Brad Taylor - The Polaris Protocol

Americans liked a black and white world, with everything clean. Some men wore the black hats, and some wore the white. Black was pure evil and needed to be eradicated. White was the shining knight and could only do good. The problem was I knew the truth. I wore a white hat, and I had seen and done things that couldn’t even charitably be considered worthy of the color. And now I was looking at a man on the other side who had done something that was.

I said, “I want to thank you for what you did. Unfortunately, that’s all you’re going to get.”

He looked at me, remaining silent.

I waited, and when he didn’t respond I said, “You and I both know you didn’t help in Mexico. But you did in Colorado, and that means something.”

The Ghost barked a short laugh. He paused a moment, then spoke. “Means what, exactly? I get your gratitude? The truth is I saved your lover in a moment of weakness. It was a mistake, and I’ll now pay for it.”

Lover? Now a damn terrorist can see through me?

I ignored that comment and said, “You mean that? What you did was a mistake?”

The support team appeared inside the aircraft and the Ghost extended his shackled arms, giving them an easy vein. A man stuck in the needle and he flinched.

He turned from the man and looked me in the eye. “You and I are closer than you think. You are closer to the man I killed to save her than the man standing above me right now. You know it. I know it.”

I said, “I don’t kill people for an outcome. I kill people to prevent an outcome.”

He said, “Maybe. Maybe you do. But it’s only because of where you were born. Sheer luck. If you were in Mexico, the killing would be different. You’d still do it.”

“Bullshit. Don’t justify your pathetic attacks as part of a system of fate. You don’t even believe that. If you did, you would have let Jennifer die. It’s more than circumstances, more than a series of events, and you know it. You told me that you had to be yourself or risk losing everything. And in so doing you did lose everything. Why did you save Jennifer?”

His eyes began to fade from the medication. He said, “I honestly don’t know. Right now, I believe it was a mistake, but if I had to do it over again, I’m not sure I wouldn’t still be sitting here.”

I watched his eyes close and said, “That’s good enough.”

I let the support team finish their work, then motioned for the computer hacking cell to exit. Jennifer and I went last, meeting Kurt in the FBO lobby.

He shook my hand, then saw Jennifer and said, “Jesus. You really did get the shit kicked out of you.”

She had a black eye, butterfly bandages on her forehead, and a large gauze pad covering stitches on her right forearm. She said, “I’ll live.”

He shook her hand and smiled. “Sorry about the damage, but it looks like I don’t have to fire you now. Come on. I have a room down the hall.”

We entered a deserted pilot’s lounge with a row of La-Z-Boy chairs and a dining room table in the corner. He motioned to the table and took a seat. Before he could start I said, “I want to talk to you about the Ghost. I promised him a better cell if he helped with the mission. I’d like to honor that.”

“Why? He didn’t help at all. In fact, his premature alert almost caused a total meltdown.”

“He saved Jennifer’s life. That’s the only reason we have him in custody. He could have let her get sliced up by that nut job from Mexico, but he didn’t.”

“He’s still a terrorist.”

“I know that. I’m not saying let him go free. I’m just saying give him some amenities in his cell. That’s all. Make his time a little easier.”

He leaned back and remained silent. I said, “Look at Jennifer. He saved her life. The least you should do is give her a vote.”

He glanced over at her, taking in the damage again. He said, “He tried to kill you. You think he deserves a reward?”

She said, “He’s going to be locked up forever for that, but only because he saved my life in the first place. He’s going to die in that jail, when he could have gone free.”

He said, “We haven’t seen it in the Taskforce yet, but the budget crunch is coming and I’m not going to spend my money making a terrorist comfortable.”

I pulled out the digital token we’d taken off the hit man from Mexico and slid it across the table. “How about making al-Qaeda pay for it?”

After I explained about the bank account from the hit man and more prodding from Jennifer, Kurt said, “Okay, okay. You guys are relentless. Dumbest damn thing I’ve ever heard.”

I smiled and said, “It’ll only be dumb if the Ghost’s jail cell is better than the team’s. What’s the story with them?”

“They’ll be coming home today. Should be here by late afternoon. We hit a snag with NORTHCOM, but the SECDEF is sorting it out. We couldn’t get to the command before the police, and their first answer was ‘Never heard of those guys.’ The police held them a little longer until we could get someone on the phone who backed up the story.”

“So we’re clean? What about the dead hit man?”

“He’s causing issues. Luckily, he was killed while you guys were inside, so we have a pretty solid alibi, but the coincidence is there. The police have demanded names and addresses for follow-up questions, so those guys won’t be operational for a while. Especially with this YouTube thing coming.”

Great. So I’d left a dead man who was now causing my team to stop operations.

While we were getting both the Ghost and Booth secured in our car, another car had entered the lot. I’d left Jennifer guarding the two men and was dragging the hit man to the trunk when I saw the lights flash as it hit the speed bump at the entrance to the alley. I didn’t know if it was police responding to the Blondie’s disturbance or just another car full of patrons, but either one witnessing me dragging a dead body was bad. I stuffed it next to a pickup, and we’d left. Wasn’t anything else I could do, but the repercussions were now harming my team. Made worse by this YouTube video coming out.

I said, “Where do we stand with the video thing?”

“Nowhere. We’ll get Booth behind a computer and see what we can find, but it probably won’t help unless he personally knows the guy, which he won’t. It’ll take too long to go through all of the leads. Right now the hacking cell is spending their time covering Taskforce tracks, including connections to Grolier Recovery Services. I feel like Ollie North ordering Fawn Hall to start shredding documents. Destroying evidence, and trying to keep this thing to a twenty-four-hour crackpot story.”

“What about Creed? All that shit he located? None of that panned out?”

“Creed? You mean Bartholomew Creedwater? He’s been helping you.”

“Yeah, and while Jennifer and I were running around trying to find Booth, he was rooting through Booth’s home computer. By the time we picked him up for the flight he’d been at it for four hours. He’s already done the homework, and he brought the computer with him.”

80

I drove past McLean Central Park to the Dolley Madison Library, my designated linkup point. Ironically, our target’s house was about two miles as the crow flies from the headquarters of the CIA, in McLean, Virginia, home of the rich and powerful. The library was close enough to the target to allow the team to penetrate without delay, but far enough away that the meeting would never be correlated with the follow-on breakin. My only complaint was that Kurt wouldn’t let me do the high adventure.

Earlier, after hearing about Creed and his research, Kurt had practically flung him out of the building, taking him to Taskforce headquarters, leaving Jennifer and me at the Dulles FBO. Ordering us to stand by until he returned. Since Grolier Recovery Services already had plenty of nefarious digital connections to the headquarters, there was no way we were going to make matters worse by going there in the flesh. I decided to stay right in the comfortable pilot’s lounge until we had an answer.