False Signs (John Taylor Book 2)

by Travis Starnes

  “Yeah,” Taylor said, staring at the map.

  “You know what’s weird?” he said after a minute.

  “Huh?”

  “The cities they went after were all larger cities in or on the border of Oklahoma, and no violence in the city with the most federal presence, just a forced blackout..”

  “It would be a dangerous place for an attack. Not only the FBI but ATF and the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation, their statewide law enforcement agency, are all based there.”

  “Yeah, but I was just thinking, what if stressing the system was the point.”

  “You heard Trevor. If that was their plan, it’s working,” she said, looking into the distance while she was thinking.

  Taylor got up and put pins on the map for all the other places that seemed to be connected. Sitting back next to Whitaker, they both just stared at the map, thinking.

  The saying in Special Forces was to work the problem. Pick a piece, and work it out, then move to the next part. Planning was the key to what made Special Forces work. Taylor would argue that they planned more than any of the other elite military units.

  That’s what he started doing. Working the problem.

  “Ok,” he finally said. “The attack on the armory was to get the explosives they needed for whatever’s happening today, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Amarillo was the start. That happened first. Then they bomb Wichita that night, Wichita Falls the next morning, knock the power out in Oklahoma City, and finally Tulsa. Boom..boom..boom, each step happening faster than the next. This rapid escalation doesn’t fit with the planning that went into what they did in Lubbock and Amarillo.”

  “That’s our fault. Once they found out about Brooks, they put everything into motion right away. I’d bet this is all happening ahead of schedule,” Whitaker said.

  “It seems clear they are trying to pull manpower out of Oklahoma City. Look at where everything’s happening. All close enough that any federal or state law enforcement presence would have to pull from there, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And then a blackout, to throw the city into more chaos.”

  “Right.”

  “So, Oklahoma City’s their real target.”

  “Makes sense, but I....” She started to reply and then stopped. “Holy shit.”

  “What?”

  “I know what the anniversary is.”

  “What?”

  “Next week is the anniversary of Timothy McVeigh blowing up the Alfred P. Murrah. But, we screwed up their timeline. We hit the farm, and then took out Brooks, they knew we were onto them and closing in. We forced their hand.”

  She pulled out her phone and said, “I’m going to call Rollins.”

  After a moment, she hung back up, saying “No answer. Maybe he’s still in the air.”

  “Call the FBI offices there and have them put it on lock-down,” Taylor said.

  Whitaker found the number and dialed it, putting the phone on speaker.

  “FBI, Oklahoma City, Agent Dillon speaking,” a voice said, coming through the phone.

  “This is Agent Whitaker, has Special Agent Rollins made it there yet?”

  “Uhh ... yeah, Rollins made it, but there’s a briefing going on. What can I do for you, Agent?”

  “We believe the real target is your offices there in Oklahoma City. Tell him you need to evacuate the building, and start looking for guys in that area. Your building is the target. Got that?”

  “Got it. I’ll tell Rollins now, and we’ll get started.”

  “Thanks, Agent Dillon,” she said and hung up. “I guess now we wait.”

  “To hell with that,” Taylor said, sliding the phone towards himself, “With everything that’s happened, I’m not going to sit on the sidelines.”

  “Taylor, it’s eight hours to Oklahoma City from here. By the time we get there, everything will be over.”

  “Not if we fly,” he said, dialing. “Albert, its Taylor. I need a huge favor .... no, it’s hard to explain, but I have to get from Dallas to Oklahoma City as quickly as possible ... it’s really important man, I’ll owe you big .... yeah, I’ll wait.”

  Whitaker was looking at him, confused.

  Taylor waved her off and, after a moment, said, “Thanks, man. We’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

  After hanging up, Taylor said, “He has a guy who's willing to take us.”

  “That’s some friend,” Whitaker said as they rushed out of the office to her car, and headed to the airport.

  “The old soldier's network is better than any fraternity networking you’ll ever find. Don’t tell me you Feds don’t have the same thing.”

  “We do, but not enough to get a plane to fly us two hundred miles with one call.”

  “Well, that’s Albert. He’s got a way with people, and he collects favors like some people collect baseball cards. I’ll owe him big, and one day he’ll trade my favor to someone else, for another favor. It’s what he does.”

  They hopped into Whitaker's car and drove quickly to the small airfield where Albert had directed them. Taylor was happy to see the lights on at the hangar Albert had told him about, although he was surprised to find a helicopter pulled out and being prepped, instead of a plane.

  Whitaker pulled her car into one of the few parking spots at one corner in front of the hanger.

  “Deakins?” Taylor asked as they walked up to the man prepping the helicopter.

  “That’s me,” he said, wiping his hands. “You Sergeant Taylor?”

  “Yep. We appreciate the ride.”

  “Albert made it sound pretty important.”

  “It is. We need to get to the FBI building in Oklahoma City as fast as possible.”

  “Well, that makes it easier. I’ve taken folks there before. They have a pad on the roof, so if I get the clearance, I could drop you there.”

  “I'll get you cleared,” Whitaker said, flashing her badge. “Talk to air-traffic control or whatever, and I’ll do what I can to make sure it happens.”

  “Can do. Hop aboard. We’re fueled and ready to go.”

  Within a minute's conversation with the tower, they were cleared and lifting off the ground. It was deafening in the helicopter's passenger compartment, even with the doors closed. Taylor pulled a pair of headphones with an attached mic from a hook by his seat, and Whitaker followed suit.

  “Mr. Deakins, there’s a chance the city will be without power when you get there. Just set us as close to the city as you can if it's too dangerous to land.”

  “The pad will have battery powered landing lights. Have to, for emergencies and what not.”

  “Still, I know it’ll be dangerous to land in a city during a blackout.”

  “Ma’am, I think we’ll be ok,” he said with a laugh.

  Taylor considered for a moment, thinking about who, exactly, Albert would have called and then asked, “What unit were you with?”

  “160th,” he answered as the lights of Dallas fell behind them.

  “We’re fine,” Taylor told her, leaning back and looking out the window.

  “You sure?” Whitaker asked.

  “Very. The 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment is also called the Nightstalkers. These guys are the best helicopter pilots on the planet. They’d fly in formation, damn near clipping the desert at a hundred and fifty miles an hour and we’d sleep like babies in the back. Should'a known Albert had contacts with them.”

  Whitaker did not seem convinced, but Taylor let it pass.

  For now, he concentrated on what they were going to find when they got to Oklahoma City. Once Whitaker remembered what next week was, everything that had happened up to this point fell into place. He just hoped it wasn’t all over when they got there.

  Chapter 13

  The trip took just over an hour. Even with the headphones, any conversation was more than challenging thanks to the noise of the helicopter, so they both opted for silence.

  As they clo
sed in on Oklahoma City, it got eerie. Except for a building here and there, the city was black. Most of the suburbs around the city still had power, making it look even more unusual like someone had carved out the center of the city, leaving nothing behind.

  While Taylor was looking down contemplating how weird the city seemed, Deakins came over the headset.

  “Agent, air-traffic control has passed us to the FBI building's flight ops, and they are trying to wave us off. It’s time to do your thing. I’m patching them to your headset now.”

  She waited a moment, and then a voice started to come over her headset, “...lo 1439-Lima, divert from your course. You are not cleared to land.”

  “This is Agent Whitaker, serial number 28401742-54. I’m part of the task force and need to meet with Agent Rollins.”

  After a pause, the voice returned, “Helo 1439-Lima, you have clearance to land on pad 1.”

  The person then started giving a string of information that made no sense to Whitaker, but Deakins started making adjustments and repeated them back to the person on the other end, so she assumed it was what he needed.

  “That’s weird,” Taylor said, looking out the window as they neared the building and lowered enough to get a general idea of what was happening on the street.

  “What,” she said, leaning to look out the same window.

  “I would have expected more activity around the building if they were in the middle of evacuating. Unless they were able to clear the entire building in the last hour.”

  “Not possible. With everything that’s happening, they’d have all hands on deck, including most of the civilian support staff. They’d also have to clear the buildings around it. Hell, I don’t even see locals around the building, cordoning it off.”

  “Why would Rollins not clear out the building?”

  “I don’t know.”

  The roof of the building started coming up to them quickly as Deakins circled it once and placed them in the center of the pad.

  “Here ya go. I’ll hold at the airport for a little while after fueling before I head back to Dallas. Hit me up if you guys need a ride back,” he said, handing Taylor a card with his number on it.

  “Thanks, man.”

  “Thank Albert. I owe that man, big, so when he asks for me to give someone a ride ...” he said with a shrug.

  “Still, thanks,” Taylor said, shaking his hand.

  Whitaker was already at the roof door, and Taylor jogged to catch up. The lights in the building were low, probably because it was still running off of generators. As they entered the roof access, past the small booth that served as the building's control room for helicopters, they saw Rollins coming towards them with another man in tow.

  “What are you two doing here?” he asked, seeming confused. “And what’s with the helicopter?”

  “What? We called, talked to an Agent Dillon. He said he’d pass the message along.”

  “There isn’t an Agent Dillon in this office,” the unidentified man with Rollins said.

  “This is Special Agent in Charge Porter. He runs this office,” Rollins said by way of introduction.

  “What?” Whitaker said, “We called the direct number and talked to the man.”

  “But what are you doing here?” Rollins repeated.

  “We think this building is the actual target,” Taylor said.

  “What?”

  Taylor laid out their reasoning. He explained how the attacks all around the city and the blackout in the city itself were designed to isolate the FBI offices and stretch their resources thin. He also laid out the connection with the upcoming anniversary.

  “But you aren’t certain,” Rollins said when he finished.

  “Certain? No. But it’s the only thing that fits. Nothing they're doing makes sense with anything else we could come up with,” Taylor said.

  “Sir, I know they're here,” Whitaker added.

  “Hell,” Rollins said, rubbing his face and turning to Agent Porter. “Ok, let's evacuate all non-essential personnel, and call the locals to block off surrounding streets. It would have been tough for them to get into secure areas, so have what personnel we have left start a floor by floor search.”

  “We don’t have many people left.”

  “I know. Let's call OCPD and see if they can spare anyone to help. It probably won’t be much, since they are dealing with the blackout, but let them know it’s important.”

  Porter gave a curt nod and walked away, headed for the stairwell.

  “If they’re here, they’ve caught us with our pants down,” Rollins said, watching the man walk away.

  “I think that was the point,” Taylor said.

  “Yeah. Probably. Ok, you two have had the best track record predicting these people so far. Where are they?”

  “I have no idea. My first thought is to check the entrance points and go from there.”

  “We’ll probably start there with the other teams Porter is putting together, but you two go do what you do. Stop by the command post we set up on the fourth floor and grab a radio.”

  Taylor and Whitaker headed off at a jog down the stairs to the fourth floor, the elevators being unavailable while the building was on backup power. The ‘command post’ was two guys sitting by a police radio in an empty conference room, with cell phones, flashlights, and radios plugged in along one wall.

  Grabbing a pair of flashlights and a radio, checking to make sure they were on the right channel, Whitaker and Taylor headed back to the stairwell before Whitaker stopped them.

  “So, where are we going,” she asked.

  “Something’s bothering me. How did our message go so wrong when we called. A guy identified himself as an FBI agent and even told us Rollins wasn’t available. Yet there is no one named Dillon assigned here, and they had no idea we were coming.”

  “I’ve been thinking on that, too. It just occurred to me, the guy didn’t mention Rollins until we asked about him, and then used gender neutral terms until I said ‘he.' I don’t think they knew who Rollins was. If I had to take a wild guess, I’d say that was one of the ALP guys, faking it.”

  “Doing what, intercepting calls? How is that even possible? These guys haven’t struck me as the ‘hacker’ type so far. More of the ‘I’ll point a gun at stuff I hate and shoot it’ type.”

  “Hacking in remotely to an FBI phone system and capturing the calls before they could get where they’re going is pretty damn hard, and I agree these aren’t the guys to do it. But, old school methods are a lot simpler and definitely in their wheelhouse.”

  “Such as?”

  “Tapping into the lines where they come in. If they managed to break into the building unnoticed in all the chaos around here, say like when the power first went off, it’s possible.”

  “Where would they do it from?”

  “Somewhere in the basement, I think.”

  “Ok, let's check it out,” Taylor said.

  They headed into the stairwell and started their trek down to the basement levels of the building. Neither of them knew much about the layout of a modern building and less about how phone lines would come into it. They radioed up to the command post, and the guys there had no idea either but said they’d try to find out.

  For almost ten minutes they wandered around the labyrinthine corridors of the building's sub-levels, with little luck. About the time Taylor started thinking they may have had it wrong, he heard something. At first, it was muffled, unclear.

  Taylor pulled his weapon and Whitaker followed suit. They both eased slowly down the section they were in, hugging the wall, headed towards the sounds. As they got closer, the noise became more and more distinct, until it became apparent the sounds were voices, punctuated by the occasional clang or thump.

  Coming to a corner, Taylor peeked around it. A hundred feet down the corridor he saw an open metal door, and a man standing in the doorway of the room, apparently talking to someone inside the room. The thumping sound was coming from inside th
at room. Taylor leaned back and indicated he saw someone, moving back so Whitaker could look.

  “What do you think?” she asked in a whisper when she moved back from the edge.

  “I think that’s a whole lot of distance before we’re on top of him, and we have no idea who or what is in that room. If we shoot him from here, they will have a long time to do what they need to do before we get to them.”

  “We could call for backup?”

  “Yeah, but they are doing something in there. I’m not crazy about waiting. Who knows how long they’ve been setting up for whatever they’re planning.”

  “I agree.”

  “So if we do this, we watch for a moment when the guy at the door isn’t paying attention, and then we go hard and fast. Hug the wall, stay clear of each other.”

  “Works for me,” Whitaker said, quietly checking to make sure she had a round chambered and flicking off the safety.

  “I’ll call it.”

  Whitaker hesitated and then said, “Sure, ok.”

  “Don’t fire until you have to. We want to keep the element of surprise as long as possible, to get us as close to the room as we can before they’re tipped off.”

  Taylor checked his weapon as well, and then moved to the corner, watching for the man in the doorway. They didn’t have to wait long. After less than a minute the man stepped forward, into the room. Not all the way, but enough to take the hallway out of his peripheral vision. Taylor thought that was probably as good as they were going to get.

  He stepped out into the hallway and stayed up against the left wall, his pistol raised and pointed in the direction of the sentry as he ran, hoping Whitaker was with him but not taking his eyes off the target. They made it about half way before the sounds of their footfalls caused the guy in the door to take a step back and see what the noise was.

  As soon as he saw them, his eyes got big, and his hand, along with the gun in it, started to rise as he began shouting out a warning. Taylor didn’t waste a moment. As soon as the man’s arms started rising, Taylor pulled the trigger on his pistol.