Brad Taylor - The Polaris Protocol

“Jennifer, you see where he’s headed?”

“Yeah, yeah, I got him.”

“It’ll be your camera.”

We each had a covert digital setup embedded in our clothing—me in the upper shoulder of my jacket, and Jennifer in a brooch on her chest, the battery pack, brains, and Bluetooth transmitter hidden in our clothing. We’d purposely sat at ninety degrees to each other to give us complete coverage of the room. If he had gone toward the nine o’clock, I’d have been getting the picture.

The cameras were digital marvels controlled by our smartphones. They had limited optical zoom but a very, very good digital zoom complete with digital stabilization. The hard part had been getting the things to line up naturally to what we wanted to see, as my jacket kept shifting when I sat down, and Jennifer, believe it or not, couldn’t get the thing to aim level because of the swell of her breast. After screwing around with them for a while, we’d managed to figure it out.

Jennifer brought out her phone and began working it, the image from the camera fed to it via Bluetooth. I waited to confirm the man was Pedro’s contact, then began relaying to Knuckles as a backup to the photo.

“Knuckles, Pike. Zulu One located. Prepare to copy description.”

After a few seconds, I heard, “Send it.”

“Dark top, black, possibly blue. Long-sleeve, button-front. No jacket. Sleeves rolled completely down. Youngish, twenty-five to thirty. Hawklike face, long nose. Swarthy—looks Saudi. Long hair down to his collar, but well kept. Looks long on purpose, not because he can’t afford a barber. Small mustache but clean chin. No outstanding identifying marks. Sort of looks like Jake Gyllenhaal in Prince of Persia.”

Jennifer, working the digital zoom, looked up and said, “He doesn’t look anything like Jake Gyllenhaal. What an insult.”

I keyed my radio. “Correction. Apparently Jake is much, much more attractive. Stand by for photo.”

Jennifer fiddled with her phone for a second longer, then nodded at me.

My radio crackled to life and I heard, “This guy doesn’t look a damn thing like Jake Gyllenhaal, except for the hair.”

Jennifer grinned, and I said, “Sue me. You guys collapse in?”

“Yeah, we’re set.”

I saw Jennifer scrunch her eyebrows, still looking at her phone. I glanced at Jake and Pedro, but they weren’t doing anything suspicious.

“What’s up?”

“My phone just picked up a signal. I have a missed call and a voice mail.”

“Who in the world is calling you in Turkmenistan?”

“Jack. My brother Jack.”

5

The desk clerk, a trembling, rail-thin man of about sixty, was brought in and slammed into the wall next to Jack. Behind him a dapper man in a business suit entered, taking a seat. The original hard-asses both remained standing. All four were of Hispanic origin.

The gunslingers stayed mute. In Spanish, the dapper man said, “Who do you work for?”

Jack feigned ignorance again, saying, “I don’t speak Spanish.”

In English, the dapper man said, “You may call me Carlos. Please, tell me why you are here.”

Holding nothing back, knowing it might help him survive, Jack said, “I’m a reporter for the Dallas Morning Star. My editor knows where I am and will be looking for me. It does you more harm than good to hurt a reporter inside America, and I swear I didn’t hear anything incriminating.”

Carlos turned to one of the gunslingers. “His phone?”

The man passed it over, and Carlos checked the call log. “What did you tell the man on the other end of this phone?”

“Nothing,” Jack said. “It went to voice mail. All I said was I was in trouble. I swear I haven’t heard anything.”

Looking at the number, Carlos said, “Then why would you feel you were in trouble?”

“Because of who you are. What you represent.”

Carlos squinted at the phone, then said, “This isn’t a Dallas area code. Who did you call?”

Confused, Jack said nothing, unsure if Carlos was trying to trick him. Carlos held out the phone, allowing Jack to read the number. His heart sank deeper into the void. Andy isn’t going to do anything.

He said, “It’s nobody. I misdialed.”

“Misdialed the entire area code? Who is it?”

Jack struggled to come up with an answer. Anything to deflect attention from the true answer. “It’s just a friend I have on speed dial. Someone I went to school with. His speed-dial number is next to my editor’s.”

Carlos brought up the menu, checked the speed dial, then chuckled and pulled out his own phone, saying, “Not exactly Woodward and Bernstein, are you?”

He dialed a number and stood, moving to the bathroom and letting a gunslinger close in on Jack. Carlos began speaking in Spanish, laying out what had occurred up to this point. Fairly fluent, Jack learned he had interrupted something much more sinister than the expansion of drugs into the United States.

“No, Señor Fawkes still believes we’re computer people like him. Hacktivists. He does not know the reasons behind our meeting. He’s paranoid but not stupid. He just about fainted when my men came in with pistols. He’ll realize something else is afoot if I don’t give him some misdirection.”

The man on the other end spoke, and Carlos answered, “Yes, I think he can do it. He works at the air force base in Colorado, the one that controls the navigation satellites. The ones that tell the drones where to fly. I think it’s worth continuing. We take out their eyes, and we can go back to the old days. The old ways. We’ll be the only ones who can do it. Los Zetas will still get caught by them, and the plaza will be ours.”

Carlos listened a few seconds longer, then turned his eyes on the desk clerk, saying, “We have paid him handsomely many times in the past. He deserves death for his treachery, but I think we can use him to deflect attention if anyone comes around asking. Keep him alive a little bit longer. I’ll pay him before I leave and remind him that I know where his family lives. What about the man himself? The reporter?”

Jack saw the desk clerk’s eyes widen and strained to keep his face neutral, waiting on his own fate. What he heard caused his heart to stutter.

“I can’t do that here, in America. I’ll need a car that can get across the border. Send someone with a SENTRI Pass. I’ll be staying at house four.”

They’re going to take me to Juárez. Kill me using our own trusted-traveler program.

Carlos hung up and said, “Watch him.”

*

Carlos reentered the original hotel room and saw Mr. Guy Fawkes sitting in a chair, pasty and sweating. Guy Fawkes. Cute little alias name. Playing me for a stupid cabrón. An obese Caucasian with greasy hair and a three-day growth of beard, he was clearly out of his depth.

“Mr. Fawkes, sorry for the interruption. My men thought someone had followed you, but apparently they are just overeager.”

“Carlos, I don’t do violence. I do computers. I’m about transparent information. I was told you could use my information. Let it out inside Mexico.”

“I understand completely. I’m sorry, but where I’m from violence is a way of life. I apologize, but tell me, why didn’t you send this to someone here? Someone you trust in the networks in the United States?”

Fawkes licked his lips and rubbed the sweat off his brow. “With my job I can’t afford it getting back to me. I want it nowhere near me. You saw what happened to Bradley Manning? The WikiLeaks soldier? Or Edward Snowden? The NSA whistle-blower? The damn US government is all over this stuff. They have tendrils everywhere in America. But not in Mexico.”

Carlos nodded. “I see. So it has nothing to do with the money I’m willing to pay you?”