After a few more minutes, a portly gentleman waddled into the lobby. He sniffled before wiping his nose with the back of his free hand, the one that wasn’t holding a donut.
“You Tom?” the man asked.
Black nodded as he stood and then offered his hand to the facility manager.
“Ken Devereaux,” the man said, switching his donut from one hand to the other before shaking Black’s hand. “But you can just call me Kenny.”
Black tried not to react to Kenny, despite his obvious lack of hygiene and social decorum. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Kenny.”
“Likewise,” Kenny said with a grunt before spinning around and heading toward a nearby door. “I hear you need to check out our mechanical room.”
“That’s right,” Black said.
Kenny stuffed half the donut in his mouth. “Follow me,” he garbled.
After Black was granted access to the mechanical room, he removed his clipboard with a checklist from his bag and started studying the gears. Satisfied that Black was legit, Kenny shuffled off and told Black where to find him when he was finished.
Black waited until he heard the door shut before inserting his earpiece and hailing Shields on the coms. “I’m in the building. Do you copy?”
“Great,” Shields said from a van parked a block away. “I need you to go to the server room on the fifth floor.”
“All right,” he said. “Heading there now.”
Black rode the elevator to the fifth floor, leaving his tools behind. He’d also swapped out the velcro patch on his left chest, identifying himself now as an IT specialist. As he meandered along the hall, he came to the server room in one corner of the floor and waited for someone to walk by.
After a few minutes, a young man wearing a pair of khakis and a polo shirt sauntered down the corridor. He had his head buried in a set of papers and almost bumped into Black.
Black grabbed hold of the door handle and groaned. “Aww, man.”
The guy stopped and glanced at Black. “You need some help?”
“Yeah, I’m working on one of the servers and I came out to use the restroom and left all my stuff inside, including my security card. Could you give me a hand?”
“Sure thing,” the man said before he waved his card over the access pad. The lock gave way, allowing the door to open. The man tugged down on the handle and held it open for Black.
“Thanks,” Black said.
“No problem. Enjoy.”
Black entered and waited until the man wandered off. Once he was alone, he contacted Shields again.
“I’m here. Now what?”
“Look for the main server,” she said. “It should be in the center of the room and is usually a different color than all the other computers.”
“I found a gray one,” he said. “All the others are black.”
“That’s probably the one,” she said. “Now all you need to do is slide that little gadget I gave you into a USB port in the back and we’ll be in business.”
“Roger that.”
Black followed Shields’ instructions and then returned to the mechanical room. He packed up all his tools and reported to Kenny that everything looked good and to expect a certificate in the mail within the next couple of days.
By the time Black returned to the van, Shields was already at work, accessing the building’s phone records and financials. She also had another computer combing through both private and company emails in search of certain keywords. Black bought them both coffee to kill some time. When he came back bearing cups of caffeine, Shields was shaking her head.
“What is it?” Black asked.
She sighed. “This looks like another dead end to me.”
“What do you mean?”
“Unify Washington looks completely legit,” she said. “I can’t find even the slightest hint of any impropriety here.”
“That’s when you should really get suspicious,” Black said. “This is Washington. Everybody here has bodies to hide.”
“Perhaps, but we’re not going to find them on their hard drives. These things are squeaky clean.”
“Have you considered that maybe they know how the algorithms work that search for any suspicious activity?” Black asked.
“That’s why I don’t use the standard one the intelligence community recommends. Mine is far more stringent.”
“And still nothing?”
She shook her head. “Not a damn thing.”
“Do you think you’ve given it enough time?”
“I’ve already been at this about an hour and something should’ve shown up by now if anything was going to appear.”
“So now what?” Black asked.
“We were either spoofed or we’re dealing with someone who really knows what they’re doing.”
“Or both,” Black suggested.
“That’s a scary thought,” she said.
Black shook his head, resisting the urge to punch the side of the van. “I’ll call Blunt with the bad news.”
After Black told Blunt about their failure at the Unify Washington building, he didn’t seem bothered.
“Look, it was a long shot in the first place,” Blunt said. “You were playing a hunch and it didn’t pan out. That happens sometimes.”
“But Alex told us she was one hundred percent certain the call Neil placed after I confronted him went to that building.”
“In this line of work, there are very few things we can be a hundred percent certain about. Shake it off. We’ll get them another way. You’ve got a major op to get ready for. We’ll deal with this later.”
“I’m not giving up on this,” Black said.
“And you shouldn’t, but we’ve got bigger fish to fry right now. Charleston is looming.”
Chapter 35
Charleston, S.C.
BLACK SAT ON A bench in Marion Square, reading a copy of Pat Conroy’s Lords of Discipline. He wore his cap low across his forehead and glanced up as he turned the pages every minute and a half or so. The sun had disappeared over the surrounding buildings, leaving the scant rays of dusk and the fluorescent glow of street lamps to light the pages of his book. He glanced at his watch. The meeting was scheduled to take place in a half hour and he’d yet to see anyone go in or out of St. Matthew Lutheran Church’s auxiliary building just across the street.
“Are you actually reading that book?” Shields asked over the coms.
Black covered his mouth with his hand before he spoke. “I figured there’s no better place in the world to read a novel than in the setting of the story itself.”
“That’s not a luxury most people have,” she said.
“Me either, most of the time. But since I’m here, I might as well take advantage of it, don’t you think?”
She didn’t answer him, instead steering the conversation back to their purpose for being in Charleston. “Have you seen any targets yet?”
“Not a one,” he said. “But there is a light that flickered on in the upstairs room where they’re scheduled to meet.”
The Firestorm team working in concert with the CIA and FBI had managed to intercept chatter originating within Charleston that pointed to a meeting taking place in the church that evening. So convinced was the intelligence community that it had identified the location of the gathering, they made no attempts to arrest the terrorist when he arrived in Charleston the previous evening. The CIA even decided not to follow him for fear of spooking him. Black had disagreed with the decision.
“Why do I get the feeling that nobody is going to show up?” Black asked.
“Apparently, the light just came on,” she said. “So, something is happening, right?”
“Might be a ruse. If this group has someone well-connected on the inside as we think they do, I think too many people are in the loop about this operation.”
“It was need-to-know only,” she said, “meaning that the only people who were looped in were the people directly involved in this op.”
&nb
sp; “Still too many people, in my opinion.”
Black glanced up again at the window and saw two more people enter the room, their silhouettes coming in and out of view through the window.
“Well, I might need to take all that back,” Black said.
“I thought you might,” she said. “What are you seeing?”
“I just saw two figures in the room. We still have just over twenty minutes before this meeting is supposed to happen, so people are definitely gathering.”
For the next fifteen minutes, Black watched FBI snipers take up positions around Marion Square. One sniper was positioned in the church’s steeple, while others were scattered around buildings nearby. A SWAT team was ready in a van two blocks away, awaiting the signal to move in.
More shadows filled the window of the upstairs room, convincing Black that he was wrong.
“Catching the entire cell before they strike is going to make President Young quite happy,” Shields said.
“I’d hold off on the celebration parade just yet,” he said. “We don’t have anyone in custody yet.”
“One of the local FBI agents here has already identified one man who entered the building as a person of interest they’ve been watching for the past six months.”
“Just be patient. If they’re in there, we’ll get them.”
“What do you mean if?” Shields squawked. “Aren’t you looking at them?”
“They are, but I don’t want to jump the gun. This thing is still a long way from being over. You should be all too aware of that by now.”
“Of course,” she said. “I’m just anxious to shut down this threat and find out who’s behind all of this.”
“That makes two of us.”
Fifteen minutes passed and Black put away his book. The street had fallen so dark that attempting to read a book in such a dim setting made him look either stupid or obvious. After tucking the book beneath his arm, he stood and paced around Marion Square. By the time he made a second pass around the park, he heard the order given on his coms for the SWAT team to move in.
Less than a minute later, agents stormed inside the building. Black listened to the conversation on his coms and watched the silhouetted figures dart around the room.
“We’ve got a runner,” one of the agents said.
Black spotted the young man immediately and pursued on foot. He broke into a dead sprint, but found himself face down on the sidewalk when Black tackled the man from behind. Black secured him with handcuffs and then rolled him over.
“He’s just a kid,” Black said.
“They all are,” another man said over the coms.
“Let him go,” the FBI commander in charge of the operation said. “This wasn’t who we were looking for. It’s a science club for refugee children.”
Black apologized to the kid before letting him go. When Black rendezvoused with the rest of the FBI team, he learned that someone had paid the children to switch their meeting place but didn’t tell the church.
“So you think the terrorist cell is still meeting there?” Black asked.
“Not a chance,” the commander said. “This was all just to mess with us, to show us that they can do whatever the hell they want and we can’t do a damn thing about it.”
“We’ll see about that,” Black said.
* * *
BLUNT QUICKLY answered his phone, anxious to hear the good news. But his face fell when Shields caught him up to speed on what had just transpired in Charleston.
“That’s not what I wanted to hear,” he said.
“That’s not what we wanted to happen either,” she said. “But here we are.”
“I thought that intel was solid from Moqed,” Blunt said.
“I did too, sir.”
“What reason would he have to double-cross us like that?”
“I don’t think he would,” she said. “That’s his job and reputation on the line if he tried a misdirect on this operation. And I can’t imagine any circumstances under which he’d mislead us. Not for money, not even for blackmail.”
“But here we are,” Blunt said, echoing Shields’ earlier conclusion.
“That’s right. Apparently the cell hasn’t been activated just yet, but it’s out there and we have no idea where to start looking for it.”
“We’ll figure this out. Just get on a plane tonight and be back here in the morning,” Blunt said. “We have plenty to discuss.”
He ended the call and then stared at the ceiling, mulling over what he could’ve done differently to reduce the number of people who knew about the op. But he wasn’t sure that was possible. Someone had played them for a fool. And while Blunt had a long list of things he hated, getting duped was at the top of it.
While he was still considering the best strategy to hunt down the sleeper cell, he received another phone call. He looked at the number on the screen and sucked in a breath through his teeth, bracing for a tongue lashing.
“J.D., what the hell was that tonight?” President Young asked once Blunt answered.
“I just heard myself, sir,” Blunt said. “I wasn’t in charge, so I don’t fully know what went down, but it doesn’t sound good.”
“Doesn’t sound good? Are you kidding me?” Young said as his voice went up an octave. “I just heard that we have a sleeper cell running around in our own country and we have no idea where it is or when it will strike next.”
“We’re already scheming how we can track them down.”
“No, no, you’re not,” Young said. “You had your chance and you blew it. I’m going to look for some other means by which we can stop this threat.”
“Our team will cooperate with whoever you tap to lead this task force, but I can assure you that my team will—”
“You can’t assure me of anything. I want you off this case. I’m sidelining your team.”
“But—”
“Don’t try to protest with me,” Young said with a snarl. “You’ve botched this up from day one and it’s time to let someone else with more experience hunting terrorists within our own boundary to take a shot at apprehending this sleeper cell.”
Blunt muttered a “yes, sir,” before hanging up. He scrambled to his feet and started to hunt up another bottle of bourbon. He had a long night ahead of him. And he wasn’t about to acquiesce to the president’s demands.
Chapter 36
Washington, D.C.
THE NEXT MORNING at the Firestorm office, Blunt gnawed on a cigar as he watched FBI agents cart off a few boxes of reports and extract data from all of the group’s computers. He was sitting in the conference room with one of the techs when Black and Shields entered, both wearing bewildered looks on their faces.
“Would you mind telling me why some geek from the FBI is working on my desktop computer?” Shields asked.
Blunt waved her off. “Don’t tie yourself up in knots over this. The FBI is taking over this case.”
“They’re doing what?” Black asked.
“The president called me last night and told me we were done,” Blunt said.
The tech stopped what he was doing and looked up wide-eyed at Blunt, half out of reverence, half out of fear.
“President Young called you?” the man asked.
“Get back to work, kid. This is how Washington works. Powerful people call peons and tell them things.”
“With all due respect, sir, you’re not a peon,” the tech said. “You’re legendary. I’ve heard about some of your team’s methods in my training at Quantico and—”
“Save it, will ya?” Blunt said. “If you want my autograph, I’ll give it to you after you’re done. But we’ve got other business to attend to.”
Black looked at Shields and winked.
“So, what can we do to help?” she asked, apparently catching the hint.
“Anything to get these guys out of our hair as soon as possible,” Blunt said. “It’s not like these were the only terrorists we were concerned with. There’s plenty of people out
there trying to take us down. And they don’t really care if we squabble about who’s going to be the one to eliminate them either.”
“Roger that,” she said.
Black nodded. “I’ll see how I can be of any assistance.”
After Young called Blunt and told him that the FBI would be in his office in the morning to glean all the data from his team’s computers, Blunt initiated the backup protocol, saving all the information onto a server in case the FBI either confiscated the computers or wiped them.
The FBI decided on the former, ultimately deciding the best course of action was to remove the hard drives completely and make copies. Blunt wasn’t excited about the idea, but he was confident his team hadn’t saved anything inappropriate involving themselves, compromising or otherwise.
After two long hours, the FBI agent overseeing the transfer of information as well as the techs assisting in the transfer finally left the building. The team reconvened in the conference room and was joined by Jana, who’d been out for a few days attending to some personal matters.
“That was about as fun as a colonoscopy,” Blunt said.
“Fortunately, I haven’t had to get one of those yet,” Black said with a smile.
“Pray you never do. It’s right up there with a root canal for me,” Blunt said.
Jana furrowed her brow. “So, I don’t understand what just happened. How come we are no longer able to work on this case?”
Blunt offered a thin smile. “Oh, we’re able, just maybe not authorized.”
“I don’t understand,” she said.
Shields nodded. “It’s as simple as this: The president told us to hand over everything we’ve gleaned from the case since we started, ordering the FBI to take the lead role in this case. But we know the case best as well as how to flush out the sleeper cell. Isn’t that right, sir?”
Blunt sighed. “We think we do, but that doesn’t mean much at this point. We’ve been bamboozled—”
“I’m sorry, what?” Jana asked.
“Bamboozled,” he repeated. “Flummoxed.”
She scowled, her face communicating that she still didn’t understand.
Honorable Lies (A Titus Black Thriller Book 6) Page 17
