Ripper (24 page)

On the third floor of the six-story building, a technician was currently tracking a trace program in Nevada. As he bit into a stale Twinkie his
eyes roamed over the telemetry streaming in from one of their newer satellites launched just last year. As he chewed he watched as the new KH-21 photo-recon bird made its way across the American Southwest. He noted the red blip on the map and its corresponding latitude and longitude.

The young technician, a young man who never knew who his work was going to be sent to, was curious as he had never
seen a tracer like the one he was tracking. This little gem was priceless in its accuracy—down to plus or minus sixteen inches on the accuracy of the coordinates.

The tech took the last bite of his Twinkie and then leaned forward to examine the small red blip still on the computer-generated map before him.

“Now that is a good old-fashioned ‘bug,’” he said as he watched the red tracer hesitate
at a spot ten miles north of its original landing position. Then his eyes widened as the coordinates, while changing, started to get strange. At first he didn’t understand what he was looking at. Then he tapped a computer command into his keyboard and he smiled as he realized that the tracer he was watching wasn’t moving north, south, east, or west, it was moving down—moving into the bowels of the
earth.

“Must be a mine of some sort,” he mumbled and then punched the send button on his keyboard that would shoot the coded information out to the company or individual who had contracted for the tracking satellite’s services.

The technician, who really never got out much, had tracked the tracer blip to a spot fifteen miles outside of the city of Las Vegas. And then he missed the coordinates
that would have told him his telemetry streaming from the satellite overhead was looking down on Nellis Air Force Base just outside of Las Vegas.

How could the technician know that the final coordinates before the bug died due to power loss placed his target at 5,700 feet below the desert in Nevada—at the north firing range of Nellis and to a complex that ran almost two miles beneath the desert
sands inside a natural cave formation that wasn’t on any geological map and was home to—The Event Group.

CIA HEADQUARTERS,
LANGLEY, VIRGINIA

Hiram Vickers was sitting in his office going over a file spread out on his desk. He looked up when a light knock sounded on his door. The bookwormish man waved at the girl he recognized as being stationed in the space-based imagery department two floors
down.

“Hi,” he said as he removed his thin-rimmed glasses. His eyes went from the young girl’s face to her small chest. The man in charge of cheap tricks around the globe never lost his smile, but he immediately dismissed the young photography expert as not up to his usual standards. “What have you got?”

The girl stepped into the immaculately cleaned office and held out a large manila envelope.
“We just received this from Cassini Space-Based Systems in Boulder. It came coded to you, but the office checkoff doesn’t have the director of intelligence in the information loop as it usually does.” The girl placed the large envelope against her chest, as if she wasn’t about to let the information leave her until she had a little bit more detail on why the agency chain-of-command signoff wasn’t
included in the package.

“Ah, we’re just running a test. We had a major screwup the last time this small company gave us tracking info. They sent it, but it never arrived. Who knows, it probably went straight to the Russians or Chinese,” he said with a broad and disarming smile as he stood from his desk and removed his glasses. He stepped out from around the sensibly clean desk and held out his
hand for the envelope. “This was to be passed straight to my desk.”

The girl didn’t look convinced at all. “But we have mandates from the director that nothing goes to the corresponding desks until they get passed to them by their department heads. And since this test originated in Boulder, it should go directly to the desk of North American Operations. Assistant Director Simpson should be the
last one on the list before the director of intelligence on this checkoff sheet.”

“I believe she was bypassed because of the unimportance of the test and also because, as I understand it, Ms. Simpson is currently visiting relatives in Texas.” He smiled and then started to turn away. “But if you would rather wait until she gets back, it’s up to you. I can wait for these mundane and boring results.”

The courier bit her lower lip and then smiled. “I guess since it’s only a test trace it doesn’t matter.”

Hiram stopped and then turned with his best smile planted on his features. “Now that’s the red-tape-cutting imaging department we have come to love around here,” he said as he took the offered envelope. “If not for people like you, nothing would ever get done.”

The young technician smiled
and then turned away. The smile on Vickers’s face left as easily as it had come as he reached out and pulled the door closed. He ripped open the sealed envelope instead of untying the string that secured it; after all, the envelope and its contents would be destroyed. This action was something totally against agency policy. He quickly read the transcript of the trace his Black Team had placed on
subject one from the Mexico raid. His brow furrowed as he read the report.

“What in the hell is this?” he asked himself aloud as he sat back behind his desk. His fingers followed the line of the track from Laredo, Texas, to Nevada.

“Okay, they obviously landed at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada. But what in the hell is happening here?” he asked himself as he pulled up a computer-generated and
much-classified map of Nellis on his computer. He studied the map and saw where the trace was still operating. His eyes told him he was looking at a firing range that hadn’t been in use since World War II. He then punched in a few commands and a real-time image of the base came up. He used his mouse to zoom into the area of interest. All he saw was a large series of dilapidated hangars that looked
as if they had seen far better days. The largest hangar was missing most of its rounded roof and he could almost see into the interior.

He looked at the coordinates that had been time stamped onto the first picture he pulled out of the envelope. Then he cross-referenced those coordinates with what he was looking at. He shook his head and then reached for the phone. He called the number he had
memorized in just the last two days.

“Johnson,” came the reply on the other end of the phone.

“I have the trace report,” Vickers said as he continued to look at the picture of the high desert surrounding Nellis Air Force Base.

“So, where do our mysterious heroes live and work?”

“Before I give you the answer, I have a question, and it comes directly from our British friends.”

“Go ahead.”

“They want to know what preparations you’ve made in connection with the Perdition Hacienda. If we complete this assignment for them, there will be no end to their gratitude, which may come in handy for our new operations.”

There was a brief silence on the other end of the phone. Then the large man who had just arrived home from Texas cleared his throat. “You can pass it on to those interested
parties that the hacienda will cease to exist in just about twenty-seven minutes, compliments of the government of Mexico.”

“And this will eliminate any possibility of the drugs getting out into the open?”

There was a small laugh on the other end of the phone. “You can say that, yes.” The man became silent as he waited. He knew he didn’t have to press the man at Langley for information on the
trace because the man he had tagged outside of Nuevo Laredo was now under intense scrutiny by one of the darkest forces in American intelligence.

“The tracer report says that your target landed at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada, and then according to what amounts to guesswork, the hard target vanishes beneath the high desert.”

“Obviously I can’t get a straight answer out of anyone in Washington.
I don’t send my men anywhere on guesswork. That kind of stuff went out of favor a long time ago. If you want us to recover what was taken from that hacienda, you damn well better get me some reliable intel as to who these people are and who they work for. We were lucky to get the body of Guzman reduced to ruins, but they have a sample of the product your British friends want destroyed. Now,
I’ve been doing a little homework myself. The man who led the rescue attempt across the border, I thought I recognized him, but couldn’t place him until now.”

As Hiram Vickers waited, his incoming e-mail chimed. He opened it and then saw it was from the very same man to whom he was speaking at this very moment. He clicked on the attachment and a picture began downloading.

“Find me this man,
and I’ll find that jar they took out of Perdition’s Gate. Don’t find him, and I guess the Brits’ dirty little secret will not be so for long.”

Hiram regretted having told the Black Team operative everything about who requested their assistance. But the new operating parameters of the Black Teams prohibited them from operating without the full range of intel on their prospective target. He knew
this man was determined to keep the Men in Black far more secretive than they had been in the past before they had been dismantled by the federal authorities.

As Vickers watched his computer screen he saw a herky-jerky video of what looked like a C-Span broadcast. As the camera zoomed in on a man in the uniform of a United States Army officer, it cleared up and then the picture froze as the generated
name came on below the frozen picture of a big man as he packed up a briefcase with papers. Vickers saw that the video had been purloined from a C-Span broadcast of a senate hearing on the Afghan conflict. Then he looked at the name on the bottom and a flitting memory came to him.

“I think this will help a great deal, if you’re sure this is the man you tagged?”

“Anyone in our line of work knows
exactly who this man is and what he brings to the table. He’s dangerous, not only to me, but to you and anyone who crosses him. If he still has Perdition’s Fire it will be hard to get from him. Now send me what you have so I can work from my end.”

“Right,” Vickers said and then terminated the call. He looked closer at the sun-hardened features of the man frozen in time on his monitor. He then
glanced at the printed name below the picture as he placed the yellow envelope and its contents under his arm in readiness to forward what he had to the Black Team in Denver. He reached out and hesitated before he turned off his monitor, but not before Hiram Vickers memorized the hard features of the man.

The C-Span freeze-frame of the soldier known six years before as Major Jack Collins faded
to black.

EVENT GROUP COMPLEX
NELLIS AFB, NEVADA

Jack sat at his desk inside the security department cut off from the rest of his people. He stared at the computer screen for the longest time in an attempt to make the words he had written make sense. They were words he thought he never would have placed end to end in his entire life.

They had been in the complex for the past eight hours, and
he was waiting for the call that would send him into the director’s office. Collins closed his eyes in an effort to make the last few words in the document he had written fade away along with the sight of them.

A knock sounded at the door.

“Come in,” he said as he leaned slightly toward the monitor and spoke softly as Captain Carl Everett entered his office. “Europa, file and code document 1877,
security one, Collins.”

“Document filed, Colonel Collins,” answered the Marylyn Monroe voice, one that Collins had finally gotten used to. He had hated it, but finally came to terms that everyone in the complex liked the sexiness of the computer-generated voice synthesizer.

“Jack, we have an update on Ryan,” Everett said as he watched Collins lean away from the computer terminal.

“Is he screaming
bloody murder yet?”

“You know he is. He said to tell you that if he’s to stay put in the hospital he wants a transfer to one that has better-looking nurses.” Everett watched the colonel’s face for any reaction.

“Tell him he’s damned lucky to have been moved from Texas to Las Vegas, and if he’s not careful, you’ll send him right back there.”

Carl noticed that Jack said
he
would have to send
him back, not Jack
himself
. Everett smiled and took a seat without Collins offering it to him.

“Other than that, what are they saying about our flyboy?”

“He’s doing better than expected. He’s sore as hell and has two dueling scars he can thrill women with, so all in all the kid got off lucky.” Everett smiled hoping to get Collins to react to something. “I didn’t know hearing about the security
department’s loss in our football game had upset you that much?”

Jack didn’t hear the question and looked at his second in command. “Excuse me?” he said.

“Okay, what’s going on? You’ve been in here since we came home. Sarah’s been in twice and even Charlie Ellenshaw dropped by to collect his winnings from the game and wanted to see you, but you told him to go away. I guess you sort of hurt the
fuzzy-haired guy. You’ve been locked up in here doing God knows what—so, what gives?”

Jack took a deep breath and then looked at Everett. “Did you get to Doc Gilliam and have that shrapnel taken out of your shoulder?”

“I’ll get in line behind you as soon as you get that hand checked out. In case you didn’t notice, you have a bullet hole in it.”

Collins looked at his bandaged hand and then looked
back at Everett. “I have to stop by the director’s office first. You want to tag along?”

“As long as it’s on the way to the infirmary, sure,” Everett answered as he watched Jack leave his chair for the first time in hours.

Collins led the way from the security offices, nodding at a very tired Will Mendenhall as the lieutenant sat at his desk adjusting the security roster for the absence of Lance
Corporal Udall and Jason Ryan.

As they gained the hallway just to the left of the elevators, Jack turned to Everett.