The 13: Fall (33 page)

There wasn’t much brush for cover, so he tried to just stay low to the ground and move slowly, using the few trees along the way to stop and look. Each time he raised the binoculars, the view was the same. The place looked abandoned.

When he was less than a couple hundred yards out, he looked a final time and saw nothing. He waited for twenty minutes, watching to see any movement. But there was nothing. Satisfied that no one was there, he went to the house.

He looked around back, just to make sure he was right and that there wasn’t some kind of outbuilding that the guy might be in. But the only thing back there was a wide-open landscape of dirt and loose brush. He checked the back door and found that it was open. He checked his gun and turned the knob.

A quick sweep of the inside showed him that no one indeed was home. And given the look of the place, if anyone lived there, he did a good job of hiding it. There were some empty cans of soup and a half-eaten loaf of bread. Someone had been there. But whoever it was wasn’t planning on staying. And it didn’t look like he was planning on coming back.

Keene spent another twenty minutes inside, looking for anything that would lead him to the Prophet, but once again came up empty. If the Prophet had been staying there, he was gone. Not so much as a toothbrush was left.

He left the place and decided to head back into town. He was hungry, and the only confirmation they had of the Prophet being there was video footage from the town square. If there was still a chance of finding him, that was the best one. As he came back into town, a small motel and diner sat beside each other. It was still early enough for breakfast, and Keene was hungry. He parked the car and went inside.

He found a table and grabbed a menu. When the waitress came over, he asked for coffee and said he needed a minute. She brought him a cup and set it down. He reached inside his pocket and pulled out the picture.

“You see this guy around town lately?” he asked her.

“Honey, ain’t you been watching the news? You’re, like, the third person who’s been in here this week. Boss is talking about shutting us down. This market crash’s got everyone scared. And with those sherriff’s deputies and other cops gone missing, everyone ‘round here’s been real tense.”

“Sherriff’s deputies?”

“I guess you ain’t heard. Couple days ago, bunch of cops and deputies went missing, all along the border. No one’s heard from them. Weird, huh?”

Keene thought about that for a minute. Yes, it was peculiar. Why would a bunch of cops go missing?
Probably just another drug cartel
, he thought,
taking advantage of the chaos going on around the country.
He dismissed it and pushed the picture to her. “Sorry, ma’am. Haven’t heard about that. But can you look at this? It’s real important.”

She studied the photo for a minute and said, “Seems like I might’ve seen him. Hang on.”

Keene watched her walk around the counter and hand the photo to the only other girl working. The other girl took the photo and walked back to Keene.

“Yeah, I’ve seen this guy. Was in here this morning.”

“You know him?”

“Nah, never seen him before today.” She cocked her head and squinted her eyes. “What’s your name?”

“Jonathan Keene. Why?”

The girl went wide eyed and stepped back a pace. “Whoa! This is too weird. That guy was right!”

Keene sat up in his chair. The hair on the back of his neck stood up. “What do you mean?”

She reached inside her apron and handed him an envelope. “This guy you’re looking for? Came in here real early this morning, ordered some breakfast. When he was done, he paid his bill and then handed me this. Said a guy named Jon Keene was gonna come in here today and ask me if I’d seen him. And then he told me to give you this.”

Keene opened the envelope and pulled out the single sheet of paper. He unfolded it and read.

Keene crumpled up the paper and threw it on the table. His head began to pound. He wanted to slam his fist into a wall. He pulled out his phone.

“This is Jennings.”

“It’s me. He’s not here.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I’ve spent the morning trying to find him and nothing. Then I get to this diner and show his picture to the waitress and she tells me that he was here. Early this morning. And he gave her a letter to give to me.”

“How’d he know you would be there?”

“Good question. Anyway, he’s not here. Said he’s long gone and told me that I was needed back in Washington.”

“Yeah, maybe. But don’t know yet.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m here at DHS with Taylor. She’s found something. Don’t know what it is, but I’m sure it’s not good.”

“Okay. I’ll head back immediately.”

“No, you won’t. I told you, you need to go see Hector. You’re meeting him tomorrow.”

“Hector’s a thug. We need to be tracking down this Prophet guy. If he’s already left, he hasn’t gotten much of a head start. I can catch up to him.”

“You have no idea where he’s going. Besides, that letter may just be a ruse to get you outta town. Stay there and keep looking. If he doesn’t turn up, tomorrow you go see Hector, and then you can leave.”

“The lady down here says a lot of cops went missing in the last two days. I’ll bet you a thousand bucks your boy Hector wants to give us another cartel tip. I don’t have time to be running down drug dealers. We have a possible threat to deal with. The deadline is tomorrow!”

“Calm down. I know what the timeline is. You still have to check out the rest of the town and make sure this Prophet isn’t there. That’s going to take you the rest of the day. Hector wants to meet tomorrow morning first thing. After that you can head home. I’ve got to go. Taylor’s in Marianne Levy’s office right now. She’s waiting on me. I’ll keep you posted.”

The line went dead.

Keene clicked off the call and slammed the phone down on the table. At least the food smelled good. He motioned the waitress over and ordered pancakes.

   CHAPTER 54   

W
hat am I looking at?” Jennings asked her.

Taylor pulled up the files she had found and put them in sequential order for them to go through. They were all different, but they all seemed to connect to one another. “This first one is a petition for a sanctioning of an area of land in Montana. According to this, an area has been set aside for research and has been deemed off-limits to the public. There’s even a mandate for Marianne’s Civil Military to support in keeping the area secure.

“This next one and the one after that are the same thing. One for North Dakota and South Dakota.”

“What are these?” Jennings asked. “And why would Marianne Levy have them?”

“I don’t know yet. But it doesn’t make sense. Why would DHS be concerned with sanctioning land and keeping people out?”

“Good questions,” Boz added. Then he pointed to the screen. “What’s that?”

Taylor pulled up the window. “This looks to be like a customs clearance form.”

“What’s that?” Boz asked.

“This gives whoever has it the ability to cross borders and bring whatever he wants in without inspection. You’ve got to have some serious pull and connections to make that happen.”

“What’s it for?” Jennings asked. “And who is it for?”

Taylor skimmed through the paragraphs till she found something. “Says here it’s for heavy industrial equipment. And it’s for a company called AE Tech International.”

“What’s that?” Jennings asked.

Taylor switched screens and brought up her Internet browser. In seconds she had what she was looking for. “It’s an oil company out of Canada. Chinese based.”

“Why would a Chinese-Canadian oil company be bringing heavy industrial equipment across our border and need to circumvent customs?” Jennings asked.

“This isn’t good,” Boz said. “The Chinese have spent the last ten years putting Canada under their thumb. They already have over thirty drilling sites there. They pretty much already own the country. You know the kind of stink it would cause if Americans found out that the Chinese were drilling here when
we
aren’t even allowed to? Canada’s one thing. But drilling on American soil is another.”

“Isn’t this, like, treason, or something?” Taylor asked. “She can’t just allow them to come into our country without the proper inspections and authorization to do this—right?”

“It’s something, all right,” Jennings said. He turned and started to walk out. “I need to go check on some things. You two stay here and see what else you can find out.”

“Will do.” She nodded.

“Oh, and Taylor …”

“Yeah?”

“Find out where Marianne Levy is. I want to talk to her.”

When Jennings was out of the room, Taylor turned to Boz. “This isn’t good, is it?”

Boz just looked at her and said, “Doesn’t look like it. United States–Canada relations have already deteriorated because of this. Who knows what’s going on up there?”

“Well, we need to figure out what all of this means. If the Chinese are coming here to drill, there’s got to be more paperwork. Could she have done an end run on the entire country?”

“Who knows?” Boz said. “You and I both know that some people are capable of anything. I wouldn’t put it past her.”

Taylor felt completely betrayed. Marianne Levy had sold out her country. She was going to secretly bring in a Chinese oil company and set them up to drill for the same oil that US companies had been denied access to since, well … forever.
If the American people find out
, she thought,
they will be calling for heads in Washington.
“Which is already happening,” she said to herself. If the market was going crazy now, what would it do when this came out? What else had Marianne done?

Taylor pushed the open windows aside and continued checking her filters. Halfway down the list another folder caught her eye. She clicked the folder and waited for it to open. When it did, she immediately felt sick to her stomach. Boz, who was standing over her watching, just blew out a long, slow breath.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” she said, almost in a whisper.

Inside were secure, highly classified documents from the CIA and Department of Defense. A dossier had been put together on an operative. It was complete with a workup of the operative’s believed-to-be personal history, a psych evaluation, and a detailed account of the operative’s past suspected missions and crime scene photos of the targets. Taylor sifted through the documents, one by one. The list of accomplishments—if you could call them that—was impressive. The operative was listed as
Dangerous, Intelligent, Resourceful, Discreet
, and
Professional.

“Why would she have this?” Taylor asked. “Better yet,
how
did she get this? Boz, you know about this stuff. This is like high-level CIA stuff, right? I mean, I know Jennings technically works for her, but—”

“No,” Boz confirmed. “I worked with the CIA for over ten years. Director Snyder handpicked Jennings as his successor. I may not know Jennings that well, but I knew Don Snyder better than his wife did. And I can promise you, Jennings didn’t get that job because Snyder thought he would roll over for Marianne Levy. There’s no way Jennings would have given her this. This is the kind of secret Intel CIA directors keep for themselves.”

There was a single photograph of the operative. It was a profile view, and it was obviously taken in a hurry and without the operative’s knowing. A notation had been made beside the picture, informing that it was the only known photograph of the operative. The shot was from across a street at a train station—somewhere in Europe, Taylor supposed, given the architecture. The order underneath the picture was highlighted in red and listed in all capital letters and read,
TERMINATE ON SIGHT.
Underneath that was a name.