Chapter07

 

The voices were going crazy.

The target had vanished along with the woman.

“Nobody takes this long to get down six floors,” the supervisor said.

“Do you want us to send an asset in to look for them?”

“No, not yet,” the supervisor said. “They must have stopped somewhere. Does the hotel have its own security system?”

“I’ll check,” a voice said and after a long pause, returned, “Yes, a video surveillance system throughout the hotel.”

“Where exactly?”

“Stairways and exits.”

“Access it.”

“Got it. The camera caught them in the stairs.”

“Put it on the screen.”

A new image replaced the sixth floor hall image, but it was clearly inferior quality, yet good enough to make out the man and woman, and the target glaring up at the camera, and then the image of them exiting the stairs on the next floor.

“They’re on the fifth floor,” a voice said.

“Where?” the supervisor asked.

“Can’t tell. We don’t have anything on that floor.”

“Check what we have.”

“Just phones.”

“Check them.”

Another pause, and then the voice returned. “We have a phone call from one room to a cellular telephone. The same phone we have the target calling before.”

“What did they say?”

“Target says he has the package, and set up a meeting for the exchange.”

“Where?”

“Jersey.”

“Monitor the cell phone. Any activity?”

“Yes, sir, an immediate call.”

“To where?”

“Washington DC.”

“Where in Washington?”

“Can’t tell.”

“What do you mean you can’t tell?”

“The call was encrypted on the other end.”

“Encrypted? Something we can’t read? That’s impossible.”

“Not impossible, if you have the right level of clearance.”

“You mean it’s someone in our government.”

“Someone high up I would say.”

“Damn,” the supervisor said. “What about the package? Does the target really have it?”

“He claims he has.”

“Could he be lying just to get the money?”

“It is possible. The camera in the stairway indicates he wasn’t carrying anything. Neither was the woman.”

“All right, get assets close to the room. As soon as they come out, eyeball them. If they have the package, then we’ll blow the place, and worry about the Washington bullshit later.”

 

 

Major Craig Southerland held the closed cellular phone for a long time, his dark sunglasses reflected the his hand, the phone, and the inexpensive motel room in which he sat: a bed, the desk he sat at, the fluttering curtains from a window not quite sealed against the chill wind outside.

His breathing was ragged, short, intense inhaling followed by sharp expired exhaling – almost a snort – a reflection of the internal struggle he underwent in an attempt to control his rage.

He was determined to calm himself before he made the next, necessary call, and by sheer determination, he eventually succeeded.

He did not put the phone down, but with his other hand, swiped his fingers across the flat screen of a postcard-sized computer pad – and when the image menu appeared, he touched one of the icons.

A moment later, a video appeared – grainy with the image of a security camera recording. This showed a bullpen of office space – filled with work stations, but after hours, so that only one of these was occupied, a lone light illuminating the image of a nervous Billman who sat in front of a computer terminal. The screen of the computer was no visible from the angle of the security camera. Yet all Billman’s actions were – the plugging into of storage device, then the unplugging, and re-plugging of another, all taking only a few minutes. After which, Billman placed these into a brief case that also contained a small laptop computer.

The black man kept glancing towards the door at the far end of the room, as if expecting someone to walk in, a constant, nervous glance that did not cease until he finished saving what he needed from the mainframe, and unplugged the last of the drives and packed this into the briefcase.

Billman closed and locked the briefcase, then turned off the terminal. He rose, took up the case and hurried from the room.

The video went black.

Southerland swiped the screen again, and his screen went black as well.

Finally, he flipped over the phone again, pressed the button for frequently made calls, and put the phone to his ear. The buzz of the distant phone droning on as he tapped the desk top nervously with the fingers of his other hand, a tapping that seemed to echo in the room and did not cease until the voice replaced the buzzing, a harsh and familiar voice, one so full of threat, even Southerland swallowed with difficulty before he spoke.

“It’s me,” he said hoarsely.

“Well?” the harsh voice asked. “Did you get things settled?”

 

 

“Not quite, sir,” Southerland said, running the palm of his other hand across the surface of his brush-like military hair – the blonde bristles long gone into battleship gray. But did not age him. His face, especially his eyes, seemed to retain vigor of youth, although close up, deep in the eyes, there was the taunt expression of an experienced warrior, a warrior clearly worried at this moment. “We have a situation.”

“What kind of situation?” the harsh voice on the other end asked.

Southerland stopped stroking his hair. The hand dropped to the desk stop and settled near the desk lamp. His forefinger clicked the switch, on, then off, then on again, until he noticed that and forced himself to stop that, too.

“Complications that delayed our getting the information drives,” Southerland said. “But I think things are back on track.”

 

 

A long pause ensued filled with a harsh intake of breath, and finally, the sound of the breath expelled.

“Delays are unacceptable,” the voice said.

“Understood, sir,” Southerland said, once more clicking the switch of the desk lamp, then stopping himself. “We’ll have it all in hand shortly.”

Again a pause, and then again breathing, and finally, “I take that to mean both parts of the mission will be accomplished?”

“One part is already done,” Southerland said. “The other part will be shortly. I’ll have the drives in my position within a few hours.”

The pause this time seemed less hostile, and Southerland thought he heard the click of fingernails on some hard surface on the far end.

“Very well,” the voice said. “Call me when you have a positive conclusion to this matter. But be careful.”

“Careful, sir?”

“Others are snooping around in this – we are not the only ones that know about the theft.”

Southerland shivered, his free hand clenching into a fist near the lamp.

“Understood, sir,” he said, and hit the off button on the phone before closing the lid.

After this, he just sat for a long time, staring into space. A bubble of sweat dripped down off his brow on his cheek, looking a bit like a tear as it dribbled down his face: but he was not crying. Finally, he stood up from the small desk, and pushed the chair back under it, the groan of the chair legs filling the room with sudden sound.

 

 

Another sound of moving cloth drew Southerland’s gaze towards the dark corner where two men slowly rose from chairs they had been sitting in.

In the dim light, he could only make out the first of the men clearly, a swarthy, tanned man with a thick black moustache that had always reminded him of some South American despot, and knowing what he knew about the man, Southerland was not far from being right. The only thing missing on the man was the uniform – it didn’t matter which nation – since this man changed nations as easily as he did clothing.

Both of these men wore gray suits – and sunglasses despite the darkness, and both had military-style haircuts similar to Southerland’s own.

“Did that go well, sir?” the swarthy man asked, stepping towards Southerland.

“It did if you did what you were supposed to do?” Southerland said.

“The team is on its way,” the swarthy man said.

“None too soon,” Southerland said, his fingers gripping the edge of the desk. “It seems that word has leaked out about the theft.”

“We do have one issue,” the swarthy man said.

“Which is?”

“The woman is with him.”

Southerland’s breath hissed in and he held it. This was a new twist among a number of twists and turns. He did not like the unpredictable. He did not like to adjust plans once he had made them and set them into motion. Too many things had already gone askew. And even he had overreacted, trying to kill the killer before he had what he needed, a move that he regretted and vowed not to repeat.

Still, this was not a bad twist. He would have had to clean this all up anyway in the end, and why not have all the eggs in one basket?

“Very well,” he told the swarthy man. “You can kill them both. But only after we have what we came for.”

 

Only three screens mattered now that the target had abandoned the sixth floor and had relocated on the fifth. And yet, he kept staring at the vacant hall on the sixth floor the way a kid with a missing tooth feels the vacant space with the tip of his tongue.

Everything felt wrong. They were missing something there. Some important piece of this puzzle remained on the original scene, although he could not say what that puzzle was.

Then, voices in the headset rose up with the warning: “They’re on the move.”

“Keep a close eye on everything,” the supervisor warned. “We don’t know where the adversaries went.”

He looked at his own screen, and the shot straight down at the roof of the hotel – a position the drone maintained for when the command came for the strike. But the shot had changed. Small shapes swarmed across it, just as they had earlier in The Bronx, like maggots squirming across the surface of bad meat.

“Found some of them, sir,” he said.

“Where?”

“On the roof?”

“Shit!”

There were a dozen dots, all of them moving, although he could not tell to where or for what purpose.

“Do we have assets on site?” the supervisor asked, panic clear in his voice.

“Only three,” another voice said. “One inside, two on the street, not enough to confront them.”

“I’m not worried about confronting them. I want our assets to watch the target and make sure they are not apprehended. Can we do that?”

“Maybe.”

“I don’t want maybe,” the supervisor said. “I get a yes or I may have to order the hit.”

“But we can’t confirm the package,” another voice said.

“Then give me a fucking confirmation. Get someone to eyeball the target. Where is he?”

“In the elevator headed for the lobby,” another voice said.

“I want a visual. Do we have a visual.”

“We will when he and the woman get there.”

“And an eyeball?”

“One of our assets is in the lobby, too.”

Just then, flashes showed on the roof screen – similar to the flashes he had seen in The Bronx indicating gun fire. Someone reported the loss of assets in the front of the hotel. First one, then the other, and then, as if someone had flipped a switch, all four screens went blank.

He blinked in disbelief.

The supervisor screamed, “Get it back.”

“We can’t get it back,” some more distant voice said.

“Why not!”

“We’ve been hacked.”

“Hacked? How the fuck can we be hacked with our security level?”

“Don’t know, sir,” the other voice said. “But we have been.”

He touched the empty screen with the tip of his fingers thinking: “Russians? Chinese?”