Edge of the Heat 5 (30 page)

***

T
wo hours later, Hawk’s computer made a chiming sound. Craig ran to it. “Don’t get too excited,” Hawk called after him, staying where he was. “That noise signifies a partial match only.”

“Holy shit,” Craig said, his voice low and awed. That got Hawk moving.

“Oh no,” Hawk said under his breath when he saw the monitor.

“What?!” Emma and Vivian cried in unison. The tension level in the room increased a thousand fold.

All four of them crowded around the computer and read the All Points Bulletin with a National Security Agency logo plastered across the top.

Vivian read out loud, her cultured voice shaking slightly. “Melissa Medina, wanted for treason. Do not approach. Highly dangerous. Call Agent Frank Thorpe immediately with any information.”

Craig felt nauseous. He clamped the feeling down. “Where’s the throwaway phone?”

Emma grabbed it for him. “Here.”

Craig sat in a chair and started texting. Suddenly he didn’t give a shit about all of Sara’s rules - no names, no mention of Westwood Harbor, only very generic texts, no locations.

“Jerry, I need to talk to you.”

Nothing came back.

“Jerry, it’s important.”

No response.

Craig felt like throwing the phone across the room but he restrained himself. He would get an answer eventually.

Emma sat down heavily next to him, a shocked look on her face. Vivian stayed with Hawk, whose fingers were a blur across the keyboard, rubbing his shoulders.

The minutes passed like seconds, everyone suddenly aware that they might be completely out of time at any moment, and that their friend Jerry’s fate might depend completely on what they did or didn’t do before then.

Craig texted a few more times and still got no response. “Damnit!” he shouted, startling Emma. She grasped his hand. “Do we have any idea at all where they are?” He curled his fingers around hers. “None. Maybe somewhere near that park. That’s all we know.”

Hawk made a noise of disgust. “What?” Craig asked.

“I’ve accessed the NSA files and I can’t find any files on Melissa Medina or this treason or anything from Frank Thorpe. His mouth twisted at Thorpe’s name.

“Clearance?” Craig asked.

“I’ve got full clearance. They just don’t exist here.”

“How could that be?”

“Not sure, but maybe it’s because Thorpe doesn’t work for the NSA, or at least he didn’t 8 years ago.”

“Who does he work for?”

“Ever heard of the DCIA?”

“No,” Craig said, his face still stormy. Hawk ignored it. He’d seen it before. Emma however, rarely saw Craig anything but cheerful. She massaged his hand, hoping to calm him a little.

“It’s a clandestine agency. They mostly do spy work. It doesn’t even officially exist,” Hawk said.

“A clandestine agency? In the U.S.?” Hawk nodded. “So how do you know about it?”

“They recruited me based on my FBI entrance exam test scores and my computer knowledge. In fact I met with Frank Thorpe. He was the director then. This was while you were still in the Army.”

“But you didn’t want to sign up with them?” Craig asked.

“Nope. I was interested, very interested. But when I met with Frank Thorpe I decided no way. The guy’s a sociopath. And he doesn’t even know it.”

Craig’s face contorted savagely. “Awesome. He fits right in with this party then. So what do we do now?”

“Not sure. I would say we snoop in the DCIA’s files but I wouldn’t even know where to begin. I don’t know how to find their network.”

“Fuck!” Craig got up and paced the large room again, texting on the small phone while he did so. Twice he looked ready to pitch it across the room, but both times he reeled his anger in with effort.

Hawk looked at Emma pointedly. “Maybe you should go look for him,” he said to Craig, inclining his head towards Emma and raising his eyebrows. She nodded and jumped up.

“Yeah honey, let’s go back to that park and see if we can find anything,” Emma said to Craig.

“Yeah, good, let’s go,” he said, still texting as he walked out the door.

“I’ll call you if I find anything,” Hawk yelled after them.

When they were gone, Vivian turned to Hawk. “Can Lionel help you?”

“Maybe. I’ll message him.” Hawk turned to his computer again. Vivian retreated to the couch and grabbed her tablet. She knew that when Hawk was working it was best to leave him in peace. Besides, she had some ideas of her own she wanted to punch into Google.

***

C
raig drove slowly. The setting sun partially blinded him, adding to his frustration. He and Emma had been walking a perimeter around East Apple Park for hours now, showing Jerry and Sara’s picture.
Melissa’s picture
, Craig corrected himself bitterly. The feeling that he was failing Jerry was stronger now, pounding relentlessly at his temples. They were driving now, and starting to get desperate. He pulled into the parking lot of a run-down motel. “Let’s go talk to the clerk and show him the picture.” Emma nodded, her phone in her hand. As they opened their car doors, it buzzed.

She read the text message from Hawk. “Hawk says to come back. He says it’s urgent.”

Craig took a last look at the large, plate-glass window of the motel, marking it, then slid back in his car. “OK.” He’d learned years ago to trust Hawk’s instincts.

It took them almost 30 minutes to get back to their hotel. As they walked in the door to the room, Hawk was already waving them over. “You have to see this Craig. Jerry’s in big trouble alright, but we don’t think Sara’s a criminal or guilty of treason. Not anymore.” He glanced at Vivian. She nodded vehemently.

Hawk handed Craig two large bundles of paper. Craig riffed the edges, unbelievingly. “Can’t you just give me the short version?”

“OK.” He looked at Vivian. “You want to tell him? You’ll explain it better.”

She nodded and took a deep breath, thinking how to start. “Sara’s a spy, Craig, and an undercover DCIA agent, or at least she used to be. She was part of an experimental program that Thorpe dreamed up. The program has since been discontinued because 29 out of the 71 original agents who were part of it are serving jail time for heavy crimes. Lots of domestic violence. Lots of murder. Basically, a high percentage of the people in the program are acting as sociopaths without any impulse control at all. What this guy Thorpe did was, he convinced agents to put their kids in the program from birth. These kids grew up without any real school or peer contact. They were trained how to be spies from the time they could walk. And they were sent to camps where the propaganda about the country and themselves was off the charts. They were trained to be killers. There’s report after report about the killing they’ve done for the agency. Lots of military stuff. Enemy targets in countries all over the world. But none of them are in jail for that. Out of the 29 people who are in jail right now, 18 of them are there because they killed outside of work. 14 of them killed a spouse or a girlfriend. One killed a co-worker. Two of them killed neighbors. And the last one tried to kill Thorpe. That was when he finally dismantled the program. He called it Operation Scope.”

Vivian took a deep breath. “There’s so much to tell. Hawk and I have been poring over everything we could find for the last few hours, trying to make sense of it all. But the bottom line is Sara was part of this program. She did a lot of work for the DCIA in Mexico and South and Central America on Human Trafficking. Thorpe turned her into a one-woman vigilante justice program down there. But her reports have been doctored. And 2 years ago she took off. Just disappeared. 5 weeks after that Thorpe put out that wanted APB on her. Problem is, there’s nothing to back it up. And she puts out her own report every day on the Internet. As far as Hawk can tell she distributes it to a different site every day and it’s deleted almost as soon as she puts it up. And the site is knocked offline too. She must have some software doing it for her, and Thorpe must be using software to find it and then scrub it.
Her
report says that Thorpe is funneling illegal drugs and money into the U.S. from Mexico, and he was using her to scare the cartels down there into doing what he wants. If one of the big drug lords didn’t do things exactly how he said, Thorpe would give his name to Sara, feed her a bunch of fake or real information, and tell her to kill him.”

Emma’s mouth fell open. Craig held up a hand. “Wait, wait, wait. This guy is funneling
guns
into the U.S.?”

Hawk nodded. “You haven’t heard the worst of it. According to Sara he’s got a partner. A senator.”

Craig tore to his feet. “A
senator
? Oberlin?” Craig yelled, knowing it couldn’t be true, but unable to not say it. Senator Oberlin was dead. He had shot himself in front of Craig and Emma when they stumbled into his sick plot. But
two
senators making themselves rich off the illegal gun trade in their own country was unthinkable to him. If there was one thing Craig didn’t understand, it was people who already had plenty of money and who were tasked with keeping the U.S. a great place, doing horrible things.

“No,” Hawk said, shaking his head. “Claymont Carruthers. Our other esteemed California senator. He and Thorpe go way back. Carruthers started the DCIA in 1974, 2 years after he was first elected. He’s held onto his seat this whole time. He appointed Thorpe head of the organization and it sounds like he and the president are the only people that Thorpe answers to.”

Craig shook his head, trying to process what he was being told. Could it really be possible that Carruthers was in on everything they thought Oberlin had orchestrated? They knew Oberlin had probably had a partner somewhere, but that suspicion had never fallen on the only other Senator in their state.

Hawk leaned in. “We think we know what she is going to do.”

“What?”

“We think she is going to confront one of them - Carruthers or Thorpe - and that’s why she wants to hijack the TV and cable signals. She wants the world to see it. She doesn’t want the possibility of it just being ignored.”

“But why take Jerry with her?”

Vivian and Hawk looked at each other. “We don’t know. Unless Jerry uncovered something that made Thorpe target him too. Unless Jerry’s in it just as deep as she is for some reason.”

Craig rubbed his arms with both hands. “What if this is all bullshit though? Sara could have just made up this elaborate plan to save her ass. Maybe she’s the sociopath.”

Hawk’s eyes bored into Craig’s. “I’ve been checking her reports against ours and I’m afraid she’s not making anything up. Names, dates, highways into the U.S. They all match up to stuff we’ve uncovered before. In fact, Oberlin may have been working with Thorpe and Carruthers.”

Craig crossed his arms over his chest. His mouth worked but nothing came out. His fingers curled into fists against his arms. If Claymant Carruthers or Frank Thorpe had been in front of him, he would have had a hard time keeping those fingers off their necks.

Emma broke in. “This guy Thorpe sounds dangerous. What if he sees her coming and just shoots her on sight? Or figures out a way to twist everything again and gets them thrown in jail?”

Hawk nodded. “I was thinking that too. We have to find them. And stop them or help them. There’s got to be a better way than whatever they are planning. Too bad we couldn’t get a direct line to the president.”

Craig looked thoughtful. “We could ask the Director of the FBI, but he’d want a day or two to review everything. Who knows if we have that. Sara and Jerry could be on the move right now.” He started pacing the room again, then turned quickly to Hawk. “Hawk, don’t you know anyone who might be able to get us in the door with the president? Someone who might slip him a report and tell him it’s important?”

Hawk shook his head no. “I don’t think so. I could try, but I don’t know anyone high enough up that it would be a guarantee.”

Vivian spoke up, softly. They all turned to stare at her. Hawk never forgot, but Craig and Emma sometimes did forget that her parents were supremely rich. “My dad knows the president. They went to college together and my dad gave him millions of dollars for his campaign. My dad has his cell number.”

A
s Jerry drove the tiny hatchback down the highway from Las Vegas to California, his anxiety level seemed to increase with every passing mile. When they first started driving, he told himself that it would get better, that the road would lull him into a relaxed state, but it seemed just the opposite was happening.

He thought back to that morning. Sara had insisted they buy him a car. She was driving the reinforced open cargo truck, and he was behind her on the 5 hour drive. She had
said
that she didn’t want him in the truck with her for most of the drive to the Senator’s house outside of Pacific Palisades in case they got pulled over. She said if she got pulled over with the truck full of guns she was going to jail for a very long time, no matter what her story was. He believed that much. She said she didn’t want him to have to go too and that’s why he needed to drive separately from her. He was scared that was a bald-faced lie.

Since the moment they woke up that morning and made desperate love, he had sensed the truth in her eyes, in her every touch and word. She was going to ditch him again. Why, he didn’t know. When, he didn’t know. But he knew it was going to happen, and the thought terrified him. His heart ached with the thought of never touching her again, never watching her bite her lip to keep from laughing, never hearing her voice call his name, or never feeling the silken weight of her hair in his hands. If she left him he knew he would be a broken, useless shell. When
she left him
, he corrected himself.

Was she going to slip away from him somewhere on the highway between here and there? Or was she going to wait until after the culmination of all their planning after the Senator’s house? Would she say goodbye first? Or just slip away? Would she finally tell him she loved him? He knew she did. He could hear it in her voice, see it in her eyes, and feel it in her every touch. But she was keeping those three little words from him. Was she keeping them from herself too?