Wrong Place (The Wrong Series) (2 page)

Chapter 2

Two Days Earlier . . .

A loud ringing awakened Samantha in the dimly lit room that she was staying in. She rolled over to the opposite side of the bed to reach for her phone, knocking the lamp over in the process. How she had grown to hate that phone. Sure, her handler was a nice enough guy, and he only called when new information was available, but why did this new information always seem to be uncovered at such ungodly hours? 

As she answered the phone, she greeted him in a rather rude voice that really reflected how she felt. 

“What?” she snapped.

“Well, that’s no way to greet your handler, is it?”  

“Oh, spill it, Jason. What news have you got? Do we have a location?” 

“Believe
it or not, we do,” Jason said. “We’ve been hearing a lot of suspicious chatter out of a small town in north Mississippi. We think the information is very reliable, and we need you to go there to see if you can get the evidence we need to proceed.” 

“Great. F
irst you send me to a safe house in Orlando, and now you’re sending me to Mississippi? I’m sure there will be lots of interesting people and places there, too,” she said sarcastically.

The truth was that Sam
had lived on military bases or secret facilities for the majority of her life, and she knew almost nothing about civilian life. She had gotten a chance to learn firsthand about it lately, however, whether she wanted to or not. She was certainly caught off guard by the heavy southern accent she heard upon going into a convenience store the day before. She knew that many people in the southern region had accents, but this experience left her feeling as if she were in a foreign country. In fact, she was convinced that the only thing that even made this place relevant was some famous mouse that the tourists were obsessed with.

“Not liking Florida?” Jason asked.

“No, what made it so obvious?” she asked with a sarcastic laugh. 

“Well
, maybe you’ll like Memphis better. You’ll be staying in the Royal Hotel. I don’t know much about it, but the locals seem to love it. It’s famous for ducks or something.”

Great, firs
t a mouse and now a duck. What’s next . . . penguins, she thought. 

“We
have you leaving on the 10 a.m. flight going to Memphis, so pack your clothes and get going. Don’t worry about equipment. We’ll have someone meet you with everything that you need after you arrive,” he said.

“
So tell me again, what’s so important about this location?” Sam asked. 

“Well, let’s see. T
his company is rumored to have sold weapons to Al Qaeda, as well as to Russia, Germany, and Syria. We have linked them to several deaths and more missing people than either of us can count. According to at least one source, it’s a location where many, if not all, of this company’s records are being held. And get this, the place is trying to pass itself off as a solar panel plant in Mississippi, of all places.”

“I thought that most of the solar plants were in California.” 

“Exactly!  It’s not even a good cover, although the locals would definitely welcome the jobs that it would theoretically create. You have a flight to catch in roughly four and a half hours. Hmm, I guess I should have let you sleep a little longer.”  

“Yeah, I guess you should have,” Sam said sarcastically.

“Oh well, be safe. I’ll call you after your plane lands and you’re settled in your new location. By then I should be able to fill you in on the details of how we plan to get you into the solar plant.” 

“Yeah, yeah. Bye,
” Sam said.  She hung up the phone and immediately reached over to reset the alarm. Two more hours couldn’t hurt, could it?

* * * * *

At the CIA base in Washington D.C., Jason had just hung up the phone when he heard a familiar voice behind him.

“How’s it going, Jason?”

As he turned, he faced Burt Jones. Burt was a short, heavyset man, whose body had apparently given up on producing hair, and although God did not bless him with an appearance that would stop the ladies in their tracks, except maybe out of sheer fright, he had been given a brilliant mind and a charismatic gift of speech that was rivaled by no other.

“I
thought I would give you a copy of our infiltration plan for the facility in Mississippi since you’ll be the one briefing our agent tomorrow,” Burt said. 

“Well, thanks, Burt!” Jason said with a large grin. 

“I told you not to call me that,” he snapped. 

Burt scowled. He had never liked the name Burt, and
he thought that his parents must have watched one too many cartoons growing up. In fact, it always seemed to him that Burt would make a better name for a puppet, possibly in a children’s show.

“
I thought we went over this. I prefer to be called Jones,” Burt said.

“I know, I know, but it’
s just so much fun to see your face anytime I simply say your name, Burt.”

“Just read the damn file!”

As Jason was glancing through the file, he had to control the urge to laugh at what he was reading.

“Is this what they
pay the eggheads upstairs to do?” Jason asked as he finished reading.

“It
is
ridiculous, isn’t it?” Burt said.

“Well, a little. I mean, they expect our girl to pose as a pest control person? I’m sorry. I don’t mean to sound sexist, but how many female
pest control people are there, and how many of them look like her? I think my four year old nephew could come up with a better plan than this. Do you have any ideas, Burt, because quite frankly, I’m not comfortable sending any agent of mine into a situation where all they have is a plan like this.”

“
Well, I have been thinking about it, and sometimes the simplest plans are the best ones. I googled the company, or at least the company they’re posing as, and they’re hiring a new office worker,” Burt said.

“
Wait a minute. Why would a phony company be hiring anyone?”

“I don’t know, for appearances probably. They wouldn’t want th
e locals realizing that there’s a company with no employees just sitting around taking up space. It draws suspicion. We could set up an interview for her, give her a killer resume, and don’t we have a guy on the inside? What was his name?”

“Driver,
” Jason answered.

“Mr. Driver. That’s right. Well, we could have Sam go to the interview, and as she goes into Mr. Fields
’ office, maybe Driver could ask him to step out for a falsified emergency. When he leaves, Sam could get as much information as possible. She could download all the files from his computer, as well as take as many paper files as she can fit into her bag, while taking pictures of anything of interest in the office,” Burt said.

“H
ow do we even know that there’s anything incriminating on that computer?”

“We don’t, but Mr. Driver seems to be very confident that this facility is one of inform
ation and not actual production and that Mr. Fields has access to privileged information straight from the top.”

“
I like your plan. It sounds fairly simple, but overall, I think that it’ll be efficient. So how do we get this changed, and how exactly were you able to come up with a plan that quickly?”

“You storm in upstairs raising ten kinds of hell about how you won’t send any agent of yours into a situation with such a shoddy plan, and then I swoop in with a better pla
n, and everyone is happy. As for how I came up with such a good plan, it’s because I used to work in the field before I decided to slow down. I have more ops under my belt than you can count,” Burt said.

The truth was
that Burt had never worked in the field. He had always been behind a desk, and Jason knew that. You see, the thing about Burt is that he’s somewhat of a compulsive liar. He’s very smart, but he definitely likes to embellish stories a bit. If he instructs an agent or plans an op, then somehow, years later, it becomes the op that
he
carried out when he tells the story. The two shared a laugh, and then Jason headed upstairs to ruffle the feathers of some of the CIA’s best planners.

*
* * * *

Sam was lying on the ground and heard the sound of sirens. Her eyes were throbbing, and she couldn’t quite put her finger on it, but the feeling was familiar. It was like an extreme scratching feeling that left her view very obscured. All she could make out were simple silhouettes. People were standing, looking on, but not daring to help. She felt som
ething run into her eyes. It felt kind of like water, but it was thicker. The more she thought about it, the more she knew exactly what it was. Blood. Panicked, she began to think of what could have possibly led to this situation. She had gone back to sleep after Jason called, and then what happened? She didn’t understand at all, and that’s when she heard it. “We’ve got a little girl.” Little girl? Who are they talking about? Was someone else involved in whatever situation I’ve gotten myself into? Suddenly, there was a loud beeping noise, but Sam couldn’t quite figure out what it was or where it was coming from. Whatever it was, the sound was certainly irritating. As she lay there, thoughts racing, she tried to take in all the information around her, but slowly began to lose consciousness.

*
* * * *

Sam awoke to the sound of a ver
y loud alarm going off. Even if the alarm was irritating, she was glad to be awake. She felt as if she must have had a bad dream, but couldn’t quite remember what it was about. After collecting herself, she began slapping her hand at the obnoxious alarm, missing it a half dozen times in her dazed and half-awake state, before finally hitting her mark. God, I like my sleep way too much. Maybe I went into the wrong line of work, she thought. In truth, she hadn’t actually chosen this kind of life. No, there was never really a choice in the matter for her. She then stood, stretched, and very sleepily wiped her eyes. As was her routine, she made the bed, not that she really had to. She wasn’t likely to come here again, and she could easily leave it to whoever had to stay here next, but she was, after all, a creature of habit, and maybe, just maybe, it had angered her to find the bed unmade and the place a mess upon arriving. She didn’t intend to leave it the same way. Her obsession with things being in order probably had to do with her strict and orderly childhood, but she didn’t question it. For her, it was now simply instinct. After she finished making the bed and picked up the lamp that had crashed to the floor earlier that morning, she began to go through the rest of her morning routine. She started with sit-ups, as she always had. One hundred sit-ups, and then fifty push-ups; that was her usual morning exercise routine. She normally would take a morning run as well, but there was simply not enough time to do so if she were going to make it to the airport and be able to get anything to eat before leaving. Besides, she had no idea where she would run. It’s not as if there was a track anywhere close to her location. After finishing her exercise regimen, she decided it was time for a shower. Sam took showers that would make most people feel like their skin was about to burst into flames. There was just something that was so relaxing about the heat and steam to her. Sure, it took a second for her body to adjust to the extreme heat, but once it did, it always felt like heaven.

After finishing with her shower and getting ready, she began to pack things up. All she would be packing would be simple things like clothes and toiletries. As she finished putting everything into her bags
, she remembered something that she had almost forgotten. She made a quick dash toward the small nightstand next to the bed where she had previously tried to assassinate a lamp and grabbed her locket. The locket was small and gold, and it was very dear to her. Perhaps at this point in her life, it was the only thing that she didn’t feel as if she could live without. “There you are. I can’t leave this place without you,” she said out loud to the locket, as if it were an actual person. She then slipped the locket around her neck, went over and picked up her bags, and exited the house.

Upon arriving at the airport
, Sam paid the cabbie. Forty-two dollars was the price. I’m glad that expense isn’t going to come out of my check, she thought. It wasn’t that forty-two dollars was a lot of money to her. It was just that the man only drove for about five minutes. In fact, without the bags, she easily could have jogged the distance they had actually traveled. After collecting her bags from the trunk of the car, she headed into the airport. She would have to pick up her tickets at the desk, go through security, and then hope to find a decent place to eat. If there was one thing that she had learned, it was that airport food and dog food were not all that dissimilar. Not that she had ever eaten dog food, but the smell was pretty much the same.