Line of Fire

by R. J. Patterson

  CHAPTER 9

  BLACK FLASHED HIS ID as he pulled up to the guard station in front of CIA headquarters. Shields continued to pore over some of the documents Besserman had given her. The guard waved them through, and Black quickly found a parking spot as agents headed home for the day.

  “Twice in one day,” Black said. “They’re going to think you want a job here.”

  “I’ll pass,” she said without looking up.

  “We’re here,” Black said. “Let’s go.”

  They hustled up the steps and entered the lobby. The security guard positioned in front of the metal detector patted his wand against his leg and shook his head.

  “Did you miss me already?” he asked, locking eyes with Shields.

  “I came back to keep you on your toes,” she said.

  Black furrowed his brow. “You know this guy?”

  Ray threw his head back and chuckled. “My job description is to give Ms. Shields here a difficult time.”

  “You don’t have to lie, Ray. You give everybody a hard time.”

  “True, but I give you an extra hard time.”

  “That means you like me,” she said.

  Ray waved them through. “Have a nice day, Agent Shields.”

  When Black and Shields arrived on the floor of Quinn’s office, a receptionist asked to see their credentials.

  “We’re here to see Director Quinn,” Black said.

  “Is he expecting you?” the woman asked.

  Black shook his head. “No, but it’s urgent.”

  “His administrative assistant has already left for the day. I’m not allowed to let anyone through these doors unless they have an appointment or I receive permission.”

  “Then try Quinn’s direct line,” Shields suggested.

  “I’m not allowed to do that.”

  Black clasped his hands together and leaned forward on the counter. “Will you at least try for us?”

  “If there’s one thing you need to understand about the agency, it’s that you always stick with protocol.”

  Black forced a smile. “I appreciate your dedication to the rules, but we really don’t have time for this.”

  “Have you tried calling the director?” the woman asked.

  “Yes, and he’s not answering,” Shields said. “So, kindly call him. We’re in the middle of an important investigation, and it’s imperative that we speak with him right now.”

  “Perhaps you didn’t hear me the first time I said this to you,” the receptionist said as she set her jaw. “That’s not how things work around here.”

  “We need your cooperation right now,” Shields said. “Your country needs your cooperation right now.”

  The woman picked up the phone and dialed a number. “Security, we have an incident outside the director’s office.”

  “I know how this works,” Black said as he reached over the counter and pressed the buzzer, releasing the lock on the glass door to the right of the desk.

  The woman bolted out of her chair to grab the door, but she lost the footrace to Black, who had already yanked the door open and was holding it for Shields.

  “Security will be here any minute,” the receptionist said.

  “Go ahead. Tell them they can find us in the director’s office,” Shields said.

  “Stop right now,” the woman said, stamping her foot.

  Black and Shields didn’t turn around or heed any of the assistant’s instructions. As they turned the corner to enter Quinn’s office, Black heard the woman growl and swear at them.

  “She’ll cool down eventually,” Black said.

  Shields shrugged. “Let’s hope so. We still have to go by her desk to get out of here.”

  When they reached Quinn’s office, he was seated behind his desk and facing the window. He didn’t turn around when they entered.

  “Director Quinn, I’m Titus Black from Firestorm along with my colleague Christina Shields. I know we don’t have an appointment, but we need to speak with you. It’s urgent.”

  Quinn didn’t move.

  Black noticed an empty glass on the director’s desk next to a bottle of bourbon. “Sir, are you okay?”

  After another long pause, Shields spoke up. “Sir, we need to talk. It’s important.”

  Finally, the chair spun around, revealing Quinn with his firearm in his hand. Black and Shields both put their hands up in a posture of surrender.

  “We just want to talk,” Black said.

  Quinn made eye contact with Black. “You think this is for you?”

  A couple of security guards stormed into the room with their weapons drawn.

  “On the ground now,” one of the men barked.

  Before Black and Shields flinched, Quinn put his gun down and raised his other hand. “It’s okay, guys. They don’t pose any threat. This is an urgent situation.”

  “Copy that, sir,” the guard said as he nodded at his cohort before exiting the room and shutting the door behind them.

  Quinn sighed and placed his gun on his desk. “I know why you’re here.”

  “Sir, I’d feel much more comfortable if you would put that gun away,” Shields said.

  Quinn glanced at the weapon without touching it. “Have either of you ever done something you deeply regret? And I’m not talking about just wishing you hadn’t been so snippy to your best friend the last time you saw him before he died. I’m talking about the kind of thing you’ll be remembered for after you die, the kind of thing you’ll forever be ashamed of?”

  Black shook his head as he eyed Quinn’s gun.

  “Well, I have,” Quinn said, picking up his weapon again. “And I don’t think I can live with myself anymore.”

  He placed the barrel up against the side of his head.

  “Sir,” Black said, stepping forward, “you don’t need to do this. We can figure a way out of this. We need to talk with you because other people might get hurt if you don’t.”

  “Other people have already died because of what I’ve done,” Quinn said, his lips quivering. “I only wish it was about others getting hurt at this point.”

  “And more may die if you don’t help us,” Shields said. “We desperately need your help.”

  Black noticed a single file folder on the desk as he moved toward it. “Do you know who’s behind all this? If we work together—”

  Quinn slammed his fist down. “It’s too late for that now. No one will ever remember a single good thing I did now.”

  Shields shook her head. “I don’t believe that, sir. Everybody loves a good comeback story. But you won’t be able to write yours if you end it all now.”

  Quinn grimaced as he pressed the gun harder against his head. “My story isn’t worth redeeming. All I’ve done is connive my way up the agency’s ladder and then kiss up to the president to get into this position. And it’s all coming back to haunt me now.”

  “We can still stop whoever is doing this,” Black said.

  “Not without destroying me … and someone else,” Quinn snapped as tears began to stream down his face.

  Quinn closed his eyes, his finger twitching on the trigger.

  “I refuse to believe that,” Shields said. “You don’t know what we can do. Just let us help you.”

  Quinn appeared frozen, locked between his desire to end it all but the fear of doing so. Black held out hope as long as he could keep the director talking and maybe appeal to the agent in him.

  “You know who’s responsible for this, don’t you?” Black asked.

  Quinn shrugged as he made eye contact with Black again. “Maybe. You can never be sure who the bad actors are behind everything.”

  “But you have an idea, right?”

  Quinn nodded.

  “Is it in that folder?” Black asked, pointing toward the folder on Quinn’s desk.

  He nodded again before lowering his weapon. Black watched Quinn loosen his grip, finally relinquishing it.

  “Why are you here?” Quinn asked.

&nb
sp; “We thought that maybe these murders were designed to bring the agency all under one roof for a nefarious purpose,” Shields said. “And when you didn’t answer your phone—”

  “There was no attack today, but your hunch was right,” Quinn said, pushing the folder toward Black. “This agent was waiting for me after the memorial service and threatened me.”

  “Threatened you?” Shields asked. “How?”

  “He had blackmail information on me that he promised to release if I didn’t do as he said.”

  Black took the folder and scanned the name. “And what did Preston Vogle want?”

  “The password to my computer,” Quinn said. “He held me at gunpoint and worked on my computer for a few minutes before leaving.”

  “And you didn’t try to stop him?” Shields asked.

  “If he releases that information, I will probably go to prison and maybe rightfully so. But it’d be a scandal that would be difficult for me to overcome, not to mention that it would place other high-ranking officials in a poor light. I couldn’t let that happen.”

  “Then let us help,” Black said. “We can do this outside the agency.”

  Quinn shook his head. “He’ll still know it was me.”

  “Preston Vogle won’t know what hit him by the time we’re done,” Black said. “And whatever his endgame is, we’ll figure it out.”

  “The collateral damage could be catastrophic,” Quinn said.

  “We’ll do our best to mitigate that,” Black said. “But the worst thing would be for you to give up and not work hard to protect your agents still out there. If our intelligence system crumbles, it’ll be more than just a ruined reputation that will be the result of your past indiscretions.”

  “I’m aware of what’s at stake here.”

  “We can do this, sir,” Black said. “We’ve done it plenty of times before. And after we’re done with this situation, we’ll do it again.”

  Quinn sighed and pushed the folder toward Black. “Go ahead. What choice do I have now anyway?”

  Shields grabbed Quinn’s gun. “Can I keep this for you, sir? I’d rather you not visit the dark side with this thing in your possession.”

  “If you insist.”

  “I do,” she said.

  “Good luck,” Quinn said. “You’re going to need it. Because I have no idea what he took from my computer.”

  “Let me take a quick peek,” Shields said. “I can do a quick scan to figure out what he copied off your hard drive.”

  Quinn stood and gestured toward his chair. “Be my guest.”

  Shields took a seat and invited Quinn to enter his password. Once he was finished, she started clicking around, inspecting different files.

  After about a minute, she finally spoke. “Wow.”

  “What is it?” Quinn asked.

  “Vogle is good,” she said.

  Black frowned. “What do you mean by that?”

  “I mean he erased his tracks.”

  “So you can’t find out what he took?” Quinn asked.

  Shields shook her head. “The guy was a digital ghost on here.”

  “Then we’re still in the dark about what this is all about?” Quinn asked.

  “I’m afraid so, sir,” Shields said.

  Black scooped up the folder and looked at Shields. “We better get going. There isn’t a second to lose.”

  CHAPTER 10

  Washington, D.C.

  THE FIRESTORM TEAM met back at the headquarters where Shields divvied up assignments. Black was given Vogle’s personnel files to look for any potential leads or clues as to what he might have been after on Quinn’s computer. Blunt decided to contact other intelligence agencies to find out if anyone had anything more on Vogle. And Shields tried to locate Vogle’s vehicle from a short clip Quinn sent after she left Langley.

  Shields’s fingers flew across the keyboard as she started her search, using the license plate from the car Vogle used to exit the facility.

  “What do you think Quinn did that would keep him from going after Vogle?” Shields asked.

  Blunt shook his head. “We all have our secrets in this business.”

  “But to be so afraid of what Vogle has on him? Vogle could’ve just waltzed out of Langley with the motherlode of every agent’s name and location.”

  “He very well could have,” Blunt said. “But there are other ways of obtaining that information much more discreetly and easily. Whatever he was after was something more highly classified than that.”

  “We believed those two agent murders would draw everyone at the CIA together for a large agency gathering,” Black said. “And we were right. But we feared there might be some other far more nefarious plot occurring. That clearly wasn’t the case.”

  “Or maybe it was and we’re just missing it,” Blunt said. “We don’t know yet whether Vogle was behind those murders, but the information he may have been after could be leading to something far more devastating to the agency.”

  “I would’ve thought killing hundreds of agency workers at once would’ve been a catastrophic blow to our intelligence community,” Shields said as she stood to return to her office.

  “Of course it would have,” Blunt said. “But we have to consider the possibility that the end game is worse.”

  * * *

  A HALF-HOUR PASSED before Shields was able to start tracking Vogle’s car using traffic cams. She learned that the car, a blue Toyota Corolla, had been reported stolen. She finally located the vehicle, following it to a parking spot in a metro train station. Switching to the transit cameras, she identified him entering the station but then lost him. Finding him again would take hours of work configuring the metro cameras with facial recognition software, time she didn’t have.

  Blunt knocked on the door to her office. “Find anything?”

  She blew a tendril of hair out of her face and looked up at him. “Not anything super useful. I tracked him to a train station, and I can’t figure out where he went from there. What about you?”

  “If I’m to believe the other agencies I spoke with, Vogle hasn’t done anything to raise red flags elsewhere.”

  “Meaning your contacts hadn’t ever heard of him or had anything on him?”

  Blunt nodded. “Clean as a whistle.”

  “Something must’ve made him snap.”

  “I’ll keep calling around to ask about him. It doesn’t make sense that he would betray the agency out of the blue.”

  Black joined the impromptu meeting in Shields’s office. “What’d I miss?”

  “I lost his trail at a train station, and the boss here says he can’t find anyone who believes he’s anything less than a model agent. You have better luck?”

  “For the most part Vogle seems to be a patriot, earning excellent reviews on his assignments. But I did find one interesting note buried deep in his file.”

  “Please share,” she said, pushing herself away from her desk and sliding backward.

  “Vogle was once reprimanded for carrying on a relationship with a fellow agent. Apparently, they were on an assignment together and became intimately involved. It continued for six months before one of his supervisors discovered Vogle’s little secret.”

  “That’s not unusual,” Shields said. “Happens all the time when two single agents find themselves working closely together.”

  “Yeah, but apparently that warning didn’t deter them,” Black said. “They were caught again three months later while working together to get intel on a suspected weapons dealer in Venice.”

  “What are you driving at?” she asked.

  “The agent he formed a relationship with, Miriam Parsons, left the CIA not long after that.”

  “To do what?” Blunt asked. “Private security?”

  Black shook his head. “Surprisingly not. Parsons now runs a little surf shop on Cape Hatteras.”

  “You think this is relevant?”

  Black nodded. “She didn’t stay in the CIA after this came out. There a
re some things stronger than love for country, even among spies.”

  Blunt grunted and gnawed on his unlit cigar. “You gonna give her a call?”

  “No, I’m driving down there,” Black said. “She can dodge my call, but if I show up, she’s got to talk to me.”

  “She doesn’t have to do anything if she doesn’t want to,” Shields said. “But I think you definitely have a better shot if you go down there.”

  Black tapped his file folder a couple times on Shields’s desk. “Perfect. I’m leaving first thing in the morning.”

  “Good luck,” Blunt said. “The people of the North Carolina coast are a different breed. They’ll close ranks in a hurry.”

  Black smiled. “Then it’s a good thing I used to be one of them.”

  CHAPTER 11

  BLACK PULLED ONTO I-95 and asked his smart phone to crank up his “Road Trip” playlist. The first song that pumped through the speakers was one of his all-time favorites, one he considered a must for almost every occasion: “Sweet Home Alabama.” That was followed by the Eagles’ hit, “Take It Easy”, Bruce Springsteen’s “Born to Run”, and “Route 66” by Chuck Berry. Black opened the moon roof and drank in the sunshine on the cloudless day. The combination of good weather and even better music made his solo six-hour drive tolerable. He also had plenty of time to ponder the situation.

  Since the operation in Maldives went awry, Black wondered what the connection was between a failed arms deal in the Indian Ocean, the dead agents scattered around the world, and a brazen agent who’d successfully extorted information from the director of the CIA’s computer. The only link holding them all together seemed tenuous at best. Black considered the possibility that they were reading too much into everything. For an agency that excelled at convincing the public that their conspiracy theories were lunacy, the CIA lapped up the faintest hint of one and pursued it with sheer fervor.

  The burning question was why. Why would Vogle need Director Quinn’s password? Why attempt to extort the director? Other than Vogle’s obvious desire to be with Miriam Parsons, he was an exemplary agent. He’d served at stations all over the world, but nothing made sense, especially the lead they were pursuing with Wilson Wellington. Vogle didn’t have any connections with Wellington, other than the fact that he was leading a program connected to the CIA while Vogle was in the agency. But the two men weren’t stationed in the same place at the same time, making the likelihood that there was a connection a scant one. So, the more Black could learn about Vogle, the greater the chance that he might be caught before something catastrophic occurred.