The Polaris Protocol

by Brad Taylor

  Knuckles said, “It’s not that simple. We’re going to have to come up with another solution now.”

  Jennifer came down to the lobby with her luggage, and he said nothing else about the mission. When she reached us, he said, “Hey, your brother’s going to be okay. It’s probably just a miscommunication.”

  She said, “I sure hope so.”

  I said, “I called your cab. It’s outside.”

  I led her out, carrying her luggage and giving her a little pep talk. Before she entered the cab I admonished her about not doing anything stupid.

  “Hey, I know you’re worried about Jack, but don’t go hot-rodding to Mexico, no matter what you find. It’s probably just bad communication, and I don’t want you jumping to conclusions. I’ll be back in three days. Four at the most. Promise me you won’t run off like the Lone Ranger.”

  Her eyes held nothing but pain and dread. She said, “Pike, I’m sorry I’m leaving. I know I’m hurting the mission. I . . . I know I’m letting you down. Letting the team down. It’s just not like him to call like that. Something’s really wrong.”

  I squared her to me, hands on both arms. “Screw that. Let me handle the team. Nothing here we can’t accomplish without you.” I poked her in the eye to lighten the mood. “Contrary to what you might think, we aren’t all wondering how the hell we’re going to execute if you leave. Just don’t do anything stupid. I’ll contact the Taskforce. Get them to track his phone and send you a grid.”

  She said, “You can’t do that. For one, it’s illegal. For another, it’s personal. Don’t get in any trouble over this. It’s not their problem.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Don’t worry about it. You’ve given enough to the Taskforce to earn a little payback. Just promise you won’t go off half-cocked. The trace will probably show up in Dallas.”

  She shook her head and said, “You never listen to anything I say.” She put her arms around my waist and stood on tiptoe. “You’re a good man. I won’t do anything stupid. I’m looking forward to seeing you away from the team. These separate rooms suck.”

  Then she kissed me full on the lips. I returned it at first, bringing her close and savoring the connection. Then I remembered where we were. Who was watching. I broke it off and said, “Get out of here.”

  I watched her drive away, praying Knuckles wasn’t in the lobby. When I turned around, he was still standing there.

  Maybe he didn’t see anything.

  When I got inside he said, “What. The. Fuck. Was. That?”

  Damn it.

  “What?” I asked.

  “That kiss . . . what was that?”

  “Nothing . . . that was just a peck on the cheek. She’d have done the same to you.”

  “I’ve never had a peck that involved my tongue.” He squinted his eyes at me and asked, “Are you sleeping with Jennifer?” I felt my face flush like I was a teenager caught in the backseat of a car, and he exclaimed, “Holy shit. You are sleeping with her, you damn liar!”

  The anger was real, because he thought I’d broken the trust of a teammate. We’d had long talks about the loss of my family, my life, and how I felt about Jennifer, but the conversations were all the same: I was torn apart by their death; I wasn’t ready for a relationship; Jennifer was a teammate, period; nobody could replace my wife, Heather; yada, yada, yada.

  All of that was true, except for the last part. While Heather’s death had left a hole that would never be filled, Jennifer had covered it over long ago, hiding the scar tissue and burying the rage that Heather’s loss had engendered. I had realized the connection, but I had been too afraid to admit it. Afraid of rejection. I’d finally worked up the courage, and because of my incredible charm, my fear of rejection had ended up being misplaced anxiety, but that had been only recently.

  I said, “Knuckles, it’s not like that. I swear it just started.”

  He stared at me, saying nothing. Wondering what else I’d lied about, because at the same time I was baring my soul to him about my family, he’d reciprocated with other very personal things, and now he felt betrayed.

  He said, “You can’t sleep with her. She’s a damn teammate. Jesus, Pike, you know better.”

  I was taken aback. This was the first time Knuckles had said she was an equal inside the Taskforce. “She’s still a teammate. Nothing’s changed.”

  “Everything’s changed. This is exactly what’s wrong with females in combat arms positions. You’ll start favoring her. Doing things to protect her, like you did here by sending her home.”

  That poked the wrong sore. “Bullshit,” I snarled. “I’ve felt the same about her since we met, I was just too screwed up to realize it. Nothing’s changed. Six months ago I let her free-climb off a sixty-story building because you said it was a good idea. Then I put her in a position to contract a lethal virus to prevent a pandemic. I thought she was going to die, and I could have pulled her back. Could have protected her. Nothing has changed. Let it go.”

  He said, “That time in Lebanon, when she was inside Hezbollah headquarters. You triggered the reaction force. . . .”

  In a low voice I said, “That was because of me, not her. It was my mistake alone. I would have done the same if it had been you inside. Let it go.”

  He searched my face, his mind calculating the ramifications. Eventually, he shook his head, coming to grips with the situation, as I knew he would. Knuckles had always been more liberal than most in the Taskforce, down to the hippie haircut he had worn since I’d known him.

  I said, “And I need you to keep this between us. I can’t have the entire team second-guessing my decision-making.”

  He rolled his eyes and said, “Why can’t you ever do anything the easy way?”

  That had been eighteen hours ago, and now I was thinking about losing this game of backgammon as an olive branch, or at least to keep him from getting more aggravated than he already was. I kept my eye on the hallway and waited on the call from the other team. Begging to hear anything, since Knuckles was giving me the silent treatment.

  Finally, my radio crackled to life. “Jake’s out. Room’s clear.”

  11

  Since Jake had passed the secondary team it meant he was headed either to the gym or to the stairs—not to the elevators near us. Given the target, I found it hard to believe he’d use either one, but he did.

  “Just entered the gym.”

  I said, “Roger. Retro, your ball game. No more than thirty minutes.”

  I heard, “Roger. Coming down now.”

  After Jennifer left, Knuckles had washed his hands of developing the new course of action, leaving it to me to come up with a plan. I’d basically used the same one he had created, only substituting Retro for Jennifer. With his black hair and seventies porn-star bushy mustache, Retro looked the most like someone from this neck of the woods. He also spoke Russian from his time in the 10th Special Forces Group. Not like a native, but it would be enough of an edge to fool someone who didn’t speak it, like our Saudi Arabian target.

  We’d found a suit that fit reasonably well and “borrowed” a hotel name tag with some moniker that was impossible to pronounce, and he looked reasonably enough like hotel security. Actually, he looked a hell of a lot better in the suit than in the dated clothes he usually wore.

  The target room was on the third floor, and the hallway had two alcoves, one on either side of it, complete with table, chair, and backgammon game. Neither position could see the room itself, but that was irrelevant, since Jake couldn’t get out without going by one of them. Decoy and Blood, the ones who had triggered, were at the other position on the far end of the hallway.

  The biggest risk was Retro being found in the room. Jennifer, as a maid, could easily have talked her way out, but Retro would have some serious splainin’ to do, which is why I had given him a time limit.

  Retro came by our position carrying
a clipboard and a radio, looking like an important member of the hotel staff. He ignored us, and I waited on a SITREP of entry.

  The seconds ticked by, then finally I heard, “Pike, I’m in and we have a problem. There are five CDs here. What do you want me to do?”

  Retro had entered with a specially constructed portable compact-disc ripper, intending on working with a single CD. While getting whatever information was on the CD was great, what we really wanted to do was identify the guy’s boss. In addition to copying the CD, the ripper would implant a small Trojan horse. Whenever the CD was booted, the virus would reach out to the Internet and contact the Taskforce. From there, the hacking cell would exploit whatever they could find and hopefully identify the moneyman. After that, it was a US government call as to what would happen with the information. Maybe another Taskforce team would get Omega authority for the guy, but more than likely the information would be passed to the CIA for them to leverage with the Saudi liaison services. The problem here was that the ripper took fifteen minutes. With five CDs, Retro didn’t have time to complete the mission in the room.

  I said, “Do they look like the blank CDs we have in the TOC?”

  “Yeah, the CDs do, but the cases are different.”

  I looked at Knuckles and said, “I’m sending Knuckles up to get them. Meet him in the elevator. Switch out the CDs and rip all of them in the TOC.”

  Knuckles stood, finally with a grin on his face, a perverse sense of pleasure coming from the curveball, like it had happened because I’d sent Jennifer home.

  Retro said, “But what if he comes back while I’m upstairs?”

  “Is there a laptop in the room?”

  “Not that I can see.”

  “Don’t worry about it, then. He won’t check the CDs for information. It’s just eye candy so you can rip them.”

  “Pike, I’ll still have to get back in here to replace the real CDs.”

  “One step at a time.”

  Retro passed by me moving at a good clip, was gone for a minute or two, then came back holding the blank CDs and disappeared down the hall. Knuckles returned in time to see him scurry by again with the target CDs in his hands, headed to the TOC on the twelfth floor.

  Knuckles said, “There’s no way Jake’s going to work out for an hour and a half. What are you going to do if he returns?”

  I said, “Let’s cross that bridge when we come to it.”

  Ten minutes later, the cursed bridge appeared. Decoy came on. “Jake’s headed back. He’s out of the gym.”

  What? Who works out for twenty minutes?

  With a bemused look, Knuckles said, “Maybe he forgot his iPod.”

  I said, “Those CDs ended up being a blessing in disguise. If there had only been one, Retro would have been caught.”

  We waited, and Jake didn’t reappear. So much for the iPod.

  I said, “What do you think?”

  “Fire alarm. Trip that and get him to the lobby. That’ll be enough time.”

  “Yeah . . . but we don’t know what their procedures are. They could come knocking on every door. Or simply reset it after five seconds.”

  “Phone call? From the lobby using an internal landline?”

  “What’ll we say?”

  “Tell ’em that he has a package waiting. All we need is a few minutes to get back in the room. The elevator ride itself will be enough.”

  I thought about the pros and cons. Tripping the fire alarm would garner a lot of attention and would force us to vacate our surveillance positions. But the biggest problem was that we just didn’t know what the official reaction would be. On the other hand, the phone call would make Jake suspicious because he wasn’t expecting a package, then grow more so when there was nothing waiting on him. Especially when the desk claimed they’d never called.

  In the end, I decided it didn’t matter. He could get as suspicious as he wanted, because we were headed to Gonur tomorrow and the mission would be done. The fire alarm option was flirting with contact with official authorities I didn’t want to engage.

  I said, “Okay, you get in the lobby and make the call on my trigger.” I keyed my radio. “Retro, this is Pike, what’s your status?”

  “It’s going quicker than I expected. I’m on disc four right now. Maybe another ten minutes.”

  I relayed the plan over the radio, then said, “Retro, come down the stairs to Decoy’s position. I want you close, but I don’t want you to pass Jake on his way out.”

  He said, “Roger all.”

  Twelve minutes later, he was done with the CDs and set. I got an up from Knuckles and said, “Execute.”

  I waited for three more minutes, then Jake passed me, all sweaty from his manly workout. I let him get thirty feet away and stood, saying over the net, “Room’s clear. I say again, room’s clear.”

  I began following Jake and heard, “Moving.”

  I hoped the elevators would be slow getting to our floor, thus giving Retro that much more time. The bank came in view and I saw that wasn’t going to happen. One opened and a man in a bellboy uniform came out carrying a box with an address on it and an envelope of legal size.

  Oh shit. They deliver packages to the rooms.

  Jake spoke to him and the bellboy used a small radio to talk to someone else, then he shook his head at Jake. Our target turned and began heading back to his room.

  I passed him and entered the elevator. When the doors closed, I said, “Abort, abort. Jake’s headed back.”

  Retro said, “I’m not done replacing them. He’ll know someone’s been in the room.”

  I said, “If he opens the door and sees you I don’t think there will be any doubt. Abort.”

  I reached the bottom and immediately went back up. I turned the corner to the backgammon alcove and saw Knuckles had beaten me back. He shook his head.

  I keyed my radio. “Decoy, you got a status on Retro?”

  “Negative. He hasn’t come back this way.”

  I paused, then keyed the radio again, “Ahh . . . Retro, status?”

  I heard two clicks, and Knuckles realized what had happened at the same time I did. He’s hiding in the room.

  I said, “What do you think?”

  “I think if Jennifer were here she could have walked right out holding some towels.”

  “That’s not an answer.”

  “Fire alarm. That’s the only thing that will work. Another phone call’s asking for compromise.”

  I nodded my head and was looking for an alarm to trigger when Retro appeared around the corner, pulling off his name tag.

  We both stared at him, and he grinned.

  “Well,” I said, “what the hell happened?”

  “I swear, Pike, he would have figured out the CDs had been tampered with if I had aborted. I had to stay, but I knew he’d been to the gym. What do you do after working out?”

  Knuckles said, “Take a shower.”

  “Yep, and that’s exactly what he did. I hid under the bed until the water came on.”

  Gutsy. But very switched-on thinking.

  “You also gave us a heart attack.”

  He said, “You? When I dove down I remembered I hadn’t checked to see if the bed had one of those boxes around it to prevent people from leaving things. That would have been embarrassing.”

  We all chuckled at the near miss, the adrenaline subsiding and the camaraderie beginning to flow. I broke down the surveillance box, saying, “Meet at the bar on the sixteenth floor. Retro’s buying. Last chance before we head out to the desert tomorrow.”

  Up top, in the restaurant bar, we poked fun at Retro and fended off the working girls out looking for a mate. Well, most of us did. I noticed Decoy sizing the women up when he went for another beer, plying his Tennessee charm. Man whore. I was in a pretty good mood, lubricated with the beer and happ
y at the successful outcome, when my phone signaled a voice mail from Jennifer, the intermittent cell service working on the top floor of the hotel. All my humor left when I listened to it. The Taskforce had located Jennifer’s brother’s phone.

  In Mexico.

  12

  Jennifer pulled into the parking lot, wondering if she should put on surgical gloves before going inside. The place was called the Traveler’s Inn, but it looked more like the Motel That Stayed in Business Because of Seedy People. Just off of I-10, on the northern outskirts of El Paso, it looked like it sold rooms by the hour. An L-shaped building, it was a one-story dilapidated structure, with a neon sign that she was sure no longer worked. There was a smattering of cars in the lot facing the motel, most rusted, with dents and dings. A family was loading a pickup, three small kids and a mother and father, all of Hispanic heritage. The sight gave her a little hope. They didn’t look like criminals. More like people who simply needed a cheap place to stay. She sat in the car for a moment, wondering what Jack had been doing here.

  She’d flown into Dallas the day before, the jet lag tearing her down but the anxiety about her brother’s fate driving her forward. Her mother was waiting for her outside of baggage claim, and there was no mistaking the relationship. They had always looked like sisters, and the similarities still lingered, although her mother now colored her hair to keep it the same dirty blond it had always been. The one difference was the eyes. Her mother’s were chestnut brown to Jennifer’s gray. The single genetic vestige within her from her deadbeat father. Many men had told her they were beautiful, but in truth she didn’t think so. The color reminded her of betrayal and loss. She would have traded them for her mother’s eyes without hesitation. Make the familial similarities with the person who had raised her complete. Get rid of the genetic flaw given by the person who had deserted them.

  Her mother had smiled upon seeing her, and Jennifer saw the wrinkles. Lines where there had been none before. It dawned on her that her mother was getting old. Right before her eyes. She wondered how much was the strain of Jack’s disappearance and how much was the march of time.