“But if you thought she was a real terrorist?”
“I’d send her to Gitmo in a heartbeat.”
Later that afternoon, Jake and Honi arrived at Giles Svensen’s apartment with an FBI forensics team.
“Giles Svensen gave me permission and his keys to search his apartment, so we don’t need a search warrant.”
Jake unlocked the door. The forensics team entered the apartment and began their search. Two hours later the search hadn’t turned up anything unusual. The forensics team left. Jake and Honi locked the apartment door and walked down the hall. Jake pulled his cell phone and dialed.
“Kay, I have a cat that needs your support. I’ll leave the keys and address in the lobby at the FBI building. Thanks.”
“So you do this a lot?”
“Do what?”
“Take care of people’s animals?”
“I just see it as part of the job.”
She scoffed. “Only federal agent I ever met that did.”
CHAPTER 8
Jake got a call from Briggs at 10:00 that evening. Jake needed to be at the FBI jet hanger at Andrews Air Force Base at 3:00 a.m. for an early flight to Killeen, Texas to assist Major Bob Stafford in the investigation of the missing nuclear weapon. He set his alarm and got four hours of sleep. When he arrived, Honi was getting out of an agency car, pulling her small travel case behind her.
By 7:50 a.m. they were with Major Bob Stafford, alongside the road, one hundred yards from the front gate to Fort Hood. Two other cars filled with 8 CID agents waited behind them.
“What about Sylvia Cuthbert?” Honi asked. “You were going to talk with her.”
Jake pulled out his phone and called Sebastian Pettigrew in the security office at the NSA.
“How is Cuthbert doing?” He waited, listening. “Okay, here’s what I want you to do.” Jake turned away from the group and continued talking. He disconnected and turned back to Stafford and Honi.
“Well?”
“She doesn’t think we will water board her.”
Stafford raised his eyebrows.
“I’ve arranged some entertainment for her.”
“Entertainment?” Honi asked.
“We’ve got company,” Stafford said.
I’ll explain later,” Jake said.
A black limo with a four star flag waving from the front bumper roared up the road. It pulled to a stop in the road beside them. The rear window glided down revealing a four-star general in the back seat. Major Stafford saluted crisply.
“General Davies, sir, I didn’t expect…”
“At ease, Major. Let’s get this done.”
“Yes, sir!”
The window buzzed up and the limo proceeded to the front gate of Fort Hood. Stafford, Jake and Honi hopped in the car. Stafford pulled in right behind the limo. The two cars of CID agents fell in line behind them.
“Who was that?” Honi asked.
“General Roger L. Davies, Commanding General of the United States Army Forces Command.”
“He runs the army?”
“He does.”
“So we’re not going to have any issues over rank, are we?” Jake said.
“Nope.”
The black limo paused at the main gate. The window lowered. The guard saluted. The window rolled back up and the limo drove on with Stafford and the CID team in tow, while the gate guard continued to salute.
By the time they reached the administration building, General Teague and his top staff officers were outside the front door, saluting.
General Davies walked up to General Teague without returning the salute, standing nose-to-nose with him.
“There isn’t a pit in hell deep enough or dark enough for you,” General Davies said. General Teague slowly let his right-hand salute drop to his side, his expression dropping in exact measure along with it. “But rest assured. I will find just such a place where you will rot forever.”
As General Davies turned and walked into the building, a CID agent stepped in front of General Teague. “You are relieved of command. You are being held on suspicion of treason and conspiracy to commit terrorism.” He took the General’s left hand and pulled it behind him as he fastened the set of handcuffs to it, and quickly connected the cuffs around Teague’s other wrist.
Once inside the building, the long and exhausting job of interviews and checking paperwork began. There was little hope of recovering the missing nuclear weapon. The goal was to find out who was involved in its theft. Three hours later Stafford approached Jake.
“These can’t be right. I’ve seen the originals of the orders that initiated the transfer of three tactical nuclear weapons to Fort Hood. These records show only two weapons being transferred.”
“We need a document expert,” Jake said. “I know just the guy.”
He pulled his cell phone and called Briggs.
“It’s Hunter, sir, I need Ken Bartholomew from the Secret Service here ASAP.”
General Davies stood eight feet away. The General cocked his head to one side.
“Your boss at the FBI?”
“Yes, sir.”
General Davies held his hand out. “May I?”
Jake handed him the cell phone. Taking the phone, the General turned away, spoke with Briggs for a moment, he then handed the phone back to Jake.
“I hate wasting time,” the General said, and then walked over to the Lt. Colonel who had been following the General around. They spoke and the Lt. Colonel headed out the door. The General walked off without further comment. Jake held the phone back up to his ear, but the line had disconnected.
Forty-five minutes later Ken Bartholomew walked in the office door.
“How the hell?” Jake said. “I thought you were in D.C.”
“I was.”
“And you got to Texas in forty-five minutes?”
Ken checked his watch. “Thirty-one minutes. Traffic in D.C., you know…”
“But how?”
“I brought my document kit,” Ken replied, adding a smile.
“You’re not going to tell me?”
“Promised I wouldn’t.”
Jake scrunched his lips together. “Okay, Major Stafford thinks these documents are phony.”
Ken took them. “I’ll need exemplars from every printer on the base, plus any printer at General Teague’s home.”
“So you think you can identify the exact printer used to make the phony documents?”
“I know I can.”
“You know how many printers that’s going to be?” Stafford asked.
“Not yet, but I certainly expect to at some point.”
Honi sat down at one of the computer terminals and typed. “I need a login and a password!” she shouted. One of the officers in the room stepped forward and typed.
“Thank you.”
Jake came over and knelt down beside her. “What are you on to?”
“I’m accessing the printer records file for each device. We check the printers that’ve gone through the most cartridges first. Narrows the field.”
“Awesome.”
Sylvia Cuthbert woke suddenly in her jail cell in the back of the NSA building security office. Distant reflections of light dimly illumined the hall. Otherwise everything was dark. She wasn’t sure what had awakened her, but it seemed like some kind of a sound. She listened intently for a moment and then relaxed a bit. Then she heard it again.
“No, no,” a man’s voice said in a distant room. “I don’t know anything. I don’t. You have to believe me!”
She listened closer. No one said anything else. She became alarmed as she recognized the sound of the man struggling, thumping against restraints, or a table maybe, as his body reacted. His screams sounded muffled and suppressed. She thought she heard water splashing to the floor, but she couldn’t be sure.
The sounds of coughing and hard desperate breaths forced their way into her mind. What were they doing? Who is doing this? The sound of weak, deadened screams returned along with intensified thuds and sounds of struggle. She strained to hear more. Coughing again, and retching. She heard what might be vomit splattering on the floor, and then more exaggerated gasps for air.