Ripper (28 page)

“Goodbye, Jack,” Sarah said as she turned and walked away.

Collins watched everyone start to file back into
the complex. And for a fleeting moment he saw the diminutive shape of the woman he loved disappear among the many military, science, academia, and other professions that made up the personnel of the Event Group.

“Europa, gate number two, please.”

“Yes, Colonel Collins, gate number two.”

“Hey!” came a shout that made Collins tell Europa to hold the magnetic-driven car. He looked over and saw
the blue jumpsuit and then Everett stepped clear of some large crates on the loading dock.

Jack slid the plastic door up and into the frame of the bullet-shaped car. He stood and waited for Carl to reach him.

“Thought you would get out without having to face me?” he asked as he held out his hand to Collins.

“Something like that,” Jack answered as the two men shook hands.

“It’s been a hell
of a ride, Jack.”

“That it has Carl. A ride I wouldn’t have missed for the world.”

Everett took a step back and literally examined the battered frame of his friend. He knew Collins was at his limit. Most men hit that mark after it’s too late, and they end up getting a lot of people killed. Jack had lost people, a lot of them, but had yet to get anyone killed out of negligence to duty. No, Everett
thought, Jack was leaving on his own terms and he for one would not ever mention the why’s of his leaving. Instead, Everett just raised his right hand and, like Mendenhall a minute before, saluted.

Collins returned the gesture and then shook his head.

“Any advice, besides run as fast as I can out of here?” Carl asked with a smile as Collins sat back down with his hand poised over the glass-enclosed
door.

“Yeah, Senator Lee once told me, ‘Jack, you’re in command, so goddamn it, command.’” With that and a return smile, Jack Collins closed the door and the car zoomed away down the centerline rail toward the city of Las Vegas and whatever future he could carve out for himself.

6

CIA HEADQUARTERS
LANGLEY, VIRGINIA

The same photo and trace technician who had questioned Hiram Vickers earlier about the chain of custody for the tracer tract forwarded to her department from the Cassini Corporation in Boulder stood at the far end of the hallway from Vickers’s office. She half turned with the large envelope in her arm, pressed it tightly to her chest, and then looked down
on the signoff sheet. Only her department had signed the receipt of service from Cassini. There was a long red arrow from the top of the custody list straight down to Hiram Vickers’s name near the bottom. She looked at the name bypassed by the arrow—the person in charge of intelligence for the North American Desk, Assistant Director Lynn Simpson. Once again the woman bit her lower lip; after all,
maybe Vickers had a point about not filling up the desks of people who didn’t have the time to look at test patterns from one of their CIA contractors.

“Penny for your thoughts,” came the familiar voice that had come up on her unawares.

The young girl looked at Hiram Vickers and the cold smile he always gave women he thought far beneath his station. While he looked at her chest, the technician
easily pulled the chain-of-possession list from the front of the envelope. She then smiled and held out the large envelope.

“Ah, the second part of the test came through, excellent,” he said as he reached for the envelope. “Uh, do I have to sign for it anywhere?” he said as she released the intelligence report from Cassini.

“Since you said it was a test that came to you only, we didn’t bother,
since here you are, and it is only a test, right?”

Hiram kept his smile on his lips far longer than was necessary. “Right, as I said, yours is the red-tape-cutting department. Thanks again for this,” he said holding the envelope up and then turning away.

The technician looked down into her hand at the chain of possession list and the first name at the top. She didn’t quite know how to handle
Vickers and his test that didn’t seem to show up on their daily “to do” list. She thought about it and decided on what course of action to take. She turned and walked to the elevator and took it to the sixth floor. She saw the empty area where the North American Intelligence Department usually was, but saw that they must have gone home for the night. She looked at her wristwatch and saw that it was
almost seven o’clock. She looked around and spied the old pigeonhole mail slots for the North American Desk. She went over and looked at box number one: Lynn Simpson, Assistant Director, North American Intelligence. She looked at the signoff sheet, folded it, and then placed it in Lynn’s mailbox. That ought to get her to wonder why her desk was bypassed on an intelligence target deep inside the
United States … test or no test.

As the girl turned and left the large area, she only hoped she was doing the right thing. Unknowingly, she had placed the intelligence trace report coming in on compromised test subject Collins, Jack, U.S. Army, into the mailbox of Jack’s very own sister, the head of the North American Intelligence Desk, Lynn Simpson.

*   *   *

The young technician was wrong
about the North American Desk having gone home for the evening. Since Lynn Simpson’s return from Texas, she had been steadily working on the Juan Guzman case and had every single one of her people in a large meeting room one floor up.

She knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that her brother Jack had been involved in the illegal rescue of Sarah McIntire and fifteen kidnapped girls. Lynn had managed
to learn through her law enforcement contacts down in Texas that Jack and the mysterious entity he worked for had not been identified as being related to the U.S. government at all. There was only the fact that the rescue element had crossed the Rio Grande into United States territory.

As she read the statements of the fifteen surviving girls as told to the FBI and the Texas Rangers, she thought
someone had been drugged or at the very least beaten until all reliability had vanished. Words such as
monstruo
,
satanás
, and
criatura
had come from the lips of the women being questioned about their rescue regarding the man who had abducted them. Lynn knew the three words most of the girls used to describe the Anaconda on their harrowing flight out of Mexico—
monster
,
Satan
, and
creature
.

The
bulk of her staff recommended they should start looking into either the American military, or a corporate security group. “No,” she explained, “we’ll not follow that angle.”

Although Lynn knew her desk had to pursue answers to the raid into Mexico, she didn’t want to because she knew Jack, Carl, and Mendenhall were up to their eyeteeth in the cover-up. As she passed the mailboxes she noticed
something in her box. She closed the folder on the Anaconda and pulled free the folded paper.

As Lynn walked to her desk she still hadn’t given instructions to her people as to where to start their search. She was hoping to buy time until she could get a hold of Jack, Carl, or Sarah. As she placed the thick file on her desk, she unfolded the piece of paper. It was a signoff chain-of-custody sheet
that had been originated in the imaging and trace section. She scanned the sheet and then slowly sat down. She saw the person who had signed for the information received from that section. She also noticed that the subject header was “Surveillance and Tracking Test” from Cassini Space-Based Systems. Her brows rose as she reached for her phone. As she punched in the appropriate number for imaging
her eyes roamed to the name that did eventually sign for the test results—Hiram Vickers.

“Imaging and Tracking,” answered the voice on the other end of the line.

“This is Simpson at the Intelligence Desk for North America; your section forwarded an intelligence package from Cassini Space-Based Systems in Boulder to Hiram Vickers.”

Suddenly and before she could continue with the person on the
line in imaging and tracking, her awareness rose as she suddenly remembered who this man was. He had started at the company a year or so after Lynn herself. He had begun his intelligence career down in Games and Theory. Now there was a rumor of a new section, a small one to be sure, but new nonetheless—Field Incursions, a special operations teams used by the CIA to infiltrate any country, any place.
She suddenly remembered she was talking on the phone.

“Listen, do you people understand your protocols down there? I know your department doesn’t get out much, but any intelligence that comes through North America, is about North America, or is even rumored to be information derived on this continent, gets forwarded to me.” Lynn stopped talking and listened. “Okay, I need the contents of both
of these so-called test evaluations brought to me in five minutes. And Mr. Vickers is to know nothing of this.” Lynn hung up the phone and then wondered why Hiram Vickers would be interested in a test subject in Nevada.

As Lynn Simpson waited on the information from Imaging, those same tracking details were being passed to that organization that didn’t exist—the Men in Black.

DENVER, COLORADO

“This is Smith,” said the deep voice of the large man who was now dressed in Levis and a pullover golf shirt. He glanced over at the door that opened to the hallway outside and the few guests he had over for dinner. He stepped to the den’s wide door and closed it as he pressed the cell phone to his ear.

“I have a little surprise for you,” Hiram Vickers said on the other end of the cell phone
call.

“Surprises in my line of work are never a good thing, Mr. Vickers. You should know that.”

“Yes, yes. Now, before I give you the information you’ve been waiting on, I just wanted to say that was a real nice piece of work south of the border this afternoon. Real nice.”

The man known as Smith didn’t respond. He didn’t need the adulation of some desk jockey in Washington to critique his work.
He waited in silence.

“Well, anyway, the man with the hard bug on him has left whatever hole in the ground he was in. The signal is weakening, but we are able to maintain the trace for the time being. Not for long though. The man is definitely the officer you know as Jack Collins. I cannot get into his file other than his regular 201 file, which basically only tells us he’s not dead. As for his
current assignment, no luck there either. I do know that he is now a full-bird colonel not, as you said, a major. At one time everyone inside the military world thought this man would one day wind up running the whole army corporate arm, until his command had been shot to hell thanks to some generals and rats in Washington a few years back. That was when he was on Capitol Hill testifying before
the Ways and Means Committee.”

The large man known to Vickers as Smith made no comment but did reach over for a pen atop his desk and started writing.

“Where can our good colonel be located?”

“I’m waiting on the next package from Imaging, but you can start at 1267 Flamingo Road, Las Vegas. After he appeared downtown, he was traced to this address, and that data is only fifteen minutes old.”

“Now, I’m going to ask this but one time. When I trace this colonel to wherever he is based, what kind of executive power do I have to recover this substance?”

“The highest. These orders come down from on high. But we’ll never have to prove that since you can get what we want and not get caught doing it, and with as few unpleasant things happening as possible, am I right?”

“You know, without
knowing who this Collins works for, this thing could get messy. This could involve the elimination of American citizens.”

“The substance that was removed from the Mexican hole in the wall must be recovered or destroyed at all costs.”

“Now you see Mr. Vickers, that is why I hate dealing with you intel types. First you wanted the substance found and destroyed; now you want it recovered. Which
is it?”

“Our financiers would like it destroyed. However, we here at the home office believe you can recover at least a sample; that wouldn’t be a bad thing either. But if you doubt recovery is possible, destroy it for our friends.”

Smith just pushed the end-call button on his cell phone and then looked at the address he had written on the pad. He heard the den door open and a small scream of
delight. He turned to see his six-year-old daughter run into his study followed by his wife of ten years. They were both smiling.

“Honey, did you forget about our guests?” his dark-haired wife asked as Smith sweeped his daughter into his arms.

“I’m afraid you’re on your own tonight sweetheart; Daddy has some work to do.”

The daughter frowned and the wife only shook her head.

“It can’t wait?”
she asked as she removed their daughter from his large arms.

The man known to certain aspects of the intelligence community as Mr. Smith looked from his wife and daughter to the address on the notepad. He tore it off and then reached for a black suitcase and placed the address inside.

“No, the country is in danger and Daddy has to save the world from the bad guys!” he said dramatically, making
both his daughter and wife laugh as they kissed him and then left his study to deliver their guests the bad news.

Smith watched them leave and then the smile vanished from his face. He made the necessary phone calls and then looked out of his window at the fine Denver night.

He joked about saving the world from the bad guys, but little did his wife and child know that he was the biggest and
baddest of them all.

LAS VEGAS, NEVADA

Jack rang the doorbell several times, but no one answered. He knew someone was home because he could hear the deep bass thump coming through the door. Someone was blasting the old Credence Clearwater Revival song, “Green River.” As Jack was just about ready to knock loudly on the door, the music was lowered inside of the modest house. He turned slightly
and looked at two of those plastic flamingos that always drove him crazy. Their black eyes looked accusatory to him, so he sneered and turned away. As he did there was the sound of a chain being removed and then he saw the door open. Standing there smiling was Alice Hamilton.