36: A Novel (30 page)

So, they weren’t worried about a dead asset coming back.  But how could they hide my body from Patterson?  There didn’t seem to be anything that happened within the facility that he wasn’t aware of.  Unless he wasn’t going to be alive to ask questions!

The thought spurred me to action.  I yanked the drive out of the USB port and stood up.  That’s as far as I got.  I had no idea what to do next.  Standing there, I thought about everything that had happened since I’d arrived.  Remembering the order for Kirkpatrick to contact Carpenter, I sat back down and began clicking through the laptop.

I didn’t know what I was looking for, but had seen a couple of people using their iPads to make video calls.  Maybe there was some program on the computer that would allow me to call Director Patterson.  After five minutes I gave up.  There was nothing on the device that hadn’t come with Windows.

That gave me another idea and I opened the internet browser.  Things had changed a lot since before I’d gone to prison, but at least there was still a way to review browsing history.  It took a few false starts, but I finally pulled up a screen with a very long list of websites that Kirkpatrick had visited.

“You’re a naughty boy,” I said to the unconscious agent.

I scrolled through literally hundreds of links to sites with titles like
Rock Hard Studs
,
Muscle Butts
and
He Likes Them Big
.  Nothing but gay porn.  Closing the browser, I slammed the lid in frustration and stood up.  Maybe a phone.

I walked over to Kirkpatrick and checked all his pockets.  I’d already done this once and didn’t think I’d missed anything as large as a cell phone, but it was worth checking again.  Finding nothing, I straightened and stared down at him.  He was wearing slacks and a dress shirt with a tie.  Where was his jacket?

Looking around, I didn’t see it.  Heading down the hall, I paused to open a small closet.  Empty.  I searched the first bedroom I came to which held nothing more than a twin sized bed and a cheap, particle board dresser.  The dresser had a set of sheets for the bed and a single towel and washcloth.

Next was the bathroom, and as soon as I opened the door I could see everything and tell it was empty.  As I was pulling the door shut, I glanced up at the mirror over the sink and stopped.  A dark blue suit coat was hanging on a small hook on the inside of the door.

Reaching around, I grabbed it and carried it back to the table with the laptop.  A type of cell phone I’d never seen before was in an inside pocket.  It had an exposed screen with a small keyboard beneath it.  The display lit up when I pushed a button, and I cursed.  It was asking for a passcode.

Moving to the unconscious agent, I knelt and shook his shoulder, shouting his name.  He didn’t respond, and I didn’t like the way his body felt so loose.  Rolling him onto his side, I checked his neck and didn’t find a pulse.  Placing my hand over his nose and mouth, I couldn’t detect any air movement.  Fuck!

What now?  I had no idea how to contact Patterson.  And other than him, who the hell was going to believe my crazy story?  They’d lock me away in a rubber room after shooting me full of Thorazine.  Anger getting the best of me, I threw the locked phone against the wall where it shattered into half a dozen pieces.

Breathing hard, I fought to get myself under control.  Slowly I succeeded, then walked over to a sofa and sat down.  I had to think this through.  Figure out what to do and how to accomplish it.  Should I find a way to contact the Secret Service and warn them?  Would they even listen?  How many crank calls and threats against the President did they receive on an average day?  I was willing to bet it was at least one.

No, that wouldn’t be worth the effort.  Without the warning coming from a trusted source, like Patterson, it would just get filed away and ignored.  What about the FBI?  No, I immediately thought.  I knew Johnson was dirty and had no way of knowing who else was.  If I called, or walked in, and told my story, he’d get a call.  And tell them I was a terrorist or a rogue agent, and I’d wind up in a dank, dark cell.  Or worse.

What about the media?  I immediately dismissed the idea.  No reporter, at least no reputable reporter that would be listened to, would run with my wild story unless it could be confirmed by another source.  Shit!  What options did that leave?

   None, I acknowledged.  I didn’t even know where the Athena Project facility was located.  If I did, I’d try to reach the coast closest to the rig.  Steal a boat, if necessary.  But I had no clue where to go.  The California coast?  The Gulf of Mexico?  About all I was sure I knew was that it wasn’t in the Alaskan oil fields.  I’d been outside a lot and it had been way too warm.  While I suspected it was located in US territorial waters, that didn’t help.  The country has a hell of a lot of coastline.

That left one option, I grudgingly admitted to myself.  I had to go to DC.  Somewhere close to the restaurant would be a man with a laser designator, painting the target for the Hellfire missile.  If I could find him and stop him, the attack would be prevented.  At worst, they might still fire the missile.  But without a laser to home in on, the chances of it missing were fairly good.

With a plan, I realized that I had a time crunch.  I’d been sent back thirty-six hours.  Twelve hours had elapsed in real time before I was transported.  That meant I had arrived twenty-four hours before the event.  Over twenty minutes had already gone by, I noted after checking my watch.  I pushed a couple of buttons and set a countdown clock running.  Twenty-three hours and thirty-eight minutes remaining until the President and the Speaker of the House were assassinated.

35

The first step was to figure out where the hell I was.  Hopefully I was in North America.  Examining the front door, I checked the brace and saw that it was locked into a bracket integrated into the door’s surface.  A key hole was set a few inches above the rod.  Flipping through one of the rings I’d removed from the dead agent, I found a small, brass key that looked like it would fit.

It did, turning easily.  There was a click and the brace shifted slightly as it was released.  Removing it, I placed it on the floor beneath the windows and reached for the first deadbolt.  Before I disengaged it, I remembered the review of my assault on the terrorists with Ray.  The peephole I’d overlooked.

There wasn’t one in this door, but a device that looked like a small tablet was mounted to the surface at eye level.  I tapped it and the screen came on, displaying an image of the other side.  My breath caught when I saw a black and white police cruiser sitting at the curb on the far side of a neatly mown lawn.  As I watched, two cops stepped out, looked around and began walking towards the driveway.

What the hell?  Then I remembered.  Kirkpatrick had fired two shots while we were fighting.  One gunshot might go unnoticed, or passed off as something else.  But two, in fairly quick succession, will probably spur someone to pick up the phone and call the police.

Looking around, I dashed to the body of the dead FBI agent.  Grabbing it by the ankles I dragged it across the floor into the kitchen, then raced back to the front door.  I unlocked the two deadbolts and pulled the door open. 

Stepping out into bright sunshine, I held his FBI ID badge at arm’s length in front of me, my thumb carefully covering the photo.  The two uniformed cops froze, both of them placing their hands on their weapons.  Fortunately, they hadn’t drawn them.  Yet.

“FBI,” I said in a loud, confident voice.

I pulled the door closed behind me and took two steps towards the driveway where they stood, spaced well apart.  The older, and probably senior, of the two squinted at the ID, but didn’t relax.

“Is there something I can help you with?”  I asked, slapping the case closed and shoving it in my hip pocket.

“You live here?”  The older cop asked. 

My eyes were adjusting to the change in light and I was able to see his name plate.  Tompkins.  I also saw all the hash marks along the lower sleeve of his uniform shirt.  This guy had been doing the job for a long time and wasn’t going to be easy to bullshit.  Remembering my training with the con-man, I decided how to handle him.

“That’s not something I can discuss.  Tompkins, is it?”

My tone wasn’t friendly.  I sounded like a condescending asshole.  Probably about like a local cop expected a Fed to sound.

“What can you discuss?  Sir?”

The sir was laced with heavy sarcasm.

“You need to get back in your car and move on, Officer Tompkins.  You’re drawing unwanted attention to this house.”

I knew I’d sold my role when he grimaced and removed his hand from the pistol holstered on his belt.  His partner noticed and visibly relaxed, moving his hand as well.

“We had a report of gun fire.  Everything OK inside?”

We all looked towards the street as another cruiser pulled to a stop, nose to nose with their police car.  Two more cops got out and walked up the driveway, the older of the two moving to stand next to Tompkins.

“Didn’t hear a sound,” I said.  “And this is turning into a fucking parade.  It’s time for you to be on your way.  Or do I need to have my Agent in Charge call your Chief of Police?”

“Maybe we need to come inside and take a look around,” the newly arrived cop standing next to Tompkins said.

He had two chevrons on his upper sleeve and even more hash marks on his lower sleeve.  Had probably encountered Feds before and didn’t mind trying to make their lives a little difficult.

“Federal property,” I said, taking a step towards them.  “Good luck getting a federal judge to sign a warrant.  Now, last chance.  Do I need to call my AIC?  Have him lodge a formal complaint?  You got time to deal with that bullshit?  Is it worth it to stand here and compromise this house further, trying to bust my balls?”

I was winging it.  Had no idea if the threat would intimidate them.  Truthfully, I was borrowing from a cheap, made for TV movie I’d seen many years ago.  Don’t even remember who was in it or what it was really about.  But I did remember a scene where there was a standoff between the FBI and some local cops.  I’d just quoted the lines the actor playing a Fed had delivered.  Well, quoted as best I could remember them.

When I saw their body language, I realized it had worked.  Their backs stiffened and Tompkins turned his head and spat on the driveway. 

“You Feds are fuckin’ assholes,” he growled.  “Anyone ever tell you that?”

“All the time,” I said.  “Especially the really bad guys that you fuckin’ locals can’t handle by yourselves.”

Yes, I was pushing my luck.  But one of the things the con-man had drilled into me was that if you’re going to play a part, play it to the hilt.  Don’t deviate from the character whose shoes you’ve stepped into.  If you do, people will recognize you’re a fake.

“Go write a jay walking ticket or something,” I said, pasting a shit eating grin on my face as I raised my right hand and made a shooing motion in their direction.

“Fuck you,” Tompkins said, turning and heading for the street.

As he walked past the shiny Suburban parked in the driveway, he rubbed the side of his body along the sheet metal.  Something hanging from his duty belt left a long scratch in the paint, the length of the two passenger side doors.

“Oh, look at that,” he said, standing on the sidewalk.  “Someone scratched your fancy ride.”

“No worries.  It’s on camera.  I’ll just review it and have the Justice Department send a bill to whoever did it.”

I was still grinning, pointing up at a spot over my head.  I had no idea if there was really a camera there or not.  But neither did they.  The look on Tompkins’ face was worth the gamble.

They all piled back into their cars, leaving a minute later with lots of tire screeching.  I watched until they were out of sight before going back in and locking the door behind me.  As soon as I was safely inside, I bent at the waist and began shaking as I struggled to not start hyperventilating.  Fuck me, that was a rush.  Just not the kind I like.

As nerve wracking as the encounter had been, it had given me an important piece of information.  The marked police cruisers had told me where I was.  Covina, California.  I was in the Los Angeles metro area.

Now that I knew where I was, how the hell did I make it all the way across the country in twenty-three hours?  I wasn’t sure, but was reasonably confident it was close to three thousand miles to DC.  No way was I driving it.  That only left one viable option.  Fly.

But how?  I had no money for a ticket, and even if I did, I had no ID.  I might have bluffed the cops with Kirkpatrick’s badge, but no way would I get through airport security with an ID that didn’t have my picture on it.  Besides, I was pretty sure the cops had run the plates on the Suburban when they’d first pulled up.  They already knew it was an FBI vehicle before they got out of their car.  I’d just given them what they expected to find.

The wallet with the driver’s license, Amex card and cash that Johnson had given me before I went after the terrorists had been taken when I’d returned to real time.  For this mission, it hadn’t been given back to me.  Nothing had been provided, other than the flash drive that Johnson swapped before I left.  So, how does one get all the way across the continental US, quickly, without cash or ID?  I was stumped.

Frustration began to set in, and I fought against the desire to fall into despair.  That wouldn’t help.  I needed to be thinking.  There had to be an option that I just hadn’t thought of.

Pacing, I tried to think.  The only thing I could come up with was somehow getting on a plane.  OK, if that’s the only way to get there in time, how do I make it work?  Could I use one of Kirkpatrick’s credit cards to buy a ticket and bluff my way past security?

I brought out his badge case and flipped it open.  Looked at the photo on his ID.  Fucking Richie Cunningham on steroids stared back at me.  Other than white skin, he and I couldn’t have looked more different.  Even the laziest, most incompetent TSA screener would notice the discrepancy.  I started to toss the ID aside, but thought better of it at the last moment and shoved it back in my pocket.