Executive Order (Reeder and Rogers Thriller)

by Max Allan Collins

  Rogers made a quick call to AD Fisk’s office and learned that the Assistant Director was in a meeting, but should be free momentarily.

  Soon, seated in Fisk’s reception area, she checked the burner phone to see if a text had come through from Reeder—it hadn’t—then got out her other phone, which had a text from Kevin about seeing her tonight. The AD’s inner-office door opened and a tall man with dark hair came out. Pleasant enough looking, he had a Cost Cutters haircut and generic gray Men’s Wearhouse suit that screamed government drone. He gave her the nod that was a stranger’s hello and strode out.

  Two more minutes passed before the AD’s male secretary interrupted her perusal of the FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin on her cell phone, to say, “Ms. Fisk will see you now.”

  Rising, Rogers took in a breath, let it out. She strode into the inner office to find Margery Fisk staring past her, her expression cold. Not welcoming.

  But as Rogers neared the aircraft carrier of a desk, AD Fisk met her eyes and said, as if uttering an expletive, “Accountants.”

  Obviously Fisk was referring to her previous visitor.

  Taking the waiting chair opposite her seated boss, Rogers shrugged, smiled just a little, and said, “Accountants.”

  “GAO’s threatening another audit,” Fisk said, her voice matter-of-fact, her eyes hooded.

  The Government Accountability Office audited, evaluated, and ran investigations for Congress. Another GAO audit would be the first step in the process of stripping the Bureau of much-needed dollars. Theoretically, the GAO could recommend more funds, but Rogers knew that with the economy in a downturn, such a thought bordered on fantasy.

  Sensing an opening, Rogers said, “Would it help if we successfully took on the biggest case the Bureau ever had?”

  Fisk’s smile had a bitter edge. “I believe, Agent Rogers, that John Dillinger is no longer at large.”

  Rogers kept her tone businesslike. “Suppose, just hypothetically mind you, that there was a rogue element in the US government. A shadow government within the government, manipulating certain events.”

  To Rogers’ relief, the AD neither laughed out loud nor threw a paperweight at her. But the woman did say, “So, you’re a conspiracy theorist now.”

  Rogers had expected a reaction like this, and had decided not to point out to her superior that just a few years ago evidence had finally surfaced clearing Lee Harvey Oswald.

  “It doesn’t seem to be just a theory, ma’am. I’m confident I can prove it.”

  Fisk straightened in her high-backed chair. She studied Rogers, as if perhaps the need for a major crime for the Special Situations Task Force had turned the younger agent desperate.

  Then Fisk said, “Make your case.”

  Rogers laid out everything that she, Altuve, and Hardesy knew, as well as what Reeder had contributed . . . without compromising his presidential mission, merely reminding the AD that four CIA agents had been killed in Azbekistan despite their presence in that country contradicting a presidential directive.

  When Rogers was done, Fisk said nothing for several endless moments.

  Just when Rogers thought she had blown it, her boss said, “About half of the dots you’re connecting aren’t there.”

  Deflating a little, Rogers said, “But what about the other half, ma’am?”

  Fisk mulled that, but only for a moment. “You may not have a convincing argument where your ‘shadow government’ theory is concerned . . . at least not yet . . . but your case for Secretary Yellich having been assassinated is sound. And obviously that is a very serious matter, a threat to the government itself. We’ll start there.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Make this investigation your task force’s priority. Get right on it.”

  She rose, nodding. “Yes, ma’am.”

  Rogers was halfway out the AD’s inner-office door when Fisk called out, “Oh, and Rogers?”

  “Yes, ma’am?”

  “Good work.”

  “Thank you, ma’am.”

  She flew through the outer office, thinking that sometimes a trip to the principal’s office wasn’t so terrible after all.

  When Rogers got downstairs to the bullpen of the Special Situations Task Force, the team was waiting for her, having been assembled by Miggie at her request before she went up to see the AD.

  Half a dozen desks, with no cubicles but plenty of space, faced a video screen that took up much of a wall; a small table looking back at them was reserved for Rogers in briefing mode, and she took her seat there. Smaller video screens were here and there around the room, and of course several offices in back—her own, Miggie’s, and an unassigned one that had been reserved for Reeder as consultant.

  Miggie was sitting at the desk he used when not in his office. Hardesy and his usual partner, Anne Nichols, had desks next to each other. Tall and fashion-model striking, the African American Nichols was as tough as she was stylish, and she was plenty stylish. Today she wore a single-breasted, gold-buttoned black business suit and leopard-print blouse.

  The other pair of field agents, Jerry Bohannon and Reggie Wade, made up the more senior team, having been partners for years now.

  The craggily handsome, fortyish Bohannon had started dating a woman his own age a while back, his post-divorce second childhood finally over, and consequently had stopped dyeing his hair, the natural gray at his temples giving him a distinguished look. So did his navy worsted suit, solid light blue tie, and blue-and-white-striped white-collared shirt.

  The six-foot-four, African American Wade was a seasoned investigator who liked to push the limits of the Bureau’s regulations of what comprised the acceptable “look” of an FBI agent. Today he was risking a black vested suit with black shirt and black skinny tie—all that black, yet the style of it said Italian.

  The final member of the team, behaviorist/profiler Trevor Ivanek, was a balding human scarecrow with a broad forehead over deep-set eyes. Open-collar dress shirt under a sweater vest gave him the air of the scholar he was. For a man who spent so much time trying to understand monsters, he had a quick, easy wit.

  Rogers got up from the table facing the team and rolled out a whiteboard that she’d asked Miggie to call down for. Something this low-tech was rarely used anymore, but it gave her a form of communication that the security camera behind her could not witness.

  When she finished outlining what she and Fisk had just talked about, to an audience whose expressions ranged from squinting skepticism to wide-eyed alarm, Ivanek was first to speak up.

  “With all due respect, Agent Rogers, you and Mr. Reeder are bucking for a psychiatric evaluation.”

  Wryly amused, Wade asked, “That your considered expert opinion, Doctor?”

  His eyes staying on Rogers, Ivanek said, “I don’t doubt that you have outlined some troubling events, chiefly the assassination of a cabinet member. And that seems entirely appropriate for an examination by this task force. But making the leap to a conspiracy within our government is ill-advised, reckless, and even foolish.”

  Hardesy said, “Then put me down for a psych session, too, Doc. I was standing right next to the black ops operative who got eliminated by a sniper. And I for one find it highly suggestive when four CIA agents get themselves killed where they were forbidden to be by, oh, just the President.” He glanced around the bullpen. “Reeder and Rogers are right. We’ve got players on the inside who’ve gone rogue.”

  Shaking his head, Ivanek said, “Conspiracies are fine in fiction, but in the real world they’re almost impossible to keep hidden, especially something on this scale.”

  Rogers said, “But we don’t know the scale of it. We could be dealing with a handful of people . . . but powerful people.”

  “Most so-called conspiracies,” Ivanek said, “are simply the individual acts of, say, police officers trying for the makings of an easy conviction, or politicos drumming up pseudo-scandals on a major figure from the other side. But sending agents overseas to die and tying i
t to the death of a cabinet member, even the probable murder of that cabinet member . . . it’s strictly Through-the-Looking-Glass stuff.”

  With a pretty eyebrow arched, Nichols said, “That little party at the Capitol last year—you were here for that, right?”

  Ivanek nodded. “I was. And ever since 9/11, we have lived in a curiouser-and-curiouser world. I grant you that. But Agent Rogers and Mr. Reeder are still making an ill-advised leap. My opinion is that we begin with the assassination of Secretary Yellich and treat it like what it is: a murder case.”

  “I have no problem with that,” Rogers said. “But I would request that everyone here keep in mind the context that I’ve provided. If the people we’re up against are as powerful as I think, then every person in this room is an insect that could easily be swatted.”

  Wade shifted his long-legged body and said, “Okay, so we’ve got a case, and just the kind of major-league case that might just keep our little Sit boat afloat. Where do we start, boss?”

  “We’ll begin with computer checks,” she said, for the benefit of any bugs in the room. But on the whiteboard she wrote: NO USE OF BUREAU EQUIPMENT. WILL EXPLAIN. STRICTLY SUB ROSA. Then she wiped it clean.

  “Why?” Bohannon asked, a question that might have been for either the spoken comment or the written one.

  Rogers said, “They may have left a computer trail, and we’ll get Miggie all over that.” But again, as she spoke, she wrote: MOLES. TRUST NO ONE BUT THE TEAM. She wiped the board clean.

  “Reeder can be considered a part of this team,” she went on, “but he has his own agenda. Our focus is, as Trevor has correctly advised, finding out who is behind the murder of Secretary Yellich.”

  As she spoke, she wrote: NO PERSONAL PHONES. NO BUREAU EMAIL. Again she wiped the board clean.

  Bohannan rose, smoothed his suit coat, and went to the whiteboard, taking the marker from Rogers, and wrote: HOW DO WE COMMUNICATE? He erased that and watched her write: BURNER PHONES ASAP. She erased that, and Bohannon nodded and returned to his desk.

  Wade asked, “So, where do we start, boss?”

  Writing REAL ASSIGNMENTS on the whiteboard, Rogers said, “Reggie, you and Jerry take another look at Yellich—personal life, her staffers . . . make sure we didn’t miss anything.”

  Wade nodded. Bohannon, too.

  “Miggie, these people must have left a trail somewhere. Find it. Follow it.”

  She wrote: APARTMENT HOUSE SHOOTER’S DNA. FROM DC HOMICIDE.

  Miggie nodded as she erased the message.

  “Lucas,” she said, “you, Anne, and I have a job in the field to do.”

  She wrote in very big letters, and underlined: WATCH YOUR ASSES. Then she swept the board clean.

  When she, Hardesy, and Nichols were in the corridor, Rogers said, “We’re going to visit Tony Wooten’s parents.”

  “Do you think they know,” Hardesy asked, “what kind of mischief sonny boy was up to?”

  Bohannon said, “Name a terrorist who lived at home whose mommy didn’t know he was making bombs.”

  “Good point,” Hardesy admitted.

  “Don’t assume the worst about them,” Rogers advised. “Remember, they won’t have been informed about their son’s death—Miggie’s digging is what turned up Tony Evans’ real identity, and so far we’re the only good guys who know it.”

  “Understood,” Nichols said.

  Soon, with Nichols at the wheel of a Bureau Ford, the two-hour drive to Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, was spent going over Wooten’s file as e-mailed by Miggie to Rogers’ burner, though there was precious little in it.

  Wooten had entered the military after getting an associate degree in police science from Harrisburg Area Community College. Rogers figured that (like her), Wooten had intended to become an MP, but (unlike her) never made it into the Military Police. Instead, he’d entered sniper school, at which point his military record became conspicuously sparse; nothing of note beyond an unremarkable tour of duty stateside. It was as if he went to sniper school then just disappeared for eighteen months until his honorable discharge.

  Rogers wondered where Miggie had gotten the information about Wooten’s black ops in Afghanistan. Were there more off-the-books activities of Wooten’s in that part of the world, or others for that matter?

  A sleepy burg of fewer than 25,000 souls, Chambersburg depended mostly on tourism—thanks to its rich history, quaint downtown, and Appalachian setting—though with the surrounding communities, the greater metro area swelled to about 50,000 with some decent manufacturing jobs available. Amish and Mennonite farmers beyond the city limits made up part of the population as well. It reminded Rogers of her home area back in Iowa, even down to the fields of corn surrounding the town.

  The biggest employer, though, was five miles north—Letterkenny Army Depot, the place from which Wooten’s father had recently retired. Amos and Constance Wooten lived in a brick bungalow on a two-lane highway called Edenville Road, where lawns large enough to require riding mowers overwhelmed modest houses like theirs.

  Rogers left the car in the driveway and the three FBI agents walked up a brick walk. The quietude reminded her of her farmland home, too—this was just far enough toward the edge of town not to get regular traffic, with only the barking of a dog and the breeze whispering through trees to test the silence.

  Rogers knocked on the door and waited. She was just about to knock again when a shadow crossed the thin curtains behind the wooden door’s glass.

  Another second and the inside door opened, leaving only the screen between her and a slender man in his sixties with thinning gray hair and Tony Wooten’s nose. He wore a Philadelphia Eagles T-shirt and new-looking jeans.

  “Mr. Wooten?”

  “Yes . . . ?”

  She held up her credentials. “Special Agent Patti Rogers with the FBI. With Special Agents Anne Nichols and Lucas Hardesy. May we come in, sir?”

  “What’s this about?” Mr. Wooten asked, understandably taken aback. One FBI agent on his doorstep would be bad enough . . . but three?

  “I’d rather not discuss it out here, sir,” Rogers said. “May we come in, please?”

  With a frown, Wooten swung open the screen and they trooped in. The living room was smallish but nice, homey. Family pictures—son Tony with a younger brother and older sister peered at them pleasantly from over the years—rested on perfectly dusted end tables, a sofa with a knitted afghan hugged one wall, a BarcaLounger sat next to a couple of wing chairs, each facing a flat-screen TV on a stand.

  Hardesy asked, “Is Mrs. Wooten at home?”

  At first alarmed, then reluctant, Mr. Wooten twisted toward the back of the house. “Connie,” he said, barely raising his voice.

  “What is it, dear?” came a voice from a doorless doorway onto the kitchen. Plates were clinking. “I’m busy right now!”

  Bringing his wife into the mix had brought home to their host how serious a visit this was, and Amos Wooten said simply, “FBI.”

  A short, stocky, aproned woman, her hair a shade of red unknown in nature, stepped into the room drying her hands on a towel. Her eyes were light blue and very pretty. “Did you say FBI?”

  Rogers made the introductions again, ending with, “Perhaps we might all sit down.”

  The Wootens traded a look and moved to the sofa and sat down side by side. Within moments, their hands found each other. The agents assembled seats around the humble living room.

  Every law enforcement officer hated this part of the job, hated it like poison. Rogers had been the bearer of bad news more than once back in her county deputy days, and it never got easier. As a federal agent, she usually came in well after someone had already received the worst news of their lives.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Wooten,” she said, “your son Tony died last night in Hillcrest Heights, Maryland.”

  The wife’s grip tightened on her husband’s hand, her knuckles turning white.

  “I’m sorry to have to tell you this,” Rogers continued, �
�but Tony was murdered.”

  She waited for the tears, the explosion of grief, but instead found herself staring at two people whose wide-eyed confusion said they didn’t understand a word she was saying.

  Mr. Wooten said, “In Maryland, you say?”

  “Yes. Hillcrest Heights. He was living there, but you probably knew that. Did you know that?”

  Mr. Wooten looked at his wife, bewildered, and she looked back at him the same way. “There has to be some mistake, Agent Rogers—Anthony isn’t even in the country.”

  Was there any way Miggie might have misidentified the shooting victim? No, the file photo matched. And she was not about to show these parents the photo from the coroner’s office. On the burner phone, she called up Tony Wooten’s military file and his photo.

  She held the phone out to the father who studied it, squinting at it, as if trying to make out a distant figure on the horizon. He gave Rogers a look that asked for the phone, and she nodded and gave it to him.

  Soon father and mother were looking down at the photo on a phone that was in both their hands.

  “That is your son?” Rogers asked.

  They didn’t need to reply. Tears trailing down the mother’s cheeks, and the tremor in the father’s hand as he handed back the phone, gave the answer.

  Rogers said, “We’re very sorry for your loss.”

  Mrs. Wooten’s head tipped forward and a small sob escaped. Hardesy got up and went to her and handed her his handkerchief. She accepted the offering with a nod of thanks, and he went back to his chair.

  Mr. Wooten gave Rogers a hard, direct look. “What happened to Anthony?”