Black Flagged Apex (52 page)

"What will happen to me afterward?"

"I can't say. They may never figure it out, and if they do…you didn't really have a choice, did you?"

He shook his head. It didn't sound so bad, whatever they had planned. A little corporate espionage? It didn't matter.

"As a matter of fact, you can go to the authorities as soon as your family is released and tell them everything. You might lose your job, but nobody will blame you for looking the other way. Nobody with a family, that is. Frankly, I don't see them figuring it out…it's highly possible that your name will never come up."

Taylor felt less conflicted. How bad could it be if they thought that his moment of "inattention" might go unnoticed?

"I'll do this, but I can't control the situation beyond my station. If your man gets through my checkpoint, you have to honor your word," Taylor said.

"Don't worry. He'll get through fine, as long as you don't get cold feet or decide to do something rash at the last second. Don't think you can fuck us over on this. The stakes are too high for you. Understood?"

"Yes," Taylor said, nodding emphatically.

He hoped their man sailed through without drawing any attention. There was no way this group could figure out if he raised the alarm upon arrival and arranged a sting operation inside the operations center. They were blind once their man entered the building and even blinder when he walked through Taylor's checkpoint into the Operations Center. If the man didn't succeed, he'd never see his family again.

"Tell me what to do."

Chapter 47

8:11 PM

National Counterterrorism Center

Washington, D.C.

Traffic in and out of the Operations Center was nonexistent at this point. The administrative section of the building had cleared out by six-o'clock, leaving either NCTC personnel assigned to support the ongoing task force or authorized task force members. The Operations Center kept a three-section, eight-hour rotation, fully staffed twenty-four hours a day to support Task Force Scorpion. He wasn't supposed to know the name of the task force, but everybody working security knew more than they should about what was happening in "Ops."

Reggie Taylor glanced around at his colleagues. A total of nine security officers had been assigned to the Operations Center entrance. Two for each of the three checkpoints, and one search team comprised of two officers. The supervisor sat in a glass-encased office directly behind Taylor, but he knew from experience that the supervisor's desk didn't provide the proper angle to see his screen from a seated position. Standing up was a different story. He'd told the Jamaican that their inside man needed to back off if anyone was standing in the supervisor's office. Taylor's screen would clearly indicate that James Fitch was not authorized to access the Operations Center.

He'd been slightly relieved to learn that Fitch was their man. Fitch had worked at the Liberty Crossing building since its inception as the Terrorist Threat Integration Center in 2003, along with Taylor. They had both been present for its renaming as the National Counterterrorism Center one year later in 2004. Fitch had accessed "Ops" to do network repairs or related IT work several dozen times during Taylor's daytime shifts, so his presence wasn't unusual. At 8:00 PM on a Saturday night, though, he wasn't sure. Still, it was better than dressing someone up in a colonel's uniform and trying to squeeze them through the Operations Center's dedicated personnel entrance.

The dedicated personnel entry gave permanent Ops analysts, technicians and managers quick access from the parking lot. This group comprised the majority of traffic handled by these checkpoints, usually around shift changes. Anyone using that entrance would raise an immediate alarm trying to use his checkpoint. They had chosen wisely with Fitch. Better yet, Fitch had chosen wisely. There was little doubt in Taylor's mind that this son-of-a-bitch IT fucker had specifically targeted him because of his young children. He had to remind himself to push these thoughts aside. They would serve him no purpose tonight. He couldn't afford to screw this up. All he had to do was let Fitch pass.

He'd be fine. Fitch would very likely attract no attention at all. When Ops needed server-related support, the Operation Center's deputy supervisor authorized access through the system, without notifying security. The whole process was transparent to the guards. When Fitch or any of the NCTC personnel swiped their card, it would either permit or deny access. The security officers simply enforced the system's output, which completely eliminated the human factor at the gate. Guards couldn't be sweet-talked, rushed or intimidated into letting someone through, regardless of their rank or importance…unless someone was holding a knife to your child's throat.

He glanced down the hallway leading into the general administrative building, trying not to look anxious. The Jamaican told him to expect Fitch around 8:15 PM. He was thankful for that. He wanted to get it over with as quickly as possible. Taylor glanced calmly at his watch.

"Long way to go, Reggie," said one of the guards seated across from him at another checkpoint.

"I know. These longer shifts are killing me. I get antsy as soon as I put the uniform on," he replied, not knowing if what he just said made any sense.

He was scared out of his mind. Movement in his peripheral vision brought his attention back to the hallway. A figure moved through the automatic doors, walking briskly toward the security station. He recognized Fitch immediately. Short brown hair, glasses, khaki pants, white button-down shirt covered by an NCTC windbreaker. He thought the jacket was an odd choice for someone trying to avoid attention, but this small observation was drowned out by his relief that the guy wasn't carrying a briefcase or anything that would guarantee that he would be stopped. He should sail right through, if he wasn't carrying anything that triggered the metal detector. Something as stupid as a cell phone or a screwdriver would set the damn thing off, and he didn't control the metal detector.

Fitch approached Taylor's checkpoint and sailed through the metal detector without an issue.
Almost there. Come on, baby.
He fought the urge to look over his shoulder. He was told that Fitch would abandon the run if Taylor's supervisor stood in a position to see the security monitor. Fitch's eyes furtively shifted in the direction of the supervisor's office behind Taylor. He kept walking. The two men never made eye contact, but Taylor could tell that Fitch was under considerable strain from the one brief glance he stole. Taylor wondered what the Jamaican might be holding over Fitch's head. He didn't know a single fact about the IT guy's personal life.

Fitch swiped his card and waited. Taylor pretended that he didn't see the "access denied" box appear next to Fitch's picture and data profile. He nodded and pressed the green button mounted at his station, which opened the small gate and admitted Fitch, exposing the single greatest flaw in the Operations Center security system. Instead of linking the gate directly to the system, designers had opted to keep the gate operation in human hands. They had their reasons. If the automatic security system interface crashed at the wrong time, Ops personnel could be denied entry during a critical operation. They thought of several additional scenarios to justify the decision, all of which made sense.

Fitch nodded at one of the guards who had taken an interest in his arrival. Taylor held his breath in terror, depriving his limbs and brain of the oxygen-rich blood it desperately needed to support his sympathetic nervous system's activation. He started to experience tunnel vision, which triggered panic. Doubt filled his mind, causing his index finger to stray toward the red alarm button. There was no way they would let his family go. What was he thinking! He had no idea what they had convinced Fitch to do in there. He had to stop this. His family was already dead. He knew it.

"Taylor. You all right?" someone said.

He turned his head toward the voice, and his vision expanded. He was breathing again.

"Yeah. I'm fine," he responded.

"You look like shit, brother. Eating at Long John Silver's again? That place will turn your stomach upside down," his friend at the next checkpoint said.

"I can't resist the popcorn shrimp. Melt in your mouth goodness," he mumbled blankly.

"Yeah, until it comes out the other end a few seconds later." The security officer laughed.

Taylor couldn't have recited his friend's name if his life depended on it, because it didn't. Everything depended on Fitch getting inside Ops. He smiled and faked a short laugh, glancing in Fitch's direction. Taylor watched the technician open the door leading into the Operations Center's blackout vestibule, disappearing inside. He'd done it. He just hoped that Fitch would go about his nefarious business quickly. The Jamaican said that his family would be back in their apartment by 9:00 PM if Fitch gained access to the Operations Center. His watch read 8:16 PM. He settled in for the longest forty-four minutes of his life.

**

Callie Stewart had grown tired of observing the watch floor from her usual perch on the catwalk, so she had taken to mingling with the military liaisons on the left side of the watch floor. Admiral DeSantos had introduced her to Colonel Hanson, SOCOM's liaison, who accepted her based on the SEAL's word. She had been able to spread her influence to a few of the technicians, even managing to cozy up to NCTC's assistant director, Karen Wilhelm. She had little ulterior motive beyond making her time in the Operations Center a little more tolerable. Of course, her eyes and ears were always open for new intelligence. Old habits were hard to break.

Over the past three days, she had mapped out the relationships between everyone on the floor, paying close attention to mannerism, posture, glances…all of the subtle, below-the-surface connections that defined the true essence of the microcosm surrounding her. She was less interested in the overt drama, since most of it was window dressing. Once she had mapped out this web of connections, she could anticipate and predict their behavior based on something as innocuous as a pair of folded arms or a stolen glance. Right now, Karen Wilhelm was annoyed. She had just placed her hands on her hips, which was one of her many "tells."

Stewart followed her glare and settled on a man she had never seen before in the Operations Center. He wore a loose blue windbreaker with some kind of yellow logo on the front. She could only read "N" from her angle, but she assumed it read NCTC. He glanced around stiffly as he tentatively approached the other side of the watch floor and started to navigate the cluster of workstations that housed most of the FBI's task force. Karen Wilhelm started walking in his direction from her desk on Stewart's side of the center. When Stewart turned her head to examine the object of Wilhelm's curiosity, she noticed that his left hand was inserted into the left bottom pocket of the windbreaker. Purely out of instinct, she started to walk briskly toward the man. Something was off.

**

Special Agent Mendoza prepared another cup of burnt coffee and diluted it with three Coffee-mate creamers. He figured this cup would probably give him heart palpitations, but at least that would keep him awake. The day had dragged on forever after Sharpe's revelation about cooperating with Sanderson. Knowing that they were possibly pursuing false leads, while Sanderson's people assembled in Pennsylvania, had made the exhausting process nearly unbearable. It reached a boiling point when Sharpe finally confirmed that Sergeant Osborne's past few vacation periods matched up with vacations taken by operatives killed or captured in Brooklyn. Julius Grimes, the operative caught on camera near one of the Al Qaeda safe houses, fit the same pattern. Sharpe twisted some arms behind the scenes to get Laurel's chief of police to cooperate, without drawing attention within the task force. They still wanted to keep this a secret while Sanderson's crew pursued the next lead.

He walked out of the small break room, intending to step into Sharpe's office for a few minutes, when he noticed a man wearing an NCTC windbreaker walking toward O'Reilly and Hesterman's workstation. The guy looked lost, edging his way forward. When the man reached into his left pocket, Mendoza placed his coffee on the edge of the nearest workstation desk.

What he saw next left him with little time to make an impossible decision. When the dark-haired man removed his hand from the pocket, he clutched a small, highlighter-sized object in his fist. A thin black wire extended from the bottom of the black device back into his pocket. There was little doubt in Mendoza's mind about what was hidden under the man's windbreaker. He didn't hesitate. Mendoza's Glock 23 flashed out of its holster and centered on the man's head. He heard a female voice scream "no" and something about a "dead man" right before he fired. The .40-caliber bullet struck the man at the very top of his spine, exiting through his right eye socket and turning him off like a light switch. Callie Stewart flew into view, screaming, "Don't shoot!" as the man's body crumpled to the floor. She wrapped both of her hands tightly around the limp hand holding the detonator, pulling it inward to her chest and dropping to the floor next to him. Instinctively, Mendoza aligned the Glock's sights on Stewart's head. She had her hands on the detonator.

"Drop the detonator!" he screamed.

If she didn't separate her hands immediately, he'd kill her. He only hesitated for this long because Sharpe trusted her.

"It's a dead-man switch. Don't shoot!" she screamed.

He processed her statement, wasting precious milliseconds evaluating the variables. If she was telling the truth, Callie Stewart had just saved the Operations Center from a suicide bombing. If she was lying, she had just bought herself enough time to finish the job. He had hesitated long enough for her to set off the explosives, but she didn't move. She'd been telling the truth. He started to lower his pistol. Three rapid gunshots erupted at point-blank range from the workstation next to her. The bullets struck her in the upper back and neck, spraying blood onto the dead man at her knees. He lurched forward in horror as her body wavered and fell. He never saw her hands come apart.