14

Jack

 

 

Iniquus Headquarters, Washington DC

 

 

“Jack, Suz’s ISO is on the phone. He wants to know what the dogs’ vet’s name is.”

“Is something wrong with Dick and Jane?”

“When he went to pick them up this morning, he found a pill pocket with medication in it on the kitchen floor. He’s looked around and can’t find a prescription bottle or a bottle of vitamins anywhere, do you know the name of their vet so he can follow up?”

“The dogs will eat anything you hand to them. Suz doesn’t use pill pockets.”

Lynx stared at him for a second then she got back on the phone. “Hey, that’s an important piece of evidence. Can you bag it up and bring it in? It needs an analysis in the forensics department. Ask them to identify what the name of that medication is, please.”

. . .

“That’s great. Thank you. Can you tell them this one is high priority? We’re working a hostage situation.”

When she slid her phone back in her pants pocket, Jack caught her eye. “You believe that don’t you? That something is going on, and she’s at risk? You don’t believe that she’s running around with some other guy behind my back?”

Lynx didn’t answer right away, she scraped her teeth over her bottom lip. “That’s not how I line up my thoughts,” she said after what seemed to Jack like a monumental pause. “If I categorize things, then evidence lines up to support that evidence. That’s how a human brain works. I counteract that by not coming to conclusions. Right now, I can say we have a lot of concerning information. It’s my job to figure out what that information means.”

Jack knew intellectually that that was not only the right way to view this, but it was the view that would get them where they needed to be the fastest. But he just wanted her to say it out loud – “Suz would never leave you, Jack; she loves you too much. The only thing that would make her go away with another man was brute force.” But even as he had those thoughts, he knew that there was the distinct possibility that that wasn’t true.

Suz was lonely here in DC. He was rarely home. She had given up her whole life-style to give their relationship a chance. And it was love alone that made her come to that decision. She loved him but she hated his job. He loved his job, and he also loved her. It had been the huge debacle in their relationship. They had talked long and hard about it – about male brains and how he compartmentalized and acted on what was in front of him. When he was on a mission, he still loved her, but his thoughts were on the mission and not on her. That was the honest truth. Hard to hear, he knew.

She had a woman’s brain, not compartmentalized. She braided all of the threads of her life into one piece of rope. She thought about him in everything she did. He didn’t want that for her, he didn’t want her to worry about him every minute that she couldn’t see him, but that’s how humans were wired in general, and Suz in particular. Lynx said she often felt that way about Striker, but her years of meditation practice helped her to better focus on other things. The last time he and Suz had had a fight about his job, Jack suggested she take up meditation. . . that hadn’t gone over very well.

He wondered if his trip to the hospital made that rope that she had braided fray. If she’d finally had enough and decided to cut the last of their ties. Done. Was she done with him? Was he seeing what he wanted to see and not the truth? He’d have to depend on Lynx. She, at least, had her head clear of pain meds.

“Man, after this satellite goes dark I’m headed to bed.” Nutsbe cut into Jack’s thoughts. “I’m locking my door. I’m going to sleep eight hours with my noise cancellation cans on my ears. And I’m going to hibernate. There would have to be an earthquake measuring at least six on the Richter scale to get my ass up.” He yawned noisily. “Here we go. I’ve got a green box on a female exiting the airport. Zooming in. Target acquired.” He tapped on the keyboard, and the image of Suz came up on the screen. She had her zombie bag strapped to her back. She had the phone in her hand.

“Look at that,” Lynx said. “She’s scanning the overhang roof along the door.” Can we get a split screen of CCTV?”

“I haven’t been able to hack into that system. But I see what you’re seeing. She’s trying to get her face on someone’s camera.”

They watched as she queued up in the taxi line. As she climbed into a cab, Nutsbe placed a green square over the car, and the computer program followed its satellite image through the city. Traffic was heavy with lunch time gridlock. Jack was impatient. He didn’t want the last image of her to be her car sitting in traffic. He wanted to see where she was going to go. The cab pulled up to a building in a better part of the city. Nutsbe tapped away as Suz got out and went in the front door.

“Che Legarto Student Hostel,” he said. “What do you want to do next?”

“Let’s hang out and watch until we lose visual. Mark who goes in and comes out. See if she goes anywhere else. Do we have anything new about boots on the ground there?”

Nutsbe tipped his wrist to check his watch. “We should have heard back by now. I’ll make a call.”

Jack glared at the satellite image. Nothing happened. They stared at the street in front of the hostel.

A medic knocked at the door, he came in and checked Jack’s vitals, made notes, and hung another IV bag.

Jack caught his arm. “Antibiotics only. You can give me a Tylenol or something for the pain. I’ve been fighting against your brew since you jammed that needle in my arm. I need to be functioning.”

The medic unhooked the IV. “Yes, sir, I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

“Oh, and hey, can you get those antibiotics in pill form? I need to be ambulatory. I can’t hang out here with a drip.”

“I’ll tell the doctor, and let him figure that out, sir.”

When the door shut, Lynx came over for a quiet powwow. “Ambulatory, why?”

“I’m heading down to Brazil.”

“What? No way in—” Lynx’s sentence was cut short when Jack squeezed her arm.

Nutsbe had hung up the phone. “Israel has a Mossad unit near Ciudad del Este, Paraguay. They’re sending an operative over the border. I gave them the address of the hostel. And I gave them your phone as their contact point, Jack. Lynx you’re the back up.”

“Israeli Special Ops? There must be some terror cell activity going on down there,” Lynx said.

Nutsbe typed and then read from his screen: “Ciudad del Este has long been known as a hotspot for terror activity. The TBA—tri-border area—of Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina has been a base for Islamic terrorists. From the TBA, terrorists have plotted and carried out attacks in the Americas. The groups that work out of the TBA include Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, and Al Jihad among others.”

“What attacks are we talking about here?” Jack asked.

Nutsbe ran his finger down the screen. “1992 bombing of the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires. The bombing of a Jewish community center a few months later.”

“1992. This information seems like it might be past its sell-by date.” Jack said. The idea that Suz might be caught up in a Middle Eastern terrorists’ cell sent his mind to places he couldn’t afford for it to go right now. He needed his focus front and center.

“Hmm 1995 Osama Bin Ladin was in Ciudad del Este. I’m not seeing fresh intel in that direction. They do have a huge Muslim population living in gated communities down there. Lots of Arabic speakers–I can work on getting into some intelligence reports that aren’t in the public domain. Just the presence of a Mossad unit tells me things are jumping down there, though.”

“One of their operatives is headed toward Suz?” Lynx asked.

“Affirmative,” Nutsbe said as his attention was drawn to the screen. A taxi drove up to the hostel and was parking.

The satellite imagery showed the front door swing open, and Suz walked out sans backpack. In her hand she carried the phone, but that was it.

Nutsbe put a green square on the taxi, and they followed it about twenty minutes through town. “Did you know your fiancée was CIA?”

“She’s not CIA.”

“I thought I saw your hand in her escape and protection of those children. I was laughing my way all the way through the Hound News report. And I was thinkin’ that was gonna be kinda shitty for her because there are gullible people who would believe those clowns. I watch them for entertainment value. Who knew Hound would get it right? I searched her in the data base. Is she black ops? What’s her real name?”

“She’s not CIA,” Lynx said.

“If you two say so.” He grinned as he went back to scanning his computer.

“Come on Suz, get there already. We’re going to lose you,” Jack muttered under his breath.

The cab pulled up to a sidewalk. A large white building loomed in the distance, past walkways and green expanses. It looked like a government building. Suz climbed out of the cab and smiled at the driver. With that same smile plastered across her face, she walked down the sidewalk. Once again, her gaze scanned slowly along the roof, then she reached for the door. The screen flickered and went black.

“So, you’re still contending this woman’s not a CIA operative?” Nutsbe asked, shaking his head as he stood.

“Not CIA,” Jack and Lynx said in unison.

“Sure.” He snorted. “And I’m a fairy godmother. I’m gonna grab some shut eye. Don’t call me, even if the whole world in imploding. I’ll leave the computer up.” He moved out of the door as the medic came in with a bottle of pills and handed them off to Jack.

Lynx frowned as Nutsbe shuffled out the door, then turned her gaze on Jack. “Okay. What do you want to do next?”