Threat warning

by John Gilstrap

Jonathan met FBI Director Irene Rivers for breakfast at the Maple Inn in Vienna, Virginia. A dive by most standards, it was a favorite hangout for the spooky community that had grown up around CIA headquarters, which sat just six miles north on Route 123-or, as it was called within the incorporated limits of the Town of Vienna, Maple Avenue. Jonathan had lost track of the number of clandestine meetings in the open he’d had here over the years, but combined, his didn’t account for one tenth of one percent of the cumulative secrets heard by the restaurant’s walls.

  Because the food was good and inexpensive, and the beer was cold and plentiful, the Maple Inn’s clientele attracted the widest possible demographic, from soccer moms with kids to working folks of every color collar. Most important to Jonathan and the people he met with, the waitstaff knew when to take an order and when to stay away.

  After their eggs, sausage, and toast had been delivered, and the pleasantries were out of the way, Jonathan got down to business.

  “Thanks for coming to my rescue last night.”

  She shrugged it off. “The Secret Service has an arrogant streak that pisses me off,” she said. “It feels good to put a thumb in their eye from time to time.”

  “Will you be able to keep my name out of the press?”

  Irene dipped a corner of her toast in the runny yolk of her egg and took a tiny bite. “The Prince George’s County Police arrested and released a fellow named Chuck Carr last night,” she said. “He was suspected of being one of the bridge shooters.”

  “And Agent Clark?” Jonathan had already finished his eggs, and had shifted his concentration to making a sandwich with his sausage patty.

  “He was never there,” Irene said, her face showing disappointment. “That was part of the deal with Ramsey Miller.” He was Irene’s counterpart at the Secret Service. “Letting the shooter run away was a big enough screw-up that he didn’t want the embarrassment.”

  “So who arrested me? I mean who arrested Chuck Carr?”

  “Does that really matter?”

  Jonathan thought about that. “No, I suppose it doesn’t.”

  Irene smiled. “Good. So, tell me who you saw on the bridge.”

  He started from the beginning and went through it all. When he was done, he had Irene’s full attention.

  “A girl, huh?” she said. “That’s a twist. You sure it wasn’t a long-haired boy?”

  “A long-haired boy with boobs, maybe. My powers of observation are really pretty well-honed. Why?”

  She shrugged. “It just runs counter to the profile. These mass-shooting types are always male.”

  “I think I saw her drop her weapon,” Jonathan recalled. “Anything useful from that?”

  “Generic Bushmaster, two-two-three caliber, modified for fully automatic fire. What concerns me is the marksmanship. Both of the gunmen-gun persons -knew what they were doing, and both were firing the same ammo from the same lot.”

  “Do you know where they got it?”

  “Not yet, but I’m not hopeful that we’ll learn a lot from that. Just a gut feeling. These guys feel trained to me.”

  “Any connection to the mall shootings in Kansas last weekend?” Eight people had been murdered in that incident, with over thirty wounded. When the shooters had been cornered, they’d killed themselves rather than being taken into custody.

  “Officially, no. Unofficially, absolutely. They were both invisible teens with jihadist propaganda in their pockets.”

  “Arab?”

  “Not hardly. One of them had red hair. But not all Muslims are Arab.”

  “Are you thinking terrorist cell?”

  Irene’s eyes grew wide as she feigned insult. “Good God, Digger. We don’t use the T-word for this. The president has made it clear that there will be no domestic terrorist attacks on his watch.”

  Jonathan chuckled. “What are we calling it, then?”

  “The last I heard, they were ‘unconnected random acts of violence.’ ” She used finger quotes for the last part.

  “Needs work,” Jonathan said. “Way too many syllables.”

  “Yeah, that’s the problem. Too many syllables.”

  A moment passed in silence before Jonathan said, “You should know that Security Solutions has launched our own investigation into the shootings.”

  Irene paused in the middle of a sip of coffee. “Please don’t do that,” she said. “I don’t need you exercising your grudge muscles right now.”

  “It’s not about me,” Jonathan said. “Of the twelve killed and sixteen wounded on the bridge, three were friends or associates of my investigators.”

  She scowled. “How is that possible?”

  He shrugged. “The Washington Metro Area is really just a small town with a lot of people in it. My folks don’t ask stuff like this very often. I can’t say no to them. It’ll all be pro bono.”

  “I’m not worried about the money-I wouldn’t pay you anyway. I worry about tainted evidence.” She held up her hand before he could respond. “And before you go into denial mode, remember how long we’ve worked together. I’ve never seen anyone who can taint evidence like you can.”

  Jonathan resisted the temptation to point out that a not insignificant amount of the work she was referring to was performed at her request. “This won’t be the clandestine side of the shop,” he said. “It’ll all be by the book.”

  Irene Rivers was one of very few people on the planet who knew the dark side of Security Solutions. To the rest of the world, it was an investigation firm that worked for some of the most prestigious corporate names in the world.

  She wearily closed her eyes. “What can you possibly bring to the table that won’t already be brought by a dozen government agencies?”

  “Maybe nothing,” he said. “Maybe a lot. The only thing I know is that I can’t say no to my staff on this one. If I did, they’d just do it anyway. Doing something helps them cope. Makes them feel empowered, I guess.”

  Irene’s phone rang in the pocket of her suit jacket. She issued a deep sigh as she reached for it. “Well, I can’t order you not to,” she said. “But please show restraint. If we find the not-terrorists who are committing these unconnected random acts of violence, I will shit all over you if so much as a speck of dust is rendered inadmissible because of something done by you or yours.”

  Into the phone: “Director Rivers.”

  Jonathan made a show of not listening even as he zoned in on every word. But she didn’t speak. Instead, she just listened and her face darkened. “Okay,” she said at last. “I can be in the office in a half hour with lights and siren. Assemble the section heads and the SAC in Detroit for a video conference at ten. Meanwhile, get Lee and Jeff on the line. I’ll talk to them from the car.”

  When she pushed the disconnect button, she shot a pained smirk toward Jonathan. “Be sure to watch the news over the next couple of hours,” she said. “A jihadist just bombed an elementary school in Detroit.”

  As Christyne waited for the gunman to return, the temperature in the tiny room soared past sweltering into the range of frightening-easily ninety degrees, if not hotter. The wall on the far side of the room from the door was too hot to touch, leading her to believe that there must not be any insulation at all between the furnace and the concrete block wall. The best she could figure out was that they used the furnace only during the day, and let the fire die at night.

  Or, it could be that the heat was a form of torture?

  It had been over an hour since they’d taken Ryan, and in that time, she had heard nothing but the drumbeat of her own heart pounding in her ears. Her mind conjured awful things that could be going on, and the imagined images triggered panic. The kind of panic that clouds your thinking and makes you do stupid things.

  She wanted to scream, to call out to him. The warnings from the guards made the difference. They demanded silence. Hadn’t she already brought enough harm to her family?

  What could they be doing to him?

  She took a huge breath and
tried to settle herself. The panicky thoughts were counterproductive. She was powerless to affect the outcome of this nightmare. What would happen would happen.

  If she told herself that often enough, maybe it would bring solace.

  For now, all it brought was more fear.

  They had her son.

  After easily ninety minutes of isolation, she heard movement of the lock again. This time, when the door crashed open, she had been anticipating it, and was able not to yell out in fear. The team of gunmen streamed in as before, guns at the ready, all of them trained on her. As four of them stopped six feet away, the fifth one-the man with the threatening eyes-approached another two steps, stopping only when he was face-to-face with Christyne.

  “Where is Ryan?” she asked.

  “Put your hands behind your back and turn to face the wall.”

  “Please,” she begged. “Is he okay?”

  “If you make me hurt you, I will,” the gunman said.

  Christyne turned and faced the wall, crossing her wrists behind her back as she had seen Ryan do. The plastic loop closed over her wrists tightly enough to restrain her arms, but not tightly enough to hurt. Yet. A moment later, a hood was placed over her head, but to her surprise, it had a mesh front that allowed her to see. Not well, but enough.

  “Walk to the door,” the gunman commanded.

  The line of gunmen parted to allow her to pass, and as she did, they curled in around her to follow. The air approaching the door was easily twenty degrees cooler than the air inside the cell. She nearly asked where they were going, but then decided not to. They would tell her what they wanted her to know when they wanted her to know it.

  Ryan was kneeling on the floor immediately outside the room, facing her, surrounded by at least a dozen of the black-clad gunmen, all of whose faces were covered by masks. Ryan’s hood had been removed. She could see the desperation in his eyes. His left eye and cheek were swollen and purple. The healthy eye showed an emotion she didn’t quite recognize from him. It was as if something inside him had been rewired.

  Once she’d been allowed to see, the gunmen slipped the hood back over Ryan’s face.

  Behind her, the man who’d been doing all the talking said, “It’s time now to atone for your sins.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Back in Fisherman’s Cove, Jonathan sat at his desk, with the fickle yet adoring JoeDog sleeping flatulently at his feet.

  No matter how much he tried to avoid the soul-stealing administrivia that came with running a company, investigative findings had to be reviewed and approved, checks needed to be signed, and the occasional mega-client needed to be stroked. Most of the truly painful boredom was shared by his lead investigator, Gail Bonneville, and his office manager and technology guru, Venice Alexander. (It’s pronounced Ven-EE-chay, by the way, and she was known to lose patience with people who blew it more than once.) Even with layers of middle management in place, though, the boss was still the boss, and only so much could be delegated.

  On the far wall, Fox News was running with coverage of the jihadist attacks that threatened to “paralyze America.” Some outfit that called itself the Army of Allah had released a video of a mother and her half-naked teenage son cowering at the feet of black-clad gunmen. The mother recited a prepared text-a rant about godless heathens and the inevitability of Islam’s rule, blah, blah, blah. While they spoke, an Arab translation crawled along the bottom of the screen.

  The Army of Allah took responsibility for both the mall and bridge shooting incidents, plus the school bombing this morning. They promised that more violence was on the way. The shootings would continue, in fact, until the United States withdrew from virtually every geopolitical stance it had taken in the last seven decades.

  Jonathan knew that the hostages were destined to die, if in fact they hadn’t already been killed. In his experience, impossible demands translated to a simple desire to kill. They were photo ops, really, designed to create iconic images of violence that would raise the stakes on terror, and the Army of Allah was doing a hell of a job so far. For the Wilson Bridge Massacre-that seemed to be the sensational moniker with the most legs-that image was the photograph of two ravaged and bloody child seats side by side in the back of a family sedan.

  Between the various tableaus of carnage, the talking-head shows ran a loop of experts who seemed united in the belief that Islamist sleeper cells had been activated, and that their existence was evidence that our decade-plus of war had failed to protect us.

  One day, Jonathan thought, he’d like to become a talking head so he could go on television and tell all those assholes to shut up.

  In fact, he made them do exactly that with the mute button. He had paperwork to do, after all.

  His intercom beeped. “Digger, I’m sorry to bother you, but there’s something in the lobby you need to attend to.” It was Venice Alexander.

  “What brand of something?” he asked. Not that it mattered. He’d help polish the furniture if it would rescue him from this tedium.

  “A visitor. An Army colonel named Rollins.” She spelled it. “He says it’s an urgent matter.”

  Spelling the name was hardly necessary. There were few people drawing breath whom he loathed more than Roleplay Rollins. “What does he want?”

  “He won’t say.” She softened her voice. “But he seems very agitated.”

  Jonathan thought about telling him to pound sand and disappear, but his curiosity was piqued. “Bring him back to the office, please.”

  “Into the cave?” Venice gasped. It was the corporate term for their highly secure executive suites, and no one from outside the company was ever invited back here. Precious few from inside the company were ever invited back here.

  “Escort him every step and make sure that Rick searches him for weapons. Be sure he finds the one on his ankle.”

  Three minutes later, Venice knocked on the door and opened it without waiting. At five-four, with chocolate-brown skin and a flawless complexion, Venice Alexander looked nothing like the computer genius she was. Her face showed utter confusion as she ushered in a graying man in jeans and a polo shirt, whose hair hung nearly to his shoulders, and whose beard made him look like a street panhandler. To those who knew what to look for, he looked exactly like the Delta Force operator that he was.

  “Hello, Roleplay,” Jonathan said, leaning his butt against the front of his massive desk. Part of the reason for bringing the son of a bitch back here was to let him see just how little his Machiavellian games had affected Jonathan in the long term. JoeDog’s tail stopped wagging when she heard the tone in her master’s voice.

  The visitor shuffled his feet. He clearly knew he was not welcome, and would rather be anywhere else in the world. “Not many call me that anymore,” he said.

  “Not many people know your true nature anymore,” Jonathan countered. Rollins’s real first name was Stanley, but in the Unit, everybody got a nickname. The colonel preferred Iceman, and that stuck for a while until he advanced through the ranks and started to put his own career in front of the men he commanded. That was when Jonathan hit on the alliterative Roleplay Rollins, and it stuck like Krazy Glue.

  “Are you going to invite me to sit down?” the colonel asked.

  “Only if you promise to leave soon.”

  Venice got squirmy. “I’m going to leave you two alone.”

  Jonathan stepped forward, beckoning her closer. “No, no, no. I want you here. When you’re dealing with Roleplay, witnesses are never a bad thing.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” Rollins groaned.

  “Say what’s on your mind,” Jonathan said. “Then get the hell out of here.”

  “Fine,” Rollins said. “Boomer Nasbe’s family has been kidnapped by terrorists, and we need help getting them home.”

  Rollins’s delivery had the feel of something he’d rehearsed, and it landed with all the force he’d no doubt intended. Boomer had been a rookie member of the Unit at the time Jonathan was leaving, and pa
rt of a different squadron, but the organization was small enough that everyone knew everyone else. Jonathan’s recollection of the kid was that of a hungry go-getter who could run forever and bench-press nearly three times his body weight. He’d heard through the grapevine that Boomer had pulled off some impressive heroics in Afghanistan.

  Jonathan gestured for the sofas and chair over near the fireplace. “Have a seat,” he said. “You, too, Venice.” Answering Rollins’s unasked question, he added, “Think of her as my Miss Annabelle.” He referred to the still-sharp, still-impressive eighty-year-old who had been the commander’s secretary since the days when the Unit was first formed.

  The colonel looked impressed. Miss Annabelle’s were tough shoes to fill.

  Jonathan left the leather people-eaters to his guests while he took the wooden William and Mary rocker for himself. Years of parachute jumps, bullet wounds, and general abuse had made it difficult for him to get comfortable in soft furniture. Before sitting, he asked if anybody wanted something to drink, but no one did. JoeDog took up the patch of carpet next to the rocker.

  “What happened?” Jonathan asked, crossing his legs.

  “We don’t know, exactly,” Rollins said. “Have you been watching the news? They’re the family at the feet of the terrorists in the new video.”

  Jonathan shot a look to Venice, who recognized her cue and stood immediately. “I’ll have it set up in the War Room in five minutes,” she said, walking toward the door in the office wall that led directly to their high-tech conference room.

  “Bring Gail in, too,” Jonathan said.

  “What about Boxers?”

  Jonathan looked at Rollins, and then back. “Make sure he knows the colonel is here, and what the purpose of the meeting is. Leave it to him.”

  Venice acknowledged the gravity of his tone with a twitch of her eyebrows, and then left them alone.

  Without the buffer of a witness, Jonathan felt his hatred returning, and his ears turned hot.

  “You can’t hold a grudge forever, Dig,” Rollins said.

  Jonathan raised a forefinger in warning. “You don’t want to open that door. Not in here. Not on my turf.”