The Senator: A Blake Jordan Thriller (12 page)

I flipped the legal pad around and showed it to Jami. “I got the address,” I told her and she smiled. It was a huge relief to know that I finally had Jim Keller’s location. I walked back into the next room and helped Burnett stand up, then I removed the handcuffs.

“We’re going to go now,” I heard Jami tell Maggie in the kitchen.

“Why do you have to go?”

“We just do, sweetie,” Jami answered.

“Do you have a safe place to go? Somewhere you and your daughter can stay until we can take this guy down?” I asked.

“Do you think he might come here?” I nodded.

“He was able to figure out that Mitchell knew where he was keeping the senator. I don’t know what his background is, but he was able to track him down and take him out. He seems more than capable to find and silence anyone he wants.” Burnett thought for a second.

“Her mom’s not in the picture. We can stay at my friend’s place for a while.” Burnett picked up his daughter and held her with his left arm. Then he did something unexpected. He extended his right hand. “Please get him,” he said. I reached my hand out to join his.

“Count on it,” I said, and Jami and I walked out, got into my car, and drove off.

“We’ll go back to DDC, stock up at the arsenal, then we’ll head out with a tactical team,” I said as I saw my cell phone that I had set down light up on its own for no reason at all. I thought that was strange and as I picked it up and stared, trying to figure out why it had lit up, the phone started to ring.

“Blake?” my dad asked after I picked up.

“Hey, I got the address. I know Jim’s location.” My dad was excited but worried about me.

“Blake, you can’t do this alone, you’re going to get yourself killed.”

“I won’t go in alone. My partner’s with me and we’ll have backup. We need to move now.” After I said those words, the call dropped. “Dad?” I said but heard no response. I looked at my phone and saw that it had shut down by itself. I kept driving while it restarted and when it did, I saw that the battery was almost completely drained. I thought that was strange because I had a full charge right before I left for Burnett’s.

That’s when I realized what was going on. I knew what signs to look for and the odd behavior was a dead giveaway. “My cell phone’s being monitored,” I said to Jami.

“What?” Jami pulled out her phone and saw that she had a text message. “Morgan texted me,” she said as she slid her thumb over the message to read it. “Shapiro. That’s all it says. What does that mean?” I pulled the car over to the side of the road and she handed her phone to me.

“Roger Shapiro. He’s the CIA Regional Director for the Midwest. Morgan’s trying to warn us.” Jami looked confused. She was still too new to the agency to understand the politics and how things worked there.

“Warn us about what?” she asked as I handed the phone back to her.

“We can’t go back to DDC. Shapiro’s there to remove me from my position as special agent in charge because of the Keller screw up.”

“Is that all he’d do to you?”

“After everything I’ve done today to get answers, probably not.” I turned my phone off and removed the battery. I told Jami to do the same. I wasn’t sure who was trying to listen to my phone conversations and track my movements or why.
Was it the kidnapper? The FBI? Or my own agency? I wasn’t sure but knew that I didn’t have time to figure it out because the clock was ticking.
“We’re going to have to go straight to the senator’s location.”

I found the piece of paper with the address on it that I had ripped out of Burnett’s legal pad and I accessed the car’s navigation system and typed in the address. I knew that the FBI and DDC could track my government-issued car, but they couldn’t track the GPS. We could stay one step ahead of them, but it would be a very small step, and there wouldn’t be room for any mistakes. And we’d have to move fast.

“We won’t have much time after we get there before the FBI or DDC shows up if they’re tracking us. Under five minutes,” I said. I took Harlem Avenue south and drove faster than I ever have in my life.

A few minutes after Victor Perez ran after the teenager, the senator heard him return to the warehouse.
Did he escape? Or did the kidnapper kill him?
Jim Keller prayed that the kid had somehow made it out of there and was on his way to find help. Keller wasn’t sure where he was but decided that he was being held somewhere in south Chicago. When he was elected to the senate, he had traveled to every county in the state so he knew that there were only a handful of rundown industrial areas. Almost all of them were on the south side. He figured that he was either in the Harlem or West Pullman industrial park.

If he was right, then the kid wouldn’t have to run far to find help. Both were next to residential areas. And the kid had told him that he and his friends came to that warehouse when they skipped school, so as long as he got away, he’d be able to call the authorities in no time. But not if the kidnapper had killed him first.

When the kidnapper appeared, he was holding an object in his hand that from where Keller sat, looked like a police officer’s club.
Was this guy an ex-cop? Or maybe ex-military?
Keller thought to himself. He could see that the kidnapper was dripping with sweat and breathing heavily. He was absolutely livid and as he held onto the club with one hand, he tapped it into the open palm of his other hand before he spoke.

“What did you think you were going to accomplish, Mr. Keller? Did you think you’d be able to get out of here that easily?” the man asked as Jim Keller looked away, unsure if this meant that the kid got away or not. “Tell me who that was and how you got him to come here,” he said and Keller realized that the kidnapper didn’t know that the boy had been in the warehouse the whole time, watching everything that had happened from the moment Keller had arrived. “Tell me now!” the man yelled and Keller winced.

“It doesn’t matter who he is, what matters is that right now he’s calling the authorities. They’ll be here any minute and your insane plan, whatever it is you’re trying to do here, will be over,” Keller said.

“You’re gonna have to pay for that,” the kidnapper said and started walking toward the senator who realized that he was about to receive another beating from the man holding the club. Victor Perez stopped tapping the club on his palm and held it at his side. Keller looked up as the man slowly approached and realized that something was different, something he hadn’t noticed before now.

The kidnapper wasn’t wearing his mask.

Beams of light shot across the room from the rising sun, entering through the row of small windows that lined the top of the wall that Keller had his back up against. The kidnapper cut through the light as he walked closer and when he did, one of the beams lit his face. Jim Keller’s eyes grew wide as this happened.

“You’ve left me no choice,” the man said as he raised the club above his head and Jim Keller braced himself for the beating. The afterimage from the bright light on the kidnapper’s face stayed vivid and present in Keller’s mind as the man beat him violently, much like the headlights of an oncoming car that can be seen by closing the eyes long after the car has passed. The image troubled Keller.

As the club repeatedly struck the senator’s body, he thought of the many people he had met over the years in the senate and the many faces he had seen over the last year while on the presidential campaign trail. Although his eyes were now closed, the after-image stayed burned in his mind.
He recognized the face
.

The club struck Keller’s back and he laid down, hands still cuffed to the metal pipe. One final blow was delivered to Keller and he felt his ribs crack before the man turned his back to the senator and walked away. As he did, Keller made the connection he was looking for.
He knew exactly who the kidnapper was.

I sped through the streets of the west Chicago neighborhoods as carefully as I could. It was a direct shot south from Burnett’s house to the warehouse according to the SUV’s GPS. We were only about eight miles away but the traffic on Harlem became congested the closer we got to our destination. I knew we were close to Midway, the smaller of the two airports in Chicago. I figured the proximity to the airport had a lot to do with the traffic and I knew that it would only get worse. At one point we came to a complete stop.

“Maybe we should have taken Route 171 instead,” I said, getting frustrated at the traffic. Jami disagreed.

“It would have taken just as long if not longer,” she said. Part of my frustration was that this was unofficial business and because I wasn’t sure who may or may not be tracking us, I didn’t want to turn my police lights or siren on. So we dealt with the airport and rush hour traffic just like everybody else on the road.

“We’re fine, Blake. We’re close already, we’ll be there in just a few minutes,” Jami said. I felt a little better and noticed that she had a calming effect on me. More than once over the last twelve hours she had kept me from doing something I would have regretted. Part of me wished that I was working this operation alone but I was glad to have her on my side.
The voice of reason
, I thought to myself.

As we inched our way down Harlem, I thought about everything that had happened since last night and all of the mistakes that I had made. For being a by-the-book kind of guy, I sure had broken a lot of laws. But this was different. This was personal. My mentor, my dad’s best friend, and a man who was headed for the presidency was kidnapped on my watch. I wasn’t going to stand by and let anyone else clean up my mess.

This was on me and it was up to me to make this right. I didn’t care what would happen to me when this was all over. I was pretty sure that no matter the outcome, even if I lived through the rescue attempt, I’d have a hard time keeping my job.

But I also worried about Jami and how her being involved in all of this would likely ruin her career, too.

And that bothered me. I figured she was sticking around and going against DDC orders because she had let Keller get taken on her watch. But I knew that it would have happened no matter who had been given the assignment, including me. I knew that Jami was sitting in the car with me trying to make things right because that was just the kind of person that she was.

“You were great back there,” I said when we got delayed by another light.

“What?” I smiled and put my hand back on the steering wheel as the light turned green.

“With the girl. Maggie. You’re a natural with kids. If you hadn’t been there, I’m not sure Burnett would have turned over the address. We make a good team.”

“We do make a good team.” Jami said, smiling back at me before turning her head to look out the passenger window. A minute or two passed before she spoke again.

“Before Derek and I split up, one of our biggest fights was over having kids. I guess we should have talked about it more before we got married. Anyway, I wanted to start a family. He wanted to focus on our careers. He told me with my line of work, I’d never be able to do both, have a family and have the career. Maybe he was right,” she said before looking back at me and smiling again before changing the subject.

“So what’s the plan when we get there?”

“I’m working on it,” I said.

The truth was that I didn’t have much of a plan. We got a break by finding Burnett before the FBI could. We got the address and as far as I knew, nobody else other than Burnett knew where the senator was. But we were off the grid. Based on Morgan’s text to Jami, I knew that Roger Shapiro had taken over DDC operations. And based on what I knew about the guy, he wouldn’t stop until he had me.

“We’re here,” I said as we pulled into the Harlem Industrial Park. I had noticed a few minutes earlier that the sky was turning dark. The sun that had been shining brightly was now hiding behind large clouds that looked like they would break open at any moment. Jami and I heard the rumble of thunder as we slowly drove by the many abandoned buildings and parked a block away at New England Avenue and 62
nd
street.

We parked far enough away from the warehouse on Sayre Avenue where we wouldn’t be spotted or heard but close enough where we’d be able to easily extract the senator from the building and get him in the vehicle to transport him out of the area. I decided that if the mission was successful, I’d take Keller to DDC to have a medic take a look at him and I’d turn myself in. I couldn’t risk taking him to a general hospital without knowing what was going on or why he had been kidnapped. DDC was more than capable of taking care of the senator until we could figure out what was really going on.

I also wanted to park the car far enough away where if the FBI and DDC really were following us, they wouldn’t know immediately what building we were in. If they were using a drone, it wouldn’t matter. They’d know exactly where we were. But I still needed to do everything I could to buy as much time as possible since Jami and I had no idea what we were going to be dealing with in just a few minutes.

“Follow me in,” I said as I turned the ignition off and held the keys in my hand. “We’ll approach from the east. If there are two ways in, then I’ll take the front and you take the back. If not, then I’ll lead and you provide cover.” Jami was busy loading a clip into her Glock 17 and I reached for my 22. She liked using the 17, it had less recoil and better control for her small hands but required several hits to take a man down due to the smaller size of the bullets.

“Got it,” she said as I saw her demeanor shift. “I’m ready.”

A streak of lightening flashed across the dark sky. It looked like evening instead of midmorning. We felt the thunder from the lightning bolt that struck somewhere close to us as we sat in the car getting ready. The reverberations lasted for about ten seconds and grabbed our attention like a dramatic effect to remind us of the seriousness of the moment. This was it. We were about to rescue Senator Jim Keller.

“We need to move,” I said and opened my car door and Jami followed suit. With our weapons drawn, we jogged west on 62
nd
past two large warehouses on both sides of the street that took up the entire length of the block. I wondered how large the warehouse was where Keller was being held and how we were going to pull this off all by ourselves. As we approached Sayre, the building we needed to enter came into view.

I crouched down and Jami did the same. I pointed to the building at the end of the street. “There’s a door to the right of the bay, I’ll take that and you go around to the right of the building and see if there’s another way in.” Just then the sky opened up and heavy rain started to fall.

“Don’t wait for me, we’ll either meet up inside or I’ll come back around and will follow you,” Jami yelled. The rain was loud and made it hard for us to hear each other. I thought that the sound might help us enter the building without being heard.

I looked behind us to make sure we weren’t being followed. There was nobody there. Not yet, anyway.

We stood back up and started jogging toward the building. I went straight to the door and Jami split off and ran down Sayre Avenue. I saw her climb and jump over a fence to get to the back of the building. I tried the door but it was locked. I couldn’t kick it in because it opened from the inside. I walked over to the bay door and saw a padlock on it. I tried pulling it up anyway and it didn’t budge. I thought that it must have been locked from the inside as well. I was going to have to shoot the door’s lock like I did earlier.

As I stood against the building in between the bay door and the large, rusty metal door preparing myself for the fallout from the noise my weapon would make that the rain would not be able to hide, I noticed movement in the distance, far down 62
nd
street. I saw a police car park, followed by two black SUVs that looked exactly like mine.
They’re here
, I thought, and I turned around and fired three shots at the lock.