Noble Beginnings (16 page)

“And if I go
there and someone is waiting?”

“You got more
than a fifty-fifty chance to take them out.”

I sat back and
crossed my arms. There weren’t many possible scenarios, but each one that
existed played through my mind. The best option was for me to go to the
Greyhound station and retrieve whatever sat inside the locker. I reached across
the table and grabbed the key. Slid across the bench and stood next to the
table.

“I’ll call you
in a few hours.”

“I’ll be
waiting.”

I turned and
started to walk away.

“Jack,” he
said.

I looked over
my shoulder.

“Like I said, I
know where this goes. If you decide to open those documents, you need to
prepare yourself for what’s in there.”

I walked back
to the table.

“Where is
that?”

Conners shook
his head. “I can’t tell you. Not until I know you are one hundred percent on my
side.”

“You haven’t
figured out that I am?”

“No. Once you
return, I’ll know, though.”

The D.C.
Greyhound station was located on 1st Street, about two and a half miles from
the restaurant. I decided to walk. I went a block north to K Street then headed
east until I reached 1st Street. I figured the later I arrived at the station
the better. Chances were the schedule thinned out at night, resulting in fewer
people around.

A cold wind
blew down the street, numbing my face and carrying a combination of wood smoke
and exhaust fumes. The sky clouded over. It looked as if a spring snow storm
was brewing.

My watch read
11:30 when I reached the Greyhound station. I walked up 1st Street and turned
on L Street. Continued past the bus station and stopped. A tree in bloom
provided cover from the evenly spaced black wrought iron lamp posts that lined
the sidewalk. I leaned against the tree and scanned the area. The activity
across the street was virtually nil, with only a few people here and there. A
red four door sedan pulled up and dropped off a young woman, late teens or
early twenties, probably heading back to college after her spring break.

I scanned the
parking lot behind me and didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. There were
only a dozen or so cars, all parked close to the lights. They belonged to
employees, I figured. There was nothing that resembled a government official’s
car.

I pushed off
the tree and walked across the street. The area behind the glass double door
entrance was empty. I pulled the door open and stepped into the yellow tinted
bus station. Directly in front of me was a large board displaying a digital
schedule. To the left was a bank of windows. Ropes stretched out and across,
creating a maze for passengers to wait in before buying their tickets. No one
was in line. Only one window was occupied by an overweight lady reading a book.
She looked up and then quickly back down when I made eye contact with her.

To my right
were several rows of seats in a blue and white checkerboard pattern. I turned
and headed that way. The outside facing wall was blank, painted a drab brown.
The back wall was lined with lockers, as was the area to the left of the seats.
The place was filled with row upon row of gray and blue and green painted
lockers.

Only six seats
were occupied, consisting of two couples and two individual travelers. None
took note of me. I walked down the aisle in the middle of the seating area and
took a seat at the last row. Then I watched and waited.

I let an hour
pass. I did nothing. I talked to no one. I let my eyes wander to the row of
lockers and focused on row B. No one entered. No one exited. Nice and quiet.
Part of me felt it was too quiet. Could I trust Conners? If he wanted me to go
down, this was the perfect set up. I was trapped here. A tactical team would
have no trouble extracting me, dead or alive. I brushed the thought aside. He
could have had me taken care of outside the restaurant. The way I saw it, he
wanted to get his hands on these documents as much as I did. If he planned on
taking me down, he’d do it after I handed them over to him. The simple solution
was to not hand them over.

I got up and
went outside, stopped near the glass doors and watched the sparse traffic as it
passed. A car drove through the loop that ran in front of the building. It
slowed near the entrance, but never stopped. Tinted windows blocked any view
inside of the car.

I took a deep
breath before walking back inside. The cold air cleansed my lungs. I headed
toward the rows of lockers and turned at the row labeled B and walked past
locker B915. I stopped ten feet away and looked over my shoulder. No one
followed me. I cut down a cross aisle and turned at row L where I grabbed the
key out of a random locker. If I needed to stash anything, I’d do it in that
locker. Probably the last place they would look.

I went back to
row B, peeking around the corner to make sure no one was waiting by locker B915.
Satisfied that the row was empty, I walked up to the locker. I stood there for
a few minutes, key in hand, debating whether or not to open it. I couldn’t
shake the feeling that I was being set up. I didn’t know Conners well enough to
put double crossing me past him. Hell, it didn’t even have to be him. It could
be any number of people I’d apparently pissed off recently.

I took a deep
breath, exhaled and stuck the key in the locker. Turned it and opened the
rectangular metal door. It squeaked against its hinges. Inside sat a black bag
with a zipper on top and a mesh back. I grabbed the bag and turned away from
the front of the bus station. I walked down the aisle until it opened up into
an empty seating area.

This time I sat
in the first row of seats. I pulled my jacket open, clearing a path to my
Beretta. My heart beat fast and my breath quickened. The training I had been
put through taught me how to control panic. I followed the steps and relaxed
myself to the point where I could focus.

I unzipped the bag
and looked up.

Two men stood
fifteen feet away from me. Two men, that upon second glance, I knew.

“Jack Noble.”

I nodded while
zipping the bag shut.

“Gallo,
Bealle.”

Gallo stepped
forward. A towel hung over his hand, a weak attempt at hiding his weapon. He
smiled when my gaze lifted from the gun to meet his eyes. “Let’s go, Jack.”

*
* *

Bealle walked
in front of me. Gallo behind, his gun pressed into my back. I held the bag
tight to my chest. For some reason they didn’t try to take it, at least not yet.

We stepped
through the front door and the wind hit like a wall of ice. The sweat on my
forehead evaporated and gave me a slight chill.

They led me
down L Street to an empty parking lot. We moved to the middle of the dirt and
gravel lot, stopping outside the range of the street lights.

“We’re not here
to hurt you,” Gallo said.

“What’s the gun
for then?”

“Our
protection.”

I said nothing
and kept the bag secure in my arms.

“We aren’t too
keen on taking you on again, especially after what you’ve been through.”

“How’d you know
I’d be here?”

“We have
sources,” Bealle said.

“Conners?”

“No. I don’t
know any Conners.”

“Me either,”
Gallo said. “Let’s go someplace we can sit down and talk.”

I wondered if
that was for their protection as well.

We walked
through the streets of Washington, D.C. until we found a twenty-four hour
diner. Gallo asked for the booth in the corner by the window. He sat against
the wall. I sat with my back to the restaurant and Bealle squeezed in next to
me. I placed the bag between my left leg and the window.

A brown haired
waitress came to our table. I ordered coffee. Gallo and Bealle ordered water.

“What do you
know, Jack?” Gallo asked.

I shrugged.
“Not much. I know that you guys framed me for the murder of that Iraqi family—”

“That wasn’t
us, Jack.” Gallo placed his elbows on the table. He leaned forward. “Martinez
was pissed. He probably still is. You made him look bad and then kicked his
ass. He’s a hothead. But it’s not like him to go back, murder a family and then
frame you.”

“What were we
doing there that night?” I asked. “Were we there to kill the man?”

Gallo glanced
at Bealle and nodded.

“Yes,” Bealle
said. “If he didn’t give up the information he was to be terminated.”

“What about the
woman?”

“No, that
wasn’t part of it.”

“Martinez took
that too far,” Gallo said. “That’s something we agree on. But, you know, there
are no rules, man. We’re hunting out there and we need to get the information
and neutralize the threat before it gets too far.”

“And that’s
where you screwed up, Jack,” Bealle said. “Repeatedly you’ve gotten in our way.
Not just us, but other teams.”

“It’s because I
can’t work like that. I’m not some security detail. For eight years I’ve worked
on these teams and always been involved. Now we go to Iraq after the attacks
and I’m standing in doorways and providing the muscle. Hell with that.”

I leaned back
in my seat and crossed my arms over my chest and looked out the window at
drunken people pouring out of a bar. I checked my watch and saw that it was now
two a.m.

Gallo took a moment
and responded. “It’s not just you. Other teams in the co-op are having this
issue as well.”

I hiked my
shoulders and held out my hands in a
‘who-cares?’
gesture.

“What else do
you know?” Gallo asked.

“I know that
half the people who come in contact with me end up dead. Stick around and you
might skew that ratio even further.”

Gallo smiled.

“I know that
somehow they tracked me. I figured they used the cell phone and got rid of it.
Still, Abbot was killed.” I locked eyes with Gallo. “They murdered him and left
me alone. So tell me, what the hell is going on here?”

Gallo took a
drink of water and leaned back. “There were six teams. You know that, you were
there with us. Six teams, a dozen Marines.” He turned and looked at the window
at the crowd of people passing by, laughing and talking with each other. “Four
are dead, six are in prison on base and you and Logan are on the run.”

The gravity of
the situation hit home. I opened my mouth to speak. Nothing came out.

“You see where
this is going?”

“What are they
in prison for?”

“Returning to
the scene of an interrogation and murdering any Iraqis there.”

I felt sick.
“Why didn’t—why didn’t Abbot tell me this?” My mind raced as the world closed
in. “He was about to. He had to make a call for my next contact, but he was
going to tell me this before I left.”

Gallo shrugged
and shook his head.

“What did you
tell them when they asked about the family?” I asked.

“They never
did,” Bealle said. “At least, they never asked us. Who knows if they asked
Martinez?”

“Where is Martinez?”

“We haven’t
seen him since that night. Word is he took leave and came back…”

“Here,” I said.
“He’s in D.C.”

Gallo nodded
and continued. “We never filed a complaint, signed a statement, nothing against
you or Logan. And the other teams we’ve spoken with said the same. But…”

“But?” I hung
on his words and watched as his face twisted in thought.

“There was
always a team that didn’t have, uh, Marines attached. Six CIA agents, that’s
it. I don’t mean us. Martinez and five agents.”

I knew where
this was heading.

“We never
worked with Martinez until a few months ago.”

“When they
reorganized the teams,” I said.

Gallo nodded
and continued. “Well, can you guess who took over the other five teams?”

“I’m guessing
the other five men who worked on the CIA only team.” I said.

“Yup,” Bealle
said.

I turned in the
seat and leaned back against the glass so I could see both of them. I didn’t
care who was outside. If someone was going to take me out, let them do it.

“Someone is
trying to take apart the program then,” I said.

Both men
nodded.

“That’s what we
think,” Gallo said.

“Any ideas
who?”

“We’ve been
trying to determine that. Doing our own investigation. We can’t find anyone who
knows. It’s coming from high up, whether in our agency or outside of it, it’s
high up.”

I thought about
it for a second before responding. “So why not just terminate the program? Send
us back to the Marines to finish our careers behind a desk and merge your teams
together. That would make more sense, right?”

“Absolutely,”
Gallo said. “Why wouldn’t they do that? That’s what we can’t figure out.”

“Because
someone else high up is pushing to keep the program going.”

Gallo shrugged.
“Makes sense.”

“Another
question, then. So we’re saying that someone wanted us out of the way. Any
ideas why?”

“So we can act
however they want us to. There were too many incidents like yours where a
Marine got in the way.”

“You say that
like we’re some damn choir boys.”

Both men
laughed.

“It also makes
me question what they were going to do once we were out of the way.”

Gallo nodded.
“Yeah, I wonder too. I think I have an answer, but I don’t want to believe it.”

I held out my
hands. “Might as well.”

Gallo opened
his mouth to speak, but didn’t.

Bealle said, “I
think you know where he’s going with that, Jack. Let’s not go down that road.
Right now we just want to put a stop to what’s going on.”

“What do you
care?”

“We might not
agree with the new direction. And if that’s the case, we might be terminated
also.”

We said nothing
for five minutes. The three of us sat in silence. I went over the conversation,
making an extra mental note of the most important parts. I hoped that whatever
was in the folder in the black bag could shed some light on what they said.

Gallo slid out
of his seat and stood in front of the table. “Jack, we’re going to leave you
for now.”

Bealle placed a
piece of paper in front of me. “Those are our numbers. Call in the morning and
we’ll meet up. Give you some time to absorb this. Think it over. Maybe
something will click.”

With that, they
left. I got up and switched seats so my back was against the wall, giving me a
view of the diner. I watched Bealle and Gallo leave, keeping my eye on them
until they turned out of sight. I had to shake my head as I looked around the
diner. How had I missed so many people entering?

When the
waitress came by, I ordered another cup of coffee. A few minutes later she
returned and set the coffee down in front of me. I declined when she asked if I
needed anything else. I watched her walk back to the wait station, and then I
pulled the black bag onto my lap and unzipped it. I slid the manila folder out
of the bag and set it on the table. My thumb and forefinger wrapped around the
outer corner of the folder. I took a deep breath and opened it.