The Senator: A Blake Jordan Thriller (6 page)

I looked to my left, back at the rows of monitors, and watched the one Jami was pointing at. The young man working the control board turned his head and saw what we were seeing. He noticed that the men entering the arena were wearing black bulletproof vests with the initials
FBI
in the center. I realized that calling for DDC backup would be pointless. The FBI was here to try and take control of the situation.

“Show me the area just outside the exit where the killer would have walked out, maybe we can get a better shot of the guy’s face” I instructed the man.

“Wait,” he responded. “If they’re FBI, who are you?” We were running out of time.

“Do it!” I yelled at the man.

“I’m not doing anything until I talk to the FBI.”

“They’re off camera,” Jami said, letting me know that she didn’t have eyes on the agents any longer. I pulled my Glock 22 and cocked it. “Blake?” Jami asked, expressing her dismay in how I was handling the situation. I was frustrated that this punk kid stood between us and a clue we desperately needed to find the senator.

“Son, I believe the man we just saw kill two of my agents was carrying the body of Senator Jim Keller in that case that he was pulling behind him. Every second counts and right now, I need you to show me the footage of the exit so we can figure out who did this and rescue the senator.
Do it now
.”

My gun was still in my hand and I pointed it at the floor as I watched the man work the control board again. He switched the view to the camera just outside of the exit and we saw a live feed of additional agents walking in and stepping over the bodies of McGovern and Flynn. “Rewind the tape. Hurry,” I said.

“Blake!” Jami yelled and before I could take my eyes off the video I heard a voice behind me.

“Drop your weapon!”

I bent down and laid my gun on the floor and put my hands behind my head and turned around.

“My name is Blake Jordan, DDC Chicago special agent in charge.” I nodded at Jami. “This is Agent Davis.” I slowly reached into an inside pocket of my jacket with my right hand, leaving my left hand behind my head. I pulled out my badge and flashed it at the man pointing a gun at my chest. Jami did the same.

His eyes looked the two of us over before lowering his weapon. Two other men outside of the room relaxed and holstered theirs as well. “I’m Agent Bill Landry, FBI. Why are you here?” he asked, looking around the room.

“Agent Davis and I were here to work security for Keller.” Landry’s eyes returned to me.

“Well you did a damn fine job, didn’t you?” I paused before continuing.

“We were looking for a clue to find his kidnapper. The guy who killed two of my men.” Landry’s tone changed from sarcastic to understanding.

“And you?” he said to the man running the control board.

“This guy pulled a gun on me,” he said, pointing to me.

“I told him I needed to see what happened. He wasn’t cooperating. We got him to replay footage of the kidnapper shooting my men dead… but, we couldn’t get a clear shot of his face.”

“Come with me, both of you,” Landry said. Jami and I glanced at each other as we followed him out. He asked one of the agents waiting in the hallway to follow us. Landry walked us down to a conference room and stopped before turning around to address us again. “This is our jurisdiction. We’ll take it from here.”

“I don’t think so, this is my operation,” I responded.

“Operation?” Landry said. “You have two dead agents and the nominee for President of the United States that
you were supposed to be protecting
has been kidnapped. On your watch,” he added. “Agent Mallory will debrief you and then you can be on your way,” Landry finished before walking back toward the room we had left. Mallory pointed to the room.

“Mr. Jordan, please have a seat,” he said and held his hand palm up in the direction of the conference room.

“We can run this as a joint operation between our agencies,” I yelled at Landry as he left Jami and me. “We’re running out of time and you could use our assistance, please let us help you with this.”

“You’ve helped enough, Agent Jordan. The FBI will handle the recovery attempt for Senator Keller.”

We wrapped up the debrief with Agent Mallory about half an hour after we entered the conference room. These things seem to go quickly between agencies. I could have pushed back and asked to do this later but the truth was I had no real leads. Maybe there was video of the kidnapper from a different angle but I wasn’t sure. Mallory said he’d be in touch if he had any further questions. I had plenty of my own.
How would I be able to find Jim Keller with the FBI now taking over the case and insisting that DDC not play a part in the operation?

“Let’s head back to DDC,” I said to Jami, as we walked out of the conference room.

I called Morgan Lennox as we walked. Morgan is my best data analytics guy and has a background in tactical surveillance.

“Morgan,” he said when he answered the phone at his workstation.

“Hey, it’s me. I need you to do me a favor.” I heard Morgan sigh.

“What’s the favor, me?” he said sarcastically. Morgan could be a pain in the ass to work with most of the time, but I did appreciate his tell-it-like-it-is attitude.

“Are you all monitoring the situation here?” I asked. Morgan said that they were and that Chris Reed was doing a bang-up job running the place while I was gone. “Morgan, listen. McGovern and Flynn are dead. Keller’s kidnapper gunned them down on his way out of the building.”

“You’re kidding. How did that happen?”

“There’s a camera at the southern exit of the United Center. I need you to try to tap into their system and see if you can access the feed to that camera, pull up the archive, and go back ninety minutes.”

“Fine.”

“One more thing. There’s a building across the street. It’s between Wood and Honore. I noticed cameras on the northwest side, try to access them and see if they picked up a motorcycle heading east right behind the arena before turning south on Wood.” We had stopped in one of the hallways for me to have the conversation with Morgan so the call wouldn’t drop on our way out of the building.

“Got it,” Morgan said and hung up. I saw that my dad had tried calling again and I decided I would call him when I got back to the office. I slid the phone in my pocket and we headed outside. Jami and I didn’t speak on our way out, but she broke the silence once we got inside my SUV.

“So did you decide to work in the field on the Keller assignment because you didn’t trust me? You didn’t think I could handle the job because I’m new here?” We were pulling out of the parking lot reserved for arena staff and slowed down as we got to Damon. I flipped on my police lights and drove onto the street after making sure that all oncoming traffic had stopped for us to get out and I chirped the siren once before turning to Jami.

“I told you, Jim Keller is a friend. I run the office. It’s my discretion to go into the field.” After about thirty seconds of silence, I continued. “After my mom died, Jim was there for my dad when I couldn’t be when I was stationed overseas. I couldn’t even go to her funeral. I couldn’t be there for my dad. But Jim was there. He kept an eye on him and made sure he held up okay. I owe the man a lot. That’s why I was there tonight.”

It wasn’t a long drive from the United Center to DDC. The field office was five minutes south of the arena. Not long after the Department of Domestic Counterterrorism opened an office in Chicago, the FBI relocated their building from the heart of downtown to right down the street from us on Roosevelt. The running joke was that they wanted to keep an eye on us. I didn’t think it was much of a joke.

“So, he trained you and then you got into the SEAL program. Where were you stationed?”
Those details couldn’t be researched
, I thought before responding.

“I was part of SEAL Team Three. Stationed at Camp Rhino in Afghanistan during Operation Enduring Freedom before leaving the service.” Jami looked at me.

“What was your expertise?” I slowed down as we approached headquarters before answering.

“I was a sniper.”

“Impressive. Taught by Keller?”

“No. His training got me in. Once I was there, I tried different things and found that I was good with guns. I guess I’m a pretty good shot.” She didn’t say much for about a minute.

“I overheard you mention to Keller that you lost your wife. I’m sorry. I was married once, too,” Jami said as we pulled into DDC and parked.

“I know,” I said. “I’ve done my homework, too.”

When Jami and I got out of the car and started walking into DDC, she pulled out her cell phone and noticed a breaking news alert from one of the local Chicago news stations. She played the news segment recap for us as we walked.

“Breaking news tonight,
The Mitchell Wire
is reporting that Senator Jim Keller has been kidnapped. Jennifer Hughes is live at the United Center, Jennifer do police have any idea how this happened?”

I stopped walking and stood next to Jami and both of us watched the video.

“Amanda, shortly after eight o’clock, Senator Jim Keller was supposed to speak at the convention here at the United Center to accept his party’s nomination for president, but the senator never showed up. Initially, we were told that he was delayed because of traffic, then former Tribune journalist David Mitchell dropped a bombshell, announcing on his Website that the senator had actually been kidnapped.”

The anchor back at the station asked the reporter on location what more information she might have.

“I just spoke with Chairwoman Debra Stewart who confirmed that Keller had refused Secret Service protection and that local DDC agents were running security for the senator. Now two of their agents have been found dead and the senator’s missing.”

The video stopped. “Blake,” Jami started, “I spoke to Stewart after we split up. She cornered me, she knew something was wrong, that the senator wasn’t delayed by traffic.” I looked at Jami.

“So you told her that he’d been kidnapped?” Jami put her hands up in front of her, as if to say
stop right there
.

“She was getting in the way. She was worried about maintaining order if something had happened to him. She was right. I explained what happened and she helped set up a perimeter with arena security.” We started walking again. I swiped my keycard, passed through a checkpoint, and entered DDC.

As we did, the staff of just over thirty stared at us. Some of them stood. Others hung up their phones or stopped whatever conversations they were having mid-sentence. I walked out to the middle of the floor and Chris Reed joined me. I decided to bring him up to speed along with the rest of the staff working late.

“Listen up,” I said and waited long enough for the team to gather around me. “Senator Keller has been kidnapped and Agents McGovern and Flynn have been killed. The FBI has taken over the operation. Officially, we’re not supposed to be interfering.” Reed spoke up.

“And unofficially?” I stared at the man who I had appointed assistant special agent in charge shortly after being promoted to my position.

“We’ve been asked not to interfere, so we won’t interfere. That’s all I know right now.”

The team, consisting of guards, analysts, and a few programmers, went back to work. Agent Reed stayed back. He had some questions for me.

“Blake, how did this happen? Do you realize how bad this makes us look?” I looked at Jami.

“Give us a minute,” I said and she walked to Morgan’s desk.

“Chris, the kidnapper was in the room before we got there. He was hiding in the wall, waiting inside an air return grille that he pulled the senator through.” Reed slowly shook his head. “He stuffed Keller inside a crate and walked right out and killed two of our guys in the process. I’m gonna get this son of a bitch.”

“Blake, they told you to stay out of it.” I put my hand up to stop him midsentence.

“I’m getting him back, Chris. And I need your support.” Reed thought for a second.

“I don’t support this. I thought you were a by-the-book kind of guy. I’ve never seen you break protocol. What’s wrong with you?”

“This happened on my watch. I screwed up. Two of my men are dead. You’re telling me you wouldn’t do the same?” Reed looked out onto the floor and for a moment, watched the crew answering phone calls and clicking away at their computers.

“You realize we could lose our jobs, don’t you?”

“I’m betting I’ll lose my job anyway. Base is probably sending someone here this very minute to look into what happened tonight.”

“I’ll be in my office,” Reed said and left. I stood there for a second before walking over to Morgan’s workstation to join Jami and find out how much progress he had made so far.

At the abandoned warehouse somewhere on the south side of Chicago, Victor Perez was also monitoring the news. He flipped his TV between FOX News and CNN to understand how much the media knew, if anything. He knew firsthand that government agencies withheld information and sometimes even leaked misinformation whenever they were closing in on a suspect.

He kept the TV on mute and turned on a police scanner. The Chicago Police Department would need to be involved to help set up a perimeter should one of the other agencies find his location. He knew that if he heard a 10-97, the police code for
arrived at scene
anywhere near his location, he’d have to move fast.

Perez saw that CNN had a scrolling banner at the bottom of the screen that read,
Senator Jim Keller kidnapped, authorities look for getaway van
.

Getaway van? How did they know that?
he wondered and turned up the volume on the TV. An anchorman mentioned a Website,
The Mitchell Wire
, as the source. That hadn’t been one of the Websites he was monitoring. Perez went to the site and read the headline,
Senator Jim Keller Kidnapped in Chicago – Developing
. He clicked on the link and read the short article, which explained that the senator hadn’t been delayed by traffic but rather had been kidnapped.

It described his van perfectly. Just as he finished reading, the Webpage auto-refreshed and read,
Update: Jim Keller’s kidnapper is a man in his late thirties, the driver of the black Ford van that took the senator. He’s wearing all black and was last seen at Wood and Monroe, heading south. This story is developing, additional updates will be added here as we get them.

Perez wondered where the Website was getting the information.

How could the person who wrote this story know so many details? Who was the Website’s informant – or had he been seen by the author of the article?
He clicked on the About Me link above the story and thought to himself,
Who is David Mitchell?

He finally recognized Mitchell, who was becoming somewhat of a local celebrity in the windy city. He had never read David Mitchell’s articles in the Tribune but now remembered the uproar created when he was ultimately fired for exaggerating his stories. The ordeal was covered by all of the local news stations as they jumped on the story and fed on one of their own. Perez stared at the picture of Mitchell on his Website and thought about his next move.

Perez pulled up a new tab in his browser and accessed a WHOIS lookup database to try to find Mitchell’s address. Perez typed in Mitchell’s domain name and clicked on
search
. David Mitchell was more tech-savvy than he thought as the domain name’s registrant contact information was noted as WHOISGUARD PROTECTED, which meant that the owner’s name and address were protected from public view.

He tried a different path and did a Google search for
David Mitchell Chicago
and found a write-up published in
Chicago Style
about the journalist. The online magazine had interviewed Mitchell about his success with
The Mitchell Wire
and his recent move to the Gold Coast. In the article, Mitchell explained how much of a contrast his new apartment on Wells street was compared to his old loft in North Lawndale. “There’s a Starbucks on the first floor of my new place. There’s another coffee joint right across the street. I can see both from my balcony. As a journalist who has to jump on breaking stories at all hours, there’s no better place to live in the city.”

Perez did one more Web search. He typed his query
Chicago Gold Coast Starbucks Wells
and hit enter.

1233 North Wells Street was the result returned by the search engine.

Victor Perez grabbed his duffle bag, packed his Beretta, and donned his ski mask. He walked out of the room, past the senator who sat on the cold, dirty floor of his cell. “I’ll be right back. Don’t go anywhere.”