“Do you think you’re alone in this battle? The last patriot in Washington? I don’t know how they uncovered you, or Grason. I wish it were as easy as giving you a couple of names. Check them out and you’d have all your answers. But it’s not. What you seek is caught in a black widow’s web. The web is sporadic, crisscrossed — no apparent synchronicity to the design. Even the tools and technologies used to protect information in the web are classified. The checks and balances in the security are so detailed that it’s impossible to guess how they uncovered you. The key point is—” he abruptly stopped. His face took on a catatonic stare. He tried remembering what he was supposed to say next, but he saw running images in his mind — the moon, the stars, Earth, spiral galaxies — like poorly constructed sentences with meaningless points and premises that ran on and on and on, and he wondered why the moon didn’t have a name like Earth had a name, after all, nobody called Earth the planet.
“Are you okay?” the congressman asked.
“Where am I?”
“If you don’t know that, I’d say you have a few internal issues to deal with.” The congressman hit the intercom on his desk, “Send a couple of the guys in here.”
Skyles grunted, grabbing his head, writhing and falling to his knees.
The congressman knelt down to help him and noticed a small device clipped underneath Skyles’ belt. He pulled on it, discovering a thin white cord running up his shirt and connecting to a button mid-chest. Looking closer, he realized it was a small camera.
The congressman had no idea what caused Skyles to act as he did. All he knew was someone had unveiled a great deal of his operation. Storm’s words rang in his head: They’ll bury your man in that desert. Val had just started his third excursion.
CHAPTER 36
Damien Owens sometimes found it useful to let his opponent know he lurked in the shadows. Engaging Ben Skyles as a ploy to feed the congressman disinformation was another brilliant idea on Owens’ part, had it worked. Instead, it was foolish and compounded Owens’ problems surrounding Skyles. He had underestimated the lack of control he had over him. The best employee in his USAP had been reduced to an intermittent imbecile, and Owens still had no explanation.
He always admitted to making the rare mistake and learned accordingly, but this was his worst ever. Skyles’ breakdown left the congressman with a calling card: a microvideo pinhole camera that used rare technologies developed through programs administered by the Defense Advance Research Project Agency. Such advanced equipment was used by few agencies. There would be tremendous repercussions throughout the intelligence community if the congressman went public with this. And Owens would now have to invest some time to ensure his tracks were covered and the camera could not be traced to him.
“I’ve become too cocky for my own good,” Owens admitted to Kayla as they waited in the car a block from the congressman’s office. “Only our agents should be handling that equipment, especially against a member of Congress.”
“Maybe everything happens for a reason,” she said in hopes of offering something positive.
“I don’t put much faith in prophetic pats on the back, but if I did, then the reason this happened is to remind me never to stray from my core values. My biggest flaw in this was feeling remorse for Skyles. I let myself care too much about him, and took responsibility for his condition because it happened under my command. He’s no longer capable of functioning in the program, and I tried prolonging his career with us by using him in another capacity … Stupid.”
Kayla had never seen Owens frustrated with himself. He didn’t appear concerned like he had lost a battle with the congressman, just mad for what he had done and the extra work needed to correct it.
“This is going to get a lot worse,” he told her.
“Why?”
“We … I … have just handed Skyles to the FBI. His mental state is not as stable as I was led to believe. I can’t allow the FBI to interrogate him. They can’t know what he knows.”
“I don’t even know what Skyles knows,” Kayla said.
“Exactly my point.”
They sat in silence for a few moments, watching the building. Two men kicked open the lobby doors and escorted a half-conscious Skyles from the building, leaving him sitting on the curb like a bag of trash.
“Should we go get him?” Kayla asked.
“And give them our plate numbers? That’s another detail we’d have to cover up. Plus there could be surveillance cameras to snap our picture. We’ll wait and see if he gets up.”
“At least the FBI doesn’t have him.”
“I’m trying to understand why. I don’t know if the congressman is dump, scared or …” His words trailed off.
“Or what?”
“The reason for the congressman’s investigation is to reach the people and programs we’re involved with. He wants us, and Skyles is a direct link, thrown in his lap. Apparently the congressman doesn’t think he needs Skyles, nor does he seem to want the attention Skyles would draw to his investigation. He wants a low profile, and is content with his current situation. Otherwise Skyles wouldn’t be sitting on the curb.”
“You said they’re just getting started. I would think Skyles is a pot of gold to them.”
“I agree, but maybe there’s more to the congressman’s operation than I realized. Both the congressman and Grason Kendricks worked in intelligence. I have no way of knowing every program they may have been exposed to. They’re old friends with an agenda and knowledge I underestimated.”
Confused by his explanation, Kayla asked, “Do you think they have a better source than Skyles?”
“The congressman must think he does.”
“Who could be a better source?” she asked, trying to work through the scenario with him.
“Depends on the topic, but in some cases, nobody. However, the congressman doesn’t know that. To him Skyles is a mental case with a GRATCOR badge.” He watched Skyles curl into a fetal position on the sidewalk and remain there, motionless. “There’s a naval hospital a few miles from here. We’ll have him picked up and taken there.”
“What are we going to do with him?”
“Unfortunately, what I should have done to begin with.”
CHAPTER 37
Trace Helms’ ranch-style house outside the high-desert town of Alamo was forty-nine miles from his parking space at Groom Lake. Tonight, as he returned home, he pushed his truck’s gas pedal hard; he was expecting company for a small poker game. Stopping inside the front gate to his rural, ten-acre ranch, he honked-honked his horn. Hearing his cue, two Rottweilers appeared from behind a red-rock bluff — Gideon and Tola, the vigorous judges of Trace’s property — and followed him up the driveway.
Trace parked in his courtyard, behind his brother’s van. Beaming with a sincere smile that was rarely summoned by anyone other than family, Trace dropped from his truck. With long, slow strides and swaying shoulders, he lumbered toward his brother on the porch. Teneil had made the journey from his Las Vegas home earlier that afternoon. When seen side by side, it was clear they had the same genetic makeup, although Teneil was even more muscly from working construction.
“Where’s Jimmy?” Trace asked after saying hello.
“Fixin’ food.”
“My poor kitchen,” Trace moaned. “Have you heard from Rebecca?”
“The bitch is on her way.”