The Infected 3: Cast Iron (24 page)

“I’m Wilson. Sandra Barris asked me to look you up, since we were both in town and might just have similar interests at the current time? She says you should give her a call to check things out.” The man wasn’t good looking, not close up. Not ugly either, he just looked like a businessman on vacation. Most of the CIA really did, outside the movies. Businessmen and college professors. The good ones did at least.

Sandra Barris. It was a name she hadn’t heard in a long time. Ten years at least. Her old handler back when she’d been just an up and coming field operative and didn’t have any pesky super-powers to get in her way. Instead of asking more questions she pulled her cell phone out and tried to remember how to get in touch with the woman. Sighing she dialed Conroy’s number instead. It was embarrassing, but short of calling up the CIA headquarters, she didn’t have any other way of getting the information. Wilson could give her a number, of course, but then she could end up talking to anyone. Did she even remember what the woman sounded like for certain? No, she’d have to do this the hard way. Mike might not have the number either, but he’d been on her mind and she really kind of wanted to talk to him anyway. If he was someplace that could be reached.

That wasn’t certain, she knew that. He often stayed out in the wilderness for days at a time, living off the land and hiking.

The phone picked up on the second ring.

“Mike Conroy. If you want me to changed long distance providers no thanks. I also don’t need more life insurance, though I might be interested in a time share someplace warm, if the price is right.” He sounded jovial enough, his voice perhaps a bit rougher than it used to be, age catching up with him as the decades passed. He’d been a few years older than she was when they married and like a normal person he aged. Unlike her.

“Mike? It’s Marcia.” Now her voice sounded timid and like she was scared suddenly. Not too bad, but enough that she’d have noticed it, given everything, if the call was coming in to her. Worse, Conroy was better at that kind of thing than she was.

“What’s the situation?” He sounded cold suddenly, his voice filled with steel. For a minute she wondered if it was about her, about how things had ended. Had he finally decided to just hate her for what had happened? She couldn’t blame him, but it would hurt if he did. He kept talking though, going worried instead of commanding after a bit.

“Is… Well, you should be alright, but… is it the boy Cutthroat sent for training? Brian Yi? I know he’s been put into some dangerous set-ups. Crap. I’ve tried to follow his career over the last few months. In the news a lot. Something finally take him down?” The man actually sounded sad about it. Like he really thought something could take Brian without it being on the news.

Marcia grinned. At least she had good news to share there.

“Nope. Brian is just fine. On vacation even, a real one, after a fashion, in Miami. Beach and picnics, all that. No, I need Sandra Barris’ contact information and was just wondering if you’d have that around? There’s… A situation going on here. On that I want to run by you.” Looking over her shoulder she walked away from the man near the door, Wilson. It was probably a fake name, but as good as any, she guessed.

Holding her hand over the receiver so her lips couldn’t be seen easily, to prevent reading, she explained the whole thing quickly.

“Three of the old crew, Weathers, Mic and Harpo are missing, some of their family members too. It’s hinky and really doesn’t feel right. Lancaster, Reyes and I are on it here, along with some others, but we’ve passed it on to the FBI, because it’s not in our jurisdiction. Now a guy is showing up and claiming Sandra sent him. He was here last night too and had ID saying he was someone other than the name he’s given us and had no fingerprints on file anywhere. Cellophane took his wallet for us.”

There was silence for a time from the device, but she could make out breathing, so gave Conroy the time he needed.

“OK. I’ll be there in… Sixteen hours. They were my crew, I owe them that. Besides, it will let me chat with you and the others. Maybe arrange a desert survival class with Yi? Cellophane… That’s Penny? The girl that can’t be seen? We should get her in on it too. Sounds like she needs to be ready to go it alone at almost any time, since people can just forget about her and all that.”

Marcia shook her head. He’d always been good about knowing things like that.

“That’s the one. I… Really, you don’t need to come. Like I said, we’re out of it for now. The only one who knows anything is Cal Morris and he took off last night. He brought us in, but he hinted he was forced to. I mean…” This was the hard part. It always was.

“Well, I’d like to see you, if you want to take a pleasure trip? You can crash in our room. I’m with Penny and a few others. Don’t worry; we can make Bridget Chambers sleep on the floor, so it won’t be that bad. She’s young and limber enough for it. If you want to visit, I mean.” She sounded about fourteen suddenly, awkward and like she was asking a boy to a dance.

“Be right there then. Oh, first… That info you needed? Let’s see… Bandon… Barris… Here you go.” She heard typing in the background.

A few minutes later he got off the phone so she could dial the needed number before she forgot it. It wasn’t the kind of thing you wrote down after all.

That led to an instant call to Barris, who answered on the first ring, her voice tense and old sounding. Then the woman had to be pushing sixty and had been a chronic smoker for years.

“What?” She snapped, sounding grumpy and a little drunk. That part was out of the ordinary, since it should still be a work day as far as Marcia knew.

“This is Turner. There’s a man here, calling himself Wilson? Said that I should confirm him being here with you? Know anything about it?” If not she’d just blitz the guy and take him down before he could try anything. She couldn’t be hurt, unless he had a significant mental talent of some kind, but her friends could. A stray bullet would pulp Tobin’s head for instance. The same with Denis. She wasn’t sure Brian wouldn’t manage to dodge somehow, but she couldn’t ensure he would either.

It was funny, but of the people there, those were the ones she thought of first. Karen came in after that, then everyone else sort of tying up for last place. She almost felt a little bad for leaving Bridget out, but the kid could be annoying. Plus, realistically speaking, she could soak a few bullets to the head and not even be bruised the next day.

Sandra laughed.

“Fuck yes. I’ve been about ready to wet myself over the whole situation. This is fubar girl. Wilson, stands about six-one, average looks. Slightly balding and medium build?” It was one way to check a person out, or had been before camera phones.

“Sounds right. Is he working in house or is this off the books?”

“This is just an inquiry. In house and above board. An investigation into some of our own people, so legal.” She didn’t have to explain that the CIA wasn’t normally allowed to operate in country. Not only did everyone know that already, but Marcia had lived it for years.

What she said meant a lot though, since one of the only times they were allowed to act on U.S. soil was when they were watching their own people. They only did that when they were suspecting one of theirs had turned to spying for a foreign power.

That or if they were looking into an insurrection of some kind that started within their own ranks. It wasn’t exactly advertized, but it had happened twice in the last forty years that she knew of. Once when Nixon was in power. Later with Clinton. It had worked the first time; luckily power had stayed with the government as it existed, except the POTUS. The second time it happened had been a real coup attempt and that had gotten the IPB involved. It had ended with twenty-seven high ranking military and government officials being taken out and shot. The press reported it as a bunch of unrelated accidents. Plane crashes, car wrecks and in one case a man being trampled by a horse.

She’ led that mission herself. She’d been the horse.

“I… see. Possibly at least. What level of confidence do you have in Wilson here?” It was just possible that she’d been put up to sending the man, possibly with a gun to her head. If that was the case, she’d say that Wilson was top notch. Not good or solid, but using those specific words. Top notch. It meant not to trust the person in front of her, an old code, but one they’d used the whole time they’d worked together.

“He’s one of the best. Trustworthy, noble and brave, all that. Don’t gamble with him, but other than that, not too bad at all. My replacement, as soon as I can get the paperwork around. Jumping ship before it sinks.” It was a bad joke, but one that almost everyone used when they left the company.

Like they were all a bunch of rats, scurrying for safety, knowing that there really wasn’t any.

“OK. Well, we should get together sometime and rehash old times and all that. Talk to you later?” Marcia knew that wasn’t going to happen. She trusted Sandra for the most part, as much as you could a spook, but she’d never really liked her much.

“Only if you get down to Tahiti.” The line went dead without more being said. Hopefully she’d just hung up.

She gestured to Wilson who’d been standing by for nearly twenty minutes while she called people. It was a hazard of just showing up like he had. With her at least. Taking a person at their word just wasn’t something she did easily anymore. That had stopped when she found out her parents had lied to her about Santa. Since then it had all been about verifying what people said.

“You seem to check out so far. Talk here, or do you want to wait? I’m on duty, watching the back exit. You know, terrorists and people trying to poison the food. Sounds silly and is, but that second one has already happened once today. Apparently food shows have rivals.”

The man looked toward the front.

“Don’t we all? Here’s fine though. It won’t take long. We need you to do a job for us. Off the books. We need a man you know watched. Cal Morris? He’s been in touch with, let’s call them certain individuals with an ax to grind? Some of them are connected. Or, more accurately, some are connected to us. The CIA. All of them have high level clearance. We’re thinking it’s about removing Lawrence from office. Certain members of the military and other areas seem to feel that they’d be better served by someone else being in place. Going for assassination this time, if the chatter is accurate.” He kept scanning the back of the set and spoke in low tones so they wouldn’t carry.

Marcia was still pretty sure there were three or four people out front that could hear everything they were saying. If Chris was back she could read the man’s mind, which would be a good thing, as far as Marcia was concerned. After all, having too little information almost never helped, and if the guy was willing to chat her up where they could be listened too, he probably wasn’t telling the truth, not all of it at any rate.

“Oh? That sounds… Like Tuesday, to tell you the truth. Lawrence is the President; of course he gets death threats. What, three a week or something? Doesn’t the Secret Service handle that most of the time?”

That got a nod at least.

“Yes. Of course most the time it’s just slow Melvin from Bumfuk going off about how his political viewpoint isn’t being fairly represented at the moment, not a cadre of people that might actually pull it off. This is… Big. You were in on it last time? This is larger. Deeper too. If we don’t break this soon, it might lead to… Something we’d all rather avoid.” Wilson followed the words with a stare.

“We can’t take this through channels even. Even the IPB might be involved.” He held up his hand and leaned in.

“Probably not, but we can’t risk it. So, are you in or not? We need Morris tracked. It isn’t anything huge; just slip a bug on him so we can track his movements. He keeps slipping past our surveillance. You know the drill. Put it on his car, or in something he’s going to be carrying around with him. Hell, if he’ll let you, shove it up his ass. Whatever you think is needed…” Wilson stopped talking and pasted a phony smile on his face. She assumed it was fake at least. It didn’t look that way, but that was probably just skill, not the man actually having feelings or anything. A lot of the men in the CIA at the top levels were basically psychopaths. Smart ones, but people that didn’t exactly think the same way everyone else did. Fearless for one thing. Or nearly so.

Brian walked toward them from the front, his eyes cold and almost exclusively on the man next to her. If she hadn’t known better, which she really did, she’d have thought it was her jealous boyfriend coming to check on her. Wilson didn’t seem to recognize him at all, or if he did hid it freakishly well and waited for one of them to speak.

Brian did first.

“Karen wants to know when we need to have things ready for dinner. Blankets and all that for the picnic? Tobin has the food about ready. I didn’t know he could cook at all, but he seems to be doing pretty well.” While he spoke he glared at the new man hard, his hand finding the knife sheath he wore on his right thigh, the black hyper sharp thing he carried while working. It was made of carbon and light enough to exchange with him when he took another person’s place. Damn hard to use, because it had almost nothing to hold on to, but it was wicked sharp and strong. She knew what he was doing because she’d helped him redesign the pockets of his black fatigues to be able to reach it when he needed. That he was dressed as he was, with his armor on underneath suddenly hit her.

Earlier she’d just figured it as him being a bit cautious, like she was most the time. After the thing the day before, it had just kind of made sense to her. Now it seemed related to what she was doing. He might not even know why he was doing it, wearing what he was. On the good side he didn’t bring anything out, just holding himself ready, hand in pocket. It looked odd, but Wilson didn’t need it explained, though he probably figured it as a pistol of some sort, not a knife. To his credit, the man didn’t go for a weapon himself, a good thing since that probably would have gotten him killed before Marcia could suggest otherwise.