John Gilstrap - Hostage Zero

You can’t sit in the presence of that kind of power and not be jostled by the wave of awe that comes with it. Brandy was speaking one-on-one with one of the most recognizable faces in the world-a man who held one of the planet’s most important positions. She took a deep breath to settle herself.

“I received notification several hours ago from a company called Triple-S-Special Surveillance Specialists. They said that a long-dormant listening station picked up key word combinations and kicked back into active mode. They monitored a lengthy conversation from an address in Jersey City, New Jersey.” She opened a leather portfolio and handed him the twelve-page transcription of the conversation. “That’s the address right there at the top of the page.”

Leger shushed her with an abrupt wave of his hand, giving himself time to read through the document.

Brandy had only recently learned that “bugging” a residence or a business was a nuanced task. It had never occurred to her that a listening device could live forever. Of course, it would be impractical to have a live person perpetually on the other end, twenty-four-seven listening to every word, so instead, smart devices could be programmed to “listen” passively for a certain combination of words, and then awaken itself to active mode. She imagined in this case that “Bruce Navarro” was the key phrase, but she had no way of knowing that for certain.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” the secretary said, looking up from the report. “Who’s the person on the other side of this conversation?”

“We don’t know for sure. Apparently, introductions were finished before the device went active. I have to assume, though, that it’s Gail Bonneville, the private investigator who visited Frank Schuler in prison. It doesn’t appear as if they were friends.”

Leger laughed. “Hardly. It looks like the husband was ready to throw her out on her ass.” He glanced through the pages one more time with an expression of mild amusement. “All these years of stonewalling, and it all comes down to one stranger promising to save a life. I’ll be damned.”

“The level of knowledge shown by the visitor is concerning,” Brandy said.

Leger’s look of amusement continued. “Concerning,” he repeated. “How about damned troubling? The population of knowledgeable parties is multiplying like rabbits.” Something arrived in his face behind the amusement. Fear, maybe? His eyes bored through Brandy as he waved the sheaf of papers. “Who else knows about this?”

“From me? No one. Just you.”

He continued to stare, gauging her. Then he started through the papers again.

“There’s more, sir,” she said.

“From the look on your face, I was guessing there might be.” He continued to read.

“It’s about the investigator, sir.”

“The one who works for the company that somehow continues to get the better of us.”

“Yes, sir.”

Finally, his eyes rocked up to see her. “Despite the fact that we have access to some of the best talent in the world.”

Brandy’s stomach flipped. “I suppose so, sir.” If she layered the “sirs” on thickly enough maybe he wouldn’t explode in his chair.

Leger waited for it.

“Well, Mr. Secretary, at first we thought she was a nobody, you know? A retired sheriff from somewhere in the boonies of Indiana. Well, then we looked a little deeper and we found some disturbing facts. For example, she’s retired FBI. And she was tangentially involved in that big terrorist raid last year in Pennsylvania. You know, the one that involved the chemical weapons?”

The secretary’s shoulder sagged a little. He recovered quickly, but not in time for Brandy to miss it. “What does ‘tangentially involved’ mean? And we both know that that incident had nothing to do with terrorism.”

Brandy felt herself blushing. “Yes, sir,” she said. That incident had occurred during the early days of the transition between the past administration and the current one, and it had exposed the Department of Defense to huge embarrassment. “By tangentially involved, I mean that she was there at the farm in Pennsylvania. The original terrorist raid-excuse me, you know what I mean-happened in her jurisdiction.”

Leger’s face formed a giant question mark. “That’s tangential? What does direct involvement look like in your world?”

Brandy pretended that she didn’t hear. “Well, the firm she works for in Fisherman’s Cove is solely owned by a man named Jonathan Grave, who himself is former Special Forces. Frankly, I was unable to obtain any records on him, which leads me to believe that whatever he did was very, very black.”

Now Leger seemed stunned. “I’m the Secretary of Defense, for God’s sake. What records are sealed from me?”

“Jonathan Grave’s, apparently.” She heard the bite in her tone, and on a different day it would have bothered her. But today, when Jacques Leger was being a certified asshole, she didn’t much care. She continued, “When Gail Bonneville was with the FBI, she was part of the Hostage Rescue Team. There were some career difficulties along the way, and some job-hopping, but the fact that she landed at a company run by somebody who I assume was a Delta Force operator-or maybe something even blacker, although I don’t know what that might be-raises some major flags with me.”

Leger looked tolerant at best. “And what might those flags be?”

Brandy couldn’t believe that the secretary hadn’t already pulled ahead of her. “What do HRT and Delta have in common?” She actually waited for an answer, but only for a couple of seconds, before she realized that SecDef probably did not like being quizzed. “Hostage rescue,” she said, answering her own question.

She waited for him to connect the dots, but when he didn’t, she pressed harder. “The church that owns the school where Ponder’s men snatched the children is literally next door to Jonathan Grave’s home. He spent a career rescuing people, and Gail Bonneville now works for him. Isn’t it obvious that they’re planning to rescue the Guinn boy?”

As she watched Secretary Leger decode it for himself for the first time, she saw the physical burden consume him. He pushed some papers around on his desk, then cleared his throat. “My, but you are full of news, aren’t you?” he said.

He thought for a moment. “Well, clearly we have some things to do,” he said after clearing his throat again. “The Guinn boy is not our concern. We’ll pass along what we know about him to the right people, and that will be the end of our involvement there. I want to concentrate on this Navarro business.” He avoided eye contact as he said, “Talk to your friend from New England. Tell him he now has the green light to do whatever he needs to do, to whomever it needs to be done in order to eliminate Bruce Navarro and the investigator woman.”

Brandy felt her skin go cold. “Eliminate, sir?”

A beat. Leger made a show of sitting up straight and crossing his arms. “That’s not too big a word for you, is it, Brandy?”

She gaped back at him. No, there was nothing big about the word. The word was easy. It was the murders that came with it that were difficult to comprehend. She squirmed in her seat. “Sir, if you’re talking about killing people…” She let her words trail off.

Leger laughed. “Oh, for God’s sake, Brandy, grow up. This has been about killing from the very beginning. Welcome to the big leagues. Only at this level, we don’t think of it as killing. We think of it as problem solving.”

She felt sick to her stomach. First the child and now this. “I, uh, I don’t think I can do that.”

“Of course you can’t. That’s why I would never ask you to. I never have asked you to. We have people who do that for us. Tell our Boston friend what we need, and he’ll take care of the rest. You never even have to mention the K — word, if you don’t want.”