Rogue Operator (15 page)

Chris
nodded as a forkful of steak and garlic mash entered his mouth. He put his fork
and knife down as he chewed, and glanced around the restaurant. Something moved
in the window, and he nearly gasped. He could have sworn it was Kane, but
another look showed no one.

“You
okay?”

“I
thought I just saw…”

His
voice drifted as he realized it couldn’t be.

“Your
spy friend?” asked Sherrie playfully, waving her fork at him.

“What
would make you say that?” he asked, suddenly feeling very uncomfortable. It
couldn’t have been Kane, but he could swear the person in the window was
looking straight at him. But with the conversation dancing around him, he
wasn’t sure if it was just his subconscious playing tricks on him.

“It was
a joke, sweetie.” She reached out and squeezed his hand. “Sorry, you’re right,
I’ll let it go.” She seductively pulled a cherry tomato off her fork with her
teeth, her lips slightly open as she stared at him.

Chris
adjusted himself, his pants suddenly becoming rather constraining, then quickly
looked at his half eaten steak and equally assailed mound of potatoes. Suddenly
he couldn’t remember how to eat.

“I know
a great place for dessert that we can go to. It’s not far from here.”

He
looked up at her, flushed.
Dessert sounded great.
“Sounds good. Where?”

“My
place.”

Leif Morrison Residence, River Oaks Drive, Mclean, Virginia

Leif Morrison tossed his jacket on the back of the chair in the
front hall, then thought better of it.
Just because your wife’s away…
He
could hear Marlene now, reminding him to take it easy on Maria, otherwise she
might quit and take one of the other myriad of offers she’s received.
And
she’s the only one I trust to clean my silverware!

He
smiled.

Marlene had
been at her mother’s for a week now and he missed her. Oh, the first couple of
nights were great, reliving the bachelor days, but when you’re Director of the National
Clandestine Service for the Central Intelligence Agency, you couldn’t exactly
pretend you were Tom Cruise and slide around the house in your socks and
underwear à la Risky Business.

Christ,
if the Senate Select Committee saw that, I’d be locked away somewhere cold and
dark.

He
chuckled as he hung up his jacket in the closet, then sat down to pull his
shoes off. An audible sigh escaped at the relief of freeing his feet from the
iron maiden they had been shackled in all day. He swore his feet sighed too.

The hiss
of carbon dioxide escaping its confines caused his heart to slam into his
chest. A second hiss had him on his feet, reaching for the drawer in the
hallway console that he kept a Glock in.

“Don’t
bother,” came a voice from deeper in the house. He peered into the darkness,
but could see nothing, the only light in the entranceway where he was.

He made
a mental note to have the main floor lights upgraded so they’d turn on
automatically when someone came home and deactivated the alarm. He reached for
his watch to alert the security detail outside.

“Uh ah!
There’s no need for company,” said the voice, closer this time. He could see
their shadow. The voice was familiar, he knew he had heard it before, but he
couldn’t place it. The footsteps were slow, and if he had to, which if he
survived, he would be doing later tonight in a report, he would characterize
them as casual. The voice was calm, non-threatening, but since it was coming
out of the darkness of his own home, it was still terrifying.

Morrison
reached for the light panel and flicked a row of switches up with his finger.
The hallway flooded with light, and the friendly face that was revealed left
his heart slamming against his chest even harder.

“Kane! What
the hell are you doing here?”

Kane
held up two opened beer bottles.

“Hoping
to enjoy a cool beverage with my boss, and ask him why he tried to kill me
today.”

Morrison’s
chest tightened.

“What
the hell are you talking about?
You
killed three agents today!”

Kane
stepped forward and put one of the bottles on the teak accent table his wife
had picked up in Scandinavia six years ago.

Coaster!

He
picked it up quickly and wiped away the condensation ring with his hand. Kane
raised his beer in a toast, took a swig, then spoke.

“Let’s
just clarify. I killed two agents, and one BlackTide scumbag.” He jabbed the
air with his hand holding the bottle. “Who tried to shoot first!”

“Correction.
You killed
three
agents, and a BlackTide scumbag.”

This
seemed to catch Kane off guard. The beer lowered from his lips.

“What?”

“You
heard me. You killed the entire team sent to question you.”

Kane
waved his finger in the air, shaking his head.

“Nooo,
that’s not the way it happened. Four guys entered my room uninvited, I got the
drop on them, BlackTide goes to shoot, I take him out, two others open fire, I
take them out, and the fourth I don’t touch. I left him alive, cuffed, after he
called his own cleanup crew. They arrived about fifteen minutes later.”

“And
when they arrived, he was cuffed, like you said, but had been beaten to a pulp,
and shot in the head.”

“That’s
bullshit, sir. I have a civilian eyewitness, a detective, who can corroborate
my story. He was with me when we questioned the kid. Christ, sir, he was green,
straight out of field training. He said he was a last minute replacement. I
never laid a hand on him.” He took a swig of his beer. “Well, that’s not
exactly true, I used a pressure point, but that was it. He spilled in record
time.”

“What
did he say?”

“Just
that he was a last minute replacement, something bad had happened the week
before, and that the guy who went to shoot first was BlackTide. He said his
orders were to find out why I was back and in Ogden.”

“Those
were
his orders.”

Kane
seemed to visibly relax, apparently relieved he wasn’t on some termination
list. Kane turned, and walked deeper into the house, the exposing of his back
not lost on Morrison.

He’s
saying he trusts you.

Morrison
followed him, and they both took seats, Kane on the leather couch, the wall to
his back, with views of both the front hallway and rear windows, Morrison in
his well-worn leather chair, inherited from his father years ago.

He
sipped his beer.

“Tell me
what you know,” he said, putting the bottle on a coaster and leaning back.

Kane
spilled for several minutes. His intel was thin, superficial stuff, as if
gleaned from someone on the outside looking in.
We have a leak, but not a
high level one.
He chuckled at the tailpipe and wasp spray, and felt his
chest tighten at the shooting of his agents. But if Kane was telling the truth,
it wasn’t his fault.

“So
where’d you get your intel?”

“Can’t
say.”

“You and
I both know who it was. I won’t bother mentioning his name, he’s already on my
shit list for ignoring orders to drop this case.”

“Why?
Why drop it when you know what these guys are working on?”

Morrison
lowered his head and massaged his temples with his fingers, then sighed.

“Did it
ever occur to you that we wanted to let it happen?”

Unknown Location

One Day after the Kidnappings

Jason Peterson felt the wheels touch down with a bounce and squelch,
then the plane rapidly decelerated as the brakes were applied. Everyone was
awake now, and he had his left arm around Darius, his right across Ayla’s
shoulders, his hand resting on Maggie’s. Across was Carl Shephard, their
teenage boy Charlie sitting between Carl and his wife Phoebe.

He
exchanged scared glances with Carl as the plane turned, beginning to taxi to
wherever their destination was. He had no idea how long they had been on the plane,
his watch, which they had let him keep, broken. All other watches had been
taken, along with cellphones and MP3 players. He was convinced he was allowed
to keep his beat-up Timex as some sick joke. All he knew was it was the second
plane since this ordeal had begun, this one not military, but some sort of
private jet.

The
plane jerked to a halt and the man who had cut his bindings earlier rose and
grabbed something from one of the seats. He stepped toward the rear where Jason
and the others were being held, and began tossing something at each of them.

“Put
these over your heads.”

Somebody
opened the door near the front of the plane, and immediately a cold wind howled
inside, causing Jason to shiver and instinctively hold his children tighter.

“Now.”

Jason
nodded and took the piece of fabric that sat on his lap and placed it over his
face. Immediately all went dark except for where some light made it through the
bottom near his neck.

It
provided little comfort.

Darius
began to whimper and Jason pulled his mask up to help the little man with his
own.

“It’ll
be okay, buddy. We’re almost done.”

“I
w-want to g-go home,” he cried.

“We
will, just not yet. I promise you.”

A shadow
cast across them both as their captor approached.

“Don’t
make promises you can’t keep.”

Leif Morrison Residence, River Oaks Drive, Mclean, Virginia

Today, Five Days after the Kidnappings

Kane’s mind reeled. What the hell did he mean? They
wanted
to
let it happen? Why the hell would the CIA want top researchers in a field that
held so much wonder and danger, along with their equipment, to fall into the
hands of some party with ulterior motives?

“Huh?”

Morrison
had taken a sip of his beer, apparently pleased he had caught Kane by surprise.

“What?
You think the Agency is required to keep you informed of every action it takes?
You’re an agent. You’re told what you need to know. You, along with pretty much
every other agent and employee out there, knew nothing about what was supposed
to happen.”

Kane
caught the wording and raised a finger.

“
Supposed
to happen?”

Morrison
shifted in his chair.

“You’re
up to your neck in this shit now, so I’ll read you in.”

Kane put
the beer aside and leaned forward.

“Three
months ago apparently there was a terrible accident at the research lab. The
experiment broke containment, and almost escaped the lab.”

Kane’s
heart beat a little faster.

“Implications?”

Air
burst from Morrison’s lips as he tipped the bottle of beer, taking another sip.

“You can
well imagine. End of the world type stuff. And I mean complete end of the
world, not something where some survivors miraculously make it onto a ship and
find an island unaffected. This is total, permanent annihilation, with no hope
the planet would ever sustain life again for eternity.”

Kane had
guessed as much when his buddy Chris had described the research, but hearing it
said by his boss was another thing. And the fear in his boss’ voice added to
his own.

“What
went wrong?”

“We’re
not clear on that. The reports say a coding error, but they activated an EMP
and managed to stop it before it spread too far.”

“An EMP
can stop it?”

“An
Electro Magnetic Pulse is apparently the
only
way to stop it, and if you
had a wide enough infestation, you’d need a nuke to stop it. And that’s only if
a few square miles are affected.”

“So
there’s hope.”

“Do you
realize what would happen if the United States launched a nuke, or possibly
several nukes, at a country to try and stop some infestation? Most likely
there’d be war, and if they were a nuclear power, there’d be retaliation. Do you
think the Administration would ever be able to come to a decision in time?”

Kane
shook his head, realizing Morrison was right. Politics had become so polarized,
so tainted, that he could see the other side risking the world being destroyed,
if it meant making the President look bad—regardless of who was in power.
We
need to realize that we’re all Americans, and we’re all in this together.
Kane
sighed. The ideologies above all else, the lines in the sand, the
uncompromising positions, the venomous hatred spewed on a daily basis of this
‘us versus them’ mentality had polarized America to a point where it threatened
to implode.

If
our politicians don’t check their egos, this country could lose its greatness.

But Kane
knew there was nothing he could do about that. He followed the orders given him
by the men put in charge by the very politicians who were driving this country
into the ground. And seeing what he had seen with the Fiscal Cliff, he realized
Morrison was right.

There
was no way they’d be able to agree to nuke a country on minutes notice, to try
and stop an infestation from spreading across the globe.

The
Chinese would, though.

So
maybe there was hope?

“So
there was an accident. What happened then?”

“The EMP
wiped out all the computers and electronics for the entire research division.
It was a last resort failsafe, and deliberately set up to not be shielded
within the lab, just in case the experiment did escape. They realized full well
what they were dealing with, and took the necessary precautions.

“Unfortunately,
this resulted in a massive expense to Omega Bionetix. It nearly bankrupted
them. Insurance didn’t cover something like this, so they were left holding the
bag. Layoffs are about to happen.
Massive
layoffs, and the rumor mill
has been running rampant.”