Neeley knew this was part of why Hannah had been quick to take over the mission of bringing down this Burns fellow. They had his location (the transmitter’s location, Neeley corrected Hannah, which was not exactly the same as the person) and could continue to track him. The issue was whether to take him down now or see where he was going and what he was planning to do.
While the Nightstalkers might be bitching about having the op taken from them, this really was the Cellar’s area of expertise: tracking down rogue agents from the covert world. If Neeley notched her various guns, there would be a lot of notches. Also her knives, her garrote, and her bare hands. Every niche had its artists, those who took the simple job, the craft, to levels others could barely conceptualize but that the artist could embody. Neeley was an artist in death. She had learned early on that the actual, final act, while important, was not the key to success. It was the preparation, the planning, the consideration of every possible contingency that were the keys to making sure the art went one way and not the other.
Thus Neeley was in a hangar at an auxiliary airfield at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. A field that was headquarters for the original Task Force 160, the Nightstalkers, to be confused with the Nightstalkers out of the Ranch outside of Area 51. Neeley thought the cover name using a Special-Ops unit another too-cute idea.
Then again, she thought as she looked at the various displays, she could simply be getting more paranoid, less patient, and just too damn old for this BS. She was seeing ghosts behind every operation lately, although the reality was there were indeed ghosts and shadows and double and triple crosses. She found the Nightstalkers’ outrage that the Cellar was taking over this Sanction a bit ironic considering how straightforward most Nightstalker missions were compared to Cellar operations. They might be bizarre and weird, but they were usually clear as to who or what the bad guy/thing was.
The Cellar was the Cellar. Few had ever heard of it. Few needed to hear of it. It was whispered of in the world of covert ops and in the halls of Washington, much like not-so-nice parents might tell their children of a horrible beast hiding in their closet that would come out and torment them if they were bad.
The airfield was near a large fenced compound, where rows and rows of grass-covered concrete bunkers with rusting steel doors had once held a large number of nuclear warheads, a leftover from a supposedly bygone day of the Cold War. Fort Campbell was also the home base of the Screaming Eagles of the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) and the 5th Special Forces Group (Airborne). It straddled the Tennessee-Kentucky border, about sixty miles northwest of Nashville.
Neeley had landed via Gulfstream just a few minutes ago and she was in a Tactical Operations Center (TOC), set up by TF-160. The signal was on I-24 approaching Nashville. From there, it could go in several directions: southwest toward Memphis (doubtful since it would have turned south earlier), south toward Birmingham, southeast toward Chattanooga and Atlanta and beyond, or east toward Knoxville. It might even backtrack north toward Indianapolis, but that was doubtful because it could have turned earlier.
Since LoJack worked on FM, it was line of sight. TF-160 had a Quick-Fix helicopter in the air, at high altitude and several miles behind the Prius, tracking it. Neeley looked at the large computer display as the Prius reached where I-24 and I-65 joined together above Nashville. In a few minutes they’d have an idea which general direction it was moving on to.
No one else in the TOC had any clue why they were following the car. The orders had come in from higher and thus they would obey. It was a mind-set Neeley was used to but sometimes found disturbing, because the people at the top sometimes might have their own agenda. She’d traveled to South America earlier in the year with Roland to deal with two high-ranking CIA agents who’d manipulated data for their own personal advancement.
Neeley trusted Hannah with her life. She had to. Time and again she’d gone on missions, trusting only Hannah’s word.
But.
Gant had told her to trust no one.
Ever.
But he’d trusted her. He’d died in her arms.
If it were easy, anyone could do it. The schizophrenic nature of covert operations where the simple operation could actually be a double-cross, which could actually be a cover for a triple-cross, which might simply be some bureaucrat trying to advance their career, not giving a damn how many operatives died because of the lies and manipulations that took their toll.
What was truth?
Neeley’s phone buzzed. There was no question who it was, since only one person had her number. Neeley pulled the phone out but paused before activating it. The weight of that thought, that there was only one person who had her cell number, had never pressed down upon her with so much force.
She hit accept. “Yes?”
“Someone is using the Loop,” Hannah said without preamble. “Mrs. Sanchez was contacted by one of her former personnel. The message is heading to a third cutout.”
“Someone’s being very careful.”
“The message originated in the Knoxville, Tennessee, area,” Hannah said.
“Who do we know there?” Neeley asked as she looked at the map display and spotted Knoxville, to the direct east of Nashville along I-40.
“We’re checking the files,” Hannah said. “But it seems to be coming from the outside to the inside.”
From a civilian? Neeley wondered. She’d been a civilian once herself. A civilian who’d walked into an airport with a bomb packed inside a gaily wrapped package, before the time of 9/11. That was when she met Gant and left the civilian world far behind.
Neeley stepped back into the TOC and looked at the screen. The flashing dot indicating the Prius had just passed downtown Nashville. It then moved onto I-40 east.
“My Sanction is heading in that direction.”
“Yes. That is why I called.”
Something was off. Neeley had known Hannah too many years. “This is a Sanction, correct?”
“Correct. The Sanction has three confirmed murders.”
“Should I allow the Sanction to get to wherever and whatever his objective is?”
A long two seconds. Silence followed. “I’ll get back to you on that as quickly as I can.”
The phone went dead and Neeley stared at it for a very long time, ten seconds, while her mind went into dark corners.
Which wasn’t unusual.
Ivar’s locker was squared away, his deployment gear was packed according to Protocol, and now they were driving alongside that third-longest airstrip in the world at Groom Lake, aka the heart of Area 51. Doc was at the wheel of a jeep, only slightly more modern than Colonel Orlando’s had been, which meant it was ancient. Ivar had to wonder why the Nightstalkers used such antiquated vehicles here.
Doc had been talking, almost nonstop, all morning and into the afternoon, bombarding Ivar not only with the history of Rifts and Fireflies, but also dipping deep into his own well of knowledge to discuss various theories. His theories on Rifts. It wouldn’t have taken Frasier, the Nightstalkers’ shrink, to point out that Doc was overcompensating, threatened by another scientist’s presence on the team.
Ivar, being a physicist, of course, didn’t make such a psychological analysis of the situation. He just thought Doc was acting pretty much like every professor he’d ever worked for on his path to get his own PhD. Self-centered, convinced they had all the answers when they didn’t even know what most of the questions were, and, most of all, being about one-upmanship.
Aka a dick.
Two massive hangar doors cut into the side of Groom Mountain were partially open, and Doc drove right up to them, guards waving them through after scanning their eyes. Ivar caught glimpses of aircraft he didn’t recognize scattered throughout the hangar, but Doc drove straight to the far wall. Two guards scanned their eyes once more and then allowed them access to an elevator.