*****
Ally hurried down the street towards the nearest convenience store. She was buzzing with paranoia and high on adrenaline.
The leader of Blue Team operations had, with no warning, requested an immediate video conference with Ally. And, with Blue Team rules, this involved getting a new phone and going through the laborious procedures involved to set up a secure video chat line. This, of course, forced Ally out of bed, where she had hoped to spend the rest of her waking day thinking about Liz. She needed the time to figure out what to do about the problems arising from Liz’s death that were not going to just go away with the passage of time.
Finally, after picking up a throw-away phone, buying credit with cash and setting up a secure connection, she was ready. She was ready for whatever they had to say. And she knew it probably wasn’t good news or congratulations. Blue Team never delivered good news to their members, especially not when they were overseas in the middle of an operation.
A face appeared on the screen. One single face. It was the head of operations for Blue Team. He started speaking right away.
“Ally, thanks for getting online so quickly. I’ll be quick with this also. I won’t waste your time. This is not a conference call, obviously. Nobody else will be joining us. OK?”
“Yeah, sure,” replied Ally. “What’s up?”
“Over the last 24 hours I’ve spoken with the leadership committee and with the relevant people at operations, including our finance people. Your expenses and your activities are unacceptable. And we all agree that you’ve made some horrible mistakes. Everybody is of the same opinion, there were no dissenters.”
“Can you list the expenses and activities that are unacceptable?” asked Ally. She didn’t need to ask, she already knew.
“You had operations spend quite a bit of resources and money in Mexico to track down a shooter – the shooter who killed your partner. The shooter’s fate was of no importance to the success of our operation, dead or alive. You knew it. There was no need for us to have spent our limited resources on revenge. And you could have died. That’s one. The second, and by far the worst, is that our source in the Office of Terrorist Financing and Financial Crimes was arrested. We know that it had to do with your work in Indonesia. That person is going to jail for the rest of their life.”
Ally didn’t know that the Blue Team informant inside the Treasury Department had been caught. She had gone back to the source, behind Blue Team’s back. And she knew that it was a high risk to have the same person leak information to the same person three times.
“Ally, you abused the significant reservoir of trust that you had built up within Blue Team. You used it to take some very serious liberties. So…bottom line is this: you’re out. No more Blue Team operations or support. We may occasionally call on you in an advisory capacity or as a consultant – if you agree to such a relationship. But that’s it. We no longer consider you a member.”
“And my current operation?” asked Ally.
She did her best to maintain her composure and to not show any emotion.
“Shut it down,” he said. “Cut that guy Larson loose. It’s over.”
“But this was a priority operation. That’s why I led it,” argued Ally, even if she knew there was no chance to salvage the operation.
“Listen, you spend a lot of time overseas. You have been missing out on an institutional shift here. What I mean by that is…Well, we don’t think that the expenses involved in overseas operations are worth it. Far fewer student loan debtors are taking the foreign option and running. We are going to devote most of the resources we have here, at home. I’m sorry Ally. You eventually would have been shutdown and recalled. What you did over the last few weeks just sped up the process.”
“And The Executioner?” asked Ally. “We let him sit on some beach in Indonesia and spend the money that he extorted and ransomed from Americans? We are going to let him get away with all of the murders?”
“Ally, he’ll eventually slip up. Someone will kill him for some reason. It’s only a matter of time. But it won’t be us, and it won’t be you. We have a ticket for you. You’re coming home. You pretty much have no choice. We’re pulling your visa support. We’re cutting off all operational assistance.”
“Yeah, so that’s it. It’s done?”
“Yes it is, Ally. But I think you knew this was coming.”
“Uh huh. Then we’re done here?”
“Yes, goodbye Ally. I’m sorry this didn’t work out.”
“Yeah, so am I.”
The call ended and Ally returned to her bed to continue her line of thinking that had been interrupted by Blue Team. She again stared at the ceiling, thinking. It wasn’t possible for her situation to get any worse, she thought. Only weeks ago she had been offered a leadership post at Blue Team, and now she was off the team completely.
Ally thought to herself, debating what she had actually been planning on doing with her career. She told herself that how she responded to Mick’s criticism was merely a reflexive defense of the Insurrectionary Anarchists. She had said the same things hundreds of times before. It was like an automatic response. But the truth was, Ally thought, that she had been ready to leave Insurrectionary Anarchism and take the promotion with Blue Team. Now that option was gone. Furthermore, she doubted that Blue Team would ever seriously consider her as an advisor. And the consulting would just mean getting pumped for information by a low level operations planning assistant. Now, she was merely an anarchist – a disillusioned anarchist who wanted to leave. The cause was hopeless. Ally accepted that.
And Liz was dead.
And The Executioner was still alive.
Department of Student Loans, Kidnap & Ransom Page 30
