The History Thief: Ten Days Lost (The Sterling Novels) (27 page)

“Not the best choice of getaway vehicle, Michael,” murmured the section chief.

“He knew we would find him this way,” said Jorge. “He’s shielding his face from the camera’s view; I’ll bet it’s this way at every toll station.”

But both men knew that it was Dr. Michael Sterling, deputy director of the National Clandestine Services. The man was a legend in the halls of Langley, and every good officer and analyst knew who he was. Besides, each day, nearly every employee entering the front doors of the headquarters building walked past his picture, which hung on the wall, showing all CIA leadership.

They knew they had him, but needed confirmation.

Jorge traced the vehicle’s route through two other toll stations, and it was as he had said it would be. The driver’s face couldn’t be seen.

Before the section chief could order Jorge to run the face recognition software, Jorge had already typed in the commands. One of his three LCD screens was displaying a fast-moving stream of changing faces in an attempt to identify the driver by matching unique angles, skin tone, and facial structure.

But both men were sure they had found their man.

Jorge had an idea.

While the recognition software worked, he panned the corridor of Route 267 and easily found what he needed. A large Exxon gas station abutted the road. Jorge tapped into its cameras.

Calculating the minivan’s speed, he backed up the digital footage of one of the station’s outdoor cameras until the moment he had figured that the minivan would drive by it.

“Sir, take a look at this!” Jorge shouted.

The section chief hurried to Jorge’s desk. Both men stared at the 2007 silver Honda as it sped by on the highway. Jorge froze the frame and zoomed in on the driver. The picture was slightly pixilated. It was an easy issue to fix. A few strokes of the keyboard, and the picture became clear enough to see the driver.

It was Michael.

At that moment, the face recognition software chimed its results.

Jorge and the section chief both looked at the screen.

Jorge worked to hide his triumph-stretched smile.

The section chief gave Jorge’s right shoulder a slight squeeze, and he said, “Good work, Mr. Garrido. Now, can you find him?”

“Give me a moment, sir,” replied Jorge.

Tapping into the footage from the tollbooth, Jorge saw Michael leave Route 267 via exit number 12.

Another chime captured the attention of both men. Jorge blurted, “Sir, I won’t need to find him. Take a look at this—he’s on the phone again!” Jorge pointed to a flashing message on his screen. It showed the stolen phone was now in use.

“Triangulate that, Mr. Garrido. Do it now!”
Stupid, Doc, really stupid!

“On it, sir!”

“Pull up the text message he sent earlier,” commanded the section chief.

Jorge complied.

On-screen was the message; the section chief silently read it while Jorge triangulated the signal.

“I have the location. He’s in a neighborhood just off the highway, on Sanibel Drive. He’s not moving. Permission to access LACROSSE Five to get a visual, sir.”

“Permission granted, Mr. Garrido. Get it on-screen.”

Jorge’s fingers moved like a concert pianist’s. His intensity never wavered. Within moments, he commanded one of the National Reconnaissance Office’s overhead real-time observation satellites to focus on the coordinates of the minivan.

Its four predecessors had been only radar imaging satellites; LACROSSE Five differed in that not only that it was the most advanced radar imaging satellite available, but its additional optical technology also utilized the power of NASA’s Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System (TDRSS). At an orbital inclination of sixty-eight degrees, and in orbit some twenty-eight thousand miles from Earth’s surface at its apogee, LACROSSE Five could both image and view the entire globe. The full strength of its resolution ability is classified, but dips well below ten-centimeter resolution: the holy grail of imaging. And when used in conjunction with the amplification and several hundred mega-bit per second processing power of the TDRSS, LACROSSE Five gives the user the ability to read a book from twenty-eight thousand miles away.

It also allowed the CIA to see anything—and anyone—in near real time, separated only by the fraction of time it takes to send and process the images.

“Do you have him, Mr. Garrido?”

“Almost, sir. Another minute or two.”

“Quit asking me for time; we don’t have another minute or two, Mr. Garrido—get him, now!”

Jorge typed faster.

On-screen, a crosshair hovered over the image of the United States. Within moments, the image became Washington, DC.

“Move, Mr. Garrido! I need him on display now! We have to find him. Every second that we don’t means that the probability of bringing him in vanishes exponentially.”

Without turning his head, the section chief shouted, “TAC, where’s Lou? Do you have him?”

“Negative, sir. He was last seen at the Doc’s point of escape. Working his location.”

The artery in the chief’s neck bulged forcibly, and he shouted, “Why are you all moving like stagnant, fucking pond water?! Get me some usable info; it’s what we do for a living, for Christ’s sake!”

Jorge ignored the diatribe but found the neighborhood and worked to make the picture clearer. A silver minivan was onscreen. Michael was nowhere to be seen.

“I have the vehicle!”

Oh, thank God,
thought the TAC.

“Mr. Garrido, is he still on the phone?” asked the section chief.

“Yes, sir.”

“Get that phone call on the COM; I want to hear what he’s saying.”

“Accessing the tower now. It’ll take a minute.”

Instantly, Jorge was angry with himself for asking for another minute. He could feel the heavy stare of the section chief on the back of his head.

Jorge continued to work.

He tapped into the cellular network.

Also not quite so legal, but no one ever asked. Doing it by legal means would have taken entirely too long: requests, warrants, a judge’s signature. It was too much red tape.

Plausible deniability—a ridiculous, clichéd phrase—but every section chief loved that it existed.

The section chief snapped his fingers at another analyst and commanded, “Get three teams to the location of that house. Go in heavy. Do it now!”

He turned his attention back to Jorge.

“Mr. Garrido, is that home a known asset?”

Jorge searched for the answer. When he found it, he replied, “No, sir, it is not.”

“Where is he heading, Mr. Garrido?! Give me some answers!” The section chief was screaming; his face was contorted. “I need you to find him!”

Turning, he screamed at the rest of the analysts in his section. “Dig deeper, people, he may be good, but he’s just a man. I need to know where he’s going. We cannot let him get off the grid; if he does, we’ll never get him. The net needs to be cast, and I mean now! He cannot get away!”

The room was a flurry of activity. A cacophony of disagreements between analysts turned into screams. Control of the situation was evaporating; the section chief could feel it.

“USGS!” Jorge yelled out.

“What’s that, Mr. Garrido?”

“Sir, the nearest asset is right around the corner; at the US Geological Society. It’s not a tactical asset. We hardly use it, but it’s less than a mile from this location. That has to be where he is heading!”

It was at that moment that both men knew that they had been sent down a rabbit hole. It was just more mud on the chief’s face when the day’s current weather repeated through the overhead loudspeakers.

The section chief’s face had been flushed, but now it had drained white. It had taken too long to find an answer. It was at this precise moment that three heavily armed, black-clad teams could be seen on the large screen at the front of the command center. The minivan was surrounded, as was the house. The order to stand-down was too late. The home’s front and back doors were both smashed inward. Bursts of heated gas escaped from the front end of a couple of M203 grenade launchers. There were a few small explosions and flashes of brilliant light. CS gas poured from the broken doors and windows of the home. Armed CIA Special Activities Division operatives cleared each room.

Michael wasn’t there.

The section chief knew it. His face burned crimson once more as the blood returned.

“Turn it off, Mr. Garrido.”

The audio of Michael’s call piped incessantly through the command center.

…today’s temperature is a pleasant sixty-eight degrees; relative humidity is at sixty-two percent…

Jorge smiled as he said to himself,
Touché, Doc.

“He’s bought himself some time, sir,” said Jorge. “Shall I redirect the teams to USGS?”

Sheepishly, the section chief replied, “Yes, Mr. Garrido, redirect them. Let’s just hope it wasn’t enough; and turn off that goddamned audio!”

My bet is that it was,
thought Jorge, as he turned off the repeating weather report.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

OLD FRIENDS, NEW
ENEMIES US GEOLOGICAL
SOCIETY

M
ichael had been running fast and his breathing was still labored, but he hadn’t stopped moving. The toll of having become a desk jockey was palpable, but he was still capable, and more than most.

He knew that his time was running out. Nearly five minutes ago, he had seen the black OH-58D flying overhead. It was the Company’s. By now, they probably had found the minivan and realized the phone call was a decoy.

Keep running, Michael,
he told himself.

He figured he had five minutes at best.

As he ran through the parking lot, he could see a lone door just ahead. Heading for it, he didn’t have time to be delicate. He put his head down and his shoulder into the door just at the point where the deadbolt entered into the frame—any door’s weakest spot.

Splinters shattered inward and rained down onto the freshly waxed floor; to his right, on the wall, hung an office directory.

He traced his index finger down the list of offices and stopped when he found the one he needed: Strategic Employee Development Consultant—RM 109.

One man stuck a curious face through his office door and into the hallway—a weekend warrior putting in some extra hours. Michael ignored him.

To no one in particular, Michael muttered, “First floor, at least one thing is going easy today.” The room was just down the hall.

Michael hurried past numerous three-dimensional topographic maps of the United States that adorned the walls like tapestries. There were large shaded blocks over parts of the maps, indicating the location of the US’s numerous mineral and ore deposits.

The US Geological Society was created in 1879 to examine geological structure and to understand mineral resources and products of the national domain. It was the last piece of the USGS’s mission statement that the CIA was most interested in.

The CIA cannot operate on US soil, and the USGS offers a way for the Company to put assets into place covertly and without congressional questions.

Products of the national domain included intelligence on the nation’s energy and hydrologic and topographic resources. More to the point, the CIA was keenly interested in keeping tabs on any unnatural changes to the national domain that might signal penetration into the country by terrorists.

Spikes in energy consumption, or the finding of certain chemicals in the nation’s water table, could indicate illicit activities by both foreign and domestic terrorists.

It was the former that the CIA was most concerned with. The latter was the FBI’s domain.

The office to which he was now headed was an asset of the CIA and where he would meet Lou.

In Room 109, Lou waited nervously and eyed his watch over and over again. He had to remind himself that this was Michael; he remembered the uncountable missions on which Michael had risked his life for the country, the many missions that saved an unknown number of innocent lives. He recounted the time in Algeria that Michael had carried him, one agonizing step at a time, down a mountainside in the middle of a firefight.

Lives had been lost that day, but his had been saved.

He owed it to Michael.

Through his shirt, Lou fingered the bulbous scar on the right side of his ribcage. He winced. It still hurt. It was the place that two 7.62mm rounds from an AK-47 had entered into his side; one of the rounds still remained embedded into his flesh. It was too close to a major artery, the doctors had said. He thought he had died that day. Michael, then a fresh-faced graduate from the farm, had picked him up from the dirt, thrown him over his shoulder, and saved his life.

Michael had gone back for more of the wounded. He had been relentless in his heroism and in the face of certain death.