Rogue Commander, page 12
part #3 of Titus Black Series
“Are you sure?” Rodgers asked as he continued walking toward the device. As he approached it, the countdown display showed fifteen seconds. He cursed before spinning toward the door.
“Everyone get out now,” he said. “Go outside and keep running. There’s a bomb in the building, and it’s about to blow.”
The scene on the body cams appeared chaotic as agents scrambled down the hallway, some of them getting shoved aside as Rodgers sprinted past everyone. He yanked one of Al-Sabah’s arms and jerked him through the exit. The Kuwaiti leader stumbled as he attempted to keep up with Rodgers, who sprinted toward the van. Once they reached the corner of it, a blast erupted, disturbing an otherwise quiet night in Washington.
Black raced out of the van and started to check on each agent to make sure they weren’t badly injured. Running from body to body lying on the ground, Black checked their pulse and asked each person a question to determine if they were conscience and coherent enough to get up. When he was finished, he walked around to the back of the van and found Al-Sabah.
The Kuwaiti leader held his arms out and embraced Black. “I’m beginning to wonder if you’re not the one doing all this. Every time something bad happens, the common denominator has been you.”
Black shrugged. “It’s either me—or someone is out to get you because you’ve always been there, too.”
“Perhaps, but you need to do whatever it takes to put an end to this madness once and for all.”
“I’m already working on it,” Black said.
Black called over one of the attending medics and asked him to take a look at Al-Sabah. Meanwhile, Black scanned the area once more and spotted a small security camera on the corner of a nearby building. He hustled back inside the van and asked the team inside if it could gain access to the feed.
“I must’ve missed that one,” Agent Williams said. “I conducted a full sweep.”
Black shrugged. “It happens sometimes.”
Whatever the reason, Black didn’t care. He was just pleased that they might be able to at least make out the model and license plate number to aid in their attempt to catch them and make the perpetrators pay. But if it was going to help, the FBI needed to move quickly.
But Black wasn't confident it would, given his deep-seated suspicion that the bureau had already been compromised.
Black fished his phone out of his pocket and called Shields to pass along the good news of Al-Sabah’s rescue. However, she wasn’t answering.
CHAPTER 21
SHIELDS HAD ONLY BEEN to Blunt’s house once for a small Christmas party, but she didn’t remember it being so difficult to get to. She couldn’t remember exactly what day of the week the gathering was held on, but she didn’t recall there being so much traffic. After a few minutes of sitting still on the two-lane road, she dialed Blunt’s number again.
Still no answer.
Come on. You’ve gotta pick up your phone.
Shields had never considered driving out to Blunt’s house, but she grew uneasy with the fact that he wasn’t answering her calls, let alone returning them. However, she found something, something that stirred a sense of urgency in her to tell Blunt, something that made her question everything they had assumed while hunting The Ghost.
After Black joined up with the taskforce rescuing Al-Sabah, she called Besserman to see if she could look at any of the closed-circuit feeds from the exterior of any of the nearby homes surrounding the shootout in the street earlier. Doorbell cameras, security footage, live feeds posted to social media—anything she could get her hands on to analyze what happened and see if she could dig up any other clues regarding the identity of the attackers. Besserman obliged her request, which resulted in her poring over all the videos from the ninety-second altercation for the better part of an hour.
She thought it was going to be a dead end until one frame arrested her attention. One of the shooters on the rooftop signaled for some of the other hostiles to fall back once they had captured Al-Sabah. But the quick motion with the man’s arm caught Shields’s eye. She slowed the video down and enlarged the frame.
Shields shook her head in disbelief before running to Blunt’s office to confirm her suspicions. After jimmying open the lock to the door, she sifted through the mountain of folders on his desk until she found the one she was after. A few days earlier, Blunt had shown them the images of an odd tattoo that kept appearing on a handful of dead Army Rangers. She took a copy of the image with her phone camera and then put the documents in their proper place before racing to her desk.
Carefully comparing the images, she determined that they were the same tattoo: the chaos monster.
Their group discussions regarding the abduction of Al-Sabah didn’t even consider the possibility that this was unrelated to The Ghost’s activities. Since the network of assassins had been wreaking havoc all across the Middle East and Europe, Blunt expressed his opinion that something big was going on that needed to be stopped, despite the fact that other intelligence agencies decided to quietly look into the murders as to avoid a political quagmire.
Despite the apathy shown by Washington, Blunt explained how he wanted justice for them, politics be damned. However, he shared how he’d grown more concerned as time went on and more murders started happening, which signaled to Shields that this wasn’t just some rogue operation. These hits were precise and calculated. And based on Lebedev’s journal, they had been planned at least weeks in advance. Somebody was toying with them and had trained operatives, including at least one soldier Shields believed had to be an Army Ranger.
A steady rain started to fall, leaving Shields to consider how everything might be connected to the rhythm of squeaky windshield wipers. She sighed as she snatched up her phone and dialed Blunt’s number.
Still no answer.
“Come on,” she said as she pounded her steering wheel. “Move already.”
After a couple minutes, traffic started to flow again. And ten minutes after that, she pulled up to Blunt’s gated driveway. Darkness had fallen, and she couldn’t see his car. She figured he’d parked it in the garage. But the fact that he wasn’t responding troubled her more deeply.
She paused as she went to press the intercom button and ask Blunt to buzz her in. A vacant white Ford Bronco was parked along the side of the road about a hundred meters away. However, the nearest house was another hundred meters beyond that. And the wooded lot across the street was part of a ten-acre estate where the house was located at the far back corner.
That’s odd.
She decided to scramble over the top of the wrought iron fence and approach the house on foot. Her prosthetic leg absorbed the leap without any problems, garnering a wry smile from her. Even in the midst of a tense situation such as this, she always heard the “nah-nah-nah-nah-nah” sound effect from the Wonder Woman TV show when she performed an acrobatic feat. She raced toward the house, which was mostly dark, save a dim glow coming from the rain-streaked window to the right of the front door.
Shields peeked inside the garage first, checking to make sure Blunt’s car was inside. It was, which heightened her concern. She whipped out her weapon and moved cautiously toward the front, keeping her gun trained forward.
Taking a glance inside the house, she couldn’t see anything of consequence through the darkness and decided to attempt to enter another way. In her first trip to Blunt’s property for the Christmas party, she received a tour of his wine cellar, which had outside access through a hatch along the side of the house. She stayed low, creeping around to the cellar access. The doors were latched shut but not locked. Once she flung them open, she crawled inside and descended to the basement floor.
She decided to try Blunt’s phone again. Still no answer.
You better not shoot me, old man.
Shields moved stealthily up the rickety wooden steps and then eased the door open. It creaked as she slipped onto the main floor of the house.
“What was that?” she heard a man say. “There isn’t anyone else here, is there?”
“Oh, settle down,” Blunt said. "Probably just one of my cats prowling around. But I don’t know what you’re afraid of. You’re the one with the gun.”
“Don’t play games with me. If you had any idea who I am, you’d keep the snarky comments to yourself.”
“Far be it from me to stop you from doing your job,” Blunt said. “I’ve been shot at so many times, I’d just as soon someone go ahead and finish the job.”
“Sounds like a personal problem.”
“Hey, you’re the one getting spooked about this creaky old house, not me.”
“Enough,” the man snapped.
Shields peered around the corner, utilizing the darkness for cover. There were a pair of floor lamps lighting the sitting area where the intruder had his weapon aimed at Blunt. The gunman’s sleeves were rolled up, revealing the tattoo she’d become all too familiar with before deciding she had needed to see her boss immediately.
Given the situation, Shields considered how important it was to neutralize the man in order to save Blunt’s life. However, she also knew how upset he’d be if she killed their best lead in solving at least one of the mysteries the Firestorm team was trying to uncover.
She eased up her weapon, steadying it against the corner of the wall. As she went to squeeze the trigger, the man jumped and dove downward. Shields fired a shot, missing him completely. But she didn’t give up, stepping forward and firing twice more as the man scrambled around the corner and out the back door.
She went after him and could barely make out his shadow streaking across the front yard that stretched at least a hundred meters to the road. He hurled himself over the wrought iron fence and then hustled to his car, screeching his tires as he sped away.
Satisfied he was gone, she rushed to the house to check on Blunt. When she entered, he was snipping off the end of a cigar, a drink already poured next to him.
“You appear pretty calm for someone who just had a gun held on him,” she said.
“That guy was pissing me off,” Blunt said. “I hadn’t even had my after work whisky yet. Before he wanted to start threatening me like that and holding me hostage in my own house.”
“I guess all’s well now, huh?” she said, nodding toward his half-full tumbler.
“Give me a few minutes,” Blunt said before he drained his glass. “He sure did run like a little chicken shit when you started firing.”
“I think I know why,” Shields said as she knelt down near the wall where he was sitting. “Looks like I nailed the bastard pretty good.”
“Not good enough, if you ask me. I thought you were a better shot.”
Shields sighed. “The shot wasn’t complicated, but the situation was.”
“What prompted you to come out here anyway?” he asked, furrowing his brow.
“I was wondering when you were going to ask me that.”
“Start talking.”
Shields launched into an explanation of what she’d discovered while studying the footage from the abduction of Al-Sabah earlier in the day. Then she shared how she noticed the same tattoo on the intruder’s forearm.
“Well, ain’t that something?” Blunt said before popping his unlit cigar into his mouth.
“It sure is,” she said. “And we’re gonna find out who this guy is. You got anything for me to get a blood sample with?”
“Check the guest bathroom and the kitchen.”
Shield found a small plastic sandwich bag in the kitchen as well as a handful of Q-tips in the bathroom. She returned quickly and began scraping off the blood from the wall. Once she finished, she held up her prize.
“Mr. Army Ranger guy, we’re gonna know everything about you soon enough,” she said with a grin.
CHAPTER 22
AT THE WAREHOUSE, Black watched as Tom Lanning marched from one station to another, trying to determine how they’d been so easily duped. The debacle with the envoy earlier gave the bureau plenty of reason to be red-faced. Add the contrived ransom situation with Al-Sabah and Lanning was on the warpath, searching for answers. Black decided to retreat to the surveillance van to see if the agents had any more information.
“Lanning is going nuts out there,” Black said.
“It must be a day that ends in y,” Agent Williams said.
Black chuckled. “You mean he’s always this animated?”
Agent Norton nodded. "If he misplaces his pen, he probably goes about as ballistic as he would if the president disappeared at the hands of international terrorists while giving the State of the Union address. There's only one speed Lanning operates at: rage."
“You guys have an encouraging and safe workplace environment?” Black asked with a wry grin.
Norton slowly turned toward Black and eyed him closely. “Why do you think Agent Williams and I enjoy being in the van so much? I can promise you that it’s not because of all the wonderful late night coffee we get during stakeouts.”
“You guys have it rough,” Black said.
“Not as rough as we will if we don’t catch the bastards who did this,” Norton said.
“Speaking of that, I think I might have something,” Williams said.
Black shuffled over to her monitor, leaning over her shoulder to check out her bank of monitors. “What’ve you got?”
“Please,” she said, turning around and gesturing with her hands for him to move back. “I need my space.”
Once he retreated, she continued. “I hacked into the company next to us and got access to their security camera, which we all missed earlier. I was able to grab a still of this white SUV speeding away from here about two hours ago. It’s kind of difficult to make out the tag since some rain got on the camera, but I can put the readable digits in the federal database and cross reference it with a white Cadillac Escalade.”
“What are you waiting for?” Norton asked.
Williams typed away on her computer and then waited. Less than a minute later, she pumped her fist. “Looky what we have here.” Then her shoulders slumped. “It’s a rental.”
“But it still might be out there on the interstate, or maybe we can at least see the last place the cameras caught it,” Black said.
“I’m already ahead of you, cowboy,” she said, furiously typing on her keyboard.
“Cowboy?” Norton asked. “We’ve been working together for three years and you’ve never given me a nickname. Just ten minutes with this spook—”
“I’m not a spook,” Black corrected.
“Special agent—whatever the hell he is—and you’ve already bestowed ‘Cowboy’ on him.”
She snickered as she shook her head. “I can’t mess with Norton. With a name like that, you don’t need a nickname. It’s perfect as it is.”
“I appreciate the warm welcome to your team here,” Black said. “But let’s stay focused, okay? Where are these scumbags headed?”
“Still trying to lasso that info for you, Cowboy,” Williams said with a chuckle. “I’m on a roll tonight.”
Norton picked up Williams’ coffee cup and sniffed the lid. “Did you spike this thing?”
She grabbed the cup from him and rolled her eyes.
“Guys, please,” Black said.
“It takes a minute,” she said. “No need to spur us on like that when we can’t do anything but wait.”
“You’re just a regular comedian tonight, aren’t you?” Norton said.
She threw back the rest of her coffee. “Thank you, thank you. I’ll be here all week—hiding from Lanning.”
One of her monitors froze with an image on it, garnering her attention. She leaned forward, squinting as she studied the screen.
“What is it?” Black asked. “Did you get a hit?”
“Time to go round ‘em up, cowboy,” she said as she wrote down the information on a piece of paper before handing it to Black along with a small metallic device. “They’re on the Beltway, heading west, just east of Manchester Estates near State Route 5.”
“On it,” Black said as he raced out of the door.
Lanning was yelling at one of his men when Rodgers approached Black.
“Enjoying this?” Black asked, nodding at Lanning.
“Don’t be so smug,” Rodgers said. “He wants to talk with you next.”
“How about we duck out of here and go catch these guys before Lanning slams back a whole bottle of antacid?”
Rodgers eyed Black. “You know where they are?”
“All I need is a car.”
“Only if I get full credit.”
Black shrugged. “Fine by me. I don’t really care who drives as long as we catch the bastards.”
“Deal,” Rodgers said before gesturing toward his black SUV.
They hustled over to it before tearing out of the parking lot and toward the vehicle’s last known location on the Beltway. Black didn’t feel like making small talk. His mind raced with how to handle taking control of the men with just Rodgers, though Black figured they only needed to keep one kidnapper alive.
The car roared as Rodgers pulled onto the interstate, trying to hit just the right exit.
“Do you have any coms?” Black asked.
Rodgers nodded. “There’s a set in the console.”
Black pulled them out and then slid in the ear piece. “Agent Williams, this is Agent Black. Can you see us on your satellite feed? I slapped the tracker you gave me on the car.”
“Picking you up as we speak, cowboy. I think you’re about a quarter of a mile behind them. But you should overtake them within the next minute or so depending on how you drive.”
Rodgers scowled as he glanced at Black. “Cowboy?”
“I don’t know,” Black said with a shrug. “She gave me a nickname already.”
Rodgers broke in a hearty laugh. “Cowboy? I hope you don’t let that go to your head. Agent Williams calls everyone cowboy, and it drives Norton bonkers. And it’s a big inside joke between her and well, everyone else at the bureau. Norton feigns like he’s offended every single time. It’s a joke that’s grown stale for the rest of us, but they trot it out whenever she needs entertainment.”
