Diane Capri: Don't Know Jack

“I’ve sent you an encrypted file. Scrambled signal. Download it now, before you reach monitored airport communication space.”

“Yes, sir.”

There was a short pause, and then he said, “Eleven thirty, remember. Don’t be late.”

She interpreted urgency in his repetition. She said, “Right, sir.” She waited for dead air again before she closed the phone and returned it to her pocket. Then she lifted her Bureau computer from the floor and pressed the power switch. It booted up in fourteen seconds, which was one fewer than the government had spent a lot of money to guarantee.

The computer found the secure satellite, and she downloaded the encrypted file. She moved it to a folder misleadingly labeled Non-workMiscellaneous and closed the laptop. No time to read now. She noticed her foot tapping on the cab’s sticky floor. She couldn’t be late. No excuses.

Late for what?

At precisely 5:15 a.m. the cab driver stopped in front of Delta departures at McNamara terminal. Fifty-five minutes, door to door. So far, so good, but she wasn’t on the plane yet.

She paid the driver double in cash, as promised. She ignored the cold November wind and pulled her bags from the car and jogged inside as quickly as she dared. Running made airport officials nervous. Airports were touchy places in America these days, particularly those close to known arrival and departure points for terrorists. Detroit-Wayne Metro had two strategic advantages for the bad guys. Proximity to the Canadian border allowed rapid deployment once they entered the country, and they could easily blend in. Greater Detroit was home to more people of Arabic descent than any city outside the Middle East. Which was the very reason Otto had requested the Detroit deployment: more opportunity for advancement on the front lines.

Right then she thought she would have been better off somewhere else.

She slowed to a walk. There were cameras everywhere. She was under the radar, but she wasn’t invisible.

She approached the checkpoint and looked for her contact. She saw a man with Kaminsky on his nameplate, manning the crew line, putting each crew member through the same screens as the regular passengers. He was focused intently on his work.

Come on, come on, come on.

She willed him to notice her. When he did, she ducked under the rope and walked up to where he stood. She said, “You’re expecting me.”

He said, “Correct.”

He glanced at her credentials and passed her along, with her bags, and her electronics, and her gun, around the outside of the metal detector hoop. Behind her a passenger called out, “Hey! What’s so special about her?”

She thought: Shit. Now someone will remember me if they’re asked, for sure. She didn’t glance back to give the guy another look at her face. She just jogged the last hundred yards to the gate, where another TSA agent waited, blocking the entrance. She flashed her ID. He nodded and stepped aside. The moment she crossed the threshold, he closed and locked the door behind her. She rushed through the tunnel and stepped onto the plane. The flight attendant closed and sealed the door behind her, the jet way retreated, and the plane backed away. The pilot had only a ten-minute delay to cover up.

Should anyone ask.

She found her seat in first class. The seat next to hers was empty, as was the seat across the aisle. Probably not by chance. She stowed her bags and buckled her seatbelt low and tight. She laid her head back and closed her eyes. She gripped the armrests until her fingers hurt.

God, she hated flying.

Experts said fear of flying was irrational. They were fools. Kim knew too much to believe that nonsense. Planes made powerful weapons and they were no match for Mother Nature. And she was in a bad way to start with. The acid in her stomach had boiled up the night before, when the untraceable cell phone had arrived. She unclenched one hand long enough to slide an antacid between her lips. She pressed it with her tongue to the roof of her mouth, and as it dissolved, she tried to calm her racing pulse. She kept her eyes closed until the plane was safely in the air and she could breathe again. She asked for black coffee and opened her laptop to find out why the hell she was headed to Atlanta.

She had two hours and thirty-eight minutes to learn everything she needed to know.

The encrypted file she had downloaded in the taxi was zipped. Inside, she found five separate documents. The first contained a short memo explaining her assignment. The other four files were identified by unfamiliar names: first, Carlos Marco Gaspar; second, Beverly Roscoe (Trent); third, Lamont Finlay, Ph. D.; and fourth, Jack Reacher.

Jack Reacher’s file was the largest, and it ended fifteen years ago. The other three were brief resumes.

She started reading.

The assignment seemed straightforward enough: Complete background investigation on potential candidate Jack-none-Reacher. She’d handled dozens of these since she’d joined the Special Personnel Task Force. But this assignment was different in every respect. There was no indication of the job for which Reacher was being considered. Nor did the assignment memo explain the secrecy, the haste. Or why the boss was involved. Everything about it felt wrong.

She was instructed to begin in Margrave, Georgia. Nothing further.

The second document was brief but normal. It contained limited data on FBI Special Agent Carlos Marco Gaspar, her partner on this assignment. She’d never met Gaspar and the file told her very little about him. He was 44 years old, married with four children, and he was currently posted to the Miami Field Office.

The only odd note was the explicit direction that she was to take the lead, even though Gaspar was ten years more experienced.

She’d never acted as lead on a SPTF assignment. Was this a test of her leadership ability? Was she being considered for promotion? No. Too soon. What, then? Another secret. She hated secrets unless she was the one keeping them. She popped another antacid and studied Gaspar’s official ID photograph, learning his face. Then she spent the next two hours reading, analyzing, and memorizing the limited information contained in the remaining three files.

The more she read, the less comfortable she became, but she was already on security alert level red, and there were no higher levels in her system.

She began with the candidate. His file was simply too thin. In her line of work, less was definitely not more. Where were Reacher’s tax returns? Credit card files? Property records? Criminal records? Had Reacher never bought a car? Rented an apartment? Owned a cell phone? Surfed the internet? Been arrested? What about banking records? Where did he get his walking-around money?

There had to be more documentary evidence on Jack-none-Reacher, but she’d been allowed no time to do her own thorough preparation using the extensive tools available to the FBI. And she couldn’t call and ask for assistance. She was under the radar. Only two people were authorized to help her: one she hadn’t met yet, and one she couldn’t ask.

She closed her eyes again.

Eventually, and reluctantly, Special Agent Kim Otto reached the only possible conclusion: Reacher’s file was deliberately thin. There had to be more. The rest was being withheld.

Which made her nervous. What always made her nervous were the things she didn’t know. What you didn’t know could kill you. She could handle anything, but only if she saw it coming. Two antacids this time, washed down with the cold coffee she hadn’t touched. She pushed the button for the flight attendant to refill her cup. Then she copied and stored the limited data on Reacher to her own encrypted files. When she had access to the satellite again, she would send her private files to secure storage.