Designated Survivor (12 page)

“We’re coming in,” Chip said through the radio. The door opened behind them and the rest of the team came in and worked to help clear the room.

Holden was furthest into the room then stopped and put his left fist in the air, his right hand still aiming the heavy rifle. Everyone stopped. Levi was closest to him and moved up. Holden pointed at a desk in the far corner. The men worked different directions to come up on the desk from opposite sides. Holden looked up at Levi and gave a three count with nods then they moved in together, rifles aimed under the desk.

“Get out, face down on the ground, hands on the back of your head,” Holden’s big voice filled the room.

“Don’t! Please don’t kill me!”

A man lurched forward from his kneeling position and complied with the orders. Holden placed his size 14 boot on the man’s back and Grace came over.

“Who are you?” Grace said.

“Jason. Please don’t kill me!”

“Don’t give us a reason to, Jason,” Grace said.

Holden patted the man down and nodded to Grace.

“Roll over,” Grace said.

Jason didn’t move.

“Roll over,” Grace said. “We aren’t playing Simon-Fucking-Says here.”

Jason rolled over onto his back while trying to keep his hands on the back of his head.

“What is this place?” Grace said.

“Supposedly some kind of social research,” Jason said.

“Supposedly?” Grace said.

“Yeah. We were hired to make phone calls,” Jason said. “But I don’t think they were legit.”

“Get him up,” Grace said. Holden leaned over and grabbed Jason by the left arm and easily lifted him up to his feet. He glanced over as Chip and Netty walked back to the desk.

“Rest of the office is clear,” Netty said.

Grace looked at Jason. “One stupid move and there’s a lot of bullets flying your way,” he said. “You understand?”

“Yeah. I just want to get out of here in one piece,” Jason said. “This place scares the shit out of me.”

“How do you mean?” Grace said.

“You ever see that old film they showed in psych classes in college, the one where people were told to press a button and then they’d hear screaming on the other side of a wall?” Jason said. “It was something like that. A social and psychological experiment, they told us.”

“The calls you were making,” Grace said. “What were they?”

“They were weird. We were given scripts and call lists. Started out with prank calls a few months ago, gauging peoples responses,” Jason said. “Then the other day our scripts changed. They got . . . mean.”

“Mean?”

“Very. We were threatening people’s families. It was creepy,” Jason said. “But all of us needed the money and we just did it. One girl complained about the scripts and she was taken out of here and we haven’t seen her again.”

“Who hired you?” Grace said.

“It was through the school employment office,” Jason said. “They said a request came in for some students to do some research.”

“What school?”

“The community college in Virginia,” Jason said.

“Boss, take a look,” Netty dropped a box full of smashed cellphones on the desk beside him.

“What’s with those, Jason?” Grace said.

“Those are the phones we used. After we used them a couple times we were told to destroy them.”

“And that didn’t seem fishy to you?” Grace said.

“The whole thing was fishy as hell, man,” Jason said. “We were all scared shitless by the end, especially after what happened at the Capitol. We started thinking it was connected.”

“Ya think?” Grace turned to walk away. “Cuff him and bring him with us.” Holden and Avery dragged the man faster than he could walk with his arms tied behind his back. Out the front door of the building they put him in the back seat of the van and used handcuffs to secure him to the seat post.

Netty worked the van through the city to avoid the National Mall and the recovery efforts going on at the Capitol. She exited onto South Capitol Street and passed Nationals Stadium then took a series of turns into an underdeveloped area.

“Where are we?” Ben said.

Grace glanced back to see a blindfold over the eyes of the college boy and a pair of huge headphones undoubtedly blasting some of Avery’s death metal into his ears to keep him from overhearing anything in the van. “Buzzard Point.”

“It’s . . .  lovely,” Ben said.

“Used to be, until the new stadium went up,” Grace said. “Now developers are buying everything up. Not long and we’ll get pushed out and replaced by a strip mall with three Starbucks and a Jimmy John’s. I liked it when it was nice and run down. Nobody paid any attention to us.”

The van turned on to a dirt trail that ran to a decrepit warehouse in the middle of a dusty field. A rusty garage door began to open and the van drove into the building and the door started closing behind them.

Out of the van, the team began to lay out all the weapons they’d brought with them and ones they’d acquired from the ETTF and the downed SEALs on a row of tables along the back wall. Several cars were parked along the side of the large open space. Grace continued through the run down building.

“Put Jason in a holding cell downstairs until I figure out what to do with him,” Grace said. He turned and began walking.

Ben struggled to keep up with Grace. “So is this your headquarters?”

“It’s where we are when we aren’t anywhere else,” Grace said. “It’s here today but might not be tomorrow.”

“Okay,” Ben said. “Didn’t know I was working with the Riddler.”

They went up an old iron stairwell that hung off the brick wall. Up one level Grace walked to a door and tapped a series of numbers on a high tech keypad that didn’t even try to blend in to the wall around it.

The door opened. Grace walked in and Ben followed. The lights began to come on one row at a time. Ben stood, his breath held, as the room was slowly illuminated by the dozens of LED bulbs hanging from metal structures suspended from the old wood beam ceiling. As the last row of lights came on Ben looked across the entire room.

“What a . . . ” Ben exhaled. “Shithole.”

“Yeah, we haven’t done much with it,” Grace said.

The floor was splintered wood left over from the building’s construction in the 1950’s. A few random folding tables were set up with computers on top, some still with large CRT monitors rather than the thin flat screen LCDs.

“I expected . . . ” Ben said. “More.”

“This isn’t Homeland Security, Ben. This is the SCS,” Grace said. “We’re not trying to impress members of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Our existence was only made known when Ed ‘Shitface’ Snowden made it known. We run black ops with money hidden from the public through a dozen different shell companies. Every federal dollar we spend has the chance of landing us on the front page of the Washington Post, so we don’t spend any. Most of this shit was borrowed or stolen. A majority of our funding comes from cash we confiscate on missions overseas. We aren’t the first to operate this way, and we won’t be the last.”

“Do you get paid?” Ben said.

“We’re all government employees of one sort or another,” Grace said. “But our compensation wouldn’t afford any of us a studio apartment with running water anywhere in the DC area. We have a system of supplementing our income without going overboard. Nobody’s driving Ferraris here, but we aren’t hurting either.”

“What about me?” Ben said.

“Right now you’re still an employee of Homeland Security,” Grace said. “If we all get to the other side of this alive and my team thinks you would make a good permanent addition, and you’re interested, then a similar arrangement would be made for you.”

“They didn’t seem to like me much,” Ben said.

“That’s because they’re all assholes,” Grace said. “But for a good reason. We rely on the person beside us everyday to get us home again. Anyone we bring into this circle has to be trusted like that. Netty’s our newest and they’re just warming up to her.”

“How long has she been on the team?” Ben said.

“Almost a year,” Grace said.

“Shit,” Ben said.

“Your table is over there,” Grace pointed. “It’s the best machine we have. Check it out and get it set up to access anything we need. If there’s anything specific you need, let Netty know and she’ll acquire it for you.”

“Is it a secure connection?” Ben said.

Grace turned and looked at him.

“It’s like we’re not even on the network here,” Grace said. “We’re masked from looking like we exist.”

“Cool,” Ben said.

“Now get to work,” Grace said.

“What do you need first?” Ben said.

“I don’t need anything first. I need everything now,” Grace said. “But I need you to keep going through phone records and look into Cunningham Construction.” He picked up the shirt he’d found while raiding apartments and tossed it to Ben.

CHAPTER 18

The lights in the motel room were off but the sun lit up the cheap, sheer curtains that hung in the window. Below the windows, hot, dry air blew out of the heater built into the outside wall, forcing the curtains to dance in the artificial breeze and causing bright January sunlight to flash into the room. Specks of dust and other materials floated in and out of the stream of sunlight, invisible to the eye when they weren’t illuminated.

Arash Abbasi sat on the edge of the one queen sized bed with a cellphone in his hand, waiting on the call he knew was coming any moment. On the small round table by the window were several guns and a closed brown leather satchel that held a passport, a change of clothes and enough cash to get him out of the country. He stared at the bag, contemplating using it to get away. He had bank accounts in three countries and could disappear easily. The contract had been lucrative but had now turned too dangerous and he wanted out. The client was pushing back on the final payment that would allow him to pay his team then disappear for another year until he decided to work again.

The phone rang in his hand and he waited until the fourth ring to answer. He pressed the button and raised it to his ear without saying anything and just listened. As the caller spoke, Abbasi nodded his head as if the person on the other end could see him.

“This was not part of the contract,” Abbasi said. “We were not to meet again.”

He listened more, still nodding.

“I understand,” he hung up the phone and walked to the window. Pulling the curtain back he looked out over the drained kidney shaped swimming pool below, the strip mall lined with stores selling alcohol, hookahs and lottery tickets across the street and in the distance, the smoke coming from the United States Capitol Building.

Turning to the table, he grabbed the handle of the brown satchel and paused. He’d never backed out on a contract before. Going into it he knew the risks were great, but the client hadn’t anticipated the failure. The meeting could only mean a change in the terms of the deal. It was rare to meet a client face to face once, and this would be the second time. The chances of being seen or caught on surveillance cameras increased greatly.

He considered going to the meeting and putting a bullet in the head of the client and walking away with the money he’d received, half of the contracted amount. There would be far less left after paying his team, but they would be done.

He released the satchel and picked up the two automatic assault rifles and a Beretta nine-millimeter and put them into a green duffle that hung on the back of one of the two chairs.

CHAPTER 19

The roof of the building in Buzzard Point was littered with debris from the former moving company warehouse below as well as with beer cans, fast food cups and bags, more than a few used syringes. There was a campfire that had been built and burned at one point before his team had added security to the building and surrounding field when they bought the land and structure through a small management company based out of Richmond that was owned by them.

It was the third building Grace had built up for his team over the years. Different factors weighed in to the decision to move, the biggest being getting discovered. The smallest being the paranoia that was always present in the back of his mind. He was protective of his team, his only family, and wanted to watch out for them.

Grace used the roof to clear his mind and work through details that he otherwise couldn’t do with his team around to distract him. The view of downtown across the water was calming to him as well as a reminder of what he’d accomplished in 16 years.

He sat on the edge of the roof, his feet hanging off the side three floors up, and watched the smoke still floating over the Capitol. Occasionally a siren could be heard and police and military helicopters were a constant sight as the mess was getting cleaned up, the bodies of the soldiers, agents and policemen pulled from the rubble. Teams were using sonar to try to find any survivors from the Special Forces teams but none had been found.

He was 24 years old when Jeffrey Morton had first approached him and 26 before he decided to join the NSA. By then Derek Arrington’s predecessor had died of a heart attack from the stress of the job as well as from the overdrinking and lack of sleep caused by the job. It was Arrington’s calmness that sealed it, compared to the hyper state of Jeff Morton, showing him that you could be in that world without being overtaken by it.

Three days earlier he’d made the phone call that would change his life forever and now he waited for the man that would make that happen.

He had sat in the back pew of an old wooden Methodist church in Mississippi. The bench was hard and cold as winter air found its way into the building. It was only used for baptisms and special events now; the new church was down the road and made of brick, glass and granite, a monument to the money that flowed into the coffers every Sunday morning.

 The tall black man walked in and sat beside him. He could smell the hint of expensive cologne worn behind the man’s ears.

“So you’ve decided?” Arrington said.

“Yes, sir.”

“You know what it means, all of it?” Arrington said. “The secrecy, the danger.”