Rogue Operator (12 page)

He’s
actually going to cooperate?

CIA Headquarters, Langley, Virginia

Chris Leroux was in love. He was pretty certain of it. All he knew
was he had never felt this way before. Especially after just one coffee. But he
couldn’t stop thinking about her. It had actually felt comfortable. Natural.
Meant to be.

He was
definitely in love.

He
glanced over at Sherrie’s desk and she was looking at him. He smiled, and so
did she. A message popped on his screen.

“Dinner?”

It was
from her.

He
looked back at her and smiled, nodding. The smile she beamed back made his
heart stop, and he was a wasted puddle of hormones for the rest of the afternoon,
the conversation merely replaying itself over and over in his head, the way she
laughed, smiled. Touched him.

Only on
the hand or the arm, nothing too forward, but he knew from his own
research—reading—that when a woman touched you like that, it meant she liked
you. They even drank their coffees at the same time and pace. It was uncanny.
If he didn’t know better, he’d think he was being played, but not her. Not Sherrie.
She was perfect, and besides, he would know if she were being dishonest. After
all, he was CIA. Though not specifically trained to detect whether or not he
was being manipulated, he had read enough reports to know what to look for.

Conversations
being too smooth.

Mirroring
of actions such as lifting and raising of cups or bottles, eating at same pace.

Unnecessary
gentle touching on the hands, arms, shoulders, legs.

Laughing
at jokes that weren’t necessarily funny.

Leroux
frowned. He thought his jokes were funny, but were they actually? And now that
he thought of it, he was trying to remember if he had actually told her any
jokes, or if she were simply laughing at simple stories.

He
played back the conversation in his head, then froze.

“How
did you get involved in the CIA?”

He tried
to recall his response, but couldn’t, it was a blur of lust and love.

“Have
you met any agents?”

His
heart slammed into his chest.

Did I
mention Kane?

He felt
his head swim, and he glanced over at her. She wasn’t looking at him, but he
could swear her head had darted away just as he turned his.

And
if I did mention Kane, what did I say about him?

Ogden Police Department

2186 Lincoln Ave, Ogden, Utah

“That’s quite the case file.” Kane looked at the stack, at least
several inches high. “What’s happened here?”

The
tired detective looked at him, then took the first thick file off the pile,
holding it up, and giving it a shake.

“This is
the kidnapping of Margaret Peterson and her two children, Ayla and Darius, to
which there are plenty of witnesses, but as of yet, almost a week later, there have
been no ransom demands, nothing.” He placed the file on the desk, and picked up
the next one. “This is the presumed kidnapping of Phoebe Shephard and her son, Charles,
the same day, and again, no ransom demands, nothing.”

Kane
didn’t say anything. The more the locals talked of their own volition, the more
likely he was to get some tidbit he wasn’t aware of. Once the freely offered
information began to dry up, or become repetitive, he would start his subtle
interrogation.

The next
file was displayed.

“This is
the file on the disappearance, and presumed drowning, of Jason Peterson,
husband to the aforementioned Margaret and father to Ayla and Darius, Carl Shephard,
husband to the aforementioned Phoebe and father to Charles, and Phil Hopkins,
thankfully husband and father to no one.”

Kane
knew that Jason Peterson was most likely alive, it being difficult to fool a
mother with a voice modification machine, and he had heard the voice on the
copy Leroux had sent him. The voice had been strong and clear, not disguised,
but stressed. He was definitely under duress, but despite somehow being able to
make a phone call, he had not only
not
asked for help, but had
specifically requested that none be provided. Kane had his theories, and none
of them were good.

“They
never found the bodies, which is why I presume you’re here.”

Kane
nodded, rather than interrupt the flow.

Another
file.

“This is
the file covering a break-in at Omega Bionetix, discovered the next day, that
stripped their lab clean.
Everything
was gone, even their damned water
cooler!”

A
smoking-bolt operation!

His
heart rate upped a few ticks as he thought about it. A smoking-bolt operation,
where a team would go into a location and strip out everything, leaving nothing
but the “smoking bolts”, was rare nowadays. It was still done, even he had done
it, but usually you were after a specific piece of tech, not an entire lab. This
was something not in the files sent by Leroux. He made a quick note on his pad,
this new piece of information blowing several of his previous theories out of
the water.

The
detective held up the second to last file, his face clouding further, his eyes
wells of tears, but the clenched fist his free hand made suggested a heart
filled with rage.

“And
this is the murder of my partner, twenty-nine year old Jamie Conway, who never
had the chance to be a wife to anyone, let alone a mother, and died in a
shootout with at least four perps of unknown identity.”

More
information he didn’t know about. And that was surprising. Leroux was usually
very thorough, so how he would miss that a cop working the case was killed was
beyond him.

The
final file was raised.

“And this,
this is the most unbelievable of them all.” He shook it hard as he spoke, then
slammed it onto the top of the new pile. “That”—he jabbed his finger at the
file—“is the report detailing what we know—which is
nothing
by the
way!—on how the bodies of the four men I shot, the four men who shot my partner
to death, disappeared from our morgue, along with all physical and electronic
records. It might as well be as if they never existed.”

A
cleanup operation.

The more
he listened, the more this sounded like an intelligence operation. Industrial
espionage, unless state sponsored—which was still a possibility—didn’t have
cleaners.

“How
long after the bodies reached the morgue were they taken?”

“Camera
footage shows hospital staff moving the bodies and loading them into a private
transport. They claimed they had transfer orders for the bodies to have them
sent to Salt Lake City. It was nothing really out of the ordinary, so nobody
questioned it. Of course, the bodies never arrived, and all information
collected was cleaned out at some point before the next morning. Their techs
are saying their computers were hacked, some sort of ‘hunter-killer virus’ I
think they called it, that searched specifically for their records only, and
destroyed them and nothing else.”

“Backups?”

“Destroyed
before the nightly backup took place.”

“And the
paper records?”

“Four
files, removed from the records room by somebody whose face we couldn’t get a
clear shot of, the cameras always going fuzzy when he walked near one.”

Signal
interference generator.

Another
hi-tech toy that Langley and other foreign equivalents provided as needed.
Whoever did this were pros. Which might explain why he was being followed. But
again, who would know he was here, and how? And who would know, let alone even
think, to watch Leroux?

Then it
hit him.

We
would.

The
agency watches its own. It was standard procedure. And since they knew Leroux
had an interest in this case, they would watch him closely, probably
intercepted his communications, and obviously his travel arrangements. And if
Leroux didn’t know about the dead cop and the lab break in, then the
information was being carefully shielded from him, because Kane knew damned
well that Leroux could dig out anything from anywhere.

Which
meant the information was being scrubbed before it could get into any system
Leroux could access.
Christ, that means scrubbing newspaper sites and
everything!
Somebody didn’t want this being messed with, and they were
within his own agency.

The
thought sent a chill down his spine.

Is
this rogue, or sanctioned?

Super 8 Motel Parking Lot, Ogden, Utah

Detective Percy sat in his new unmarked car, the last one a complete
write-off after Jamie’s murder. His interview with the insurance investigator
had been an opportunity to vent, and he had probably said too much. In fact, he
knew he had said too much, and by the end of it, he had realized he was being
pumped for information, and cut off the questions.

Something
didn’t smell right.

It
wasn’t anything this Kane guy did or said. He asked all the right questions for
the job, he expressed the proper level of concern about Jamie’s death, and
asked the kind of unrelated questions he would expect of a curious person.

But
something was wrong. He couldn’t put his finger on it. It was a gut feeling
that probably had to do with
everything
being wrong on this case.
Helicopters, military transports, shootouts on darkened roads, bodies
disappearing, false paperwork, computer viruses, labs being cleaned out.

Everything.

Which in
his gut told him not to trust this insurance investigator. Unfortunately his
brain didn’t receive his gut’s message until he had spewed a fountain of
information to the guy in his effort to tell anyone that would listen, his
story. Everyone at the damned station was tiptoeing around him, nobody wanting
to mention Jamie’s name. He was looking forward to the funeral tomorrow to
hopefully put all that behind him.

And
hopefully get the damned desk duty his lieutenant had assigned him to, over
with.

So this
was a coffee break. He had asked Kane where he was staying, and the man had
volunteered the information. A quick call confirmed it, so rather than follow
Kane, he merely waited fifteen minutes, and drove to the hotel. In fact, he was
parked at the Texaco, the Super 8 tucked in behind the gas station, figuring it
would be less obvious. He had done a drive-by, and there were a smattering of
vehicles, including a large Ford Expedition rental he presumed was Kane’s, it
being the only rental in the lot, and the only vehicle that really looked out
of place, the rest of the vehicles older with far more body damage than he’d
expect an insurance investigator from Shaw’s to tolerate.

And it
was parked directly in front of the room the desk clerk had said one Dylan Kane
was occupying.

Sometimes
it was just nice to match the phone evidence with some eyeballed evidence. He
sat in the car, waiting for what, he had no clue, and soon found himself
regretting not going into the convenience store attached to the Texaco upon
arrival. Normally he’d leave Jamie in the car, then load up, but this was a one
man, against orders surveillance, and he was stuck.

There
was a commotion behind him and he looked in the rearview mirror to see a man in
a suit screaming at the piece of eye candy sitting in the driver’s seat of a
Jaguar convertible, its top down, steam and smoke spewing from under the hood.

“Turn
the fuckin’ wheel!”

“I am,
Ricky! It’s hard! If I break anotha fuckin’ nail, I’m chargin’ ya double!”

“Fuck
your nails, just turn the fuckin’ wheel!”

Percy
turned his attention back to the motel, the overpriced bucket on wheels, its
regretful owner and his afternoon delight rolling by toward the motel. And
yawned.

How long
was he supposed to wait?

And for
what?

This
is stupid.

A black
SUV rolled by, pulling into the motel parking lot, next to Kane’s vehicle.
Another
guest?
It was a reserved spot for the next room. The thought was banished
when four men in suits climbed out, all examining their surroundings, then
heading for Kane’s door.

Shit!

Super 8 Motel, Ogden, Utah

Kane didn’t have to wait for the sound of the lock being picked to
jump from the bed; he had already done so when he heard the engine of an SUV
pull up outside his window. He had slipped the desk clerk an extra twenty to
keep the adjacent room empty, and the other room that backed against his
headboard, had occupants from North Dakota, at least according to the plates
attached to their old Ford Escort.

A
vehicle whose engine sounded
nothing
like the SUV that just parked in
their spot.

The moment
it had pulled up, he was out of bed, slipping his dress shirt on, pulling his
slacks up, and slipping his feet into his shoes. It took less than thirty
seconds. During which time he heard four doors open, and four doors close.

Definitely
not my neighbors.

Gun in
hand, he looked through the peephole and saw four suits on the other side, all
with subtle bulges from their shoulder holsters. He had only seconds before
they’d be inside. He could take four average guys in a bar fight no problem,
but four highly trained men, possibly agency? For that he would need the
element of surprise, and besides, he still didn’t know if these were sanctioned
agents, or rogue. He could put a row of bullets through the door right now,
ending this, but he would never do that without knowing their intentions.

Instead,
he implemented his escape plan, already prepped in the first five minutes after
his arrival this morning. He stepped quietly back from the door, then opened
the door to the vacant adjoining room—his twenty dollar payoff now seeming to
be money well spent—then opened the second door, it already having been picked.
Closing the doors behind him, he was safely out of the room and into the next
before the door was picked by his intruders.