Cash nodded, suddenly realizing the anomaly. “Wait, if it was silenced, how did you know? We’re a mile from the nearest house,” asked Cash, confused at who had raised the alarm.
“We didn’t come about the shooting, it’s only when we got here that we saw the bullet holes. It’s the observatory, it’s been destroyed.”
“Destroyed?”
“Up until a minute ago, I’d have said it was a gas explosion, an accident but…”
The president, thought Cash, thinking ahead to the ceremony due to take place later that evening. He was searching for reasons but the president’s trip was shrouded in secrecy. Nobody but those deeply involved in the project, itself top secret, were aware of his planned visit.
A handcuffed, bloody, and naked Rigs was lifted from the floor, interrupting the conversation.
“Chief, this is a friend of mine, Captain Jake Miller, US Marines,” said Cash, turning to look at Rigs.
The Chief looked at Cash with some discomfort. “Whose blood?” he asked, trying to ignore the nakedness.
“The shooter’s,” said Rigs nonchalantly, indicating with his head to the pen on the floor, soaked in blood and covered in brain matter. All of Rigs’ awkwardness had gone. It was almost as though he had forgotten how awkward he was, how uncomfortable he felt around strangers. “In the bushes, end of the drive,” he added.
Rigs was in the zone, one of two zones that Cash knew overrode Rigs’ awkwardness. One he knew all too well - killing. When it came to killing, Rigs had little or no conscience. An emotional void, Rigs could kill without the slightest hint of remorse and that had made him one of the US Forces’ most accomplished operatives. The other, Cash had to take the word of the many women who, after spending a night with Rigs, were desperate to spend another with him. Fucking and killing were Rigs’ two areas of brilliance.
“Check it out,” said the Chief to the officer closest to the door. “And somebody get something to cover this guy up!” Rigs was comfortably standing at ease, his hands cuffed behind his back letting the air flow easily over his muscular frame. Cash shook his head in despair. His friend had no body confidence issues, strange for a guy who couldn’t look you in the eye or talk to you, but if he hadn’t been a soldier, he’d have made a great porn star.
“Chief, I’ve got the weapon but no sign of a shooter,” reported the officer.
“He’s at the end of the drive by the rose bush,” insisted Rigs.
“Nothing there, Chief,” said the officer.
Rigs walked towards the door but was held back by another officer. “I killed him, that guy was going nowhere!”
“You can’t have, he’s not there,” argued the officer. “Perhaps you only wounded him?”
“With a pen through his brain? And a double tap with his own rifle for good measure?” asked Rigs, looking at Cash and not the officer. “Trust me, he couldn’t have been any deader!”
“So you fired the rifle?” asked the chief, trying unsuccessfully to catch Rigs’ eye.
“Yes.”
“The rifle that killed the professor?”
“I assume so.”
“So you’re covered in blood, your fingerprints are on the weapon that killed the professor, and you’ll have gun residue on you from firing that same weapon?”
“Whoa, Chief, rewind a little,” said Cash as Rigs shuffled awkwardly to the corner of the hallway.
“You can vouch for him?” asked the Chief.
“Of course, he didn’t kill my father,” he said, looking at Rigs, whose head was once again dipped, avoiding all eye contact.
“He was with you when your father was shot?”
“Yes. He was upstairs sleeping.”
“And then he came running down past you and out into the garden where the shooter was shooting?”
“No, he went out the back and came around from behind the shooter.”
“You told him to go?”
“Well no, he must have heard the shots”
“The silenced ones? While sleeping?”
Rigs nodded, sensing the eyes of the policemen on him.
“How well do you know this guy?” asked the Chief.
“I trust him with my life,” said Cash.
“Likewise,” mumbled Rigs.
“Maybe, but we’re not talking about your life, we’re talking about your father’s life.”
***
Pacific Ocean
300 miles due west of Santa Cruz
The barge shuddered as the explosion separated the RIM-161 SM3 missile from its temporary home. The missile rose into the sky as a secondary explosion tore through the barge’s hull, sending it to a watery grave deep below the surface.
The missile quickly accelerated to cover a distance of over three miles per second toward its target just over three hundred miles away, programmed and unaware of its imminent demise, in little more than one minute.
***
Santa Cruz
The Chief had heard enough. Rigs was going back with him to the station.
“Officer, take him out to the car,” he said pointing to Rigs. “And for God sake put some pants on him.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Chief,” protested Cash. “Rigs has nothing to do with this!”
“We’ll let him do his talking, thanks.”
“Chief,” Cash pled, “he’s not comfortable around strangers.”
“Obviously,” said the Chief looking down at Cash’s father’s body.
“He has trouble talking to people he doesn’t know.”
“And he was a Marine Captain?”
It was Cash’s turn to look down at the bloodied pen. “And a very good one. Trust me, you’d have wanted him on your side!”
“We’ll let the evidence tell me that. We’ll check out the blood at the station. If it’s human and not anyone else’s here, I’ll be inclined to listen but at the moment, I’m liking him for it.”
Cash followed the Chief out into the front garden. “Chief, you’re making a huge mistake. Rigs is one of the good guys.”
“Let’s wait and see what the blood on him tells us.”
Rigs, clad in ill-fitting jogging pants, was loaded into the squad car.
Cash looked up at the heavens for inspiration. He had just lost his father and the one man on the planet he trusted with his life was being taken away as a chief suspect. A flash drive delivered with the hammer blow of his father’s dying word lay uncomfortably in his pocket. In an hour, his world had gone to total and utter shit.
Cash saw the streak of light in the night sky, just before the explosion.
“What the hell…?”
Chapter 3
Santa Cruz, CA
The flash in the night sky signified a hit. The RIM-161 missile had done its job as planned, a perfect hit. Hubble 2 was gone. It was the only part of the plan that had gone without a hitch.
“We have another problem,” Gray’s radio chirped.
The client had made it clear, they didn’t want problems.
“What?” he barked angrily.
“The professor had company.”
“And?”
“They took out Blue.”
“Took out?”
“Killed, and very professionally.”
Gray banged his fist against the steering wheel in frustration. It had been, on paper at least, a simple job - take out the new telescope, Hubble 2. Unfortunately, the reality was somewhat different. He had had to wait two years to complete the assignment. All attempts on the ground had proved futile. The security surrounding the Hubble 2 telescope was unlike anything Gray had ever witnessed. His team took on the jobs that others deemed impossible. For him, that simply meant he could charge more. However, Hubble 2 had looked as though it was going to be his first failure, until he had gotten his hands on a RIM-161 missile. The client hadn’t liked it, they hadn’t wanted Hubble 2 to see the light of day. There was something they didn’t want it to see, something only it could see was to be kept from prying eyes.
Allowing it to be launched had come with caveats. Anyone with any access to Hubble 2’s feeds was to be watched and eliminated should they see anything before its destruction. Fortunately, that list had proved short and easily accessible. Professor Charles Harris and his deputy were the only two people who were to have access to the feeds prior to Hubble 2’s destruction, twelve hours after its launch.
Gray, thanks in part to his own name, and thanks to Reservoir Dogs, had named his operatives by color. Blue had been with Brown at the professor’s home, while Red and Green had been watching the deputy who had taken a late night trip to the observatory and not waited until the morning, as had been hoped.
The destruction of Hubble 2 would have been put down to an unfortunate and exceedingly costly space collision. However, owing to the deputy’s curiosity, Gray was now in the midst of instigating a major cover-up. Destroying the observatory and killing Professor Harris was going to unleash a massive investigation into the incident, an investigation that he had to ensure did not implicate his client in any way. Not an easy prospect, given he had no idea who his client was.
Dead men didn’t talk. He pressed the transmit button. “Make sure there’s nobody left who can talk, I’m sending some local help.”
Three affirmatives came back to him as he walked across the road to the drug den, home to the Surenos’ gang.
Chapter 4
Defense Initiative Services
New York
The DIS offices were at the top of one of New York’s most illustrious skyscrapers, with views that stretched across Central Park and the upper half of Manhattan. They were offices designed to impress but were also shrouded in secrecy. Few would ever know what the ‘DIS’ plaque stood for, and even fewer knew what they did.
It was a question that Mike Yates often asked himself: What does DIS do? He had been head of the organization for almost four years and he was still trying to figure out what they did. However, the simple answer given to him on recruitment was ‘whatever needs to be done’. As head of the CIA Clandestine Services, tipped for further advancement, it was a job offer he should instantly have walked away from. However, when those recruiting you were two of the more Senior Senators who sat on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, you read between the lines. Staffed exclusively by CIA and DIA veterans, it wasn’t a giant reach to understand that DIS did the jobs the US Government agencies and their allies wanted to but couldn’t.
Although amply remunerated, it had come at a cost. Jobs no longer had meaning or understanding, they were simply to be undertaken without question. The bigger picture was no longer Mike’s concern. He was out of that loop. DIS did not worry itself with the why something had to be done, it merely delivered, and under Mike Yates’ expert leadership, it always did.
Mike had recruited many of the men and women he had worked with over the years as they retired or sought more lucrative work, ensuring his pool of resource was amongst the best and most experienced operatives in the world.
Deniability was the key word. Everything DIS did for its clients had to be deniable by whoever the client was. The simplest way for that to happen was complete and total anonymity. Mike Yates had no idea who ordered each individual DIS operation. He could have tried to guess but over the years, he hadn’t even bothered with that. In the beginning, he had struggled to understand how some of their activities could possibly benefit US interests. However, he had to assume that whoever was pulling his strings knew what they were doing. After a while, he became desensitized. The money, travel and perks certainly helped numb any latent intrigue. He had a job to do and the best people in the world with which to deliver.
He looked down at his latest operation, one that had troubled him from the outset and for the first time in years piqued his intrigue. Never before had he been ordered to employ an outside team. Everything had always been handled within their own team. However, the instructions were explicit, even down to the selection of the team to hire. The team was to be headed by a man Mike had known in his CIA days. He was an excellent choice but the update from Gray was extremely disappointing. Gray was a man who was known for his ability to complete difficult and complex missions that few other teams in the mercenary business would even contemplate accepting. Mike read the message again:
Deputy at observatory spotted something and had to be terminated but not before he had alerted Professor Harris. We have destroyed observatory and any data that may have been captured and as a precaution, given the transcript below, have eliminated the professor.
“You said I was right?”
“Yes I did. And you are!”
“I am what?”
“You are right!”
“About what?”
“Everything…”
Call terminated at this point. In the process of covering tracks but want to ensure we cover any that lead to client?
Mike read the brief again. It was certainly explicit. No knowledge or information was to be garnered by Hubble 2 before its destruction. Any suggestion of data having been collected was to be dealt with extreme prejudice to ensure any and all trace of the information collected was destroyed, which included any persons who may have gained that same knowledge. Their simple operation, to destroy an unguarded telescope in space, had just became a nightmare.
Mike had no option but to alert the client. His instructions given the scenario were explicit. He picked up the burner smart phone that had only one number; a new burner was used for each operation and client. Mike copied the text of the message from Gray and waited for a response.
***
It wasn’t possible, unless, pondered the client…unless they had known exactly where to look.
He turned to his laptop, and pulled up recent stories for the Professor. There was something he had seen, something that may make sense. He scanned through the results of the search. The first few pages all referred to Hubble 2. Page five was what he was looking for - a front page story, ‘Astronomer Turns Archaeologist’, with a picture of the Professor at a dig at Tiwanaku, Bolivia. The article detailed a number of digs the Professor had been involved in over the previous few years. They were all sites of significance from thousands of years earlier. He couldn’t have, he thought. But the evidence said otherwise, they had known exactly where to look.
He typed a reply to Mike Yates. They had planned for this eventuality and it was going to be messy but necessary.
No tracks lead to me but all of the professor’s research must be found and destroyed as a matter of urgency. Additional resources will be made available to you as a last resort. Click here for link to control screen. Plan B should also be implemented. I will arrange for package to be delivered to your operatives for delivery on completion of Plan B.
***
Mike received the reply and forwarded on the relevant portion to Gray. Plan B was most definitely not for Gray’s eyes, although he would be fully aware of it in the not too distant future.
“Cancel my breakfast meeting,” Mike instructed his P.A. “And get me Steve in Santa Cruz on the phone.”
Chapter 5
Santa Cruz, CA
The flash in the night sky blinded them all momentarily.
“…was that?” finished Cash as the brightness above them died and the blackness returned.
“Do you think it’s all linked?” asked Cash, reflecting on his father, the observatory and the flash in the night sky directly above them.
“Certainly all very coincidental,” pondered the Chief.
The officer escorting Rigs to the police car paused. “You still want him back at the station, Chief?”
“Yes, of course I do!”
“C’mon, Chief. There are things going on here that don’t make any sense and they certainly don’t involve Rigs,” argued Cash.
“And that’s exactly why he’s going to the station. I have absolutely no idea what’s going on and until I do, I’m not taking any chances.”
“You’re welcome to
come with him,” offered the Chief, walking back to this car.
Cash looked back at his childhood home and his father’s body that lay in the hallway. Fifteen hours was all they had had. After fifteen years of silence, those last fifteen hours would comfort him for the rest of his life. The thought that this could have happened without reconciling at least in some way would have been devastating. However, there was little more he could do there. His friend needed him.
“Chief, hold up!” shouted Cash. “I’m coming!”
Rigs shook his head wildly, as he was being directed into the back seat of the other police car. He didn’t want Cash to come. Cash knew he wanted him to stay with his father. After fifteen years, Rigs seldom needed to speak for Cash to understand what he was thinking.
“He’s gone and you’re all the family I have left,” replied Cash abruptly, taking a seat in the Chief’s car.
“Keep the scene secure for the Crime Scene Team,” the Chief said to the third officer.
“Yes, Chief,” replied the officer, turning back to the house with a roll of police tape to secure the scene.
“Are you sure you’d not rather stay here?” asked the Chief as he turned the ignition key.
Cash nodded halfheartedly. He wasn’t sure of anything.
“Fair enough,” he said, waving for his officer to follow behind in the second car where Rigs was secured as their suspect.
“So when did you get back?” asked the Chief.
“Yesterday about lunch time,” replied Cash.
“Staying long?”
“Supposed to be leaving later tonight, right after the opening ceremony. It was meant to be a flying visit.”
“Figures,” replied the Chief, barely restraining the anger in his voice.
“What figures?” asked Cash, taken aback at the Chief’s tone.
“Nothing, I’m not getting involved.”
“Involved in what?”
“Your irresponsibility!”
Captive-in-Chief Page 37
