The Forgotten Soldier: A Pike Logan Thriller (15 page)

28

I
heard the door open behind me and saw Kurt enter, ripping down my little sign. He was followed by someone else.

He held out the computer printout, which read
ALEC STATION
, saying, “I don’t see the humor. No jokes on this one.”

Jennifer glared at me behind his back. When I’d hung the sign, she told me it was in poor taste, and, as usual, she was right. We’d been given our own top secret office to work our wonders searching for Guy, and I thought it had needed a name in case anyone came looking. Alec Station was the code name for the CIA’s counterterrorist cell that tracked Osama bin Laden before 9/11. Given our mission, I’d thought it was funny.

Sheepishly, I took the paper and said, “Got it, sir.”

He said, “Where do we stand?”

“Well, in the ‘confirm or deny his location’ department, we’ve done a lot of denying and very little confirming. He hasn’t been to either his home of record in Montana or his condo in DC, and hasn’t used anything associated with his identity. No checks, credit cards, E-ZPass toll use, car rentals, plane tickets, nothing.”

“And we’re sure he hasn’t stolen one of his alias documentation packages?”

“Yep. Positive. He’s moving, but we don’t know how or where. He’s just disappeared.”

The man behind him stepped out. When Kurt had entered, I naturally thought it was George Wolffe, his deputy, and now did a double take when I saw who it was. Nicholas Seacrest, looking lost, and hesitant to even be in the room.

I said, “Well, well. If it isn’t Veep.” He grinned halfheartedly at his callsign, letting Jennifer hug him and awkwardly kiss him on the cheek. He freed himself from her embrace and shuffled from foot to foot. I looked at Kurt and said, “So he’s a go? You’re giving me permission to take him and show him the ropes?”

Kurt said, “That’ll depend on whether you have any reason to use him or not.”

I’d returned to DC about six hours after Jennifer’s little award ceremony. Kurt had told me about the death in Key West and then dropped the bombshell that he wanted me to form a cell and find Guy. He still didn’t believe that Guy would perform an extrajudicial killing, but he was covering his bases. I could tell a part of him was scared. Really scared.

He told me whatever assets I wanted were mine, and I’d given him my requirements. He’d relented at Creed but had balked at the mention of Veep.

Nicholas Seacrest was a Combat Controller—Air Force Special Operations—who had been taken hostage and held for ransom by a terrorist group. My team had been the one that had rescued him, and then he’d been instrumental in helping us rescue another hostage who meant a great deal to both me and Kurt. He’d performed very well under pressure, both in captivity and out, and when it was over, I’d subtly recruited him for the Taskforce, not saying anything to Kurt and never thinking he’d bite.

He had, and the Oversight Council had gone ballistic—because he had a little bit of a pedigree. He was the vice president’s son. Which is why he was slapped with the callsign Veep.

After some wrangling, he was allowed into Assessment and
Selection, which he passed with flying colors, something I’d never doubted he would do, because I’m a scary judge of talent. Just ask Jennifer. He was now in the training pipeline, learning all sorts of Jason Bourne tradecraft to survive as an Operator in the Taskforce. It had been sort of an unspoken agreement that he was coming to my team when he finished his training, but because of this mission, I’d asked to pull him early. Kurt had drawn the line at that, or so I’d thought.

A day ago, Kurt had said, “No way. He’s not even on probation status. He has to finish training first, then go through all the alias documentation procedures, and still has to deploy for his check ride on an orientation mission before even walking across the hall to a team. Three or four months easily.”

I said, “Sir, one of the reasons you gave me this was because Johnny was too close to Guy. That cuts both ways. He couldn’t track Guy on the ground because Guy knows every one of his team members on sight. The same goes for me.”

Kurt said, “Don’t build this up into an Omega mission. All I want you to do is talk to him. Bring him back to the Taskforce.”

“I get that, but I might have to track him to do it. Find him on the ground and determine his state of mind. We’re not talking about a high school kid playing hooky. He failed to show up at his own brother’s memorial. Something’s not right, and you know it. I’m not going to run up to him at a bar and slap him on the back the first chance I get. I want to observe him first, and I need a clean team to do that.”

“He doesn’t know Jennifer. He hasn’t met her, has he?”

“No. I’ve got both Brett and Jennifer, who are clean, as far as I know. Knuckles is no good, but he’ll help when I approach him. I want to go two on one for that. But I need at least one more. Nick is squeaky clean, and he’s worked with me before. I don’t want someone from another team who I don’t know.”

“Pike, I’m having a hard enough time just keeping him in training. The Council only agreed to let him attend the course. They still
haven’t given permission for him to go operational. I’m taking it one step at a time, and broaching this now might mean he’s
never
coming to your team.”

“What’s Hannister saying about it?”

Philip Hannister was the vice president, and an Oversight Council member. While in the Air Force, Nicholas had taken his mother’s maiden name of Seacrest as a security precaution.

“He’s good, from what I can see. He’s not super comfortable with his son coming here, but it’s no worse than he was when Nick was in white SOF to begin with. He’s okay as a father. He’s never fought what his son wanted. It’s the professional connection that’s got the Council concerned.”

“Go talk to Hannister. Him and the president. You can get them alone and get concurrence. When you first gave me this mission, you talked about the changes coming to the Taskforce because of the presidential election. Start planning for it. Hannister is running and very well might win. What better way to set the tone for the Taskforce under a new administration than having the son of the president inside it?”

Kurt had raised an eyebrow and said, “I thought you hated the politics of the Oversight Council? Never want to get your hands dirty with the crap I have to deal with. That whole ‘all I want to do is operate’ thing is bullshit, huh?”

I’d smiled. “No, I do hate it. But that doesn’t mean I don’t understand it. All I want to do is operate.”

29

E
ven after that conversation, I thought my idea had maybe a fifty-fifty chance of coming to fruition, but Kurt asking me if I had information worthy of employing the vice president’s son could mean only one thing.

Nick looked slightly more relaxed after Jennifer pecked him on the cheek. I understood how he felt, given he was still in training. It didn’t matter how big a badass you thought you were, when you came into the Taskforce for the first time, you couldn’t help but feel somewhat inadequate. Especially if the commander of the entire organization pulled you from training. Nick probably thought he was getting fired.

I said, “Oh, I’ll use him, all right. It looks like the conversation with Pop went okay.”

“Yeah,” Kurt said. “Let’s just say the Council is a little concerned about Guy. You know pigs have started flying when they take
your
advice. Tell me you’ve got something beyond knowing he’s not in Montana. Some magical Pike thread.”

“Not yet, but I will. He’s not using any special tools, which means he’s relegated to commercial stuff. Still pretty significant, and I’ve got Creed trying to locate what apps he’d use, what technology he’d focus on to track a guy. There are a ton of useless ‘catch my wife cheating’ apps, but there are a few that are pretty damn devious, and that’s where he’ll gravitate. That is, if he’s
really
on the hunt.”

Kurt said, “Pike, Johnny called today. His team deployed on schedule, but he’s missing one piece of kit. A Gremlin. He did a predeployment inventory, and it was there. Now it’s not.”

The Gremlin was a small device the size of an iPad mini, with a folding antenna and a plastic case on the back the size of a cigarette pack. Its sole purpose was to remotely slave a cell phone for the introduction of malware. If you knew the IMSI or IMEI of a targeted phone, you could trick the phone into talking with the device, and it would implant any program you wanted—with certain caveats based on the cell network and security settings of the phone. It being missing wasn’t a good sign.

I said, “Hey, sir, let’s not go on a witch hunt here. Maybe it’s up in the team room. We can’t assume that Guy took it.”

Deep inside, I didn’t want to believe what Kurt was saying. I didn’t want to face the reality.

Kurt said, “Pike, you remember what you were like? Back in the bad days? After your family?”

Hearing an echo of what I’d said earlier, I caught Jennifer’s eye and said, “Yes.”

“Could you do this? Would you be capable?”

I said nothing for a moment. He said, “Pike?”

I looked at him and said, “Yeah. Yeah, I could do it. If it meant finding the murderer of my family, I’d have done it without looking back. But Guy isn’t me. This is a different situation. My family was killed in the United States, not on a combat patrol. And . . . I was . . . a little screwed up. This has nothing to do with me.”

Kurt took a breath, assimilating what I said, then dropped the hammer. “It has everything to do with you. Sorry, but you set the precedent. President Warren is talking about shutting down the Taskforce. Saying that our operational parameters are so far outside the law, we’ve inculcated a bunch of pirates. Men who don’t know where
the line is anymore, because we removed the line for them. And you’re case study number one.”

“What the hell? Seriously? I lost my way, but don’t put this on me. My family was murdered in the United States. His was killed in combat. Guy is
not
my fault.”

“Nobody’s saying that. But they’re looking at the comparison. At one time, you were the closest thing to bringing us down. And now, you’re the closest thing to preventing that.”

I sighed and said, “What do you want from me?”

“I want him home. I want him back in the fold.”

I heard the words, but they didn’t really express what he desired. What the end state could be. I said, “And if I can’t do that? If I can’t get him back in the fold? What do you want?”

He dodged the question. “What do you have to work with?”

I said, “Creed?”

The computer geek turned around, looking scared, and said, “We don’t really have anything. I’m collating everything he could use, but we don’t have usernames or accounts. We’re fishing.”

Nicholas Seacrest shuffled a bit, looking hesitant, then finally opened his mouth. “Maybe we’re looking in the wrong place. Don’t try to find specific surveillance apps. Look for apps everybody uses.”

I said, “Like what?”

“Facebook, Instagram, that kind of thing. If he’s using it mobile, we can get his location.”

He saw us staring at him like a church group hearing rap music. He said, “What? You guys don’t use Instagram? Snapchat?”

Nick was a full ten years younger than anyone else on my team. I said, “No. We don’t. And neither will you in about a month. If you think Guy George is posting on Instagram, you’ve proven me wrong in my choice of teammates. Welcome to the real clandestine world, Air Force.”

He sank back against a wall, looking like he wanted to crawl through it to the skull-crushing training he’d left, and Jennifer sidled up to me, pinching my arm, telling me without speaking that I was being too harsh. She’d lived in the Taskforce he-man world, getting beat up just like I was doing to Nick, and she didn’t like it. I glanced at her and she whispered, “Calm down, commando. You might not be the smartest in the room.”

I gave her a small grin, pulling back a couple of gears, because she
was
the smartest person in the room. But I wasn’t done with Nick. I said, “Okay, okay, start over, Veep. He’s not using social media, but he might be using something we can find. What else you got in your hipster tool kit?”

Nick looked at me like I was just baiting him for another insult. I said, “Cat got your tongue? You pining away for Kylie? Wishing you could just curl up in bed with her and get away from the mean people?”

Kylie was Kurt’s niece, and the one I had been tracking to find when I rescued Nick. The one I’d really wanted to save. At the time, I couldn’t have given a shit about him, but he’d ended up being pretty solid under fire, and it turned out he cared about Kylie as much as I did. In a little different way, of course.

Nick scowled, his face going crimson. Jennifer hissed, “Do you think that’s helping?”

I said, “I want to know what Veep’s got beyond just another face that Guy doesn’t recognize. You have anything at all to contribute?”

Yeah, I was being an ass, but it was for a reason. I wanted to determine if what I’d seen before was real. If he could take the pressure he was under and produce. Even if that production would be nothing more than snapping back at me. I needed to see if he had heart.

I glanced at Jennifer, telling her to back off on supporting him. Letting her know she wasn’t doing him any favors. She got it. She’d been there before, and understood.

Nick glanced at Kurt, then said to me, “Sorry, Granddad. I didn’t know I had to spell it out. He’s got a digital trail, just like you do. That didn’t start with my generation. You ever bought anything on Amazon?”

I nodded, telling him to continue. He gained courage and said, “I promise he has a trail under his real name, and there will be a crossover with whatever name he’s using now. Maybe he doesn’t use social media—Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram—but he’s using something. Uber, Spotify, something like that. He can stay away from what you’re looking for, but he’s using something you’re not seeking. I promise.”

When I didn’t respond, he rolled his eyes and said, “Jesus, I’m not saying he’s blabbing on Yik Yak, but he’s using something.”

I said, “What the hell is Yik Yak?”

Before he could answer, Kurt snapped his fingers and said, “Wait a minute. He might have a point.”

He opened the door and snagged the first person he saw, saying, “Get me George Wolffe. Right now.”

I said, “What do you have?”

“Nothing yet. But maybe something. George sat with Guy after our meeting, and he said something about a playlist.”

George entered within seconds, saying, “What’s up? I’m dealing with some serious blowback from the North Korea thing you handed me. Am I here to take Creed back? I could use him.”

Kurt said, “No such luck. You remember when you were talking to Guy George after our meeting? He had earbuds in and ignored you?”

Wolffe looked confused, saying, “Yeah? He was listening to a Pandora station his brother had created.”

Kurt said, “His brother? He was listening on his brother’s account? You sure about that?”

“Yes, I think so. He talked about how his brother had created it, and it was the only thing he had left from him. Why?”

I smiled at Nick and said, “You’ll do.”