Rogue Operator (16 page)

“Why
have
we
been paying attention to this?”

“Because
we intercepted some conversations between one of the scientists and a foreign
competitor. They basically began to feed him false information that his program
was about to be cut, and scrapped completely. His life’s work. So they offered
him a job if he’d come work for them.”

“I’m
sure he’s signed a non-compete that prevents him from doing so legally.”

“Which
is why they planned an extraction of him, to make him look like he had died in
an accident, with the body never found.”

Kane’s
eyes narrowed. “That’s ridiculous! It’s just a job!”

“Some of
these geniuses are borderline nut-bars.”

“And the
other two? How did they get involved?”

“It
appears they were taken against their will.”

Kane
leaned back in his chair, squeezing the bridge of his nose. “Let me guess. This
foreign competitor isn’t Sony.”

Morrison
shook his head. “No. This is government run, state owned—which in this case
means military.” Morrison sighed and Kane looked up. “If this technology gets
into the hands of a foreign, military power, it could completely shift the
balance of power. And in a maniac’s hands, it could mean the end of the world.”

“Why the
hell were they working on this if it was so dangerous?”

“Because
the potential for good was deemed to far outweigh the bad, once the research
was completed and the safeguards put in place. This technology is another ten
or twenty years from hitting the streets. With proper development, it would be
safe and if weaponized, we would hopefully have figured out a countermeasure.
But right now? Right now it’s only dangerous.”

“So what
went wrong? Why were you letting them be taken?”

Morrison
held up a finger.

“Correction.
We were letting him be taken, because of the three, he apparently was the least
important, and there was no way he would be able to complete the work on his
own. Keep in mind, he’d have to recreate everything from scratch. The end goal
was to embarrass the Chinese behind the scenes.”

“So it’s
the Chinese behind all this?”

“Don’t
get ahead of me, just listen.”

Kane
closed his eyes and processed the briefing, his mind desperate for answers to
questions, not the least of which was, ‘How stupid do you have to be to let one
of these guys, let alone all three, be taken?’

“The
idea was we’d track him, find him in China, embarrass them behind the scenes,
they’d cough him up, and we’d bring him back and charge him and imprison him
for a very long time. By the time he’d be out, the technology would have
advanced beyond him, and he’d be of no use to anyone.”

“But why
let them take him in the first place?”

“Well,
we can’t exactly charge him for
thinking
about doing something. We
needed him to actually
work
for the foreign power. Then he’d be
indictable. Remember, if he changed his mind, nothing would have happened to
him and there’d be no risk to our country. If we stopped him, he might just try
again, and we might not know who was involved next time, or when it might
happen. As it happens, we knew everything this time.”

Morrison
sighed, rubbing his closed eyes.

“Or so
we thought.”

Unknown Location

Two Days after the Kidnappings

Jason Peterson’s ass was killing him. He had been on a wood bench
seat for what seemed like almost a full day without being able to stand and
stretch his legs. He looked at the top of Darius’ head as it rested on his lap.
The poor kid had cried himself to exhaustion after their first few hours in the
back of what he would describe as a regular troop transport he’d seen in almost
every war movie.

After
exiting the airplane they had been immediately loaded onto a truck. He had
heard voices that sounded Chinese, but he couldn’t be certain. For all he knew
they could be Japanese or Thai. He just didn’t know. Once they were moving,
after about an hour they were allowed to remove their head covers. It was still
the two families, with two guards, Asian, he was sure Chinese, in paramilitary
uniforms, meaning a complete lack of insignia or markings. They were switched
out every couple of hours, and he had determined by the sounds of engines
starting and stopping during these switches, that there was at least one other
vehicle like they were in now, as well as at least one regular car.

They
were a convoy of vehicles, moving to God knows where, for God knows what
purpose.

He heard
the vehicle gear down, and the engine began to take the edge off the speed it
had built up, then with the brakes applied, the vehicle came to a stop and
shouting could be heard around them. Their two guards jumped from the back of
the truck, the cloth flap that had been covering it flipped aside for a moment
allowing a flood of daylight to stream through.

And a
glimpse of a flag that caused his stomach to churn.

What
the hell are we doing here?

He
looked across at Carl who had apparently also seen the flag, his eyes revealing
the same fear.

If
this is our final destination, there’s no hope of rescue.

Leif Morrison Residence, River Oaks Drive, Mclean, Virginia

Today, Five Days after the Kidnappings

“Or so you thought? What do you mean?”

Kane
eyed his boss. He had never seen the director look so tired, though he had only
met him a handful of times. Agents and the top dog don’t frequently meet,
unless they’re being awarded with something, usually in secret. Kane had a few
awards, all of which were presented, then taken back, the mission they were for
always too secret. Someday he might have a cozy house on a lake, with a wall
for his trophies, but he doubted it.

He lived
by a code he had adapted from something heard during Delta Force training. His
version he felt had kept him alive beyond the mission, and probably explained
his hard lifestyle while off duty. He believed that if you went through life
thinking you were already dead, you were more willing to take the risks during
a mission that might actually keep you alive. If you were too afraid to die,
you wouldn’t take that leap from one roof top to the next, leaving you to be
captured and killed by your pursuers. But if you weren’t afraid to die because
you were already dead? You took the leap without hesitation, and if you made
it, you left your pursuers behind, and survived to die another day.

And
party like there was no tomorrow.

Phuket
memories returned for a moment, then the Director finally spoke.

“We’re
not sure what happened. All we know is we lost contact with our surveillance
team. We still don’t know where they are; we presume they’re dead and cleaned
up.”

Kane
shuddered on the inside. That type of cleanup operation usually didn’t mean
retrieve the bodies and scrub the crime scene. It usually meant bottles of potassium
peroxide and no trace of what was once a human being.

“Sorry
to hear that.”

Morrison
nodded. “I sent in another team, the team you essentially eliminated—”

“You
sent in a team with a BlackTide member?”

Morrison
shook his head. “No,
I
sent in a team of our own men, and the Defense
Department sent in their own team of specialists from BlackTide. I got wind of
it and at least managed to have them under our command, and then swapped out a
man from each team so I’d have eyes on what they were doing. They weren’t happy
about it, but there was no way I was going to let BlackTide mess around with
our operation.”

“Where’s
the second team now?”

“Scrubbed.
Ogden is a dead end now. They were supposed to leave a couple of days ago, but
when we intercepted your flight plans, I decided to have them stick around.”

Kane
remained silent but his thoughts roared in his head.
If you hadn’t gone to
Ogden, three agents and a BlackTide contractor would be alive.
He pushed
the thought from his mind.
They shot first.

“So what
did they find out?”

“That
not just our one scientist was taken, but all three, along with all the
families. As well, helicopters and a military transport were involved, and a
crew went in and stripped the lab bare.” Morrison sighed and swirled the last
of his beer in the bottom of the bottle, then drained it. Putting the bottle
back on its coaster, he looked at Kane. “As far as we can tell, three of our
best scientists and their families, along with all their equipment, have been
transported out of the country.”

“And
where are they now?”

“We know
they landed in China, and our sources there were able to track them to the
border where there was a handover.”

“Handover?
To who?”

“The
North Koreans.”

Somewhere in North Korea

Three Days after the Kidnappings

Jason Peterson couldn’t believe what he was seeing. It made no
sense. They had crossed the border and driven for a few more hours, then were
offloaded in the middle of the night, put into what appeared to be houses that
looked like something from a 1950’s or 60’s newsreel, and told to rest. It
hadn’t been an order they were able to ignore, and all four of them, exhausted,
slept in what was in every way a master bedroom.

He had
awoken the next morning to the doorbell, and when he answered it, he could have
been forgiven for forgetting where he was. A young man, presumably North
Korean, dressed in the latest business casual fashions you would see anywhere
back home, smiled a greeting, and asked him, in perfect English, to be ready in
one hour for his first day at work.

Jason
hadn’t bothered questioning anything.

He woke
Maggie and left the kids to sleep. He found everything he could need in the
bathroom, and a full set of clothes made to his size in the closet, and Maggie
found a fully stocked fridge, with all the brands available at their local
supermarket.

Except
the milk and bread seemed odd. The cartons and wrappers matched, but the taste
was inconsistent. If he didn’t know better, he would guess they were refilling
the milk containers and bread bags with local goods.

Which
made sense to him. Shaving cream and soap could be brought in bulk. But bread
and milk needed to be fresh. But he didn’t have time to analyze their
surroundings much, as the doorbell rang again, exactly one hour later. A car he
didn’t recognize was waiting, along with his friendly greeter from earlier. The
back door was held open for him, and he climbed in. It was roomy, leather, and
quite comfortable, and the steering wheel had “Chery” written on it, a
manufacturer he didn’t recognize. He was pretty sure from what he had read and
heard, that North Korea wasn’t able to produce anything like this, which meant
it was an import.

Probably
from China.

Which
would be logical. They were pretty much their only ally. But it wasn’t until
they began to drive that he truly realized the extent of their situation. Rows
of houses sped by, all perfectly appointed homes with white picket fences, as
if transported here from another era. Everything was from the sixties, from
lampposts to mailboxes. And stepping out from those houses were men in suits,
in lab coats, in all sorts of different garb, but of all ethnic backgrounds.
The majority were definitely oriental, but he couldn’t tell if they were all
North Korean, or if some might be from the south, or from China, Japan, or
Singapore for all he knew.

But
there were also white men, with white wives kissing them at the doors. As far
as he could tell, this was a middle-class, multi-ethnic, professional
community, with everyone going about their daily lives as if nothing were out
of the ordinary.

But
where are the smiles?

It was a
frown on one man as he walked by that made him take notice. Nobody was smiling,
except his grinning chauffeur, but as they pulled up to a gate with several
armed guards, all obviously North Korean, but wearing blue jumpsuit style
uniforms as opposed to a traditional military green, his focus changed to the
massive building in front of him.

And
another mausoleum to the past.

It was a
large box of a building, probably the length of a football field, about ten
stories high, filled with a grid of tiny windows that stretched from end to end
on every floor, except for two in the middle that seemed to have no windows at
all, at least on this side. Dozens of people were flowing into the building as
they pulled up in front. His instinct was to open the door, but he hesitated,
not sure if he was supposed to actually get out. His ‘chauffeur’ jumped out and
opened the door for him, but not before opening the trunk and removing
something. It was a briefcase, which was handed to him with a smile that was so
practiced, it actually seemed genuine.

“Please
follow me, Doctor.”

The man
then briskly walked toward the building, and Jason had to hurry to catch up.
They stepped through a set of doors held open by another blue jumpsuit, and
inside Jason gaped at the vast lobby, all marble and stone, but the accents
still dated, at least four decades out of fashion. But what caught his eye was
the sign emblazoned across the mezzanine above.

International
Cooperation Center
.

And
under it were dozens of flags, most of which he recognized, others that he
didn’t. He looked about at the people arriving along with him, and began to
notice the occasional smile, usually as what appeared to be colleagues met up
with each other. But when alone, amongst their thoughts, there didn’t seem to
be any joy here.