Blown Coverage (7 page)

A guy whose name Riley couldn’t remember from the Mustangs video department rounded a corner and came toward him. “Hey,” Riley
called out to him.

“Hey, Riley. Great to see you back!”

“Yeah, good to be back. Listen, can you do me a favor? You know my friend—the one who came with me this morning?”

“You mean . . . ?” The guy lifted his hand way up in the air.

“That’s him. Could you find him and ask him to bring the truck around to the loading dock behind the Mustangs store in five
minutes?”

The video man seemed eager to help. “You got it, Riley,” he said before sprinting out to the practice fields.

Riley walked back to his locker, decided there was nothing he wanted out of it, and headed to the hallway. Right outside the
front locker room doors was a line of mail cubbies. Most of the little nooks had at least a few letters in them. A number
of them were pretty packed. Riley’s was stuffed full, and there was a white U.S. Postal Service tub sitting on the ground
and a sticky note attached with his name on it. He stopped, looked at it, and then walked on.

Stopping by the equipment room, Riley picked up a Mustangs cap. Pulling it low on his head and putting his sunglasses on,
he walked through the back room of the team store and out into the May sunshine. Immediately, he heard a mass of loud shouting.
The only discernable word was
Riley
.

Thankfully, Skeeter had the Yukon right there with the rear passenger door open. Riley saw a huge wave of reporters and cameramen
racing toward him as he dove into the back of the vehicle. His hand scraped against something hard on the leather seat. Looking
down, he saw it was Skeeter’s Heckler & Koch MK23.

“Left a little something for you, just in case,” Skeeter said as he slowly pulled out into the growing mass of people.

Riley quickly sat up and tucked the gun under his right thigh. The last thing he needed was a picture published of him defending
himself against the media by holding a handgun in the back of his SUV.

Suddenly cameras, microphones, and faces were pressed against his side windows. Riley instinctively pulled the cap a little
lower on his head. Hands began grasping at the handles and banging on the doors. The truck dropped in the back, and Riley
turned to see three men standing on his rear bumper shooting their cameras through the tinted glass of the gate.

While all this was going on, Skeeter kept the vehicle moving—slow and steady, never speeding up but never slowing down, like
an icebreaker making its way through the early thaw of Hudson Bay. Insanity was all around the outside of the truck, but inside
it was peace and harmony. Riley noticed that Skeeter had even tuned to public radio’s classical music station.

“Skeeter, you are amazing,” he said with genuine admiration. Riley couldn’t be sure, but he thought he might have seen a slight
expansion of Skeeter’s cheeks at hearing the comment.

Finally Skeeter got to the street and gunned the Yukon.
Oh man,
did that just happen?
Riley asked himself.
That was complete insanity.
He looked behind to see the size of the crowd but instead saw three vehicles rushing to catch up to them.

“Hey, Skeet? We’re not done yet.”

Riley saw Skeeter’s eyes look into the rearview mirror. Then the big man pulled out his cell phone, hit a speed-dial number,
and said a few words before hanging up. “Done,” he said to Riley.

Within four minutes, Riley watched each of the chase cars being pulled over to receive tickets for various traffic infractions,
real or imagined. “What about home?” he asked Skeeter.

“Taken care of. The security team’s not allowing anyone on the block who doesn’t live there.”

“Excellent. Thanks again, my friend.”

“Mmmm,” came the reply.

Riley stretched himself out in the roomy backseat and began processing what had just happened. The day had been so emotional
and so downright bizarre, he felt like he needed to debrief with somebody. But he knew that Scott and Khadi were busy at CTD.
Talking to Skeeter was just one small step above talking to himself. Keith Simmons was at practice. Mom and Dad and Grandpa?
No, there was too much distance. He wanted to look someone in the eyes while he spoke.

Hmmm, look someone in the eyes.
Riley thought for a moment, then reached into his pocket and extracted a now-crumpled business card. He pulled his cell phone
out of his shorts and dialed the number.

“Hello?” a woman’s voice answered after the first ring.

Riley took a deep breath. “Whitney?”

CHAPTER
EIGHT

MONDAY, MAY 11, 11:00 A.M. MDT FRONT RANGE RESPONSE TEAM HEADQUARTERS DENVER, COLORADO

His right foot gently tap, tap-tapped to an old Tommy James & The Shondells song that had been stuck in his head for the last
two days. Unfortunately, the only lyrics he could remember—“Crystal blue persuasion, mmm-hmm”—were looping in his mind over
and over and driving him crazy.

Jim Hicks stood up from his desk and walked to the interior window of his office, hoping the change of location would purge
the song from his brain.

The room into which he looked was filled with the varied pulse of blinking lights and the soft glow of computer monitors,
all of which reflected off the glass and metal furnishings, giving the room the feel of a high-tech Christmas display.

Gathered around a conference table in the middle of the large space just beyond his door was Hicks’s team: Scott Ross, Tara
Walsh, Khadi Faroughi, and the genius misfit quartet of analysts—Virgil Hernandez, Evie Cline, Joey Williamson, and Gooey
. . . whatever his last name was.

Scott caught Hicks looking out. He smiled, tapped his watch, and held up two fingers. Hicks gave a wave of acknowledgment
in response.

Guilt grabbed his insides as he watched Scott and Khadi talking. He would give anything to be able to go back in time and
accept that invitation to the Costa Rican vacation. When Hicks first heard about the attempt on Riley and his friends, it
was the closest he had come to emotionally losing it since his second wife had left him. But when it came down to it, Riley
and Scott had handled the situation beautifully, even without him. Everyone had survived, and now Scott and Khadi were here
as part of his new team.

Two months ago, Hicks had been approached by Stanley Porter, chief of the Midwest division of Homeland Security’s counterterrorism
division (CTD). Porter had been tasked with creating smaller, more action-oriented subsets of the larger departments. Hicks,
after showing extraordinary leadership during the recent Hakeem Qasim manhunt, had been pegged to head up the new Denver-based
CTD Front Range Response Team.

At first Hicks had balked. He was an
ops
guy, not a suit, he had said to them. In his mind, rules were there simply as a guideline for the less creative. But when
Porter told him the amount of autonomy he would have in running his team, he had actually begun to consider the leadership
position. Finally, Hicks had accepted on the condition that he could choose his own people. Scott and Khadi had been obvious
choices.

As for the analysts, he’d left that to Scott. The gang of misfits his number-two man had brought in were an odd bunch, and
Hicks figured the less direct contact he had with them, the more peace would reign.

But now he had to go out and face this group, and he had no idea what to do with them. He could lead any team into battle
with strength and confidence. But this was a whole new ball game.

Taking a deep breath, Hicks opened his office door and walked into the very first meeting with his new team. Scott, seeing
him come out, began clapping. The four analysts, apparently recognizing a chance to burn off some of their sugar calories,
took it to the next level by standing and cheering. Khadi and Tara just sat there shaking their heads, although Khadi at least
did it with a smile.

Hicks took his chair at the head of the table and, after Scott finally got the analysts to sit back down, said, “Okay, that
will never happen again.”

“Sorry, Jim,” said Scott with a mocking grin on his face. “I guess we’re all just a little enthusiastic.”

“Well, enthusiasm can be a good thing when it’s directed properly,” Hicks responded, immediately realizing that he was already
sounding like the stuffed-shirt political bureaucrat he was afraid of becoming.

Khadi stifled a laugh, and Hicks glared at her, though he softened his look when he spotted the slowly fading scar on her
cheek that she didn’t bother trying to cover with makeup.

He continued, “I want to welcome you all to the Front Range Response Team.”

Hernandez, Cline, Williamson, and Gooey all started to giggle.

“What’s so funny?” Hicks called out, his nerves causing his already short fuse to burn at double time.

Tara Walsh responded for them. “Sorry, sir, but about an hour ago they finally figured out our team’s acronym, and they’ve
been this way ever since.”

“Coulda been worse. What if we were the Bureau for Uncovering Terrorist Threats?” Williamson said innocently, causing the
other three analysts to burst out laughing.

Hicks turned to Scott for some help, but his right-hand man was looking intently at the glass tabletop and drawing on every
ounce of self-control to not laugh. He looked at Khadi, who had her hands folded properly in front of her and was sporting
a huge grin on her face. Tara was staring at him with an expression that said,
“
See what
I have to put up with every
day?”

Finally, Scott jumped in. “Come on, gang, knock it off. Jim is trying to speak.”

“Thanks, Scott. Now I—”

“And I certainly don’t want anyone suggesting the Departmentally Utilized Military Bureau and Systems—”

“Scott!” Jim yelled.

Everyone lost it. Even Tara joined in. Hicks leaned back into his chair, heaved a deep sigh, and then slowly began to chuckle.
His laughter built up momentum until he was wiping tears away from his eyes like everyone else.

All the stress and anxiety Hicks had about his new position was released at that moment. He raised his hand, trying to get
control of the group even as he struggled to get control of himself.

“Okay, everyone, enough. Let’s have a little chat.”

As Hicks spoke, he kicked his feet up on the table, then motioned for everyone else to do the same. “I have no clue what the
suits were thinking when they gave me this job. I have a feeling that before long they’ll be asking themselves that same question.”

A chorus of chuckles sounded around the table.

“The one stipulation I gave in accepting this job was that I be allowed to pick my team. I figured if I was going to give
this a shot, I wanted the best around me. In my opinion, you folks and our boys on the ops side are the best.”

“Gawrsh,” interjected Hernandez.

“Although I’m beginning to understand why Stanley Porter didn’t give me a fight when I stole you away from him.”

“Mr. Porter’s bad! He’s bad!” said Williamson, doing his best impersonation of Dana Carvey impersonating George Bush.

“Yeah, well you’ll find that I run things a little differently than Porter. As you can tell by my friendship with Scott, I
don’t care what you look like or how you dress.”

Scott feigned offense.

“I don’t care how you act or what rules you need to break. Gooey, I don’t even care how you smell.”

Gooey responded with a thumbs-up and a stifled belch.

“All I care about are results. You guys do your jobs, and you’ve got free rein. You don’t, and it’s back to Porter with the
lot of you. Any questions?”

Evie Cline’s hand went up. “Yes, Evie?”

“Mr. Hicks, sir, I know this is technically called a ‘war room,’ but that makes me uncomfortable. It just sounds so violent.
So, instead of calling this the war room, could we call it something different? Our old place was called—”

“Yeah, I know all about the Room of Understanding. Listen, you can call this Tinky Winky’s playground for all I care, as long
as your work gets done.”

Seeing Hernandez’s hand go up, Jim sighed and said, “Yes, Virgil?”

“Sir, I don’t think Tinky Winky had a playground. Unless maybe the rest of the Teletubbies had a playground that they shared.”

“Barney had a playground,” Evie pointed out.

“I think Mickey Mouse might have had one, too. Or maybe that belonged to the Mouseketeers,” said Williamson.

Scott jumped into the action. “You know, that Teletubbies baby sun always creeped me out. Why was it always laughing? Was
that supposed to mean something?”

Hicks shot Scott a “you’re not really helping” look, which Scott caught out of the corner of his eye.

“I mean, let’s rein this in, people! Jim?”

“Thank you, Scott. Now, enough of that intro stuff. Tara, tell me what you’ve got on Costa Rica.”

“Thank you, sir. And let me just tell you what an honor it is to be working with you.”

A chorus of wet-sounding kisses came from the analyst end of the table.

Doing her best to ignore them, Tara continued, “Truthfully, we don’t have much that’s new. The bad guys were all Middle Eastern
of one stripe or another. They flew to Havana; boated to Nicaragua, where they got their weapons; then went down across the
border.”

“Any sign of the last gunman?”

“No, sir. He’s just vanished. And the Costa Rican authorities are not being overly cooperative.”

Hicks’s frustration was beginning to show. “Are we getting any pressure from our higher-ups on their government?”

“No, sir. They seem to want to treat this as a random incident.”

“They what?”

“Tara, if I may,” Scott broke in. “Jim, the higher-ups are idiots. You know that, and I know that. The only good information
we’re going to get is what we dig up ourselves. Right now Khadi and I are working on finding out who fed the bad guys Riley’s
location.”

“And is Riley safe right now?”

“Skeet’s his shadow, so he’s probably safe as he can be.”

“Fair enough. You know to keep me up-to-date with everything on this.”

“Will do,” said Scott.

Hicks turned back to Tara. “Tell me what else you’re working on.”

“Over the last week, there has been a remarkable spike in the amount of intercepted chatter. As you know, all of our intelligence
branches are woefully lacking in Arabic, Farsi, Urdu, and Pashtun speakers, so much of our COMINT—that’s communications intelligence—”

“I’m familiar with the term.”

“Of course; sorry. Much of our COMINT remains untranslated and is therefore useless to us. So what we’ve done is set up filters
to catch often-repeated phrases in those other languages. The computer doesn’t necessarily recognize the words, just the sounds.
When we get something, we send it to Khadi, who gives us the translation.”

“Okay, probably more information than I needed, but that’s fine.

What about it?”

“There has been one new phrase that has hit at least twenty-five times in the last seven days. Its translation is ‘Awake,
O Sleeper.’ We think it might have something to do with awakening sleeper cells.”

Scott jumped in. “I, on the other hand, have a hard time believing this. Waking up sleeper cells with the phrase ‘Awake, O
Sleeper?’ Could they be a little more obvious? The only thing more blatant would be a knock on the door by someone with a
suicide vest on a hanger, calling out, ‘Terrorgram for Mr. Ahmed!’ I mean, let’s give these guys a little credit.”

Tara immediately countered. “Listen, Scott, it’s not out of the realm—”

“You mean ‘boss’.”

“What?”

“Chain of command. You need to call me ‘boss’ from now on,”

Scott said with a grin on his face.

In response, Tara picked up her cell phone and began dialing.

Jim asked, “Tara, what are you doing?”

“I’m calling the devil to see if I can get a weather report.”

The analysts showed their appreciation for the slam with an “Oooooo” and some light applause. Tara was typically known for
her well-rehearsed and poorly executed attempts at zingers. She sat back in her chair with a smug smile on her face. Her celebration
was short-lived.

“I’m surprised you had to dial so many numbers,” Scott responded immediately. “I always figured you’d have him on speed dial.”

The analysts all jumped to their feet and began a chorus of “Scott, Scott, Scott!”

Once the cheer died down, it was Khadi’s turn to finally weigh in. “Scott, I agree that it would be unusual to use that blatant
a phrase. But you’ll agree it’s not out of the realm of possibility.”

“Of course. Nothing’s out of the realm of possibility.”

“Cubs winning a World Series,” Williamson reminded Scott.

“Ashlee Simpson winning a Grammy,” added Hernandez.

“True, but I took those as givens.”

“Stay with me, boys,” Khadi said. “Let’s just play this out a bit. What possible reasons could the bad guys have for using
an obvious code sign?”

“They’re stupid?” offered Scott.

“Try a little harder, Mr. Wizard,” countered Khadi.

“To show power?” said Evie. “You know, ‘Look how strong we are, we’ve got all these sleeper cells activating.’”

“Maybe it’s a distraction,” suggested Gooey. “We’re all looking for these cells—maybe real, maybe not—while they’ve got some
big thing planned.”

“Could be fear,” said Scott. “Imagine what would happen if the media got hold of this. Twenty-five sleeper cells ready to
wreak havoc on America. Think of what would happen to the stock market.”

Khadi was nodding. “Fear fits. Remember Hakeem Qasim’s big thing was to create fear. Fear in your city. Fear in your neighborhood.”

“And not just in your neighborhood, but of your neighbor,” said Tara.

Hicks jumped in. “Okay, sounds like we’ve got reason enough not to rule out a mass sleeper awakening. Tara, I’m guessing they’ve
disguised their tracks fairly well on those calls, but I’d still like you and the kids to try to get me sources and receivers
on each one of them.”

“You got it, boss.”

“Scott and Khadi, I want you to run out the scenarios for each of these options—power play, distraction, and fear.”

“And stupid?” asked Scott.

“And stupid. We all know that isn’t out of the realm of possibilities either with these guys. I want to take reports home
with me tonight, so that means you have exactly six hours and twenty-nine minutes to get them to me.” Hicks got up and walked
to his office. Just before going in, he turned and said, “Good work, gang.”

But everyone was already too involved in their discussions to hear him. Hicks went into his office, sat down, and kicked his
feet up on the desk. A satisfied smile spread across his face. This was exactly what he had hoped for when he brought this
team together.
Maybe
being a suit
isn’t
that bad after all.