Double Crossfire Read online

  O’Malley said, “Pursued your theory and did some research. The video footage from Hite’s security cameras had been erased by the time New Hanover County Sheriff’s team got there, but some neighbors had posted a short video on Instagram of an inbound helicopter, probably thinking it was a high-level politician. I loaded Zara Perro’s face into the CIA’s database and ran some Carnivore-like programs. This picture is of Zara Perro landing on Hite’s helipad within an hour of his murder.”

  “Any shot of a helicopter leaving?” Mahegan asked.

  “No. And no other video.”

  “I know Figure Eight. It has a gate guard to get onto the island. She wouldn’t have wanted to risk that,” Mahegan said.

  “No. But check this out,” O’Malley said. He pointed his finger at a spec of light behind the helicopter. “It’s a pier and there are boats in the water.”

  “Okay. Any idea on the flight path of the helicopter?”

  “I did a tail number check and it’s registered with the Lynchburg, Raleigh-Durham, and Wilmington air traffic controllers for the evening of the murder.”

  “How far is Lynchburg from the Valley Trauma Center?”

  “Maybe twenty-five miles,” O’Malley said.

  “She kills Dr. Broome, flies to Figure Eight, kills Hite, jumps on a boat, and goes where?”

  “Carter lives about a two-hour boat ride from there,” Biagatti said.

  “Okay. So fast forward this thing three months. When did Cassie show up at Carter’s?”

  “Yesterday morning, as best we know. She escaped from the Valley Trauma Center around the time of Broome’s murder, then was tracked in the Greensboro area, where she stole a cop car. The GPS on the car put her in Uwharrie National Forest. After that, she disappeared and showed up the next morning at Jamie Carter’s house.”

  “Okay. This is solid. Now we just have to wait and see what Carter does—who she fires and who she hires,” Mahegan said.

  “She’ll fire some people. Name new cabinet secretaries. Bring in some aides. All the normal transition bullshit.”

  “No. Outside the normal stuff. If she’s been calling the shots here, she still has loose ends to clean up. The Twitter conspiracy people are going to have a field day with this. Make sure we’re tapping into that. A lot might be bullshit, but there’s always a kernel of the truth in there, somewhere.”

  “Roger,” O’Malley said, taking the task to write an algorithm to scroll through the traditional conspiracy feeds.

  “What about forensics on the three crime scenes?” Mahegan asked.

  “Two blond hairs found at the Hite crime scene that match Cassie’s DNA. Cassie’s fingerprints all over the cyanide tanks they placed behind the SCIF. Several eyewitness reports of someone matching Cassie’s description at the scene of the Speaker’s murder, not to mention some blood that matches her DNA. Pretty solid evidence that she is the connective tissue.”

  “What about Zara Perro?”

  “Not a whisper,” O’Malley said.

  Then, from Owens, who was staring at the intelligence significant activities scrolling across the display monitor: “Oh, man. That’s her next move right there.”

  Mahegan turned and stared at the screen. A picture of Cassie was staring back at him; an intelligence nugget scrolling beneath: FORMER CHAIRMAN OF JOINT CHIEF’S DAUGHTER LEAD SUSPECT IN COUP ASSASSINATIONS.

  CHAPTER 15

  “HER IS A LIST OF PEOPLE THAT I WANT TO BRING INTO THE administration immediately. And we need to create a Committee of Public Safety. Give me some names for that, too,” Jamie said. “I’d like to meet with them today. I’d also like the first lady out of the White House by tomorrow.”

  “That seems a bit . . . extreme,” Zara said.

  “These are extreme times. I’m not going to the White House filled with people who don’t agree with me.”

  Jamie handed the lists of names to Zara, who studied them briefly and kept them in her hand, absently holding the lists facing outward by her thigh. Zara looked at Cassie and stood, nodding to Jamie. They walked to the far side of the office and engaged in a whispering conversation.

  All three phones in the office pinged with an alert. Retrieving her iPhone, Cassie fumbled the device when she saw the intel alert pop on her home screen. With a sharp, silent breath, she thumbed up the home screen, selected the camera function, placed the phone on video, turned it outward, and began walking toward the women. Cassie palmed her phone and spread her fingers so that the camera had a clear line of sight. She shouldered her rucksack as she approached Zara and Jamie, her heart beating like a war drum, both from the news she had just seen and from the feat she was about to attempt.

  Jamie pulled up from the whispered conversation and looked at Cassie, who slowed, juxtaposed to Zara’s back.

  “Cassie?”

  “Just going to use the restroom,” Cassie said.

  “Okay, quickly then. We have a lot to do, so let’s get to it,” Jamie said. “Zara, you’re in charge of getting my team together. Cassie, you need to be by my side at all times. I’ll work from here until we get everything situated at the White House.”

  “Okay. I’ll just clean up in the bathroom. Been a long night,” Cassie said. She brushed past Zara, who glanced over her shoulder at her, and then slid past the two security guards who were looking down at their phones. In fact, just about everyone was looking at the alert that had just been sent across all media networks.

  Cassie was the number one “person of interest” in the “Coup Assassinations,” as the media now called what had transpired.

  Given the seniority of the pro tem position, the office was on the corner of the building, with windows in every room, including the bathroom.

  Zara had looked at her phone at the same time, registering something Cassie couldn’t quite place. Concern? Task checked off? She wasn’t hanging around to find out, so she was up and out of the office before anyone could stop her. Seeing Jake had given her renewed confidence that what she was doing was the right thing, that her path was true.

  She closed and locked the bathroom door, feeling the presence of the guards moving toward her. One of them began knocking on the door. Studying the Band-Aid Jake had placed in her hand, she opened it and placed it behind her ear ensuring the pad was centered on the mastoid bone. They had experimented with these micro communications devices previously, but before she could test it, she was interrupted.

  “Captain Bagwell, we need you to come out.”

  “Just a sec,” she said. “Can’t a lady use the restroom?”

  Using the heel of her hand to press up on the window that probably hadn’t been opened in twenty years, she broke the seal of the paint. The gap was a reasonable size for her to slide through, though she wasn’t sure about how she might climb down the three stories of sheer brick facing. She squeezed through the opening, her back scraping along the bottom of the window frame. She lowered herself until her hands were straining, her shoulders were nearly out of socket, and the bathroom door opened with a loud cracking noise.

  Her feet found a small three-inch ledge, which allowed her to relax her arms and pivot her back to the wall. Constitution Avenue hummed with morning traffic. She was maybe forty feet above the sidewalk. Two dogwood trees were about ten feet to her left, growing out of a small rectangular patch of grass, maybe forty feet wide and ten feet deep. The only hope she had of not seriously injuring herself was to jump from the ledge into the dogwood, grasp a branch, and hope that it lowered her somewhat gently to the ground.

  Visualizing the leap was very different than execution. She leapt, her rib cage bounced off a thick branch, causing her to roll toward thin branches, which gave way quickly as she plummeted into the grassy area. The only saving grace was that the rain had been heavy and softened the ground.

  She had no time to waste on feeling sorry for herself, though, as the two Secret Service agents were at the window. One was climbing down, and the other was aiming his service pistol at her. Her m
ind fuzzy, like swimming through cotton, she knelt and then ran, like a sprinter out of the starting blocks. With no safe haven nearby, she had to disappear fast. Amtrak was two blocks away, but out of the question, as was using the Metro. Cameras everywhere.

  She ran east, then south behind the Supreme Court. While she had been injured, her training regimen had been significant, including heavy cardio work. The Secret Service agent who had been chasing her either gave up or had taken another route to attempt to cut her off. She continued to wind her way into Southeast Washington, DC. From the halls of power on Capitol Hill to the projects along the Anacostia River. Helicopters now buzzed the skies in ever-expanding circles along the general azimuth she had run.

  She found herself pressed up against a small boathouse, which had stacks of plastic kayaks leaning against the side. She pulled a Leatherman from her belt and used it to cut the thin wire looped through the carrying handles. She slid one of the kayaks into the water and grabbed one of the loose oars. Shoving quietly along the Anacostia, she realized that she was in full view of several major freeways, an easy target from the air, and particularly susceptible to sniper fire from any number of SWAT teams, which were most likely hustling to find her trail.

  The surrounding highways were jammed with traffic, very little moving in any direction. The helicopters buzzed overhead about a mile behind her. She dug the paddle into the murky river and gained speed, skimming along the surface of the water. She covered the quarter mile in minutes. She was conspicuous and at the same time invisible: just another millennial out on a lunchtime kayak across the river. She made landfall in Anacostia Park, where some children were playing on swings. A parent or babysitter, it was tough to tell, was buried in her smartphone. The kids waved at Cassie as she tugged the kayak onto the shore and pulled it under a willow tree.

  She kept the momentum by jogging into the dilapidated neighborhood behind the park. Crossing Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue, she ran along Good Hope Road and then turned onto W Street. Sprinting past the Frederick Douglass National Historic Site, she found the ramshackle row of homes she remembered from a childhood visit there.

  Not much had changed in fifteen years. The redbrick buildings were in worse condition. They didn’t appear inhabited. If they were, she would find out soon enough. Her lungs burned from the high-speed sprint across Washington, DC, but it was imperative she not be caught. A few hands pulled down window blinds, eyes peering out. People mostly kept to themselves here, she figured, but they would also be territorial. A blond white girl in the heart of Ward 8, Washington, DC, was a rare find. She moved swiftly inside the dank open doorway. There were blankets on the wood floors and the deeper she walked into the bowel of the building, the more decrepit it became. This place was inhabited on a daily basis.

  A floorboard creaked on the other side of the wall, where she presumed whatever passed as the kitchen might be. She retrieved her pistol from her holster and pressed her back against the wall, keeping an eye on the doorway. Another footfall, another squeaky floorboard. A head poked around the door.

  It was a child.

  The kid stepped into the room, saw Cassie, and held his hands up. He was wearing a T-shirt that had a big star on it with a silk-screened image of Malcolm X over dirty, worn dungarees, and old PRO-Keds that were missing the laces.

  “I ain’t done nothing,” he said. “Are you here from the school?”

  “No,” Cassie said. She shook her head, awaking to the fact that a boy who looked about ten was standing in front of her while she held a pistol at him. She had been through a lot in the last year and was still recovering, but she had never lost her moral compass. She didn’t shoot kids. She didn’t scare kids.

  Lowering the pistol, she said, “No. I’m not from the school. I just need a place to hide from some bad people.”

  “You mean like principals and teachers?”

  Cassie coughed out a laugh. “I wish,” she said. “Mean people are chasing me.”

  “Principals are mean,” the kid said, sticking with his main fear.

  “Yeah, I guess they can be. What’s your name? I’m Cassie.”

  “Jermaine,” he said.

  “Why are you hiding out in here, Jermaine?”

  “My moms is at work. Teacher all mad at me, all the time. So I come here when I can and do my work.”

  “What work?”

  “Schoolwork,” he said.

  Cassie sighed. “Want to show me?”

  “Why?” Jermaine squinted at her with narrow eyes, suspicious, perhaps thinking that maybe she was a principal or a teacher.

  “No reason. Got nothing else to do. I feel pretty safe in here. So might as well kill some time.”

  “Safe?” Jermaine shrugged. “If you say so, Miss, but you might not want to stay ’til night. ”

  “I’ll take my chances with you, Jermaine.”

  Jermaine disappeared into the next room. Cassie followed him and Jermaine sat cross-legged on the floor, papers stacked neatly on one side, books arranged similarly on the other. He had an old dingy brown clipboard fraying on the sides, with a rusty metal clip at the top. He was writing on a piece of paper, pressing the pencil firmly, his brow furrowed. The pencil moved quickly across the paper. He glanced down at an algebra 2 textbook.

  Cassie walked over, dropped her rucksack on the floor, and slid her back down the wall. She watched him do what, to her, looked like a probability and statistics problem.

  “How old are you, Jermaine?”

  “Be ten next month,” he said.

  “And you’re taking algebra two?”

  “No, I ain’t taking algebra two. They won’t let me take algebra two. So I do it on my own.”

  “The school can’t keep up with you,” she whispered to herself. She was transformed from worrying about the tragedy unfolding across the nation to a microcosm tragedy exactly the size of one nine-year-old little boy.

  “I keep telling everyone I’m done with everything they’re teaching, but no one listens. So I robbed some textbooks and downloaded the flipped classrooms from Khan Academy. It’s free and I can do it fast.”

  “An app?” Cassie asked.

  “Something like that.” He removed his phone and showed her a video of a young man teaching algebra. “Like that.”

  “You can do all your classes like this?”

  “All that I want to do,” he said. “English. Math. Chemistry. I want to be a doctor. Go to Howard or Harvard. As long as it starts with an H, I don’t care.” Jermaine cackled at his own joke. Cassie smiled.

  “I was pretty good at math,” Cassie said.

  “I’m kind of like that guy on Good Will Hunting,” Jermaine said.

  “Good movie. I imagine you are like him.” After a pause, Cassie asked, “What kind of doctor?”

  “Like Ben Carson. Brain surgeon. I figure I’m ahead of where he was when he was a kid. Only problem is it’s easy to get lost in this city. I’m just another dumb black kid to most people.”

  “Not to me,” Cassie said. She picked up his pencil and wrote her phone number on a loose-leaf sheet of paper in his folder. “Call me in a few days. I’ll come back and help if I can.”

  Jermaine nodded at her but didn’t speak.

  “I’ll let you get back to your studies, then,” she said. “I have some of my own homework to do.” She held up her phone, knowing that if the FBI really wanted to find her, they could trace her by pinging her location, which was why she had switched off the cell and Wi-Fi functions. She only needed the video footage to see if she could decipher the list.

  “You still in school?” Jermaine asked.

  “No, but you never quit learning.” Cassie sighed, then pulled up the photo reel and played back the video she had downloaded to her photo app. Jermaine seemed more interested in her phone than his studies.

  “What’s that?”

  “Just a work thing,” Cassie said. She felt exhaustion creeping through her body, but knew that she needed to see the list, whic
h might contain the names of the key conspirators in the coup. Her mind fought for clarity. Through the haze of the drugs, she remembered The Plan. It had always been there in her mind. The challenge was fending off the influence efforts of Zara. Now that the façade had fallen, it was all clear. Rather than being an accomplice, all along she was an asset. Jake’s temporary post protecting the CIA director had been a deliberate move by General Savage. The posting had allowed him to mine the CIA intelligence feeds and discover that Jamie Carter had been communicating with Zara Perro and Franklin Broome in code.

  Just as President Smart’s predecessor had unmasked him and his transition team, President Smart had returned the favor, providing access not to the FBI, but to Joint Special Operations Command by using Jake as a cut out in the CIA. Knowing that her parents had left Jamie as her next of kin, Jake sent a U.S. Army casualty assistance officer to Jamie’s home in New Bern two months ago. The officer had suggested she visit Cassie, which Jamie had done, dragging Zara Perro along.

  Because this was a compartmented operation, labeled Double Crossfire, not even CIA Director Carmen Biagatti knew about this mission, mainly because it was unclear if Biagatti was involved in the Resistance or not. The media portrayal of the Globalist Resistance Force, or GRF, was that of deep and wide national, even international, support. In reality, Jake had discovered the leadership was nine people, including four holdovers in the FBI, Jamie Carter, Zara Perro, and three unknowns.

  Is Biagatti one of the unknowns?

  Cassie scrolled through her video; Jermaine rolled his eyes and said, “Boring,” before going back to his flipped algebra. The video showed two separate documents. The facing-outward one was the only legible opportunity. She paused the video when she thought she could make out the list of names.

  She took a screenshot of the most legible frame of the video. After a minute of adjusting lighting and black point compensation, she was able to read the names.