Don't Order Dog (38 page)

Jack Preston was about to hang up when a sudden click on the line made him stop and bring the cellphone back to his ear. Annoyed, he didn’t wait for a response before speaking.

“In case I didn’t make myself clear before, Agent Martin, I expect a goddamn progress report every fifteen minutes here forward. Now give me the status on the situation – starting with your exact location.” 

“I’m afraid the situation isn’t as expected,” an unfamiliar male voice replied coolly into the phone. “Agent Martin is dead.”

“Who the hell is this?” Preston demanded.

“Agent Martin has just suffered two shots from a high-powered rifle,” the man continued. “From what I can tell, the first shot collapsed his left lung but was non-lethal. Unfortunately, the second shot shattered his fourth thoracic vertebrae and severed his spinal cord before destroying his heart. I’m quite certain the second shot killed him instantly. Please give his family my sincere condolences.”  

Preston sat speechless in his chair as the unknown man paused and waited for his response.

“Are you still there?” the man asked.

“I’m… yes, I’m still here,” Preston stammered. “And who am I speaking to?” he asked as he rose from his desk and rushed towards the door.

“I happened to be nearby when this whole horrible
situation
as you call it occurred. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to offer any useful assistance to Agent Martin after he was shot. His injuries simply were not survivable.”

The Director threw open the door to his office and looked anxiously down the hallway towards the elevators.
Dammit! Tom Coleman was already gone.
He turned to Julie his assistant and irritably motioned for something to write with. She pushed a notepad across her desk and handed him a pen.

“I’m… I’m very sorry to hear that,” Preston replied as he scribbled down a single underlined word and held it out to her.

Trace!

Julie nodded her head and immediately picked up the phone to initiate a trace of the call as the Director paced back into his office and quietly shut the door. “I’m sure you did everything you could. I apologize, but I didn’t catch your name.”

“I didn’t provide it,” the man replied matter-of-factly. “My employer has a rather strict policy against the use of real names while on assignment. Of course, I might be persuaded to bend the rules a little if you were to tell me
your
name.”

Preston stood by the window in his office and considered his reply. The voice on the other end of the line almost certainly belonged to the man – the
terrorist
– they were after, and yet nothing about this call made any sense.
Agent Martin dead?
It didn’t seem likely, and yet this man had just described his injuries in grisly detail. Even more perplexing was the call itself. If this man truly was their terrorist – the man who’d murdered four Petronus Energy employees and miraculously evaded the CIA – why had he answered the call? Preston knew the only chance of finding the answer and maintaining a traceable thread to this man hinged upon keeping him on the phone long enough to gain some information. But he had to play it smart. Under no circumstances could he provide any useful information in return.

“I wish I could
,” he responded. “Unfortunately my employer follows the same policy.”

“That’s too bad,” the man replied. “I was hoping we could speak under a greater sense of mutual trust,
Director
.”

A cold chill ran up Preston’s spine.
How in the hell did he know this? Christ, what other information had Agent Martin given him?
He ran his hand through his receding crop of red hair and started pacing the floor. “I was hoping for the same, but it seems you already know a lot more about me than I know about you.”

Preston heard a brief click on the line. The signal trace had started.
If his surveillance team in Phoenix was doing its job, they’d also started recording the conversation and initiating a voice analysis on his unidentified caller.     

“On the contrary, I know almost nothing about you, Director,” the man replied. “My knowledge is limited to two simple facts
– you sent a U.S.  Homeland Security Agent named Martin to China on an assignment, and Agent Martin is now dead.”

The remark sent a bolt of anger through the Director. “You forgot one important fact,” he replied slowly, any trace of politeness now stripped from his voice. “
You
killed Agent Martin.”

“
No, Director, that’s not a fact. That’s an assumption… and an incorrect one as well. But this must be your lucky day, because the man that
did
kill Agent Martin is here next to me, and I would be delighted to introduce you. Please hold for just a moment.”

“What?” Preston repl
ied. “I don’t understand. Who–” He paused at the muffled sound of someone speaking in the background. A moment later, another male voice spoke languidly into the phone.

“Hello?”

“Who is this?” Preston demanded.

“This is Sergeant Andrew Kearney
. United States Army… 2
nd
Division.”

The Director stopped pacing and stood rigidly next to his desk. Did he just hear this man correctly?
“Sergeant, what’s your involvement in this situation?”

The sergeant hesitated for a moment before speaking. When he did, his baritone voice came across the phone line in a soft, faintly slurred whisper.

“At twenty-one-hundred hours last night I received eyes-only orders to neutralize two terrorist targets believed to be operating at this location. I arrived on-site at zero-four-hundred hours this morning and set up my primary position on the roof of the building directly south of this location. Shortly after zero-seven-hundred hours, I observed a tall Caucasian male with brown hair who I believed to be the first of my two targets walking into the apartment number I was provided. Upon exiting the apartment, the target proceeded to enter another apartment with a weapon drawn, and it was at that time that I decided to engage. I then neutralized the target with two shots from my rifle.”

Preston listened without saying a word as he walke
d around his desk and sank dumbfounded into his chair. The sergeant continued in a slow, droning monotone.

“After neutralizing the first target, I received permission via COMLINK to investigate the target site and neutralize the second target if encountered. Upon entering the apartment… I mean the target site… I was confronted with a man sitting in a chair and was immediately disoriented by a loud noise and a bright flash of light. At that time I determined the man sitting in the chair was an aggressor and engaged him with my handgun. I fired several shots before I was subdued by the man who is now holding the phone. That… that pretty much summarizes my involvement in this situation.”

Jack Preston sat silently. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. An American army sergeant had just admitted to killing a Federal Agent and god knows who else. The reason his elusive terrorist had taken his call to Agent Martin was now clear – he wanted to make sure that Preston and everyone listening knew exactly what had transpired.
He didn’t just know the call was being traced and recorded,
Preston thought solemnly.
He was fucking counting on it
. Right now his team of technicians was analyzing the voice on the other end of the call, and the worst possible outcome would be what he already knew to be true. Agent Rick Martin’s death, through some unfathomable mistake, had come at the hands of another American soldier.

You clever son of a bitch.

Preston checked his watch. The trace had started just over one minute earlier. He knew he needed to keep the call active for at least another two minutes to give his team enough time to complete the signal trace. There was only one question left to ask, and the Director had no intention of ending the conversation without getting the answer.

“Sergeant,” he said with a steady tone of authority
. “Who gave you those orders?”

The sergeant let out a sudden breath before responding. Preston had the odd impression that he had woken the man up from a deep sleep.

“The… the orders came directly from my C.O., sir,” he replied, reflectively adding the ‘sir’ in response to Preston’s tone. “But that doesn’t mean anything. I knew the minute I was given the mission that it was just another charter.”

“Another
charter
?”

“Yes sir, that’s our name for any special ops assignments that come from other agencies. You know, like a contract. Nobody does their own dirty work anymore
. Too fucking messy.” The sergeant laughed softly at his own remark. “Excuse my French, sir.”

“So you’re saying you don’t have any idea who requested your assignment?” the Director pressed. 

“No sir, I’m not saying that. I mean, yes sir, I
do
know. In fact, I’m absolutely sure I know who requested it.”

Preston hesitated before responding, faced with yet another dilemma. He needed to know who was responsible for the sergeant’s kill-order assignment, but asking the question meant allowing the man sitting next to the sergeant to h
ear what was essentially highly-classified information regarding military operations and protocols. And yet what other option was there? The entire investigation was now a complete and utter clusterfuck. The only hope of salvaging anything – including his own career – was to finish the location trace and find out who in the hell had authorized this idiot sergeant to go on a killing spree.

“Then tell me sergeant,” he said firmly
. “Who ordered it?”

“The COMLINK response I received before entering the target location had an authentication code that started with 009,” the sergeant said matter-of-fac
tly, his voice low and dull. “And the only agency that uses that code is the National Security Agency.”

Preston spun his chair around to the window and looked up at the dull, featureless sky.
The NSA? How could they have gotten tangled in this? Even if they were monitoring a suspected terrorist, the NSA would rarely if ever initiate a kill-order directive unless they were absolutely certain of their information. He gazed out at the unbroken gray, puzzling over the information and beginning to doubt the likelihood of the sergeant’s assertion. Then suddenly it hit him.

Connolly.

It made perfect sense. The HSI Director had made it abundantly clear he didn’t approve of the way Preston was handling the investigation – demanding to know everything that was happening with Agents Coleman and Martin under the threat of carving Jack’s divisional budget into pieces if he wasn’t forthright with every new development. He was also the only person with whom Preston had shared the Dongying intelligence. And of course, Connolly was ex-NSA. He could have easily used his knowledge and connections within the government’s most clandestine organization to submit a kill-order request, then concealed his tracks beneath the agency’s thick layer of surreptitious protocols.

Richard, you conniving old prick
Preston thought as he
shook his head in anger. A heavy sigh on the other end of the line brought his attention back to the call. He checked his watch again. It had been nearly two minutes since his team had started the trace.

“You’re certain of this, Sergeant?” he asked sternly, choosing his words carefully in light of the fact
that every word was now being recorded. “You’re certain your orders, including the authorization to use lethal force, came from a source within the NSA?”

“Yes
, sir. I’m certain of it.”

Preston turned back to his desk and grabbed the case file Coleman had given him earlier that morning. He flipped to the copies of the Polaroid photos from the letters and immediately examined the obscured figure standing in each. “Sergeant, the man holding the phone… is he Caucasian, maybe six feet tall, with short, curly brown hair?”

“Yes sir.”

Preston nodded his head. “By any chance is he wearing a blue t-shirt with a logo on it?”

The sergeant hesitated for a moment. “Uh… yes sir. It looks like it’s a t-shirt from a bar. It says
Joe’s Last Stand Saloon
on it.”

So much for discretion
Preston thought as he slapped the manila folder closed and leaned back in his chair. “Okay, thank you Sergeant. I would now like to speak to the man holding the phone, but I want you to know I will do everything in my power to get you safely back to your unit. Do you understand?”

“Yes sir,” the sergeant replied, a slight slur still evident in his voice. “Thank you, sir.”

“Good luck, sergeant,” the Director replied, rubbing his fingers deep into his temples. He knew Sergeant Kearney would likely be killed within seconds of ending the call, but he had to present an illusion of hope.

The voice of the man returned to the line. “It seems you know practically everything about me now, wouldn’t you agree, Director?” he asked in a cheerful tone.

“The only thing I know is what you’ve done… and what you’re capable of,” Preston replied contemptuously.