“Take it, get the hell out of here before there is a response. This is the nerve center for law enforcement in the area, so it will be some time before they get more troops. Looks like all electrical and phone lines are out, except for emergency backup.”
A large explosion rocked the area, and a fireball climbed skyward from one end of the station. Even the emergency lights went off.
“Scrap that. Even better for us — they’ve hit the diesel generator. This place is dead. No word in or out. But fire responders will be here soon, and after that, likely the damn National Guard!”
Houston took the keys he held up for them. “Where do we go? What does Fred say?”
The man looked at her intensely. “He knows what happened to Miller. He knows what you found. That’s why I’m here. You have to get back to DC, you have to stop the maniacs before it’s too late! Finish what you started. Go, now!”
He pushed them toward the SUV, and Lopez grabbed Houston’s hand as they sprinted. They leapt into the vehicle and sped off onto the road, leaving the inferno that was the police station behind them.
Standing next to the flames, near the spot where the SUV had been parked, a blond man watched them pull out. It had been close. Too damn close. He was furious at himself for nearly allowing the CIA asset the chance to kill the pair. Had he arrived only seconds later, he would have lost his best lead to the mission architects.
But it worked. He had seen their eyes. He had reached them, pushed the buttons that needed to be pushed. They were on their way. Once again, he checked his phone. The transmitter on the SUV was active, showing their position. He began to sprint to his own vehicle.
It was time to head south.
47
The Priest and the Whore: When Will This National Nightmare End?
An Op-Ed, By William Notti, New York Daily News
Abused children. Murdered government agents. A break-in at a CIA ultra-secure site, followed by its near destruction and the theft of critical documents. Counterterrorism agents murdered in their homes, tortured, their skulls drilled into. A wild chase on the New York highways, ending in arrest and mayhem as the two killer fugitives blow up a police station, killing dozens of officers.
This is the United States?
The president finally has begun to take this seriously and called in the National Guard. But it’s too little, too late.
What we have is another example of a weak commander in chief who has staffed his “intelligence” communities with dangerous liberals more in tune with his own politics.
The Central Intelligence Agency has been warped into a Liberal think tank and is in danger of utterly failing in its function as our nation’s most important intelligence agency. It is now overly politicized, used to leak key facts to the mainstream media in order to alter the political landscape.
The sharp tools developed and put in place by conservative administrations have all been blunted. And now we are all suffering for these mistakes.
It really doesn’t matter who Lopez and Houston really are or even what they’ve done. Of course, their sex crimes, murder, and treasonous espionage will go down infamously in the history books. They deserve the full force of our justice system: treason is a capital offense, as is murder.
But they are just the symptom, the pus of a vile infection of multiple branches of government by people who at best dislike American exceptionalism, and, as in this case, at worst secretly aim to undermine it.
We need a return to the strength of patriotism, to a counterterrorism that will harshly pursue and punish those who wish ill to the United States of America. We had that in the years after 9/11, but the success of those patriots in stopping more attacks has made us soft and forgetful.
In my view, we still haven’t gone far enough in bringing the fight to our enemies. The terrorists certainly aren’t constrained by the Geneva Conventions, so why should we be? We need to clean house and muscle up, or they’ll be back.
The American people demand it, and come November, this president may find a rude awakening at the ballot box.
48
Three days!
The one called Zulu pressed his fingertips tightly to his temple. Three days had passed since the pair had escaped the New York State police station, blowing the entire thing up in the process, creating a national sensation unparalleled since Bonnie and Clyde. The ever-rising toll was astonishing. Twenty dead cops, millions in damages, and a nightly news bonanza. Calls for the use of the National Guard. The president on national TV calming the country.
Meanwhile, their asset had never surfaced from the wreckage and was presumed dead. The two had been trapped! And they had let them escape. Houston and Lopez had disappeared, carrying deadly information about them all, doing who knows what with it. By now, anything could have happened.
He had been a fool to let this simmer so long. Now his mistake was courting disaster. He had to act, he had to destroy the files before they were discovered. He did not think to broach the topic with the others. He did not have to guess their reaction. He did not want to face it. He would do this alone.
The one called Zulu walked down to the control room. It was late, and only one man was monitoring the security system. The guard glanced up at him and nodded, and Zulu moved behind him, turning quietly to the unmanned monitor directly across on the opposite side of the room.
“Everything looks clean?” he asked, sitting down in front of the screen, speaking over his shoulder to the other guard. His presence did not arouse any suspicion. On many occasions, each of the occupants had wandered the hallways of the converted country home. Sleep was frequently denied to anxious minds.
“Yeah, quiet as a baby,” came the fatigued words. Zulu softly pressed a series of keys, opening windows to the security system. The monitor in front of him jumped from camera image to camera image. He pressed another key, and the image locked, a camera ceasing its back-and-forth panning. He then opened a control panel window for the motion detectors and quietly entered a series of commands. He cleared the screen of windows. Satisfied, he stood up.
“OK, good. Stay alert. Things could happen when we least expect. Scratch that. They will happen when we least expect.” The guard nodded, straightening in his seat slightly.
Zulu walked to an unused portion of the large farmhouse and approached a door leading to the outside. Hesitantly, he placed his hand on the doorknob, turned it, and pushed outward, closing his eyes. He waited. There were no alarms. He had done it right.
He walked outside, pulled out a remote control, and deactivated the gate security. He checked the inside of his suit jacket, felt the weight of the weapon, and walked toward the car parked by the road.
It was dangerous. Crazy. But he had to do it, whatever the risk. He’d screwed up, he knew that. A sign that he was getting old, probably, or that things were happening too quickly, too insanely for anyone to do everything right. It would have taken him only five minutes to start the erasure of the hard drive! But he’d been too busy running out of the house.
Cowardice. It wasn’t age. Or carelessness. That was the truth, and he knew it. He had simply been afraid. He’d bolted to the safe house. He’d left the secrets on the drive.
Well, he’d fix that now.
49
It was midnight, and Lopez found himself summoning the stamina to once again plow his energies through another long night of breaking and entering. But compared to the more recent activities he had been involved with, this seemed almost saintly.