Target

by Cindy Dees

  “I don’t need you to believe me, Captain,” she said shortly. “All I need you to do is tell me who gave you and your partner the order to pick me up. Who tipped you off about me?”

  The guy looked up at her and back down at the card in his hand. Silently, he handed the card back to her, his expression defiant.

  She threatened with cool savagery, “I’m not leaving your house until you tell me, and you seriously don’t want to catch the heat I’m going to bring down on your head if you don’t cooperate. My grandfather was just the first of the big guns I can aim at you. You’ve gotten tangled up in something so much larger than you, I doubt you can even imagine it. You might as well just give me the name, because I am going to get it out of you one way or the other.”

  She saw him weakening. C’mon, Hammersmith. Break already. Time’s awasting here.

  She lightened her tone of voice to one of patient understanding. There was nothing like having to do a one-woman good-cop bad-cop routine. “Look. You can give me the name voluntarily, or I can call in someone way, way above you in your chain of command to give you an order. If you’d like, I can start with Gabe Monihan and let it roll downhill from there.”

  Hammersmith huffed hard. “Fine. A guy named Smith called us. Colonel Al Smith. He’s an aide to General Pace.”

  “General Eric Pace? As in the Army Chief of Staff?” she asked carefully. Holy cow!

  “Yeah. Satisfied now?” he snapped.

  “Yes, I am. Thanks. I’ll mention your cooperation to President Monihan when this is all over.”

  “You do that.”

  Not a happy camper. But she didn’t have time to care. Time to move on to her next interview. She left his house quickly and repeated her call to Delphi, this time obtaining the home address of FBI Special Agent Ronald Flaherty. He’d be a much tougher nut to crack if she didn’t miss her guess. The guy was a veteran agent. No way would she be able to bully him like she just had Hammersmith.

  She pulled up to his house, a rambling colonial on a tree-lined street only ten minutes or so away from her home. Nice place. She walked up to the wide, covered front porch and rang the doorbell, huddling deep in her leather duster. Man, it was cold tonight. Of course, some of the chill was probably coming from inside her gut. First, a high-level Secret Service supervisor fingered her, and then someone attached to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. She dreaded hearing who’d sicced Flaherty on her.

  Agent Flaherty himself opened the front door. He took one look at her and growled, “What the hell are you doing here?”

  “Look. I’m sorry to bring work to your home like this. But I need to speak with you for a minute. I have a question for you. It won’t take long. I promise. It’s a matter of national security.” That phrase usually got to men like this, whose lives revolved around the idea of protecting that national security.

  Flaherty snarled, “Call me in the morning. At my office. And don’t ever show up at my house like this again, or I’ll arrest your ass so fast it’ll make your head spin.”

  Damn. He wasn’t going to cooperate. She’d been afraid of that. She stepped forward aggressively, shoving her hand forward, still cloaked inside her coat pocket. She jammed the barrel of her Beretta into his ribs. “Don’t do anything sudden, eh, Ronald?” she purred.

  His eyes widened in shock then quickly narrowed in calculation.

  “Ever heard of a combat system called Krav Maga?” she asked casually. “Don’t try what you were just contemplating. At this point, I really don’t give a flip if I blow your head off or not.”

  Apparently he heard the menace in her voice of someone who wasn’t lying and who could, in fact, follow through on that threat to kill him. The fight flickered out of his eyes.

  “I respect your wish to protect your family. So why don’t you step outside onto the porch with me?” she suggested quietly. She stepped back a pace to give him room to join her. His gaze dropped to the front doorknob.

  She smiled coldly. “I’m telling you. Don’t try it, my friend. I only want to ask you a question, and then I’ll leave.”

  Flaherty stepped outside and pulled the front door closed behind him.

  She gestured toward the porch swing off to her left. “Have a seat.”

  Flaherty did as she directed. She moved around to his right side, partially behind him, in the best position to subdue him if he pulled any stunts. The way his eyes widened as his gaze followed her, he apparently recognized what she’d done. It was the move of a pro. Now that she’d established her seriousness with this guy, maybe they’d get somewhere.

  “Who are you?” he asked.

  It was undoubtedly a delaying tactic to stall her and distract her. But she was willing to give the guy that information on the assumption that he’d report her visit to the very superiors who’d set him on her. She wanted them to get the message that she was closing in on them.

  “I work for Army Intelligence, and I’ve been investigating the terrorists who’ve been trying to kill Gabriel Monihan for the last several months. After they showed themselves today, I’m inches away from nabbing them. I’ve got names already, but I’m going to nail everyone in this conspiracy and put them all away for good. And I need your help.” There. That should put the fear of God in whoever it was she was chasing.

  Flaherty snorted. “That’s nuts. If there was a conspiracy to assassinate Monihan, we’d have heard about it and investigated it ourselves.”

  She retorted, “Since when do all the branches of the government, particularly the intelligence agencies, share their toys and play nicely with the other children? Even with the Department of Homeland Security in place, you know as well as I do that interdepartment rivalries are alive and well within the government.”

  Flaherty made a derisive sound of agreement.

  “Are you getting cold, Agent Flaherty? I figure in another ten minutes or so, frostbite’s going to hit and your fingers are going to start to freeze. You know, you could lose your field qualification if you lose the tip of your shooting finger.”

  He didn’t show any reaction to that one. Not that she’d expected him to. She spent a couple of seemingly endless minutes just standing there beside him in silence, letting him soak up the cold without distractions from her. She had a coat on. She could be patient. And silence was a hundred times more unnerving than a steady stream of conversation.

  Finally, when he was shivering violently, he broke the stalemate. His teeth chattered when he snarled, “What question is so goddamned important that you’d drag me out here at gunpoint to ask it?”

  “Who called you this morning and gave you instructions to detain me and interrogate me?”

  His lips, black in the scant light out here, curled into a sneer. “Why the hell do you want to know that?”

  He was delaying again. “Like I said, Agent Flaherty. It’s a matter of national security.”

  “Bullshit,” he spit out.

  “I’m not particularly interested in your opinion on the subject. I want that name. Now.”

  “Go to hell.”

  She sighed. And leaped forward lightning fast, wrapping her right forearm around his throat and half lifting him off the seat with a vicious choke hold. With her left hand she grabbed his ear and, twisting it hard, forced his head to stay locked in a position that severely restricted his breathing.

  She murmured conversationally in his ear, “This is a basic Krav Maga choke. You know, those Israelis are mean bastards. They don’t care much if they kill the occasional punk in the name of doing their job. If I crank down this hold and shift it a bit, like this-” she tightened the hold across his throat and windpipe fractionally “-I can cut off your breathing altogether.”

  He gurgled beneath her arm and tried to struggle, but when she yanked hard on his ear, the shooting pain of it forced him to subside as it had been designed to do. She left the killer hold in place a few seconds more for good measure, then eased up with her arm enough for the guy to draw a partial breath.

>   “Now where were we?” she murmured. “Ah, yes. You were about to tell me who gave you the order to mess with me this morning.”

  He drew in another rattling breath but said nothing. She started to tighten her grip around his throat again.

  “All right, all right!” he gasped.

  “Talk,” she commanded in his right ear.

  “Janelle Parsons.”

  “Who’s she?” Diana demanded.

  “Works in the office of the Director.”

  Crud! What was this with high-level orders to yank her chain? “What did she say to you, exactly?”

  “She said there was a loose cannon bombing around town causing problems. I was to detain you and question you, and arrest you if you gave me the slightest reason to do so.”

  Diana let go of him and stood up. He leaped off the swing and dropped into a defensive position before her. Didn’t want her to get an arm around his throat again, did he? “So why didn’t you arrest me?” she asked.

  “You saved that guard’s life,” he answered simply. “And I didn’t have due cause to arrest you other than some order from on high to harass you.”

  Dang. Under other circumstances, she could’ve liked this guy. Been honored to work with someone decent like him. Aloud, she said, “Thanks, Agent Flaherty. I appreciate the information. I’m sorry I had to rough you up to get it. But it truly is a matter of national security, and time is of the essence. When this is all over, I’ll be happy to sit down with you and tell you all the gory details.”

  He stared at her in open disbelief as she politely excused herself and moved off the front porch. Of course, she wasn’t dumb enough to turn her back to him at any point, and she kept her hand in her pocket and on her pistol. She slid into the front seat of her car and backed out of his driveway fast, peeling away into the darkness while he still stood on the porch, staring at her. Whether or not he’d call the police and get an APB put out on her was anybody’s guess.

  She pointed her car toward home and her computer. She had a bunch of names to run through the Oracle database, assuming it wasn’t completely corrupted. The tampering she’d found had all been in analysis subroutines. Hopefully, the fact-correlation routines were still functional, and she couldn’t wait to see what they said.

  She parked in the alley behind her house, backing into the neighbor’s driveway in case Flaherty had, in fact, called the police. She could bolt out of her house and drive away fast if someone came knocking on her door. She made her way through her yard cautiously, keeping an eye out for any company. After scanning every dark corner of the yard and finding nothing, she slipped into her kitchen. Without turning the lights on, she moved into the living room. She closed the front blinds and then moved over to her computer and turned it on.

  She had a couple of incoming e-mails and she glanced through the addresses. Mostly from her family. They could wait. Nothing from the office or Oracle. She accessed the Internet and booted up the Oracle database quickly.

  She entered the names she had-Alex Porter at the Secret Service, Colonel Al Smith at the office of the Army Chief of Staff and Janelle Parsons at the FBI. The computer searched for several minutes, looking for significant connections between the three people.

  A response popped up on her screen. “Please enter more data to narrow the search parameters.”

  Damn. On a hunch, she typed in, “Find name of Richard Dunst’s last supervisor at the CIA.”

  A cursor blinked for a few seconds and then came back with, “Collin Scott.”

  She typed back, “Find Collin Scott’s supervisor when Dunst worked for him.”

  That name came back up almost instantly. She stared at it in dismay. Joseph Lockworth. Holy cow.

  She went back to her list of names in the original search and added the names, Collin Scott and Joseph Lockworth. On a hunch, she threw in the names of the members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as well. Flunkies at JCS didn’t do much on their own. She’d bet someone higher up had told Colonel Smith to make the call to Captain Hammersmith and friends.

  Oracle took longer to think about her list of names this time. And that meant it was probably on to something. While it analyzed whatever it had come up with, she went into her bedroom and threw on a pair of warm, lined wool slacks and a turtleneck-sweater combination. No sense freezing to death tonight. And even with her coat on, that stint on Flaherty’s porch had chilled her.

  The computer beeped in the living room and she hastened out to see what it had come up with.

  A detailed analysis scrolled down the screen. Most of the individuals on her list could be placed at various conferences, retreats, or meetings together steadily for the last three years. Oracle wasn’t talking two or three meetings. It listed fourteen dates where at least four of the people on her list were in the same place at the same time. Now what were the odds of that? She read further. Oracle placed the chances of these meetings being random coincidence at less than ten percent. Maybe not enough to convict someone on, but it was enough for her.

  She typed in, “Who else was at most of these meetings?”

  The screen blinked while Oracle compared the various lists of attendees. And then a list of a dozen names appeared. She scanned down through it. Quickly. Nine of the names were high-ranking members of the federal government. Good Lord. Even the Army Chief of Staff himself made the list, General Eric Pace. The last three people on the list were prominent businessmen-according to Oracle two were CEOs of major corporations, and the third was a finance banker. Whoa. If this was the group behind Q-group and Dunst, no wonder they’d nearly succeeded in killing Gabe. Frankly, the real shocker was that they’d failed. So far, she reminded herself grimly.

  She glanced further into the analysis and stared in dismay as another name caught her attention. One of the speakers at nearly half the conferences was another name she knew all too well. Thomas Wolfe. Gabe’s own Vice President? Could it be? Was he involved in a conspiracy to kill Gabe and take the Presidency for himself? The very thought sent a chill racing down her spine.

  She read on. Most of the conferences this gang had been at together had to do with national security issues, and three of the conferences were sponsored by the Society for the Advancement of Free Economies. Bingo. S.A.F.E… She’d found the connection. Triumph surged through her. DiscoDuck’s encrypted e-mail files had contained multiple references to the word safe in the mail titles. Now she had a positive link between the Q-group, Richard Dunst and this S.A.F.E. bunch.

  Quickly she typed in the society’s full name and asked for information on it. Founded a dozen years ago. Established its own small-press publishing house a few years back. Followed the teachings of…there he was again…Thomas Wolfe. Believed that terror would choke the global economy if left unchecked. Argued that terrorism was the greatest threat to the future of mankind since the beginning of history. Okay then. So this was a conservative group. Probably in favor of use of force against terrorism, given their strong opinions about it. Then why in the world would they propagate terror of their own and try to kill Gabe Monihan? It didn’t make any sense. She was missing something.

  She stared at her computer screen, seeing nothing but a blur before her eyes. Now what was she supposed to do? She forced her numb brain back into gear.

  Four of the names on her list worked at the CIA. Maybe that was the center of this group’s operations. It was worth a try. She picked up the phone on the desk beside her computer and called Delphi one more time.

  Yet again, her employer picked up the phone immediately and asked without preamble, “What have you got?”

  “I’ve got a list of names. I tracked down everyone who passed down warnings about me to the various underlings who harassed me today, and I ran those names through part of the Oracle program that’s still working. I’ve come up with a list of twelve people who appear to have been meeting each other regularly for the last several years. They’re all high rollers. You can access the analysis yourself. I saved it into the
threat assessment file on Gabe that you sent me last night.”

  “How very interesting,” Delphi said cautiously, if the toneless electronic drawl of Delphi’s altered voice could be described as having any emotion at all. “What do you plan to do next?” her employer intoned.

  “I’m going to start visiting these turkeys and see what I can shake out with a few pointed questions directed at them.”

  “Do you think it’s a wise idea to shake the bushes quite so directly? Perhaps a subtler approach might be best.”

  Diana gaped in surprise. Her boss had never before offered any suggestions about how she should proceed with an investigation. But then, she’d never threatened to rattle the very foundations of the federal government, either. She asked Delphi cautiously, “What sort of approach do you recommend?”

  “Write up a report on your findings to date. Make a few official inquiries about the purposes of all those meetings and see what you get,” Delphi suggested.

  Diana frowned. A written report? That would take days! Go through channels? That was the whole purpose of Oracle. To skip all that bogged-down bureaucracy! What in the world was going on? Why, all of a sudden, was Delphi backing off of this investigation? Was Delphi scared of the list of names she’d come up with? It was Delphi personally who’d green lighted this investigation. Told her to give it all she had and nail whoever was behind this assassination conspiracy!

  “Is everything all right?” Diana asked cautiously. Surely, Delphi had a good reason for all this sudden caution.

  “Of course,” Delphi replied quickly. “But before you proceed, I’d like to talk this over with you. Let’s get together and form a plan of action before we go any further.”

  “Uh, okay,” Diana mumbled, shocked to her core at the suggestion that she should meet Delphi in person. “When and where?”

  “At the Old Town facility. In, say, a half hour?”

  Diana answered quickly, “I’ll be there.”

  She stared at the phone as she hung it up. Son of a gun. She was finally going to meet Delphi and find out who was the mysterious mastermind behind the Oracle Agency.