The Polaris Protocol

by Brad Taylor

  Jesus Christ. It’s the desk clerk. He’s sold me out.

  He slammed the lid to the digital recorder closed and shoved it under the bed, then grabbed the speaker and yanked it out of its connection to the wireless receiver. He threw it in the bathroom, then fumbled for his phone, his hands shaking, looking for a way out that wasn’t the door. He realized there was none. Realized he’d made a catastrophic mistake.

  He pulled up speed dial and hit a button. The phone went straight to voice mail. He shouted, “Andy, Andy, I’m in trouble. I’m in big trouble. Where the fuck are you?”

  The door burst open and he remained standing, the phone trembling in his hand. Two men entered, both pointing pistols at him. He shouted, “No, no, no!” throwing his arms into the air. One snarled in Spanish, and he feigned ignorance. The other said in English, “Get on your knees. Now.”

  He did so, the fear so great he thought he would pass out. He’d studied the Mexican drug cartels for over four years, seeing the savagery they would inflict on those who attempted to thwart them, and in no way did he want to provoke their ire any more than he had.

  They handcuffed him with efficiency, no outward abuse, no punches or smacking just because they could, which did nothing but raise his alarm. They weren’t local thugs. They were trained and had done this many times before. He began calculating what he could do. How long he had. He knew they wouldn’t kill him here, in El Paso. The drug trade was vicious, violent beyond the average human’s comprehension, but it still wasn’t here. They’d move him, which meant some time. At least a day while they tried to get him across the border, to Ciudad Juárez, where they could torture him freely.

  One day. Twenty-four hours. He looked at his watch and saw the seconds begin to disappear.

  4

  I opened the door and felt like I needed an oxygen mask from the smoke spilling out, the nightclub so full of fumes from cigarettes that I was having a hard time seeing five feet.

  Guess this place hasn’t heard of the secondhand dangers.

  I felt Jennifer recoil and pulled her inside. Sometimes you get to play baccarat at Monte Carlo in a tuxedo, sometimes you have to belly up to a smoke-infested bar in Turkmenistan. Story of my life.

  The room reminded me of the bar at the beginning of Raiders of the Lost Ark, where Indiana Jones met up with his ex-girlfriend. A bunch of burly men and raunchy woman yelling and shouting at one another. All I needed to do was get Jennifer to challenge some big-ass bear of a man to a vodka-drinking contest, and the image would be complete.

  Sotto voce, Jennifer said, “This place looks like the cantina in Star Wars.”

  I chuckled and said, “Wrong movie. Come on. We’ve got thirty minutes before the meet. Let’s see if we can blend in that long.”

  We found a table in the corner, and I checked my phone, seeing I had lost service yet again. The cellular infrastructure inside Ashgabat, the capital of Turkmenistan, was pathetic to say the least. It was making our surveillance effort very difficult, but in truth no harder than it had been for our commando forefathers who worked through the Cold War. It just meant we had to go old-school.

  I keyed the radio strapped to my leg and leaned into Jennifer, as if I was talking to her. “Knuckles, you staged?”

  “Yes. We got a box. You send the photo and trigger, and we’ll do the rest.”

  “Roger all.”

  Jennifer glanced at her watch and said, “This guy is cutting it close.”

  “I know. He’s not stupid. He’s aware of the curfew, and he’s going to use it.”

  Nobody was allowed to walk around after eleven at night in the capital, but really that was a crapshoot. A lot of people did, and the police then usually picked on the westerners to fleece for bribes. Or other unsavory things. There had been reports of them arresting women, taking them to jail, then extorting sexual favors. It would make a surveillance effort after the witching hour very, very hard.

  “What if he doesn’t show? Are we going to push it and try again tomorrow or head to Gonur?”

  “We still have forty-eight hours. One more night. If he doesn’t show then, we’re leaving for Gonur. We can’t blow off the contract. This was just a freebie anyway.”

  Gonur was a four-thousand-year-old archeological site set in the middle of the Karakum desert, and we, as the proud owners of a company called Grolier Recovery Services, had been hired to help a team of experts take a look at the dig. Well, at least that’s what the government of Turkmenistan thought.

  In reality, we were a cover corporation using counterterrorist operators as employees, all working for an organization so removed from the traditional US defense and intelligence infrastructure it didn’t even have a real name. We simply called it the Taskforce, and it had sent us to Turkmenistan to identify a wealthy Saudi Arabian who was funding the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. Unfortunately, our cover took precedence over the mission, so if we didn’t locate the contact, we were looking at spending a few days sweating in the desert. Something Jennifer would love. She enjoyed anything and everything dealing with old crap.

  She waved her hand in front of her face, trying to clear the smoke, while she surveyed the bar, looking for our linkage target. She said, “I can’t believe Pedro would meet a rich Saudi in this dump. Why not in a mosque? Or any number of coffee shops? The intel seems off to me.”

  Pedro was our nickname for a terrorist affiliated with the IMU. He was all set to be removed from the playing field in Uzbekistan when the Taskforce learned he was meeting a contact in Ashgabat. They decided to see if we could identify the contact, implant a collection device in his personal effects, and try to swim upstream to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia with the end state being identification of the money man.

  I said, “The mosques here are all owned by the government. In fact, the government monitors everything here, like it’s still part of the Soviet Union. He’d need someplace noisy. Someplace that self-defeats the bugs all over this damn country.”

  Which was why we wouldn’t be doing anything overt against Pedro. Much easier to take him down when he returned to Uzbekistan. Our mission was pure snoop and poop. No high adventure.

  I went to the bar, happy to see a smattering of Europeans, including one old couple clearly forcing themselves to enjoy the “culture.” Jennifer and I wouldn’t stand out. I got a couple of glasses of hot tea, and by the time I had returned to the table, Jennifer said, “Pedro’s at the door.”

  I casually glanced that way and saw him, our linkage target. He was swarthy, with a full head of chestnut hair and a red beard that looked like a briar patch. Dressed in a striped shirt, the sleeves rolled up to the elbows and the tails hanging out over a pair of black slacks made of rough cloth, he looked like every other regular. He glanced around, locked on something, then began walking toward our three o’clock. I followed his line of march and saw a single man sitting at a table smoking a cigarette. Bingo.

  “Jennifer, you see where he’s headed?”

  “Yeah, yeah, I got him.”

  “It’ll be your camera.”

  We each had a covert digital setup embedded in our clothing—me in the upper shoulder of my jacket, and Jennifer in a brooch on her chest, the battery pack, brains, and Bluetooth transmitter hidden in our clothing. We’d purposely sat at ninety degrees to each other to give us complete coverage of the room. If he had gone toward the nine o’clock, I’d have been getting the picture.

  The cameras were digital marvels controlled by our smartphones. They had limited optical zoom but a very, very good digital zoom complete with digital stabilization. The hard part had been getting the things to line up naturally to what we wanted to see, as my jacket kept shifting when I sat down, and Jennifer, believe it or not, couldn’t get the thing to aim level because of the swell of her breast. After screwing around with them for a while, we’d managed to figure it out.

  Jennifer brough
t out her phone and began working it, the image from the camera fed to it via Bluetooth. I waited to confirm the man was Pedro’s contact, then began relaying to Knuckles as a backup to the photo.

  “Knuckles, Pike. Zulu One located. Prepare to copy description.”

  After a few seconds, I heard, “Send it.”

  “Dark top, black, possibly blue. Long-sleeve, button-front. No jacket. Sleeves rolled completely down. Youngish, twenty-five to thirty. Hawklike face, long nose. Swarthy—looks Saudi. Long hair down to his collar, but well kept. Looks long on purpose, not because he can’t afford a barber. Small mustache but clean chin. No outstanding identifying marks. Sort of looks like Jake Gyllenhaal in Prince of Persia.”

  Jennifer, working the digital zoom, looked up and said, “He doesn’t look anything like Jake Gyllenhaal. What an insult.”

  I keyed my radio. “Correction. Apparently Jake is much, much more attractive. Stand by for photo.”

  Jennifer fiddled with her phone for a second longer, then nodded at me.

  My radio crackled to life and I heard, “This guy doesn’t look a damn thing like Jake Gyllenhaal, except for the hair.”

  Jennifer grinned, and I said, “Sue me. You guys collapse in?”

  “Yeah, we’re set.”

  I saw Jennifer scrunch her eyebrows, still looking at her phone. I glanced at Jake and Pedro, but they weren’t doing anything suspicious.

  “What’s up?”

  “My phone just picked up a signal. I have a missed call and a voice mail.”

  “Who in the world is calling you in Turkmenistan?”

  “Jack. My brother Jack.”

  5

  The desk clerk, a trembling, rail-thin man of about sixty, was brought in and slammed into the wall next to Jack. Behind him a dapper man in a business suit entered, taking a seat. The original hard-asses both remained standing. All four were of Hispanic origin.

  The gunslingers stayed mute. In Spanish, the dapper man said, “Who do you work for?”

  Jack feigned ignorance again, saying, “I don’t speak Spanish.”

  In English, the dapper man said, “You may call me Carlos. Please, tell me why you are here.”

  Holding nothing back, knowing it might help him survive, Jack said, “I’m a reporter for the Dallas Morning Star. My editor knows where I am and will be looking for me. It does you more harm than good to hurt a reporter inside America, and I swear I didn’t hear anything incriminating.”

  Carlos turned to one of the gunslingers. “His phone?”

  The man passed it over, and Carlos checked the call log. “What did you tell the man on the other end of this phone?”

  “Nothing,” Jack said. “It went to voice mail. All I said was I was in trouble. I swear I haven’t heard anything.”

  Looking at the number, Carlos said, “Then why would you feel you were in trouble?”

  “Because of who you are. What you represent.”

  Carlos squinted at the phone, then said, “This isn’t a Dallas area code. Who did you call?”

  Confused, Jack said nothing, unsure if Carlos was trying to trick him. Carlos held out the phone, allowing Jack to read the number. His heart sank deeper into the void. Andy isn’t going to do anything.

  He said, “It’s nobody. I misdialed.”

  “Misdialed the entire area code? Who is it?”

  Jack struggled to come up with an answer. Anything to deflect attention from the true answer. “It’s just a friend I have on speed dial. Someone I went to school with. His speed-dial number is next to my editor’s.”

  Carlos brought up the menu, checked the speed dial, then chuckled and pulled out his own phone, saying, “Not exactly Woodward and Bernstein, are you?”

  He dialed a number and stood, moving to the bathroom and letting a gunslinger close in on Jack. Carlos began speaking in Spanish, laying out what had occurred up to this point. Fairly fluent, Jack learned he had interrupted something much more sinister than the expansion of drugs into the United States.

  “No, Señor Fawkes still believes we’re computer people like him. Hacktivists. He does not know the reasons behind our meeting. He’s paranoid but not stupid. He just about fainted when my men came in with pistols. He’ll realize something else is afoot if I don’t give him some misdirection.”

  The man on the other end spoke, and Carlos answered, “Yes, I think he can do it. He works at the air force base in Colorado, the one that controls the navigation satellites. The ones that tell the drones where to fly. I think it’s worth continuing. We take out their eyes, and we can go back to the old days. The old ways. We’ll be the only ones who can do it. Los Zetas will still get caught by them, and the plaza will be ours.”

  Carlos listened a few seconds longer, then turned his eyes on the desk clerk, saying, “We have paid him handsomely many times in the past. He deserves death for his treachery, but I think we can use him to deflect attention if anyone comes around asking. Keep him alive a little bit longer. I’ll pay him before I leave and remind him that I know where his family lives. What about the man himself? The reporter?”

  Jack saw the desk clerk’s eyes widen and strained to keep his face neutral, waiting on his own fate. What he heard caused his heart to stutter.

  “I can’t do that here, in America. I’ll need a car that can get across the border. Send someone with a SENTRI Pass. I’ll be staying at house four.”

  They’re going to take me to Juárez. Kill me using our own trusted-traveler program.

  Carlos hung up and said, “Watch him.”

  * * *

  Carlos reentered the original hotel room and saw Mr. Guy Fawkes sitting in a chair, pasty and sweating. Guy Fawkes. Cute little alias name. Playing me for a stupid cabrón. An obese Caucasian with greasy hair and a three-day growth of beard, he was clearly out of his depth.

  “Mr. Fawkes, sorry for the interruption. My men thought someone had followed you, but apparently they are just overeager.”

  “Carlos, I don’t do violence. I do computers. I’m about transparent information. I was told you could use my information. Let it out inside Mexico.”

  “I understand completely. I’m sorry, but where I’m from violence is a way of life. I apologize, but tell me, why didn’t you send this to someone here? Someone you trust in the networks in the United States?”

  Fawkes licked his lips and rubbed the sweat off his brow. “With my job I can’t afford it getting back to me. I want it nowhere near me. You saw what happened to Bradley Manning? The WikiLeaks soldier? Or Edward Snowden? The NSA whistle-blower? The damn US government is all over this stuff. They have tendrils everywhere in America. But not in Mexico.”

  Carlos nodded. “I see. So it has nothing to do with the money I’m willing to pay you?”

  Fawkes looked flustered for a moment, then said, “Hey, don’t question why I’m doing this. I want it out. Everyone wants it out. Fuck this, man, I didn’t ask for some Miami Vice shit. I’ll go somewhere else.”

  Carlos said, “Calm down. I just have to make sure. If you want it out so badly, I’ll take it for free. Because I’m in Mexico, and as you say, I can get it into the world.”

  Fawkes shuffled in his chair a bit, then wiped his nose like a fifth grader. “I have what you want, but it’s not free. Understand?”

  Carlos remained silent for a moment, watching the man twitch and knowing he could get whatever he wanted without paying a dime. But he needed something more. He needed the man’s skills. He said, “Do me a favor. Run this number for me. Tell me who it belongs to.”

  Fawkes said, “A test?”

  “Perhaps. I, too, have to make sure you are who you say you are.”

  Fawkes opened up a laptop and got online. Carlos passed him the number, then waited, Fawkes’s sausage fingers racing over the keyboard. Eventually, he looked up and said, “It’s an archeological firm
in Charleston, South Carolina. Not a whole lot of information tied to it. I got a Dun and Bradstreet number, some credit stuff. What in particular did you want?”

  Carlos thought about it, wondering what the hell Jack’s call could have been about. Maybe it really was just a friend. Or maybe he’s working for the Federales.

  Carlos smiled. “I’d like you to take a closer look when you get back home. Just poke around and see if you can find anything strange.”

  Fawkes pulled his head back like a turtle, exposing the folds of his double chin. “You think this is someone after me?”

  Not after you. “No, no. I’m just curious. Consider it a favor. How long before your product is ready?”

  “I’m not sure. It depends on a lot of different factors. They’ve just turned on the new control system, and it has some glitches. I have to wait for an aberration, and then when they call me to patch it, I can build the bridge. Shouldn’t be more than a week, though.”

  Carlos passed across a cell phone. “Call me on this when you’re ready. Don’t use it for anything else.”

  Mr. Fawkes rose unsteadily, his face glowing with a rancid glean of sweat. He skipped past Carlos, giving him a wide berth on the way out, his body odor lingering long after he closed the door.

  A few minutes later, Jack was brought in and thrown onto the floor, the gunslinger passing Jack’s wallet across.

  Carlos flipped through it and said, “Well, Mr. Jack Cahill, as I’m sure you are much more self-aware than that one wrong phone call would indicate, I’m really going to need everything you heard. I have to know what I envision is still safe.”

  “I swear to God, I thought I was investigating a drug deal. I have no idea what is going on here. I didn’t tell anyone a thing.”