Terrorbyte

by Cat Connor

  “Tell him!” Mac said.

  “What?”

  “Whatever it is that’s bugging you. It’s not going to go away unless you face it.”

  I took a breath and let it rush out of my body. It was useless to deny anything was wrong. He wasn’t just my friend, my colleague, he was my husband. He had a way of reading me, a damned annoying way of knowing me better than I knew myself.

  Suck it up, chucklehead, tell him what it is.

  “Usually I get a feeling in any given situation – a signal from my gut – that tells me what’s going on … then I just have to prove it.” I couldn’t help but smile, knowing that was the easy bit.

  Praskovya spoke, “Why not this case?”

  “Why any case?” I asked.

  He tossed it back at me. He wasn’t going to fall for my tricks.

  “What’s special about this case?”

  Then he surprised me. “Shut your eyes, Ellie. Take a deep breath and let me ask you again.”

  “What the hell for?” Interfering wretch.

  “You are a difficult woman. I can help. Shut your eyes.”

  “I am not difficult. I do not take orders from you and if you can help, then start talking!”

  I knew Mac was smiling. “She’s not difficult, Praskovya. She is, however, contrary.”

  I flipped him the bird.

  “I can help. You have the answers, you have more than you know inside,” Praskovya said, tapping his head.

  “Why do I need to close my eyes?”

  “It will help you focus.”

  “Mmmm …” Skepticism lay heavy in my voice. Possibly because Praskovya had suggested it and not because I thought he was full of crap. I sighed as loud as I could. Contrary?

  “How exactly are you going to do this?”

  “I learned a relaxation technique a long time ago; it helps unlock things we do not realize we know.”

  “And this works?”

  “On some people. I think your mind finds meaning where other people can’t.”

  Mac tapped my hand. “It can’t hurt.”

  “Fine,” I said and, with great reluctance, closed my eyes.

  Moving pictures folded like cloth as Praskovya’s voice took me to the seashore and a yellow, sandy beach. Sparkling white-capped waves rolled onto the sand. A heat haze hung over the water, making the world shimmer. Seabirds whirled above, squawking loudly. Their calls interspersed between Russian and English as they dove at the sand. Pulling and pulling. Four birds in a row tugged a cloth from the sand, stretching it between them like a canvas. The images settled.

  Still life, exquisitely painted like the gilt-edged scenes on a Fabergé egg. Fragile. Pictures captured by a dream. One by one the images told a story. His words brushed over the canvas illuminating the recesses. It was all so clear.

  “What’s special about this case?” Praskovya’s voice powered its way into my consciousness.

  I opened my eyes and looked straight at him. “There is definitely more than one Unsub, maybe even more than one actual killer. I think a minimum of two people are killing.”

  Praskovya smiled. His dark cloud parted briefly and I saw a man who didn’t always take life so seriously. Someone who was real, not a misplaced character from a cheap romance novel.

  “More than one,” he repeated. “More than one killer.” He tapped his fingers on the desk. “We know he has associates. Why do you think they’re a part of the killings?”

  “He could not have carried out all the surveillance, or picked the victims. He arrived in the U.S. only two weeks ago. Everything was already set up. He came to kill. He came to get our attention,” I replied, maintaining eye contact.

  “And?”

  “And he has it,” I said.

  “Why?” Praskovya pushed onward.

  “It’s a mask.”

  “What for?”

  “That’s what I don’t understand. Why blow smoke up Delta’s ass? What don’t they want us to find? We’re being played.”

  “Delta’s directive is what?”

  “Serial crime.”

  He nodded.

  “I still don’t understand why they want us tied up.” I left my words out in the space between us and let my mind run over the rest of my thoughts.

  It made no sense. Human trafficking in Europe isn’t under our directive, so that can’t be what they’re hiding. Why would they kill mothers connected to the Foundation? Why target me? Why make this personal? What if … this … was … about … American kids? The vulnerable kids of bipolar mothers. Nah! Can’t be. Ninety percent of the children involved in the Foundation had fathers in their lives. They’re not easy marks and would be too easily missed.

  What if that’s what they’re covering up? The real crimes could be the kids who are easy marks. Those no one would miss.

  My stomach sank as I realized what could be happening.

  Praskovya spoke, “What are your thoughts?”

  “They’re not good,” I said, “Is it possible that he/they kept us busy with crimes that covered up what was really happening.” I paused, letting my thoughts roar. “Mixing the underlying crime with a heavy coating of bloodied murder victims so we become overwhelmed and desensitized?”

  “What are you saying?”

  “That a few more bodies turning up would be lost in the abundance of crime scenes; we may not notice in time that children are missing.”

  Mac asked, “Why the kids?”

  Praskovya looked at me. In his eyes I saw a shadow of knowledge he’d rather not have. He spoke to Mac, “They could be filling an order.”

  I tapped at the keyboard intent on finding out how many daughters were untraceable after the deaths we were investigating. Five children were missing, presumed out of the area with extended family. No one had found them yet. Five that we knew of.

  “Fuck! I’ve handed these perverts a smorgasbord of vulnerable exploitable kids.”

  “You didn’t do this, Ellie,” Mac said with his usual calmness. “We did.”

  I shook my head. “Yeah, I did. In my efforts to help I managed to help these boys and girls right into a pedophile’s bedroom.”

  He started to argue again. I held my hand up to signal him to stop.

  Silence fell.

  “There is too much information here,” I said.

  The silence continued.

  “I need the pictures. Victims. Kids. All of them.”

  Mac pulled them all from a file he had near him and handed them to me. I touched each picture and then laid each victim on the desks with the corresponding children. I moved away from the younger children – the children I knew were safe – away from Dakota’s deep brown eyes.

  Five children were left. The youngest was ten years old; the oldest twelve. The only children with no immediate family. “Where are they?”

  “Everything we have says they were picked up by relatives.”

  “So why can’t we find the relatives?”

  “They’re out of State,” Mac replied. “Schools were notified that the kids were spending a week away with relatives.”

  “Any of those schools query who the relative was?”

  “No.”

  No one looking. No one demanding FBI involvement and screaming about how they were good kids and someone should find them.

  “Did anyone even get a contact number for any of these so-called relatives?”

  “Not that we have found,” Mac said.

  Rage rose in waves at the realization that schools didn’t care enough about their charges to ask a few basic questions. I chewed my lip and considered a plan of action. I directed my response to Mac. “Get Chrissy to work on something for me. I want the names of office staff and principals of the schools these children attended.” I was fuming and trying really hard not to sound mad at Mac but, damn, the thought that no one cared about the pupils at these schools really ticked me off. “These schools need better security measures and some basic safety practices in place. They
obviously have no fuc’n clue how to safeguard their pupils so we’ll help them.”

  Mac wrote my instructions on a pad. “Anything else?”

  It wasn’t easy curbing the desire to tell to him that if and when we had babies, I’d be giving up work and home schooling them. Them? Jeez, now it was more than one. This thinking about babies thing had to stop. I thought for a second or two while he waited for more instructions.

  “Ask Chrissy to get someone from the Crimes Against Children program to contact these schools and express our concern.” Before I go in there and express myself through the medium of a closed fist. “While you’re at it. Get her to fire up legal … find some charges we can threaten them with. I want something to scare the fuck outta these people.”

  “I’ll get it done.”

  “I don’t believe they’re with relatives. Why don’t we have something, anything that says these kids have family somewhere? We don’t. All we have is the schools being notified by someone other than the parent and no contact phone numbers or addresses.” I was aware that I was starting to rant. “These are the children I think we’ve lost.” I spread their pictures out across my desk. “These and how many others, I don’t know. We have to find them.”

  Praskovya cleared his throat. “There are so many ways to leave, but they may not always leave. Sale could be arranged here within the United States.”

  I nodded. “And so many places to hide, right here.”

  “Why the fort?” he asked suddenly. “What’s so special about the fort? Why did they take you there? Where is your informant?”

  Lee swung the door open. “It’s taken care of,” he said. In his hand was a manila folder, and from it he pulled some photographs. When he slapped the first photograph on my desk I knew he’d heard Praskovya’s question. “McNab was drowned in the bay, about a hundred yards from where we found you, Ellie.”

  I picked up the picture. Dead.

  “How did they know?” I struggled with the knowledge. “How did they know who my guy was?”

  They knew better than to answer. I thought and thought. The only thing I concluded in the short term was that McNab had set me up and it all went pear-shaped on him. I hope he was paid well, that it was worth dying for. The whole scheme was well planned.

  Kids targeted.

  Planned.

  Someone else helped set this up: it wasn’t just McNab. Someone who could conduct surveillance on me as well as on the Foundation, and set up safe houses; someone who could get around Fort Belvoir with no questions asked.

  “He’s watching and listening at crime scenes. How else could he get information?” I said.

  “Your computer, your cell phone … car. If he’s as well organized as he looks to be … bugs in our homes and offices. We know at least one operative is Spetsnaz trained, plus two other military types involved. We could’ve been tailed. The cell could be bigger than we know,” Mac replied.

  “This could’ve gone on for months.” I looked at Mac. “Take what you need, go back to my room and see what you can uncover. And get Noel Gerrard to come meet me here. Have Caps and Tats bring him in from their outer perimeter.”

  He grabbed a laptop and disappeared.

  The penny dropped, spun and came up heads.

  “Last Saturday – missing Dutch kid. The Albanians.”

  Praskovya looked baffled but Lee caught on. As he would; he was with me on Saturday.

  “A test to see how we would react? How deadly our response is …” Lee said, slowly shaking his head. “Damn!”

  I nodded. “It feels like that and what a great opportunity to see who responded.”

  “To snatch a look at the lead agent,” Lee said.

  “Finding the girl we were supposed to find.”

  “Go team,” Lee murmured. “We were played.”

  Praskovya interrupted. “Excuse me. The note – the first victim – did it have your name on it?”

  “Yes.”

  “They were hoping for you to take the case … then tested your responses just to make sure you were available?” Praskovya asked. “Or was this fluke of timing?”

  I shrugged. It seemed nuts. Mostly that’s how it goes with my job. “I doubt it was me they wanted. But they did want a name, a lead agent, someone they could taunt.”

  Lee added, “Those rooms, the building where we found the girl: probably bugged.”

  “That’s how they knew my name. If anyone had overheard my conversation with Caine they’d also know all the other teams were involved in cases and we were the only available team,” I replied. “That would explain the mystery of the notes addressed to me. I wonder, did they let that girl escape on purpose?”

  I sank into the chair behind me. From beginning to end we had been under the microscope.

  “Most probably,” Lee replied. “I would say they most certainly unlocked the door and left the room on purpose, sending the bait running off to trap us. And then it wouldn’t take much research to find out you’re the FBI poet everyone’s been talking about. That makes you much more likely to receive taunts than say, me or Sam.”

  “Where would these kids be?” I asked, burying the Post-it notes, pushing aside the death of my informant and mentally uncovering the faces of the missing children.

  We all reached the same conclusion. “Fort Belvoir.”

  “They got me through the gates with no problem whatsoever and I’m an adult. It’d be much easier to conceal a kid in a car,” I said.

  “Could we have been so close to those kids and not known to look?” Praskovya said.

  “But why would they take me to the same place?”

  We were interrupted by Mac at the doorway. “Gerrard is on his way now; he’ll be here in about twenty minutes. Caps and Tats are the welcoming committee.” Mac went back to what he was doing, leaving us to continue the conversation.

  I heard Praskovya speak softly, “She goes where she is comfortable.”

  “Who?” I asked.

  “Selena,” he replied. “Most likely place to hide?”

  “Somewhere out of the way, a private house, an army house, an old bunker on a military reservation. We’re talking about a big area. We need to narrow it down.”

  “What was that road? Deakyne?” Praskovya asked. “Where you were.”

  I nodded. “There was another building before the bunker, close but not too close. It was large and concrete. That could be what they were protecting.” I remembered seeing both structures. The car driven by the Marine was parked near that building. “I need to meet with NCIS. Hopefully he’ll agree to get us on base and we can check out that building.”

  We all scoured the notes, case files, every scrap of information we could find while waiting for Gerrard to arrive. I was hoping something would jump out and declare itself irrefutable proof of my theory regarding snatched children.

  Eventually, several sets of footsteps approached the door. Someone knocked.

  “Come in,” I called.

  Tats swung the door open.

  “Visitor for you, Agent Ellie.”

  “Thank you very much.”

  Noel Gerrard stepped into the room. Caps poked his head in and made eye contact with me. “Do you need the copal now?”

  I’d forgotten all about it. “Oh, Caps … it’s worked out. Please thank your aunt for me. Maybe I just needed to know I could get it.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah. Thanks Caps.”

  He pulled the door shut, indicating they would be outside waiting.

  I stood up and moved to greet my perplexed visitor. He was clean cut, about six feet tall and stood strong and straight. His eyes suggested he missed nothing. “Special Agent Gerrard, pleased to meet you. I can’t shake your hand. Sorry.”

  He glanced at the bandages.

  “Good to meet you, SSA Conway.”

  Lee moved a chair over to my desk for Gerrard.

  “Have a seat. Call me Ellie,” I smiled and introduced my roommates. “This is FBI
Special Agent Lee Davenport and FSB Officer Misha Praskovya.”

  He nodded and greeted the men.

  “You wanted to see me?”

  “I do. I had a little run-in with a Marine out at Fort Belvoir.”

  His expression didn’t change as he asked, “Would this have anything to do with the shoot-out yesterday on Deakyne Road?”

  I smiled and inclined my head. “The Marine I’m referring to assisted in my kidnapping. He also attacked me with a knife.”

  “Your arm?”

  “Yup. I have nothing. No name, no rank, no nothing. Except that he was with another man – possibly military or at the very least a civilian working on base. What I can tell you is that he’s hurt.”

  “Hurt how?”

  “I cut his right hand, while trying to pry the knife from him. Before his buddy stabbed me in the back.”

  “Bad enough that he’d show up on sick call?”

  “I think so.”

  “Shouldn’t be too hard to find him, then. I’ll look for recent injuries reported at the base hospital, and for anyone on sick call. How good a description did you get?”

  “White, five-ten, light brown hair – not thinning – medium build. His hands were kind of soft. Not what I expected. I did my best to get a description but I was fairly preoccupied with survival.”

  Gerrard smiled. “I’ll investigate this. Is there anything else?”

  “Can you get us into Fort Belvoir without creating a stir?”

  He grinned. “Sure, why the hell not? When?”

  “Now.”

  “What are you after?”

  “We think there are missing children being held out on Deakyne Road. We don’t want anyone on base knowing we’re heading out there.”

  “So I’m taking you.” He swept his arm around the room. “And no one’s supposed to know?” His voice held a hint of sarcasm.

  “Uh-huh.”

  He pulled a phone from his pocket and made a call. “Get your gear, you’re heading south. Meet me at the intersection of Fairfax Country Parkway and Route 1.”

  He closed the phone and put it back in his pocket. He looked at me. “You might need help. My team is coming.”

  “Let’s do it,” I said. I looked around for my badge. Lee pulled a hand out of his pocket and passed my badge over. I stuck my head out of the door into the corridor. “Yo, Mac. We’re moving out.”