The Alberta Connection (8 page)

Ryce was very anxious about Monday morning.
Karen indicated at lunch on Saturday that numerous applications to
the Joint Border Task Force had been submitted. With a slight
smile, she had clarified the statement.

“I think lots of people want to get away from
Doug.”

With so few successes, John had asked Doug to
expand his search to include those who had been arrested on
Trans-Canada 1. So far, Doug had found no connections between the
Canadian participants and their American sources. There were not
even connections between the Canadian members of the groups.

Doug was quick to admit not having names for
the three at the cabin made connecting them to anyone significantly
difficult.

Mark looked across the room. “You, my dear
sir, are very perspicuous.”

When Tanya looked at Ryce, he laughed and
told her that Mark had just told Doug he had an amazing grasp of
the obvious.

This was a perfect blind operation. None of
the participants had any common connections. If anyone was picked
up, they could not provide any information. Had the groups been put
together for the single purpose of running the corridor? They
picked up the packages delivered from Montana, drove across Canada,
and then disappeared back into the shadows. How they got the
packages and who they gave them to were the million dollar
questions.

Before Ryce and Tanya left the chow hall,
John requested Ryce follow him to the chow hall computer center.
John closed the door as soon as Ryce walked into the room.

“I have gotten some excellent reports of how
you and Tanya are progressing. What I am going to tell you now does
not leave this room.

“When you leave here in four months or maybe
sooner, you will likely be the new Director of the Joint Border
Task Force, US branch. Remember, these are just rumors I am
hearing, but my sources are good. They are so good, I would put
some money on it in a Las Vegas casino.”

John returned to the family table. Ryce sat
in shock for several minutes, trying to absorb the
conversation.

Tanya walked into the room and asked, “What
are you looking so dazed about?”

Ryce just shook his head. “Can’t tell you,
yet.”

Ryce awoke before his alarm clock broke the
silence. He watched the digits slowly creep upward. Three seconds
before the alarm was scheduled to go off, Ryce pressed the button,
and then snuggled back into bed. For some reason, the alarm clock
did not get the message. Something was shattering his morning. Ryce
realized the clamor of his cell phone had replaced his alarm clock.
He picked up his cell phone.

“This is Ryce.”

“Ryce, this is Matt. I know it is excessively
early for the phone to ring, but the four men who were executed
were discovered this morning in the lake near the cabin. The bodies
were not weighed down. Just popped out of the water. Scared the
hell out of the Park Service employees who were cleaning the
campground. I just wanted to let you know. Tell Tanya hi for
me.”

Ryce’s cell phone went dead. He looked over
at Tanya, who had been sleeping when Ryce’s cell phone had alerted
him he had a call. She was no longer sleeping.

“Who was that? Any chance I can disable your
cell phone? Or can you

just change the ringtone?”

Ryce pulled Tanya close, and kissed her.

“The ringtone is some angry chickens. It
reflects how I feel when the cell phone wakes me up on Saturday
morning. I used to have Darth Vader on it. I have no idea how to
get more ringtones. I think those ringtones were ones you loaded
onto my cell phone.”

He chuckled. “So I think you are
responsible.”

Ryce smiled as he slid off the bed, walked in
the bathroom, dropped his clothes into the hamper, and opened the
shower door. He thought he heard the shower door open and close
while he was rinsing the shampoo out of his hair. He tensed in
anticipation of the water getting hotter. Instead of hotter water,
he felt arms encircle his waist.

“OK, big boy, what do you have planned for
today?”

Ryce completed rinsing his hair and then
said, “O2 will be over around 10:00 AM. John is taking his boat out
on the lake, and we have been invited to ride along. O2 said John
wants a shot at some more fishing points.”

John did not win any fishing points. Marge
caught the first fish, which was also the largest. Ramona caught
the most. As soon as the boat docked, Marge added her numbers to
the tally board mounted prominently on the fence. She was ten
points ahead of Ramona, who was five ahead of John.

When Ryce and Tanya returned to the
apartment, he checked his email. Karen had sent the interview
schedule for Monday morning. The first interview was after lunch.
He would have all morning to study the applicants’ files.

Chapter 10

Ryce and Tanya
arrived thirty minutes early on Monday morning. Today was
officially the first day of the Joint Border Task Force research
team. Ryce had the interview schedule, but no personnel files to
which he could refer, and no applications or resumes. He smiled. He
was the blind interviewer.

An hour after he arrived in his office, a
service cart stacked high with folders was brought in. When the
folders were unloaded on Ryce’s desk, they created two stacks each
more than a foot tall. Three typewritten pages were clipped to the
top folder.

Ryce picked up the sheets. There were 117
applicants. Karen had signed the note with, “
Here’s everyone
from Pendergast Holdings and the District who applied. At least the
ones John allowed to apply. Doug tried twice. Once with John, and
once with Marge. Have fun. Karen
”

Ryce checked the system clock on his laptop.
His first interview was in four hours. He pulled the first five
folders off the stack labeled “Marge’s Recommendations,” walked to
Tanya’s office and handed them to her.

“Karen left an interview schedule on the
stack of applicants. She has some notes on the names that John,
Marge, and Doug have suggested we take a good look at. These
folders are on Marge’s recommended list. I want you to look at them
and give me your impression. I am looking at five recommendations
from John. I will be in my office.”

Ryce turned and walked back to his office. As
he picked up a folder, he did a quick tabulation. At this rate,
just checking the applications would take four hours.

Tanya returned to Ryce’s office at 9:15 AM
with her pile of folders. “I put a yellow sticky note on the two I
like.”

Ryce smiled and handed her the next set of
five folders.

The last interview was finished late
Wednesday. Eighteen applicants had passed. One of those who was
asked to join the JBTF-US was Lynette, one of Mark’s assistants.
She had made it clear to Ryce it was time to move on. She had
learned everything she could from Mark.

During the family dinner, Marge asked if
Lynette had passed the interview. Everyone at the table turned to
look at Ryce. Ryce chuckled.

“Yes, she did.”

John laughed. “That is going to put a kink in
Mark’s production. I think his two assistants are doing three times
as much work as he.”

The first project on Thursday morning was to
assign the new team members to work groups. Tanya was given six
members for her group. Because Marge, John, Doug, and Mark had
recommended Lynette, she was given a team to lead with five agents.
Ryce took the remaining six agents. Each group was given an office
suite and one of the three occupants of the cabin as a research
assignment.

As soon as Ryce handed out the assignments,
he started toward his office, followed by Tanya.

“OK, how are we going to do the research with
eighteen people but only four spare laptops? And I thought we
couldn’t find anything on the three at the cabin.

Ryce smiled. “Doug told me to give him a call
with the number we have hired. We did not find anything, but maybe
they can. It took me all day to get through three state driver’s
license databases. We have eighteen people. That is less than three
states per agent. I have already gone through Alabama, Alaska, and
Arizona. Print out a list of the states and wander through the work
centers.”

Doug was waiting for Ryce’s telephone call.
Within thirty minutes, two technicians wheeled two service carts
into Suite 425. An hour later, all of Ryce’s agents were busy with
their new laptops.

Mark returned to the JBTF offices twice on
Friday. The first time was to see if Ryce needed anything, and the
second, to say goodbye to Lynette.

Ryce overheard part of the conversation Mark
had with Lynette. When he asked if she would be interested in
coming back, she had smiled.

“I don’t think you can match what Ryce
offered me.”

Ryce sat at his desk for several minutes
wondering what Lynette had been offered. He had her personnel file
in hand when she was hired and had offered nothing more than what
was in the file. He stood and walked into Tanya’s office.

After he recounted the conversation, Tanya
started giggling.

“She was just jerking his chain. There is a
lot more in the relationship than meets the eye.”

AP was waiting in Ryce’s office when Ryce
walked through the door. AP looked up and smiled.

“I have two additional mobile whiteboards for
each office suite on the way over. If you can take another fifty
whiteboards, I will be able to see the back wall of my storage
room.”

Ryce was happy someone was reading his mind.
The whiteboards provided an easy way to keep track of the
information they had discovered. However, when the teams departed
at 5:00 PM, all of the whiteboards were empty.

Chapter 11

The alarm clock on
the table started buzzing at 5:00 AM. Ryce looked over at Tanya,
smiled, and then headed for the bathroom. He adjusted the water in
the shower and smiled again when he heard the shower door open.Ryce
and Tanya arrived at Suite 425 at 6:30 AM. Ryce walked through the
offices and found almost half of his team had arrived and were
busily working on their laptops. By 7:00 AM, all of his agents were
busy.

At 7:30 AM, Ryce returned to his office to
compose an email to Doug. Almost all of the state driver’s license
databases had been accessed without success. The three men at the
cabin continued to be unanswered questions. Mark had mentioned John
had possible access to the military service record databases. Did
Doug have any news on that front?

Ryce wandered through the work centers after
sending his email. He was getting jittery. The three most important
research projects of the Joint Border Task Force were stalled.

Ryce decided a few hugs from the most
significant woman in his life would likely cheer him up. However,
after the third long kiss, he realized he should return to his
office before he locked her office door.

As Ryce returned to his office, he heard
voices coming from the conference room. Reversing his course, Ryce
walked into the conference room. Sitting with Doug were a man and a
woman with FBI nametags. Doug looked up from the open laptop in
front of him.

“John asked me to ask you if you’d include
these two FBI agents in the JBTF.”

The male guest stood and shook Ryce’s hand.
“My name is Roger Twills. The lady on my right is Dylene Kent.”

Dylene stood and shook Ryce’s hand.

Ryce asked if they could be split up and
suggested Roger join Lynette’s team, while Dylene would join Ryce’s
team. Doug agreed with the assignments.

Ryce accompanied the two added agents to
their new work centers, introduced them, and then returned to the
conference room. He needed some answers from Doug, and he needed
them now.

When Ryce walked back into the conference
room, Doug held up both hands. Ryce pulled an invisible pistol out
of his pocket and shot him. Doug laughed and then confirmed he had
received Ryce’s email, but was still waiting for an answer from
John.

As Ryce reported the lack of information on
the three at the cabin, he had a thought.

“I have the license plate numbers on both
vehicles at the cabin. I am sure we have access to motor vehicle
licensing, but I have been using only the photo recognition
software.”

Ryce could hear Doug chuckling. “I think we
can find something. I’ll send Mark over with a flash drive.”

Mark must have been close. He arrived in
Ryce’s office within five minutes and handed Ryce a flash
drive.

“The program on that drive will get you into
every DMV in every state. John doesn’t want this program getting
any legs. Use it only under your personal supervision, or better
yet, only you or Tanya. You got any questions?”

Ryce shook his head “no,” and then found a
USB port on his laptop. After loading the program, he checked the
pictures he had taken of the license plates. When he enlarged both
pictures, he was able to see where each had been registered and
selected those states for his research.

Ryce plugged the information from the license
plate on the Dodge into the program. It was from Wyoming. After he
pressed enter, the program thought for a few moments and then
reported that the tags had been expired for five years.

Ryce studied the picture of the license plate
again. According to the tags, the plate had four more months before
the expiration date. Ryce checked the serial number on the tags.
The tag serial number did not belong to the license plate. Ryce
enlarged the tag and carefully inspected it. The special glue on
the tags made removal from a plate extremely difficult. The job
done on this plate was remarkably good. It belonged on a VW Beetle
that had been totaled in a collision six years earlier. Ryce began
to get the feeling that this particular research project was not
going to turn up anything reliable or accurate.