The second agent flashed a thumbs-up to him—the nuclear device was not armed, and the agent spoke into his comm set.

  Jana’s pain began to abate as a warm haze fell
upon her. The men slid her into place on the hard board, then strapped her down.

  She looked at the first agent’s cobalt blue eyes. “You sure you’re not an angel?”

  “More than positive, ma’am. My mother can assure you of that fact.”

  “We don’t have time . . . I left them . . .” She tried to sit up.

  “Ma’am? Don’t have time for what? Everything is okay now. The nuclear weapon is safe. There’s nothing to worry about.”

  “Leave me here. You have to get to Agent MacKerron and Cade Williams. They’re in critical—”

  “Already taken care of, ma’am. The other Huey has a medic on board. They’re en route to triage. They’re going to be fine.”

  “But how did they—”

  “Shhh. Try not to talk now. They said the park ranger drug herself to the top of the hillside so she could radio for help. All with a broken leg.”

  The warmth of morphine washed over her and she smiled. “There was a medic on board the other gunship?”

  “Yes, ma’am. All HRT teams have a medic.”

  “And you? Are you a medic?”

  “No, ma’am. We split the team into two groups, half in each chopper. They got the medic.”

  “So you don’t really know what you’re doing, do you?” Jana smiled. “If I asked you how I was doing, you’d probably tell me I’m going to be just fine, wouldn’t you?”

  “Yes, ma’am, I would, because you are.”

  “Maybe it’s the morphine talking, but I’d have to agree with you. I’d say everything is going to be just fine.”

  52

  TO LEARN THE TRUTH

  Big Sky Medical Center, Big Sky, Montana. About fifty-nine miles northwest of Tower Fall

  Jana woke in the hospital and opened her eyes to see a man with a grizzled beard standing beside her bed.

  “More orange snack crackers, Uncle Bill?” she said as she reached to pluck a crumb free.

  “They’re my favorite.”

  “I thought Misses Uncle Bill wouldn’t let you have them anymore. Presumably because of all the crumbs everywhere.”

  “She doesn’t. But when I came out here on temporary duty to see my girl, I figured, what the hell.”

  Jana’s eyes widened. “Kyle? Cade—”

  Bill held up his hands. “They’re okay. They’re going to be just fine. In fact, we’re all going to be just fine. We almost lost Cade. But both Cade and Kyle came out of surgery and are doing well. They’re already up and walking around. Well, hobbling around, anyway.”

  “Jarrah?” Jana said, still trying to piece together the events.

  “Dead. Very dead.”

  Jana thought back to the scene at the top of the waterfall and the hellish fight with Jarrah.

  “How long have I been out?”

  “Two days. And you’ll need to stay a few more until you’re able to travel. It’ll be a medical transport back to Bethesda, I’m afraid.”

  “Bethesda Medical Center. Crap. I really don’t like that place.”

  “I know. But it will take a bit of rehab to get you back up and running.”

  “I left them, Bill. I left Cade and Kyle to die.”

  “You made a choice.”

  “I should have gotten the medical kit to them.”

  “And if you had, what do you think would have happened?”

  Jana’s eyes drifted out the open doorway. “It would have been too late. Too late to stop Jarrah.”

  “You did what you had to do. You chose the mission over all else.”

  “So today is May third? And I’ve been unconscious for two days? We were almost too late, Bill. Did you notice the date?”

  Bill exhaled. “Yes, I noticed the date. Two days ago was May first.”

  “May first. He was going to detonate at 11:16 a.m.”

  Bill nodded. “Adjusted for local time, May first, 11:16 a.m. Pacific would have been the exact date and time of the anniversary of the Osama bin Laden assassination. From what the HRT operators said, you probably killed Jarrah within minutes of then.”

  “I don’t think I can do this anymore, Bill.”

  Bill studied her face a moment. “Jana, you’re like a daughter to me. The daughter I never had. You need to do what’s best for you.”

  “Bill? I don’t know why I never asked you this. Did you and Mrs. Tarleton ever have children?”

  “Sure we did. A boy. He turned sixteen today.”

  “Oh, Bill. You shouldn’t be here with me. You should be at home with him, celebrating. Sixteen is a big deal.”

  “At home? What for? He’s right here,” Bill said as he looked into the hallway.

  Knuckles walked in.

  “Wait a minute. Knuckles? He’s your son?”

  “Well, sure he is. You didn’t know that? I call him son all the time.”

  “Bill, you call every male who’s younger than you son.”

  Knuckles said, “Yeah, I guess we do keep it a bit of a secret. Not that I mind keeping it a secret. You think I want people to know this is my old man?”

  Jana giggled, but grabbed her ribs. “Ouch. Hey, don’t make me laugh, all right?”

  “Listen, Jana, I just wanted to be here to see that you were all right.” The boy looked at Uncle Bill. “I’ll let you two talk now.”

  After Knuckles shut the door behind him, Bill said, “He’s a good kid, really. But don’t tell him I said that.”

  “It’ll be our secret, Bill.” She drew in a shallow breath and winced against the pain. “Bill, there are some things I have to know.”

  He looked at her, but said nothing.

  “Things about my personnel file.”

  “You accessed it, didn’t you?”

  “Yes. Bill, Jarrah told me everything, had the documents to prove it. I have to know, Bill. I have to know if it’s true.”

  He did not hesitate. “It’s true.”

  “Which parts?”

  “All of them. It’s all there in your personnel file. I have access to the redacted sections in the records.”

  “You mean when I was hired, the FBI knew my real father was Richard Ames? The brother of Aldrich Ames? And they still hired me? They let me be a special agent with a background like that?”

  “Yes, the bureau knew. But Jana, you were a toddler when your father was arrested. The bureau may be a, well, a bureaucracy, but they have common sense, too.”

  “Yet they chose to polygraph me more frequently than anyone else. They never really trusted me, did they?”

  He said nothing.

  “I don’t even know who I am anymore.”

  “I know exactly who you are. You are Jana Baker.”

  “But who is that? She’s a work of fiction. An imagined person.”

  “That’s crap and you know it. Jana, we are not made up of the sum total of our biological parts. We make ourselves. Your father had no say in the matter. He didn’t form you then, and he doesn’t form you now. The bureau’s trust or lack of trust has no say in the matter either. You formed you. You are exactly who you were when you started as a rookie agent. You just have to accept your past now.”

  He took her hand and encased it in both of his. “There’s more,” he said.

  “I don’t think I want to hear this.”

  “You have to know the truth, Jana.” He gripped her hand harder. “It’s about your mother.”

  “Please don’t tell me she committed treason, too,” she said as a lump formed in her throat.

  “Far from it.” He paused. “Your mother acted as a material witness in federal court against your father. She’s the reason he was convicted. She took a huge risk, Jana. She took a huge risk . . .”

  “Bill, what are you not telling me?”

  His eyes found the floor. “And they killed her for it.”

  “Killed . . . she wasn’t killed in a car accident?”

  “It was a setup, Jana. It was staged to be a car accident. She was murdered.”

  “Who? Who killed my mother?
”

  “His sponsors. Your father, Richard Ames, was career CIA. But he was selling information to the Russians. After his conviction, the Russians wanted to send a message to anyone that might want to help convict another one of their spies. They killed her.”

  He held her hand until the sobbing subsided.

  She wiped a tear from her cheek. “You talk about my father as if he’s still alive.”

  “He is alive, Jana.”

  “What?”

  “He’s in the same place he’s been since his conviction, at the United States Penitentiary at Florence, Colorado.”

  “He’s alive?”

  “That’s right. It’s called the Alcatraz of the Rockies. It houses those in the federal prison system who are deemed the most dangerous or in need of the tightest control.”

  Jana sat with the information for what seemed like an eternity. Her gaze fixed on the wall in front of her, though she didn’t really focus on it.

  “What do I do now, Bill?” she whispered. “Where do I go?”

  Bill’s smile almost protruded from underneath the enormity of his beard. “On.” He leaned over and kissed her forehead. “You go on.”

  53

  AFTERMATH

  In the weeks and months that followed, Jana was questioned on multiple occasions by the assistant US attorney about the circumstances surrounding the death of one Gerardo “Rafael” Soto. She told the truth, all of it.