Viper Team Seven (The Viper Team Seven Series Book 1) (26 page)

Solomon laughed.
“Then you picked the right job. Or shall I say you were picked for the right
job.”

The guards
outside of the Headquarters Building asked for badges again and after every one
was cleared, the team went inside.

“Welcome to Langley, Virginia, home of the CIA. ‘The Work of a Nation. The Center of Intelligence,’” Solomon said as he wiped his feet on a mat.

Parks looked
around and discovered he didn’t know where to go. “Uh, Solomon, could you lead
us to where we’re supposed to go?” he asked in a low voice. “I mean, the
conference room is where I was told to go, but I don’t have a clue how to get
there.”

“Yup, mmmhhm. That’s
just over here.”

As Solomon led
the team to the room, he paused and whispered in Parks’ ear. “Word of warning –
watch out for Nancy Kano. She’s the Director of Intelligence and she’ll be the
one briefing us. She’s a pain in the neck. Don’t cross her and by all means,
never make her feel stupid. She’s trying to make it to D/CIA and she is attempting
to impress everyone with her limitless knowledge of the CIA. Got it?”

Parks wasn’t
sure how to take that information but he nodded and turned to the large doors
leading to the conference room. Slowly, he opened the left one and entered,
flanked by Solomon who was pushing to get right beside him.

“Come in,
Major,” Cummins greeted as soon as he spied Parks. “Have a seat at this table.”

Parks motioned
for his team to follow him and they all sat at the long conference table in the
center of the room.

“You all
remember Solomon and the guys, don’t you?” Cummins asked his agents in the
room. Everyone appeared to know them personally. “Now gentlemen this,” the D/CIA
began, “is U.S.M.C. Major Keith Parks. Keith, meet my Deputy Director, George
Gork. We call him GG for short. And this is my Head of Counterterrorism, James
Lawrence.” Lawrence and Gork rose and greeted Parks, who after their handshakes,
was having troubles trying to fight off the urge to use
Germ-X
.

Cummins went on.
“This is the senior watch officer on duty, Max Wilbert. He heads the
joint-agency intelligence task force here at Langley.” Wilbert also stood and
shook Parks’ hand.

“Oh, is Kano in the room?” the D/CIA wondered.

“She is not,
sir,” Gork replied. “She’s doing last-minute intel preps so her briefing can be
thorough. She’ll be here soon.”

Cummins nodded
with satisfaction. “Well, formalities aside, let’s get down to business.” He
looked around and after several seconds finally sighed, “Max, will you get Kano? We need to get rolling.”

Wilbert didn’t
have the chance. A small door opposite the two larger ones flung open and
everyone’s eyes flew to it. There, standing barely 5’ tall, was Nancy Kano.
Parks didn’t have to be introduced to her to know that it was indeed Kano. She looked just as Solomon had described her attitude. Obviously of Japanese descent,
her hair was jet-black and down to her hips, and her eyes were dark brown.
Parks guessed she was in her mid to late fifties. She was petite, and if her
temper was as short as she was, Parks knew he was going to be in trouble.

As Kano stood in the doorway, her face was buried behind a stack of papers that she was
holding. She slammed the door shut behind her as she stepped into the room.
Instantly, Parks stood out of respect.

From across the
room, she looked up from her papers and cast her eyes up and down the length of
Parks. It was an awkward moment. She was sizing him up. After several rundowns,
her fiery eyes finally locked onto the ribbons on his uniform. She stared at
them for quite some time, evidently wondering about his capability.

After a long
pause, she dove back into her papers and began walking to a desk.

“Sit down, sit
down,” she ordered as she walked by Parks, not even bothering to lift her eyes off
the papers.

Slowly, he sat
down and glanced at Solomon who was trying to control a laugh.

“Aren’t you
going to introduce me to Major Keith Parks, Solomon?” she more commanded than
asked as she plopped down into a swivel chair and turned her back on the table.

“Oh, of course,”
Solomon accepted. “KP, this is Nancy Kano. Mrs. Kano, this is Marine Major
Keith Parks.”

Kano waved her hand over her back in a shallow greeting to Parks.

“Mr. Director,” Kano spoke, addressing Cummins, “someone would like to speak to you on the phone in your
office.”

“Who is it?”

“Find out,” Kano stated as she began typing something into her computer.

The D/CIA shook
his head, excused himself from the table, and walked out of the room. Now the
room was under Kano’s control. She was in total charge, and everyone – except
the Deputy Director – was at her mercy.

“Solomon, are
you going to tell Major Parks that I’m the fourth-ranked person in the CIA?” Kano questioned. “Are you going to explain that I am the top lady in the intelligence
field? Are you?”

Solomon shot a
confused look at Parks.

“Well, he
already did,” Parks threw out. “It is an impressive position you have, I must
say.”

“Yes, it is,
isn’t it? But it is not high enough.”

Parks wasn’t
sure what to say.

“Tell me,” she
continued, “why does your Marine Corps say that ‘oorah’ thing, huh?”

Taken off guard,
Parks hesitated as he thought of the best approach. “Uh, well, it’s a
motivational call, ma’am,” he finally replied. “Whenever a Marine hears that,
he feels pride. That’s why we say it; so we can motivate.”

“That’s why you
have Semper Fidelis, isn’t it?” she asked.

“That too,
ma’am, but that’s different. Semper Fi is more…mellow than a good oorah.”

Parks knew that
it was killing Kano not to know why Parks and his team were here. No one except
the D/CIA knew who Parks was and why he was called here. Everyone else was in
the dark, and it would have to stay that way.

“I get it now,
Major Parks,” she confirmed. “I have always wondered why the Marines say
‘oorah,’ and now I know.” She swiveled in her chair and faced the table.

“Max,” she
ordered, “clear the room of all unnecessary agents – that means all of them – and
prepare for the image.”

The order was
carried out and now only the few necessary people remained in the conference
room.

“We’re ready.
You can commence, Mrs. Kano,” Wilbert informed her.

She took her own
sweet time, which was merely a show of force that Wilbert could not tell her
what to do or when to do it. At last, she swiveled back around and began typing
again.

“Do yourself a
favor, Major Parks,” she started. “Never join the CIA. You have to memorize too
many passwords just to log on to something simple.”

“I’ll try and
remember that, ma’am,” Parks graciously said as the live video feed flashed onto
a screen to his left. Instantly he matched things up and realized that he was
looking at the twenty-man El Paso Border Patrol BORTAC team searching for the
terrorists.

Thursday, March 20
^th
– 0800 hours

CIA Headquarters, Langley, Virginia

The D/CIA burst
into the room. “You started without me?” he asked Kano as he pointed to the screen
that was displaying the satellite image of the BORTAC team.

Kano didn’t look at him. “Time is like gold right now, Mr. Director. You were taking too
long.”

“It was
important; you know that.”

“Yes, I know, the
caller briefed me before I decided you needed to hear it for yourself. It was
quite an interesting bit of news wasn’t it?”

Cummins seated
himself and responded. “I’d say it just might answer my question.”

“And what
question was that?”

“Never mind,” Cummins
said with irritation. He then turned back to the seated men and stated, “Gentlemen,
BORTAC has lost the terrorists, I just received word. They have one more lead
but they’re not hopeful.” The Director paused. “Go ahead with your brief, Nancy.”

Kano stared at the screen on the wall and yawned. “For starters, we found out where the
people we’re dealing with are from. I had the wild but lovely idea to check with
the Pakistani Military Intelligence (PMI) to see if there had been any
terrorist activity. The information they have given me has been too valuable to
even begin to explain, but if there was anyone who could come close to doing so,
it’d be me, so here goes.” She paused. “They said that they have nailed down
the site of a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan. Actually, they’ve known
about it for quite some time, and they’ve been monitoring it. Tuesday, March 18
^th
at around 1300 hours, twenty men emerged from that camp in separate vehicles
and split ten different ways.”

Kano’s eyes were fixed on the short length of her left hand’s fingernails as she spoke.
“Twenty men from the PMI were assigned to follow after the terrorists. Well,
they followed them all the way to an airport and ten terrorists – one from each
vehicle – went inside. The Pakistani team noted that the terrorists went into
the airport from different directions and at different times, giving the
mindset that they were not at all affiliated with each other. Each terrorist
had a vehicle and driver. The Pakistanis assigned a man to follow each vehicle
when they drove away from the airport. In the end, the transports were dumped
off somewhere deep in Afghanistan and the PMI never found the drivers. Also,
the terrorists who boarded a plane already had tickets for a flight that
traveled to Mexico City, Mexico. We know this because when the PMI team saw the
terrorists board the flight, they asked the airport official if anyone had
bought tickets for that flight that day. The man said no. The Pakistanis were never
able to track down the names of the men who had purchased those tickets. They
would have been fake, of course, but it would have been a possible lead
nonetheless.”

“Okay Kano, get to the meat of this,” the D/CIA complained.

The Intel Director
turned back to the stack of papers she had brought in when she had entered the
room and began flipping through them wildly.

“Ahh,” she voiced
when she found the right one. “Here it is.”

She swiveled
around and stared right at Parks. “The terrorists were followed, however, by
one of the Pakistani team members who boarded the plane. He managed to capture
a photo of who he believed was the lead terrorist as the passengers were
stepping off the plane at the Mexico City airport.” Kano passed the paper to
Parks.

“We compared the
terrorist’s description and photo to all of our files, all of the ones in the
FBI and several other agencies. He didn’t match any of them. It seems that
whoever is heading this operation is smart enough to train new teams that won’t
show up on our files and that can’t be traced back to him.”

“Thank God that
the PMI was in the right place at the right time,” Gork commented. “Or we
wouldn’t know what we do know now. However little it may be.”

“Image...,” Kano said, trying to get everyone’s attention back to her.

Parks passed the
terrorist’s photo and description paper down the line of seated men and focused
on the image. It was the same one displaying the Border Patrol agents – BORTAC
to be more specific – that had been on a dirt road by an irrigation canal,
searching for the escaped terrorists.

“They aren’t ever
going to find them,” Lee concluded with a sense of hopelessness.

Kano unseated herself and walked over to the screen as she simultaneously grabbed a wooden
yardstick from her desk.

“BORTAC is
here,” she noted as she pointed with her yardstick to the Patrol agents who
were on the road. “This image depicts the struggle they are having trying to
find the escaped terrorists.” Kano looked around. “Major Parks, would you go to
my desk and open the file marked ‘image2’?”

Parks walked to
her desk and looked at the computer screen, recognizing that it was a
touch-screen variant. He scanned over the options and found two different files
bearing the same name. One was named “image2,” and the other “Image2.”

“Which one do I
open, ma’am?” he questioned.

Kano moved to within three feet of Parks and replied, “That one.” She motioned with her
hand at what appeared to be the second file with the capitalized name.

He raised his
hand and moved to touch the file.

In a flash, Kano stepped forward and raised her yardstick high in the air. She snapped it down hard,
right on the back of Parks’ hand. He instantly drew it back and his eyes
searched for the source of the hit. As he saw the ruler in Kano’s hand, his
eyes went wide. He opened his mouth to say something but nothing came out. The
action was more startling than anything. For a second, he and Kano locked
stares.

“Actually, Major
Parks,” she corrected, “it’s this one.” She tapped the lowercased file name
with her stick.

Parks could hear
a couple of people in the background desperately trying to hold in laughs.
“This one?” he double-checked.

Kano nodded.

“You’re sure?”
he almost laughed. “I don’t want my other hand to get the same treatment.”

The room
exploded with laughter. Kano remained dead serious, however.

Parks touched the
file and it opened. He turned to the screen and saw that a completely new scene
had appeared. Somehow the computer was hooked up to be the controlling
mechanism for broadcasting the different images.

“Stay there,” Kano ordered Parks.

He was debating
whether to disobey that order. His brief sense of humor in her “correction” was
replaced with a greater sense of contempt for this short, bossy Director. After
all, she really had no authority over him.

“I think I’ll
take my seat,” he told her as he returned to the table with his team. “I don’t
want to miss anything.”

To his surprise,
Kano didn’t protest at his refusal. Instead she was staring at the screen
that was broadcasting what she described as the “Brier Patch.” The Patch was the
location where the terrorists had been hiding from the Border Patrol. But when
the BORTAC team had gone in to try and flush them out, they came up empty.

“There are a
hundred million places they could have escaped from,” she declared dejectedly.
“But there is only one place that they will go.”

“Nancy, will you get on with it?” Cummins demanded. “We haven’t got all day.”

The Intel Director
half-nodded and continued. “I would say that these guys are heading into El Paso.”

Cummins scrutinized
his subordinate’s assessment and asked, “You have any gold to back up that
dollar?”

“Plenty. First, these
terrorists must have a sleeper agent that is holding their explosives because
obviously they don’t have them. Second, El Paso is
the
best place to
hide a sleeper agent. You know that. This agent could easily smuggle in weapons
or explosives over the Mexican border and keep them at a certain place where
the terrorists could access them easily. It makes sense that the terrorists
would cross the border near Sunland Park. It is less guarded than the borders nearer
El Paso yet it’s close enough to their sleeper where they wouldn’t have to go
too far to access him.”

“It’s a little
shaky, wouldn’t you say?” Cummins pointed out. “I mean, you don’t really know
that they don’t have the explosives on them, or if they’ll even use any type of
explosive. Besides, if they need a sleeper, why wouldn’t they have him in Mexico?”

“Take it or
leave it,” she responded as she walked back to her desk and waved her hand in
dismissal.

“Mr. Director,
may I?” Norse asked.

“Feel free,” Cummins
allowed.

“Thank you. I
believe there are two reasons that the terrorists wouldn’t hide the sleeper in Mexico. First, if he’s in the U.S., he can establish contacts without the hassle of border
crossing issues. The second reason is that the FBI is very restricted when it
comes to looking at a U.S. Citizen, while looking at foreign entities is more
permissible.”

Cummins thought
about how to respond. It definitely was a wild guess but it made some sense. “I’ll
keep it in mind,” he assured Norse. “GG, we need to find these terrorists as
quickly as we can. Any suggestions on how we might do so?”

Gork loosened
his constricting tie and replied in a solemn tone. “The only way to find the
terrorists would be to put agents on the ground to look for them. I know that’s
what BORTAC is doing but our CIA agents would have the advantage of being
undercover. I think they could find them. But other than that...” He shrugged
his shoulders.

“Okay, Nancy, get our agents near El Paso working overtime to find these
guys,” the D/CIA decided. “Have them scan the entire area, and do whatever else
you think will work. Until you get some positive results, we’ll conclude this
meeting.” The Director of the CIA rose. “Excuse me,” he said quickly. Then he
left the room.

*          *          *

“They have been
quiet, have they not?” Hazeroth asked the prime minister. “It has been two days
since we mobilized our forces and nothing has happened. Perhaps our show of
force has really been useful.”

Aziza shook his
head in disagreement. “They are planning. For what, I don’t know, but rest
assured, they are planning.”

“Let them plan.
Their plans have no impact on us. It’s when they take action that it will concern
us.”

“I suppose you’re right, Judah. But make no mistake about this. If one man
in Lebanon so much as blows his nose toward us, I will decimate the Lebanese.
All
of them.”

*          *          *

“What idiot
would have picked Kano for a Director of Intelligence?” Parks whispered to
Solomon as they walked down the hall toward the Visitor Control Center. Solomon was supposed to show Parks around until he got the call to come back into the
conference room and then the intelligence briefing would resume. Solomon had already
escorted his boss to half a dozen different places inside Langley.

“She’s mean,
huh?” Solomon agreed.

“Yeah, that’s
what you said. But I thought you said she was human.”

Solomon chuckled
out loud. “Well, to answer your question, she is hard to deal with and all, but
if you ever played chess with her, you’d know why she’s the Director of Intelligence.”

“That good?”

“Better than
that
good. She’s a real thinker, and she has an excellent way of knowing what her
opponent is thinking.”

“So that’s why Mr.
Cummins has her as the Director? Because she’s a good chess player?”

Solomon shook
his head. “Her chess playing ability is merely an offshoot of her intelligence
gathering abilities for the CIA. She’s real good.”

“Yeah, so I
see,” Parks mumbled under his breath. “Let’s see how fast her guys can find the
terrorists.”

“Oh they’ll find
’em. I’m not really sure anyone could escape the grasp of the Central
Intelligence Agency.”

Parks jammed his
hand in his pocket and fished out his
Germ-X
. “Want some?” he offered to
Solomon.

“Nope, nope. I
don’t use that stuff. It feels slimy.”

“Yeah well it’s
clean, and that’s all that matters. To me anyway.”

Solomon didn’t
bother to smother his wide smile. “What happens when you’re ordered to search
the dead body of a terrorist?”

Parks was taken
aback by the question. What would he do? “I suppose I’d be forced to say ‘Aye,
aye, sir’ and then do it. But afterwards, I’d rip the skin off my hands I’d
scrub them with soap so hard.”

Solomon laughed.

“I hope they
resume the briefing soon,” Parks told Solomon. When he saw his deputy’s long
face he asked, “What, you don’t feel the same?”

“No. I’m afraid
that this time Kano will whack
my
hand with her ruler.”

“Cut it out,” Parks said good-naturedly as he pushed Solomon’s shoulder.
To be honest with himself, he was nervous about going back to the conference
room where anything good, bad, or the worst concerning the terrorists would be discussed.
Parks hoped with all his might that when the time came, it would be good news –
if that was even possible.

*          *          *

Soaked to the
skin and thoroughly exhausted, Siraj and his terrorist team finally sought the
shelter of a nearby dry ditch, which was covered in tall weeds. Who would have
thought that skipping the border and escaping from the Border Patrol would be
so tiring and take so long? Siraj would have never guessed. But now the first
part of their escape was over, and the hardest part was yet to come. It would
be tricky to try and make it to the sleeper’s house as it was, yet broad
daylight – if one could call the overcast day that – was not the preferred
lighting with which to make a run like this. The Border Patrol was hunting for
them in every corner, and the cover of darkness would have helped immensely in
the jaunt to their weapons cache. Also, Siraj wasn’t really good with
directions and in a strange place like this, with no one to guide, things would
be even worse. Though he had been given the precise location of the house and
directions to get there, those directions’ starting point had been the Sunland
Park Port. Siraj had no clue where they were now, and backtracking to Sunland Park was not an option. So what would he do?