Black Flagged Apex (48 page)

"I'll load up the truck and get moving. Will you be okay here if I need to stay there until she finishes finals?"

"I'll be fine. I bought enough water yesterday to last a month. What should we do about Emily?"

His older daughter was in her third year at U.C. Berkeley and would not finish her final exams until May 15
^th
, nearly two weeks away.

"Karl said that the threat appeared to be isolated to the East Coast."

"Did he give any more specifics?" Cheryl asked with a raised eyebrow.

"No. But he said they had no indications that the threat would spread west," he said, aware of the fact that Berg hadn't exactly given him an airtight case to present to Cheryl.

"That's not what I gathered from the president's address."

"The president can't make sweeping promises in the face of a biological weapons attack and run the risk of being wrong."

"Neither can we. I get the feeling they have no idea what they're up against."

Cheryl had her hands on her hips and that look on her face that would send most men scrambling for cover.

"I'll call in a few favors out west. If I can't get Emily home, I'll fly out myself."

"Thank you, honey. I'm going to load up my Land Rover on the way to work," she said.

"Bring a sheet to cover it up. I have a feeling that bottled water is about to become a valuable commodity."

"All right. I'm out of here," she said, stepping over to kiss him.

He could hear her phone buzzing in her purse. She had a long day ahead of her as deputy superintendent. They'd probably cancel school until Homeland Security could convince them that the water was safe.

"Be careful out there."

"Me? You're the one that can't stay out of trouble. You and Karl Berg."

"He really misses your home cooking," Darryl said.

She looked at him with soft, patient eyes. "You really miss him. Don't you?"

"He's a good friend."

"Well, if he can promise to keep you out of jail, I might be persuaded to extend a dinner invitation. Don't get excited. He'll have to eat the first meal out on the deck."

"I love you. Karl Berg or no Karl Berg," he said, embracing her.

"Good. Because if I so much as sense that he's asked you for another favor, the offer will be rescinded and never reissued." Cheryl broke their contact and backed up a few feet.

"You'll make a great superintendent one of these days. Tough as nails."

Once his wife left, Darryl descended into the basement to pick out a few items for his trip north. The kind of items that would be illegal to transport through the D.C. metropolitan area without one of the specialized permits he carried. Twenty minutes later, he emerged with a dark blue nylon gym bag filled with his personal insurance policy should law and order cease to exist.

The home phone rang, and he searched for one of their cordless handsets. After several rings, he finally found one of them buried in the couch. He thought the hidden phone phenomena would end when his daughters left for college, but Cheryl had apparently taught them everything they knew about misplacing remote controls and phones. If anything, the problem intensified when they left. He saw from the caller ID that it was the guilty party herself.

"What took you so long? You had me worried for a minute."

"Oh, I don't know. Maybe I had a little trouble finding the phone you had buried between the cushions. What's up?"

"Don't bother stopping for water. The stores are mobbed. I couldn't even get close to Wegmans. I can't imagine Giant will be any better," she said.

"Give it a try. I don't want to take any from the house if you can't find more," he said.

"You'll need it if you're staying in a hotel. Take what you need. I can boil water from the creek if I have to."

"All right. Let me get moving here. I'm anticipating a mess trying to get through D.C."

"Business as usual. Drive safe. I love you," she said.

"I love you too. I'll give you a call from the road."

BLACK AND WHITE

Chapter 41

8:13 AM

National Counterterrorism Center

McLean, Virginia

Special Agent Dana O'Reilly disconnected the phone call and removed her headset.

"Well, fuck you too, Deputy Dawg," she mumbled.

"What was that?" Hesterman said from his new napping position at their workstation.

"Nothing. Just some uncooperative dickhead."

She had placed a call to Laurel, Maryland's chief of police, following up on a hunch. Something about the shootout in the forest didn't make sense to her. She couldn't put her finger on it, but it triggered her need to apply "Occam's Razor" to the situation in an attempt to try and make sense of her inexplicable discomfort with Sergeant Bryan Osborne's report.

"Occam's Razor" was a principle designed to urge one to select the hypothesis or theory that made the fewest assumptions. Though on the surface it favored parsimony and economy, the principle didn't assert that the simplest available theory should be applied. The "razor" wasn't an arbiter between theories. In scientific circles it served as a guide. For O'Reilly, it was an interesting way to approach competing theories, especially at 8:15 in the morning, when the stimulant effect of coffee had ceased to have any impact.

Maybe it wasn't something specific in Osborne's preliminary report that triggered her hunch. Perhaps it was the entire situation that didn't appear to make sense to her. Occam's Razor in reverse. Sergeant Osborne had chosen today of all days to ride with one of his newest police officers. Officer Donahue had taken him on a ride through the winding, gravel roads of a large park east of urban Laurel, which happened to be part of the officer's patrol. Osborne spotted a vehicle parked deep in the woods from an intersection nearly one hundred feet from the dirt turnoff. Officers responding to their call for backup saw Donahue's SUV parked on Combat Road, but had trouble finding the right path at first. Somehow, Osborne had spotted the vehicle from the intersection. Finally, Osborne called in backup, but decided to investigate with a rookie.

He said they stumbled into the group, and the men reached for their rifles, but one of the men had been shot in the back. Backup officers said the generator was running when they arrived, which made it difficult to believe that the two officers had simply stumbled into the group and got the drop on them. There were too many coincidences and discrepancies to take Osborne's report as gospel, which left her wondering. What had really happened out in the North Tract?

She believed that Osborne had heard the drilling equipment, possibly spied the three men, and decided to play Rambo with his partner. Osborne would have realized this error in judgment as soon as his partner fell to the ground sans intact skull. The discrepancies in the forest could be explained by Osborne's need to present a slightly different version of events, one in which he didn't get his partner killed with backup officers a few minutes out. But this still left O'Reilly pondering the rest of the coincidences leading them deep into the forest.

She was working too hard to explain Osborne's actions, which led her back to Occam's Razor. Was there a theory that cleared most of these assumptions and put Osborne in the forest with his partner, on the path to a deadly engagement with domestic terrorists? There was only one. Sergeant Osborne had known they would be there. Just the thought sent a chill down her spine. If true, this theory had far-reaching implications that could undermine their current investigative efforts.

The questions spun around her head like a vortex and called into question everything they had uncovered. What else had been staged for them and why? This epiphany had led her to place a call to Laurel's chief of police moments ago, kindly requesting Sergeant Osborne's vacation schedule for the past two years.

The conversation had started kindly enough, but quickly tanked when she disclosed the request. The chief didn't give her an earful as she expected, but very firmly expressed his distaste. She sat there and listened to his speech about loyalty, their code of honor and the difficulty of making daily life and death decisions under pressure. She didn't bother to remind him that she was a sworn law enforcement officer, just like him, and had been shot through the forearm by a .223-caliber bullet making one of these pressured decisions. She was a woman, calling from a desk, muddying the waters. No point in pressing the issue.

She'd bring it up with Sharpe a little later and see if he could apply a little downward pressure on the Laurel Police Department. It was worth checking. Until she eliminated this theory, Occam's Razor would never be satisfied. Osborne's forest shootout wasn't the only thing bothering her.

"Eric?"

"Yes," Hesterman said, not bothering to open his eyes.

"Anything new on the guys in the compound?"

"Two more died at Scranton Regional, leaving eighteen. Of those eighteen, only six are conscious. Other than that, there's not much to report. Only one of the regulars appears to have survived the assault. Jake Skelly. He's the guy they grabbed in the communications room. He hasn't said a word to Carlisle or anyone."

"He checks out clean, right?'

"Yep. Just like the operatives in Brooklyn. Clean record. Current driver's license from Missouri. Nothing in the system. We'll know more about him in a few hours."

"And the rest?"

"This is the interesting part. We've identified sixty-three of the remaining suspects from personal identification located on the bodies or in the barracks buildings. It looks like True America was in the midst of a recruitment drive. I found eleven of them on our own list of 'persons of interest to the government.' A few others have overt ties to extremist websites and blogs, posting regularly. I imagine we'll find more links once we start issuing warrants and start digging."

This was one of the other big issues bothering her. None of the True America operatives identified by Task Force Scorpion had any recent connections to anti-government websites.

"This group's profile doesn't match up with the operatives killed or captured so far. Something's off here."

"Maybe not. If you took a trip back in time two or three years, this is exactly the kind of group you might find hanging around the compound. If we hadn't hit the compound when we did, this group would have been instructed to cut all extremist ties and devote all of their upcoming vacation time to training sessions in Hacker Valley."

"I don't know. Why would they start training a new cadre of operatives in the middle of a major operation?"

Hesterman finally opened his eyes and rubbed them with the back of his hands. "What are you thinking?" he said, inching his chair over to O'Reilly's.

"I can't put my finger on it, but I'm starting to see too many inconsistencies and one too many lapses in our investigation."

"Here?" he said, staring around the watch floor.

"Even here. The Imam's snatched right out from under us, never to be seen again. True America operatives carried away into the night less than a block from a major FBI crime scene. Anonymous phone calls leading us right to the Al Qaeda cells. I'm getting the impression that Sharpe's holding something back. I have no idea what it might be, but I'm willing to bet it has something to do with Stewart. She seems awfully content watching over us from her perch. Don't look up at her."

Hesterman stopped his head from turning all the way.

"She just stands up there, doing nothing."

"That's exactly what Sharpe wants her to do around here. Nothing."

"I wonder, though…"

"What is that supposed to mean?" Hesterman asked.

"I don't know. I'm going to talk to Sharpe about my call to the Laurel police chief. I just asked the chief to provide me with Sergeant Osborne's vacation record for the past two years, and he flatly denied the reque—"

"You did
what
?" Hesterman said incredulously.

"Yeah. Nothing about Osborne's statement makes much sense to me. Maybe I'm losing it. Either way, if Sharpe ignores this, it's time to start watching over your back."

"Do you need backup in there?"

"Nope. I'll be fine." She watched Special Agent Mendoza approach Sharpe's door with two cups of coffee. Perfect. She could play them off each other.

O'Reilly stood up from her computer station and prepared what she would say.

**

Sharpe had taken his second sip of coffee when O'Reilly appeared in his doorway and knocked on the frame, announcing her obvious presence.

"Come on in, Dana. You want to grab a coffee first?"

"No, thanks. The coffee doesn't seem to have any effect on me anymore, beyond sending me to the bathroom every thirty minutes," she said.

"Then grab a seat. Your visit is perfect timing, since Frank was about to fill me in on the recent developments from Hacker Valley."

Frank Mendoza slouched in one of the faux leather chairs under a standing lamp, holding his coffee in two hands in what looked like an effort to keep it warm. The coffee cups stocked in the break room weren't insulated and didn't include tops. All of the equipment installed in the Operations Center was state of the art, with the exception of the coffee machine. Even the complimentary juice machine had a touch screen, allowing the selection of several dozen beverages, including carbonated choices. The coffee maker was a stainless steel, two-pot Bunn classic, taking up twice the amount of space necessary and brewing up the same coffee served to government employees for the past four decades. Amazingly enough, the machine looked new.

"I wish there was more to report, but Dana's team will start making calls to businesses and households shortly. We'll send teams out for interviews. How many were identified? Sixty-three? It's a lot of legwork. Nobody likes to talk over the phone to a faceless FBI agent. This takes the highest priority, and we'll have help from other agencies, so we're expecting to start collecting detailed information by noon. More pieces to fit into the puzzle. I'm hoping we'll start seeing a useful pattern here shortly. We have a lot of information," Mendoza said.