by Lewis, Rykar
Siraj broke into a fast but quiet swim. He wasn’t sure where he was going but he knew what he was trying to find. Maybe if he stayed a jump ahead of the Border Patrol, he could make it out of this mess alive.
* * *
“They’re what?” Rule demanded to know.
Washington’s somewhat timid voice on the other end of the radio explained again. “We searched this whole place, Mr. Rule, they’re not in here.”
Sure enough, the BORTAC team was back at the temporary base camp set up just outside the thicket, and they had negative results. Washington was trying desperately to calm Rule down and tell him how much of a wild goose chase this had been. “They were in the thicket, we have signs to prove that, but they’re not now. They could have escaped anywhere from five minutes to two hours ago. We don’t know.”
“Do you know which way they went? I need answers, Washington, not more problems.”
“We can’t tell, sir,” the BORTAC team leader admitted. “For all we know...” Washington trailed off and began to hold a conversation with someone nearby.
“Washington,” Rule said impatiently, “you’re on the radio with me, so talk to me, not to whoever’s there.”
“Hold on.”
Rule was picking up bits and pieces of the dialogue between the two agents but he couldn’t make out everything and it was irritating him. “Washington...” Rule threatened.
“Sir, I might have something here. Hold on please, just give me one minute.”
Rule begrudgingly held on.
“Okay, we may have a lead on the terrorists,” Washington said excitedly after a few moments.
“Go on.”
“This agent here just talked to me and said he saw some movement on a dirt road that’s near here. He said he couldn’t exactly make out what it was, and when he got out to check there was nothing to point him anywhere. But he’s optimistic that it was our targets.”
“What are you waiting for then, Washington? Get after them,” Rule ordered.
“All right, all right, we’re on our way. Over and out.”
The sector chief turned to Tee. “It seems like we are looking for a needle in a haystack,” he admitted dejectedly. “We have to find them, we just have to.”
* * *
CIA and FBI badges were handed to the gate guard as ICEBERG attempted to come into CIA Headquarters. The guard looked over the credentials, then at the people to whom they belonged, and handed the badges back.
“And you two up front are...?” the guard asked referring to Yahtzee and Parks.
“I’m a Marine,” Parks answered. “And he’s a soldier – our driver.”
The guard frowned. “You got a badge?” he questioned.
“No but we’ve got an ID card, and I have a White House badge.”
“Let’s see the badge then.”
Parks handed it over and after much scrutiny he received it back.
“And you,” the guard demanded while pointing to Yahtzee.
“I’ve got nothing like that, just a military ID. I’m their driver.”
“Yeah, that’s what your copilot said. Let me see your ID then.”
The same drill occurred and then the guard declared, “The Deputy D/CIA called in and told me about you guys coming and said for me to let you through. Your IDs match the names he gave me so go ahead.” He waved them through.
Yahtzee parked the van and shut off the engine. “I’ll be here for when you’re ready, sir,” he told Parks.
Parks nodded his approval and stepped out onto the pavement. The sun was up and the morning air was cool. It looked as though it was going to be a wonderful day. Too bad I have to be stuck in a conference room all day, Parks thought. I’d rather be taking out the terrorists in the great outdoors.
“Ever been to Langley?” Solomon interrupted as he walked up next to Parks.
“Yeah, once – when I was in Expeditionary Warfare School.”
“You like it?”
“Sure, it was pretty cool. I was only visiting though; now that I’ll actually be doing something here I might notice some things I didn’t last time.”
“We’ve got some interesting devices,” Solomon continued.
“When did you stop working here and switch over to the EEOB?” Parks asked, trying to pass the time as they walked up to a massive building.
“I’ve worked here every day of my career up until a few days ago. I was promoted to the Director of Counterterrorism Operations early this year, and then suddenly I was assigned to be the deputy commander of a special counterterrorism team. That’s when I moved to the EEOB. It was quite a change.”
“Wow, you must be pretty good if you were the Director of CT Ops.”
“I don’t know about that. To tell you the truth, I’d rather be lower on the totem pole and do more hands-on operations. That’s part of the reason I was so thrilled to be assigned to this team. I love to be in the front lines, not coordinate someone else to do the harvesting.”
“I know what you mean. I’d definitely rather do field work than sit in an office.”
Solomon laughed. “Then you picked the right job. Or shall I say you were picked for the right job.”
The guards outside of the Headquarters Building asked for badges again and after every one was cleared, the team went inside.
“Welcome to Langley, Virginia, home of the CIA. ‘The Work of a Nation. The Center of Intelligence,’” Solomon said as he wiped his feet on a mat.
Parks looked around and discovered he didn’t know where to go. “Uh, Solomon, could you lead us to where we’re supposed to go?” he asked in a low voice. “I mean, the conference room is where I was told to go, but I don’t have a clue how to get there.”
“Yup, mmmhhm. That’s just over here.”
As Solomon led the team to the room, he paused and whispered in Parks’ ear. “Word of warning – watch out for Nancy Kano. She’s the Director of Intelligence and she’ll be the one briefing us. She’s a pain in the neck. Don’t cross her and by all means, never make her feel stupid. She’s trying to make it to D/CIA and she is attempting to impress everyone with her limitless knowledge of the CIA. Got it?”
Parks wasn’t sure how to take that information but he nodded and turned to the large doors leading to the conference room. Slowly, he opened the left one and entered, flanked by Solomon who was pushing to get right beside him.
“Come in, Major,” Cummins greeted as soon as he spied Parks. “Have a seat at this table.”
Parks motioned for his team to follow him and they all sat at the long conference table in the center of the room.
“You all remember Solomon and the guys, don’t you?” Cummins asked his agents in the room. Everyone appeared to know them personally. “Now gentlemen this,” the D/CIA began, “is U.S.M.C. Major Keith Parks. Keith, meet my Deputy Director, George Gork. We call him GG for short. And this is my Head of Counterterrorism, James Lawrence.” Lawrence and Gork rose and greeted Parks, who after their handshakes, was having troubles trying to fight off the urge to use Germ-X.
Cummins went on. “This is the senior watch officer on duty, Max Wilbert. He heads the joint-agency intelligence task force here at Langley.” Wilbert also stood and shook Parks’ hand.
“Oh, is Kano in the room?” the D/CIA wondered.
“She is not, sir,” Gork replied. “She’s doing last-minute intel preps so her briefing can be thorough. She’ll be here soon.”
Cummins nodded with satisfaction. “Well, formalities aside, let’s get down to business.” He looked around and after several seconds finally sighed, “Max, will you get Kano? We need to get rolling.”
Wilbert didn’t have the chance. A small door opposite the two larger ones flung open and everyone’s eyes flew to it. There, standing barely 5’ tall, was Nancy Kano. Parks didn’t have to be introduced to her to know that it was indeed Kano. She looked just as Solomon had described her attitude. Obviously of Japanese descent, her hair was jet-black and down to her hips,
and her eyes were dark brown. Parks guessed she was in her mid to late fifties. She was petite, and if her temper was as short as she was, Parks knew he was going to be in trouble.
As Kano stood in the doorway, her face was buried behind a stack of papers that she was holding. She slammed the door shut behind her as she stepped into the room. Instantly, Parks stood out of respect.
From across the room, she looked up from her papers and cast her eyes up and down the length of Parks. It was an awkward moment. She was sizing him up. After several rundowns, her fiery eyes finally locked onto the ribbons on his uniform. She stared at them for quite some time, evidently wondering about his capability.
After a long pause, she dove back into her papers and began walking to a desk.
“Sit down, sit down,” she ordered as she walked by Parks, not even bothering to lift her eyes off the papers.
Slowly, he sat down and glanced at Solomon who was trying to control a laugh.
“Aren’t you going to introduce me to Major Keith Parks, Solomon?” she more commanded than asked as she plopped down into a swivel chair and turned her back on the table.
“Oh, of course,” Solomon accepted. “KP, this is Nancy Kano. Mrs. Kano, this is Marine Major Keith Parks.”
Kano waved her hand over her back in a shallow greeting to Parks.
“Mr. Director,” Kano spoke, addressing Cummins, “someone would like to speak to you on the phone in your office.”
“Who is it?”
“Find out,” Kano stated as she began typing something into her computer.
The D/CIA shook his head, excused himself from the table, and walked out of the room. Now the room was under Kano’s control. She was in total charge, and everyone – except the Deputy Director – was at her mercy.
“Solomon, are you going to tell Major Parks that I’m the fourth-ranked person in the CIA?” Kano questioned. “Are you going to explain that I am the top lady in the intelligence field? Are you?”
Solomon shot a confused look at Parks.
“Well, he already did,” Parks threw out. “It is an impressive position you have, I must say.”
“Yes, it is, isn’t it? But it is not high enough.”
Parks wasn’t sure what to say.
“Tell me,” she continued, “why does your Marine Corps say that ‘oorah’ thing, huh?”
Taken off guard, Parks hesitated as he thought of the best approach. “Uh, well, it’s a motivational call, ma’am,” he finally replied. “Whenever a Marine hears that, he feels pride. That’s why we say it; so we can motivate.”
“That’s why you have Semper Fidelis, isn’t it?” she asked.
“That too, ma’am, but that’s different. Semper Fi is more…mellow than a good oorah.”
Parks knew that it was killing Kano not to know why Parks and his team were here. No one except the D/CIA knew who Parks was and why he was called here. Everyone else was in the dark, and it would have to stay that way.
“I get it now, Major Parks,” she confirmed. “I have always wondered why the Marines say ‘oorah,’ and now I know.” She swiveled in her chair and faced the table.
“Max,” she ordered, “clear the room of all unnecessary agents – that means all of them – and prepare for the image.”
The order was carried out and now only the few necessary people remained in the conference room.
“We’re ready. You can commence, Mrs. Kano,” Wilbert informed her.
She took her own sweet time, which was merely a show of force that Wilbert could not tell her what to do or when to do it. At last, she swiveled back around and began typing again.
“Do yourself a favor, Major Parks,” she started. “Never join the CIA. You have to memorize too many passwords just to log on to something simple.”
“I’ll try and remember that, ma’am,” Parks graciously said as the live video feed flashed onto a screen to his left. Instantly he matched things up and realized that he was looking at the twenty-man El Paso Border Patrol BORTAC team searching for the terrorists.
32
Thursday, March 20th – 0800 hours
CIA Headquarters, Langley, Virginia
The D/CIA burst into the room. “You started without me?” he asked Kano as he pointed to the screen that was displaying the satellite image of the BORTAC team.
Kano didn’t look at him. “Time is like gold right now, Mr. Director. You were taking too long.”
“It was important; you know that.”
“Yes, I know, the caller briefed me before I decided you needed to hear it for yourself. It was quite an interesting bit of news wasn’t it?”
Cummins seated himself and responded. “I’d say it just might answer my question.”
“And what question was that?”
“Never mind,” Cummins said with irritation. He then turned back to the seated men and stated, “Gentlemen, BORTAC has lost the terrorists, I just received word. They have one more lead but they’re not hopeful.” The Director paused. “Go ahead with your brief, Nancy.”
Kano stared at the screen on the wall and yawned. “For starters, we found out where the people we’re dealing with are from. I had the wild but lovely idea to check with the Pakistani Military Intelligence (PMI) to see if there had been any terrorist activity. The information they have given me has been too valuable to even begin to explain, but if there was anyone who could come close to doing so, it’d be me, so here goes.” She paused. “They said that they have nailed down the site of a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan. Actually, they’ve known about it for quite some time, and they’ve been monitoring it. Tuesday, March 18th at around 1300 hours, twenty men emerged from that camp in separate vehicles and split ten different ways.”
Kano’s eyes were fixed on the short length of her left hand’s fingernails as she spoke. “Twenty men from the PMI were assigned to follow after the terrorists. Well, they followed them all the way to an airport and ten terrorists – one from each vehicle – went inside. The Pakistani team noted that the terrorists went into the airport from different directions and at different times, giving the mindset that they were not at all affiliated with each other. Each terrorist had a vehicle and driver. The Pakistanis assigned a man to follow each vehicle when they drove away from the airport. In the end, the transports were dumped off somewhere deep in Afghanistan and the PMI never found the drivers. Also, the terrorists who boarded a plane already had tickets for a flight that traveled to Mexico City, Mexico. We know this because when the PMI team saw the terrorists board the flight, they asked the airport official if anyone had bought tickets for that flight that day. The man said no. The Pakistanis were never able to track down the names of the men who had purchased those tickets. They would have been fake, of course, but it would have been a possible lead nonetheless.”
“Okay Kano, get to the meat of this,” the D/CIA complained.
The Intel Director turned back to the stack of papers she had brought in when she had entered the room and began flipping through them wildly.
“Ahh,” she voiced when she found the right one. “Here it is.”
She swiveled around and stared right at Parks. “The terrorists were followed, however, by one of the Pakistani team members who boarded the plane. He managed to capture a photo of who he believed was the lead terrorist as the passengers were stepping off the plane at the Mexico City airport.” Kano passed the paper to Parks.
“We compared the terrorist’s description and photo to all of our files, all of the ones in the FBI and several other agencies. He didn’t match any of them. It seems that whoever is heading this operation is smart enough to train new teams that won’t show up on our files and that can’t be traced back to him.”
“Thank God that the PMI was in the right place at the right time,” Gork commented. “Or we wouldn’t know what we do know now. However little it may be.”
“Image...,” Kano said, trying to get everyone’s attention back to her.
Parks passed the ter
rorist’s photo and description paper down the line of seated men and focused on the image. It was the same one displaying the Border Patrol agents – BORTAC to be more specific – that had been on a dirt road by an irrigation canal, searching for the escaped terrorists.
“They aren’t ever going to find them,” Lee concluded with a sense of hopelessness.
Kano unseated herself and walked over to the screen as she simultaneously grabbed a wooden yardstick from her desk.
“BORTAC is here,” she noted as she pointed with her yardstick to the Patrol agents who were on the road. “This image depicts the struggle they are having trying to find the escaped terrorists.” Kano looked around. “Major Parks, would you go to my desk and open the file marked ‘image2’?”
Parks walked to her desk and looked at the computer screen, recognizing that it was a touch-screen variant. He scanned over the options and found two different files bearing the same name. One was named “image2,” and the other “Image2.”
“Which one do I open, ma’am?” he questioned.
Kano moved to within three feet of Parks and replied, “That one.” She motioned with her hand at what appeared to be the second file with the capitalized name.
He raised his hand and moved to touch the file.
In a flash, Kano stepped forward and raised her yardstick high in the air. She snapped it down hard, right on the back of Parks’ hand. He instantly drew it back and his eyes searched for the source of the hit. As he saw the ruler in Kano’s hand, his eyes went wide. He opened his mouth to say something but nothing came out. The action was more startling than anything. For a second, he and Kano locked stares.
“Actually, Major Parks,” she corrected, “it’s this one.” She tapped the lowercased file name with her stick.
Parks could hear a couple of people in the background desperately trying to hold in laughs. “This one?” he double-checked.
Kano nodded.
“You’re sure?” he almost laughed. “I don’t want my other hand to get the same treatment.”
The room exploded with laughter. Kano remained dead serious, however.
Parks touched the file and it opened. He turned to the screen and saw that a completely new scene had appeared. Somehow the computer was hooked up to be the controlling mechanism for broadcasting the different images.
