Chapter 12-1
906 Words
Chapter 12
Frank: Now
She’s the best.”
Frank knew better than to feel offended. First, the President was trying to make him feel better in a potentially ugly situation. Second, he was absolutely right. Even he wasn’t as good as Agent Beatrice Belfour.
He needed to remember that.
If anyone could get out of this alive, it was Beat.
“So, what’s the situation?”
Hank had radioed Frank that they were ready to brief the President on the G-B situation. Frank had informed the President as he came out of a quick meeting with the European Central Bank representative to the U.N., checking in on the latest banking crisis to hit the European Union. All of the aftershocks of the American recession were still having brutal ripple effects around the world. The recovery ripples just now crossing America were still a year or more in the future for Europe and Asia.
When Frank told the President about the problem in Guinea-Bissau, he’d immediately rescheduled a coffee chat with India and they’d taken the elevator down to the Secret Service’s security office in the basement.
“I don’t know the situation yet, Mr. President.” Frank stuck his head out of the elevator and looked carefully both ways despite being inside the U.N. security perimeter. Two of his agents at either end of the hall signaled clear.
Frank led the President across the hall and down two doors. “I just know that she and the ambassador have been missing for thirty-one hours now. I’m hoping we’ve found out more than that.” And if they hadn’t, he just might steal a plane and fly over there himself to see what he could find out.
He went through the first door and inspected the small outer room. Six feet square, it had an American flag, a steel door, and a camera.
Once the outer door had latched behind them, two sharp buzzes filled the room. The first, driving bolts into the door behind them. The second, releasing the bolts on the door ahead. They moved into the war room.
A line of agents sat at terminals along the right-hand wall. They were responsible for the security of the room, coordinating all U.S. agent activities within the U.N. complex, and controlling outside security. Along the left wall a series of stations faced inward, about a third of these were staffed. They were responsible for communications, research, and anything needed by the active teams on site, including the U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., presently in London.
In the center, a table that could seat ten faced a trio of large flat screens on the far wall.
The room wasn’t as secure and flexible as the White House Situation Room, but it was close. Close enough to observe and address world crises. Frank glared at the G-B map presently filling the central screen. Especially in unstable little ratholes like Guinea-Bissau.
The President joined Hank at the table, Frank stood behind a swivel chair and held on until his fingers ached where they dug into the leather. But he couldn’t let go.
It was Hank’s briefing. Frank had retasked him to prepare this briefing because, despite his constant joking and deep joy in hazing rookies, he was a top agent. No military commander could get to New York, cleared into the U.N.’s extraterritorial zone, and be sufficiently briefed in time, so Frank had loaned Hank to them as a liaison. If the situation escalated, they could call the Joint Chiefs into the Situation Room and link down to them.
At least with Hank on the case, Frank could stay focused on the President’s security.
Mostly.
“We’ve been able to confirm that the ambassador’s plane landed in Bissau at Osvaldo Vieira International. Thankfully we had the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier Harry S. Truman in the vicinity. They flew a Raptor drone overhead twenty minutes ago and were able to identify the plane.”
A slide came up of the one-strip airport. A white circle around a tiny white cross on gray tarmac. The next slide a close-up so good he could almost count the rivets of the embassy’s Beech King Air.
There was a dark blotch on the tarmac at the foot of the steps. A blotch that didn’t look like spilled oil. Hank didn’t comment on it, so neither did Frank. They’d both seen the spray and bleed-out pattern of a single headshot before. It wasn’t important to the tactical situation, other than to confirm it sucked. They already knew that, without the confirmation. No body in evidence, no way to tell anything about who it had been.
The President’s skin, gone abruptly gray, told that he’d reached the same conclusion.
Hank put up the next slide. It showed a small building, or rather the remains of one.
The walls had been blown out sideways, the roof was gone. Inside were the remains of a pair of SUVs. A close-up revealed a leg and an arm, the first stuck out from beneath a section of the roof, the other wasn’t attached to anything.
The silence in the room was so thick that it pressed in on Frank from every side. Everyone was waiting for his reaction and he wasn’t ready to have one yet.
“Do we have a higher resolution image?”
Hank said something to one of the left-wall techs and the image jumped inward until the two body parts were nearly life-size projected against the wall. So close you could smell the red dust, the black char from the fire, and the deep-in-the-throat bite of copper that was spilled blood.
The arm wore a golden bracelet, not something Beat would ever wear in the field.
The leg had a men’s shoe.
He swallowed hard and managed to keep his voice steady.
“What else do we know?”
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