Terror Rising: Book 0 – The Insurgence (12 page)

Drake looked beside
himself. “
When?
”
he asked, very curious now.

Thaxton glanced toward the ceiling, thinking
to herself. “I was eighteen when I joined the academy. I believe he
was too.” She paused and noticed everyone staring. “I’m not going
to tell you my age now, if that’s what you’re thinking. Perhaps
you’re thinking I’m someone too young to be an assistant director.
And you’d probably be right.”

“
What’d he do, drop out?” Hopper asked
with little tact.

“
Something like that,” Thaxton
answered.

“
And you’ve kept in contact with him
this entire time?” Drake asked, still seemingly stunned by the
revelation.

“
From time to time. We were friends.
Hadn’t heard from him in years when I got a call from him the other
week.” She paused and looked at Angela. “He had a lot to say, and
though it had been years, I noticed a change in his voice. He was
tense. Paranoid even.”

Angela nodded, wondering how much more she
didn’t know about Captain Martinez, her partner for the last
year.

“
So, Agent Gannon. Does that answer
your question?” Thaxton asked.

“
Yes,” Angela said. “Thank you.” She
had plenty of more questions but held back. She wanted to know the
connection between Martinez’s suspicions of government officials
and his relationship with Thaxton. And if Martinez was in fact old
friends with her, why did he balk at the idea of the FBI assisting
him? There seemed to be much more to this bizarre scenario, but she
knew one thing: she didn’t want to let these FBI agents out of her
sight.

“
I want in on the El Paso mission,”
she announced boldly.

Drake turned to her, surprised. “I’m
sorry?”

“
If we’re going to El Paso, I want to
be there,” she said clearly.

The agents deferred to Thaxton, turning
their heads toward her as she studied Angela with an admiring look.
The chief, however, didn’t seem too enthusiastic about the
idea.

“
I’d prefer not including Agent
Gannon. We already have one of ours off the grid. Best not to risk
another.”

“
But, sir,” Angela began.

Drake shook his head, cutting her off, and
spoke forcibly. “This is not something I want you involved in any
longer.”

Thaxton pushed through the other agents,
standing directly in front of his desk. “I’m afraid we need her,
Chief Drake.”

The chief balked and pulled at the dark blue
tie of his green uniform. “With all due respect, ma’am. I’m in
charge of this station, and I answer to the Department of Homeland
Security, not the FBI.”

“
I understand that, and your station
has been more than cooperative to this point. However, like it or
not, Agent Gannon is an integral part of this
investigation.”

Drake dismissed her with a wave of his hand.
“She has your cell number, I’m sure. My answer still stands at
no.”

Thaxton placed both hands on the front of
his desk and leaned toward him, inches from his face. His eyes
blinked rapidly, revealing a brief nervousness.

“
Your
department will do whatever it
takes to find these terror cells. Anything less is unacceptable.
Now you can hear it from me or from the FBI or the Homeland
director. Hell, we might even get the president on the line. What
do you say?”

Drake looked around and saw only the blank
faces of the other agents watching him, daring him to argue
back.

“
I don’t want her placed at risk of
any harm,” he said, trying to gain back his authority and tamp down
the anger rising in his chest.

“
Of course,” Thaxton said,
nodding.

“
And she can accompany you no longer
than twenty-four hours.”

Angela sat by as they negotiated her
involvement as though she weren’t in the room.

“
Forty-eight hours,” Thaxton
added.

“
That’s simply too
long. We have a border to guard
here
not in El Paso,” Drake
said.

Thaxton backed away from the desk and rubbed
her forehead, sighing. The other agents stepped aside as she walked
past them, going toward the window. “Time is critical, Chief Drake.
We could be dealing with something larger than we can imagine.” She
stopped and turned back to him. “The only question is, can we stop
it in time?”

“
I’m not trying to impede that,” he
answered, as the lines in his face deepened into a concerned frown.
“I just think that rather than whisking one of my Border Patrol
agents going to El Paso on some wild goose chase, you search for
the perpetrators who were behind the improvised truck
bomb.”

In the silence that followed, Drake knew
from their expressions that they were not fully following him. “Not
the dead ones, of course. You know, the ones who got away.” He
looked directly at Angela for confirmation. “The station
wagon.”

Angela had to admit, she
preferred a closer search of the immediate area for the station
wagon. She found it unfathomable that a car like that still
remained unfound. However, she felt, for whatever reason, more on
the side of the FBI. Perhaps the assistant director was being
genuine in her requests. Stopping the terror cell
and
finding Martinez
seemed to her the best bet for doing that. At the very least, it
was something.

She didn’t realize Drake was waiting for a
response from her, and then suddenly she spoke up. “Yes. The blue
station wagon.”

Hopper laughed. “Hell. They’re probably
halfway across the country by now.”

Thaxton walked away from the desk and toward
the door, stopping once again to turn to Drake as she reached for
the handle. “We’re leaving for El Paso in an hour. I expect to have
Agent Gannon on board.” She opened the door and signaled to her
team.

Not expecting to leave so abruptly,
Sutherland and Hopper walked out. Lynch grabbed his laptop and
followed. Thaxton waited as the others had left to deliver the
final word. “I appreciate your support, Chief Drake. It means a lot
to the Bureau.”

Feeling left out of whatever the hell was
going on, Angela stood up. “Ma’am. It’s getting late and I have a
family.”

Thaxton’s glacial eyes shifted over to her,
unblinking. “The decision is all yours, Agent Gannon. The
helicopter will be here soon. We leave in an hour.”

Angela nodded.

“
Is that a yes?” Thaxton
added.

Duty called, and she had to listen to her
gut. “Yes, ma’am. I’ll be ready.” She paused, thinking she could
hear the chief’s otherwise thinly veiled sigh.

“
Excellent,” Thaxton said. “Don’t go
too far.” She then left the room and closed the door without asking
if the chief wanted it open.

After having agreed to the mission, Angela
dreaded having to look him in the eyes, but she did anyway, as he
leaned back in his chair. She glanced at the television, seeing a
weather report in process, the first time she had seen them stray
from the truck explosion coverage.

“
I hope you don’t mind, Chief,” she
said, facing him.

Quiet at first, Drake adjusted the collar of
his dark-green uniform, affixed with two silver stars. “If it will
help get Martinez back, then I’m for it.” He took his glasses off
and set them on the desk then squeezed the bridge of his nose as
though he had a sinus headache. “I’d have another agent accompany
you, but we need all our resources here at home.”

Angela thought to herself for a moment and
then said, “What about Captain Reynolds?”

She didn’t know why her name came to mind.
Reynolds had understandably been a wreck after Dawson’s death.
Perhaps helping to find and stop a terror cell would bring
closure—for both her and Reynolds. Maybe that was it.

Drake shook his head. “No. You keep your
head down out there, and do your best. I’m not so sure about that
assistant director. She’s young and cocky. That might work in some
areas, but out here we have to look out for each other.
Understand?”

“
Yes, Chief,” Angela said.

Drake grabbed some files on his desk and
began straightening them up. “Dismissed,” he said, keeping his eyes
down.

Angela thanked him and got up, relieved to
be on her way out. She asked him if he wanted the door open.

“
What does it matter?” he said, eyes
still cast down.

“
Chief?” she said, not understanding
his answer.

He looked up, seemingly distracted. “Oh. You
can leave it open.”

Angela walked out to find border agents
everywhere, walking to and from cubicles and offices on both sides
of the hall. She zipped past, hoping to find some quiet. The
breakroom was ideal, but she knew of a place even better than that.
She passed the restrooms, eyes forward and away from the curious
glances of Border Patrol agents, and then turned down a darkened,
narrow hall with two doors at the end across from each other. She
opened the door on her left and turned on the light, revealing the
janitor’s closet.

She stepped inside and closed the door to a
crack, basking in the relative quiet. She could feel the warm glow
of her cell phone in her pocket and was eager to make a call. She
pulled the phone out and dialed Doug. A glance at the screen told
her it was close to four. By committing her services, in whatever
capacity, to the FBI, she knew that she was in it for the long
haul. Maybe several days.

“
Hey,
what’s up?”
Doug asked on the
second ring. He sounded like he was driving and had her on the
speakerphone.

“
Nothing much. Just getting into the
thick of it at work,” she answered, leaning against a concrete wall
next to a large sink and hanging mop—anything for a little
privacy.

“
Haven’t
watched the news since this morning, but I heard them talking about
it on the radio,”
he said, sounding
more serious than he had with his boisterous greeting.

“
Yeah…” she said with a sigh. “It’s a
madhouse here.”

“
When
you coming home?”
He paused, then
spoke before she could answer.
“I still
don’t think it’s a good idea that you went in today. Dawson’s death
and all. You need time to decompress.”

Angela didn’t want to admit that Dawson
hadn’t been much on her mind since morning. She pondered how much
to reveal to him about her day. He wouldn’t have approved of her
going to the abandoned outpost, and he most certainly wouldn’t
approve of her flying to El Paso. But she had to tell him
something.

“
When’s
the memorial service, anyway?”
he
asked.

Angela peeked out the door crack and was
relieved to see no one coming. She also wasn’t sure what question
of Doug’s to answer first.

“
Soon,” she answered.

“
Soon you’re coming home,
or soon on Dawson’s memorial?”

“
That’s what you get for asking me too
many questions,” she said playfully.

“
Har, har. When you coming
home?”

“
Are you driving?” she asked, evading
the question.

“
Yeah, I got off work a
little early. Was going to pick up some pizza for the
girls.”

Chassity and Lisa were in the sixth and
seventh grades, and they normally got home around three. They were
good kids, overall as rambunctious as any eleven- and
twelve-year-old.

“
Sounds good,” Angela said. She knew
she was stalling, and she could sense that Doug knew it as well. It
was fairly obvious.

“
And when can we expect
you home, my dear?”

“
Doug…” she began. “Martinez went
missing today.”

A pause on the other end indicated that she
had his complete attention.

“
We think he might be in some serious
trouble,” she continued. “The FBI is now involved in the search,
and… I have to help them, Doug. I have to.”

“
Missing?”
Doug asked.
“Missing how?”

“
He went off on his own, trying to
figure this whole thing out. He doesn’t trust anyone, it seems.
Anyone but me.”

Doug spoke sternly, as
though he couldn’t have disapproved more.
“I want you home, Angela. The kids want you home. Whatever he
got himself into, I’m sure your partner can handle it
himself.”

“
I’ll only be a few hours,” she
replied. “I have to do this, and I refuse to wait for another
memorial service to do something.”

There was little fight left in Doug. He knew
when she was serious, and her utter conviction was evident to
him.

“
If you have to do this,
promise me that you won’t put yourself in any danger.”

“
I promise,” she said, feeling a surge
of tears coming, though she held them back.

A long, defeated sigh came
over the phone.
“I really
wish…”

“
What?” Angela asked after his
pause.

“
Nothing. I love
you.”

“
Love you too,” she said. “Tell the
girls I’ll be home soon.”

“
Sure thing.”

She ended the call before the chance of Doug
talking her out of it could come about. She tilted her head back
against the cold, concrete wall and stood alone in the janitor’s
closet with her thoughts. Something didn’t seem right with the
mission, but she couldn’t put her finger on it. All she knew was
that she had to go along with it. Martinez was counting on her,
even if he didn’t realize it.