The 13: Fall

by ROBBIE CHEUVRONT

  “How’d he know you would be there?”

  “Good question. Anyway, he’s not here. Said he’s long gone and told me that I was needed back in Washington.”

  “Yeah, maybe. But don’t know yet.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m here at DHS with Taylor. She’s found something. Don’t know what it is, but I’m sure it’s not good.”

  “Okay. I’ll head back immediately.”

  “No, you won’t. I told you, you need to go see Hector. You’re meeting him tomorrow.”

  “Hector’s a thug. We need to be tracking down this Prophet guy. If he’s already left, he hasn’t gotten much of a head start. I can catch up to him.”

  “You have no idea where he’s going. Besides, that letter may just be a ruse to get you outta town. Stay there and keep looking. If he doesn’t turn up, tomorrow you go see Hector, and then you can leave.”

  “The lady down here says a lot of cops went missing in the last two days. I’ll bet you a thousand bucks your boy Hector wants to give us another cartel tip. I don’t have time to be running down drug dealers. We have a possible threat to deal with. The deadline is tomorrow!”

  “Calm down. I know what the timeline is. You still have to check out the rest of the town and make sure this Prophet isn’t there. That’s going to take you the rest of the day. Hector wants to meet tomorrow morning first thing. After that you can head home. I’ve got to go. Taylor’s in Marianne Levy’s office right now. She’s waiting on me. I’ll keep you posted.”

  The line went dead.

  Keene clicked off the call and slammed the phone down on the table. At least the food smelled good. He motioned the waitress over and ordered pancakes.

  CHAPTER 54

  What am I looking at?” Jennings asked her.

  Taylor pulled up the files she had found and put them in sequential order for them to go through. They were all different, but they all seemed to connect to one another. “This first one is a petition for a sanctioning of an area of land in Montana. According to this, an area has been set aside for research and has been deemed off-limits to the public. There’s even a mandate for Marianne’s Civil Military to support in keeping the area secure.

  “This next one and the one after that are the same thing. One for North Dakota and South Dakota.”

  “What are these?” Jennings asked. “And why would Marianne Levy have them?”

  “I don’t know yet. But it doesn’t make sense. Why would DHS be concerned with sanctioning land and keeping people out?”

  “Good questions,” Boz added. Then he pointed to the screen. “What’s that?”

  Taylor pulled up the window. “This looks to be like a customs clearance form.”

  “What’s that?” Boz asked.

  “This gives whoever has it the ability to cross borders and bring whatever he wants in without inspection. You’ve got to have some serious pull and connections to make that happen.”

  “What’s it for?” Jennings asked. “And who is it for?”

  Taylor skimmed through the paragraphs till she found something. “Says here it’s for heavy industrial equipment. And it’s for a company called AE Tech International.”

  “What’s that?” Jennings asked.

  Taylor switched screens and brought up her Internet browser. In seconds she had what she was looking for. “It’s an oil company out of Canada. Chinese based.”

  “Why would a Chinese-Canadian oil company be bringing heavy industrial equipment across our border and need to circumvent customs?” Jennings asked.

  “This isn’t good,” Boz said. “The Chinese have spent the last ten years putting Canada under their thumb. They already have over thirty drilling sites there. They pretty much already own the country. You know the kind of stink it would cause if Americans found out that the Chinese were drilling here when we aren’t even allowed to? Canada’s one thing. But drilling on American soil is another.”

  “Isn’t this, like, treason, or something?” Taylor asked. “She can’t just allow them to come into our country without the proper inspections and authorization to do this—right?”

  “It’s something, all right,” Jennings said. He turned and started to walk out. “I need to go check on some things. You two stay here and see what else you can find out.”

  “Will do.” She nodded.

  “Oh, and Taylor …”

  “Yeah?”

  “Find out where Marianne Levy is. I want to talk to her.”

  When Jennings was out of the room, Taylor turned to Boz. “This isn’t good, is it?”

  Boz just looked at her and said, “Doesn’t look like it. United States–Canada relations have already deteriorated because of this. Who knows what’s going on up there?”

  “Well, we need to figure out what all of this means. If the Chinese are coming here to drill, there’s got to be more paperwork. Could she have done an end run on the entire country?”

  “Who knows?” Boz said. “You and I both know that some people are capable of anything. I wouldn’t put it past her.”

  Taylor felt completely betrayed. Marianne Levy had sold out her country. She was going to secretly bring in a Chinese oil company and set them up to drill for the same oil that US companies had been denied access to since, well … forever. If the American people find out, she thought, they will be calling for heads in Washington. “Which is already happening,” she said to herself. If the market was going crazy now, what would it do when this came out? What else had Marianne done?

  Taylor pushed the open windows aside and continued checking her filters. Halfway down the list another folder caught her eye. She clicked the folder and waited for it to open. When it did, she immediately felt sick to her stomach. Boz, who was standing over her watching, just blew out a long, slow breath.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” she said, almost in a whisper.

  Inside were secure, highly classified documents from the CIA and Department of Defense. A dossier had been put together on an operative. It was complete with a workup of the operative’s believed-to-be personal history, a psych evaluation, and a detailed account of the operative’s past suspected missions and crime scene photos of the targets. Taylor sifted through the documents, one by one. The list of accomplishments—if you could call them that—was impressive. The operative was listed as Dangerous, Intelligent, Resourceful, Discreet, and Professional.

  “Why would she have this?” Taylor asked. “Better yet, how did she get this? Boz, you know about this stuff. This is like high-level CIA stuff, right? I mean, I know Jennings technically works for her, but—”

  “No,” Boz confirmed. “I worked with the CIA for over ten years. Director Snyder handpicked Jennings as his successor. I may not know Jennings that well, but I knew Don Snyder better than his wife did. And I can promise you, Jennings didn’t get that job because Snyder thought he would roll over for Marianne Levy. There’s no way Jennings would have given her this. This is the kind of secret Intel CIA directors keep for themselves.”

  There was a single photograph of the operative. It was a profile view, and it was obviously taken in a hurry and without the operative’s knowing. A notation had been made beside the picture, informing that it was the only known photograph of the operative. The shot was from across a street at a train station—somewhere in Europe, Taylor supposed, given the architecture. The order underneath the picture was highlighted in red and listed in all capital letters and read, TERMINATE ON SIGHT. Underneath that was a name.

  ALEXANDRA SOKOLOV—AKA ALEX SMITH.

  CHAPTER 55

  Alex Sokolov sat on the bed, staring at the laptop. She had been monitoring the feed now for nearly an hour. The bug she’d placed in Marianne’s system was turning out to be very helpful indeed. It’s not that she didn’t trust the woman, she just … didn’t trust the woman. She had wanted to make sure she kept tabs on everything she could. And that included the computer of her employer.

  Whoever it was
over at DHS going through Marianne’s files was good. She assumed it was that FBI agent she’d seen with Keene at the Capitol. She’d done a little checking and found out that Megan Taylor was quite special when it came to computers. Perhaps a little too special.

  The bug was designed to monitor only the feed. It didn’t enable her to operate as a user on the system. However, it did allow her to send a signal to the machine, triggering a nasty little virus—a little something she’d picked up from an Egyptian friend at the University of Cairo—that would wipe out any and all computers connected to that particular server.

  She was surprised, initially, when the little alarm had sounded, letting her know that someone was using the computer. She had been in the middle of finalizing details for her departure. The house had to go, as much as she hated the thought. She’d enjoyed the place for nearly a decade now. But with her assassination of the president—she was giving herself the full credit, even though the man was technically still alive—there could be no trace of her whatsoever. The house, her belongings, everything had to go. She had been meticulously wiping down the entire property. She was taking only what she could carry with her. But the little beeping made her stop to see what was happening.

  Now here she was, watching and waiting to see what Marianne was stupid enough—no, that wasn’t it, narcissistic enough—to have kept on her computer. Everything was fine. Until it wasn’t. She should’ve known. How could she have been so careless? She’d believed Marianne wasn’t careless enough to have something like Alex’s dossier. That was enough. She should’ve triggered the virus as soon as she saw the computer come to life. She knew Marianne was gone already. There was no reason for her computer to be on.

  Alex cursed herself for allowing this to happen. Maybe Marianne was a liability after all. No matter, that would have to wait. For now, she needed to stop this. She clicked a couple buttons and entered a code. She hit ENTER and watched as the screen began to pixelate. Then the screen began to rain with ones and zeros, and in a matter of seconds everything disappeared. And the screen went blank.

  She shut the laptop and packed it in her backpack. Her flight left in less than two hours. She needed to set the charges on the house. If she hurried, she would have enough time to watch it burn to the ground before she left. She spent the next twenty minutes carefully going through the place, checking to make sure nothing was left that could connect to her, in case it miraculously survived the fire. She did one final sweep and closed the door behind her. She had just removed her latex gloves and stuffed them into her pocket when she felt her phone vibrate. She looked at the screen. She was a little surprised. Of all the people she never expected to hear from again, this one was at the top of her list.

  “This is Ms. Smith,” she said politely.

  “Ms. Smith, this is Mr. Chin. I would very much like to acquire your services.”

  CHAPTER 56

  Taylor and Boz were looking at the photo when it happened. The screen just popped, and then everything began to pixelate. She immediately knew what it was.

  “Wh–what’s happening?” Boz said. “It’s all going away. Do something!”

  She already was.

  The first rule of computers is to never detach a cable or device without properly ejecting it from the computer’s hard drive. This process usually consists of using the secondary click on the mouse and selecting the tab for ejecting the hardware safely, as the computer puts it. Not following this procedure could often lead to a corrupted, irretrievable drive. The second rule of computers is to never shut down the machine cold, unless it froze up and couldn’t be manipulated. Always, always, use the proper shut-down procedure. Not doing so could produce the same result as the mismanaged external hardware. Being a cautious computer nerd, Taylor never skipped the procedure.

  Without even considering the downside, she yanked the Cat-5 cable out of Marianne’s computer and mashed the power button down on her laptop. Two seconds later, the machine whined to a stop. Ten seconds later, Marianne’s computer buzzed, made a couple popping sounds, and then the screen went completely crazy. Starbursts of color shot all over the monitor as the entire screen took on the likeness of a Picasso painting.

  “What just happened?” Boz said when it was over.

  Megan was furious. How could she not check for a worm like that before starting her search for the files? She had not followed her own procedure, and now this!

  “What happened?” Boz repeated.

  “That stupid hag had a worm installed!” she said. “I can’t believe I didn’t check it!”

  “Calm down, Megan. You couldn’t have known.”

  “Yes, Boz. I could have. I should have. Now we’ll never know what else was there.”

  “Did you get any of it transferred onto yours?”

  “Ha!” She threw up her hands. “I don’t even know if my computer was infected. For all I know, this thing is now a glorified paperweight!”

  “Okay. Calm down. What do we need to do to find out?”

  Taylor took a couple breaths and tried to calm herself. She thought for a moment. “I need to take this back to my office and start it up in safe mode. Our network is secure. And if the worm is operating via the net, it won’t be able to function there. If it got onto my computer, I’ll be able to quarantine it and remove it. But I have no idea what all it’s already destroyed.”

  “Okay, then. Let’s get back to your office.”

  The door to Marianne’s office opened up and Deputy Director Faigan stepped in. The title was extremely misleading, as the man was nothing more than a glorified assistant. He was currently acting as the liaison to Director Jennings. “Ah, excuse me,” he said, “but did either of you have anything to do with what’s going on out here?”

  Megan gave the man a disgusted look. “It’s a server worm.”

  “What’s that mean?” he asked.

  “It means that anything connected to that server is blown. You can thank your former boss for that!”

  The man gave her a quizzical look. “Former boss? What do you mean? I thought Director Levy had just taken personal time. Did something happen?”

  “Oh, something happened, all right! You can tell everyone to just sit tight. Director Jennings will be calling to give you all an update. I wouldn’t count on seeing Director Levy again, though.”

  The man’s eyes went wide. “Is she all right? Is everything okay?”

  “Not if I find her,” Taylor snapped.

  CHAPTER 57

  Keene had spent most of the rest of the day traversing the town and the surrounding areas looking for any trace of the Prophet. He had stopped and shown the picture to anyone who would look. Everyone had said the same thing. Never seen him.

  He’d tried to call in and see how Taylor and Boz were faring but got cut short both times. Apparently, Boz informed him, Taylor’s computer had been infected by something called a worm when she connected to Marianne’s office computer. He said they had news but couldn’t talk then, and he would call back. Keene had tossed the phone into the seat beside him, frustrated. He just wanted to get back on the plane and go home. But instead, he was here, in this dumpy little town, waiting to talk to a drug snitch about who knew what.

  He went back to the roadside inn on the outside of town and got a room. It wasn’t the Ritz, but at least it was clean. He turned on the TV to see what was happening in the world outside of Hidalgo County. He fumbled with the remote until he found a news channel. The commentator was talking about the day’s events with the market. It seemed as if this whole market crisis wasn’t going away. There were a couple clips of President Walker giving a press announcement, asking the American public to be patient. He was asking the American people to set it aside for one day and try to enjoy the holiday. The government would be working round the clock to try to avoid a major financial catastrophe.

  “News flash, you big dope!” he said to the TV. “It’s already here!”

  He clicked the thing off and tossed the
remote to the other bed. It was getting into evening, and Boz still hadn’t called him back. Keene checked his watch and decided he was hungry. He left the room and walked across the street to the same small diner where he had eaten breakfast.

  The same waitress from the morning was there, though she had a fresh uniform on. He waved her over and gave his order.

  The food was good, as far as diner food went. He paid his bill and left a generous tip. He had said, “Good luck with business,” to her as he left, not even knowing what he meant by it. She must’ve taken it as encouragement, though, because she gave him a big smile and said, “Thanks.”

  Looking to his right, he noted the town looked like everything had shut down. Lights were off and cars were gone. Even a small town like this, he realized, had seen the immediate effects of the Wall Street mess.

  He decided to take a walk since he had nothing better to do. Besides, there was nothing worth seeing on television, and it was a nice night. The south Texas heat wasn’t quite ready to let up for the evening, but at least the humidity had gone down.

  Off in the distance, he could see a few small fireworks pop up here and there. Even with the economy tanking like it was and people freaking out, there seemed to still be a few who were at least trying to celebrate.

  He’d gone only a few blocks before his phone finally buzzed. It was Boz.

  “Where are you? What’s been going on?”

  “I’m at Andrews with Megan,” Boz said.

  “What? Why?”

  “It’s not good. Jennings is headed to the White House right now to talk to Walker.”

  Keene stopped and felt his dinner begin churning in his belly. “What’s happened?”

  “Megan found some stuff on Marianne’s computer. Seems she’d been setting up a major operation with the Chinese to come here and drill in the Dakotas and Montana.”