Preston listened without saying a word as he walked around his desk and sank dumbfounded into his chair. The sergeant continued in a slow, droning monotone.
“After neutralizing the first target, I received permission via COMLINK to investigate the target site and neutralize the second target if encountered. Upon entering the apartment… I mean the target site… I was confronted with a man sitting in a chair and was immediately disoriented by a loud noise and a bright flash of light. At that time I determined the man sitting in the chair was an aggressor and engaged him with my handgun. I fired several shots before I was subdued by the man who is now holding the phone. That… that pretty much summarizes my involvement in this situation.”
Jack Preston sat silently. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. An American army sergeant had just admitted to killing a Federal Agent and god knows who else. The reason his elusive terrorist had taken his call to Agent Martin was now clear – he wanted to make sure that Preston and everyone listening knew exactly what had transpired. He didn’t just know the call was being traced and recorded, Preston thought solemnly. He was fucking counting on it. Right now his team of technicians was analyzing the voice on the other end of the call, and the worst possible outcome would be what he already knew to be true. Agent Rick Martin’s death, through some unfathomable mistake, had come at the hands of another American soldier.
You clever son of a bitch.
Preston checked his watch. The trace had started just over one minute earlier. He knew he needed to keep the call active for at least another two minutes to give his team enough time to complete the signal trace. There was only one question left to ask, and the Director had no intention of ending the conversation without getting the answer.
“Sergeant,” he said with a steady tone of authority. “Who gave you those orders?”
The sergeant let out a sudden breath before responding. Preston had the odd impression that he had woken the man up from a deep sleep.
“The… the orders came directly from my C.O., sir,” he replied, reflectively adding the ‘sir’ in response to Preston’s tone. “But that doesn’t mean anything. I knew the minute I was given the mission that it was just another charter.”
“Another charter?”
“Yes sir, that’s our name for any special ops assignments that come from other agencies. You know, like a contract. Nobody does their own dirty work anymore. Too fucking messy.” The sergeant laughed softly at his own remark. “Excuse my French, sir.”
“So you’re saying you don’t have any idea who requested your assignment?” the Director pressed.
“No sir, I’m not saying that. I mean, yes sir, I do know. In fact, I’m absolutely sure I know who requested it.”
Preston hesitated before responding, faced with yet another dilemma. He needed to know who was responsible for the sergeant’s kill-order assignment, but asking the question meant allowing the man sitting next to the sergeant to hear what was essentially highly-classified information regarding military operations and protocols. And yet what other option was there? The entire investigation was now a complete and utter clusterfuck. The only hope of salvaging anything – including his own career – was to finish the location trace and find out who in the hell had authorized this idiot sergeant to go on a killing spree.
“Then tell me sergeant,” he said firmly. “Who ordered it?”
“The COMLINK response I received before entering the target location had an authentication code that started with 009,” the sergeant said matter-of-factly, his voice low and dull. “And the only agency that uses that code is the National Security Agency.”
Preston spun his chair around to the window and looked up at the dull, featureless sky. The NSA? How could they have gotten tangled in this? Even if they were monitoring a suspected terrorist, the NSA would rarely if ever initiate a kill-order directive unless they were absolutely certain of their information. He gazed out at the unbroken gray, puzzling over the information and beginning to doubt the likelihood of the sergeant’s assertion. Then suddenly it hit him.
Connolly.
It made perfect sense. The HSI Director had made it abundantly clear he didn’t approve of the way Preston was handling the investigation – demanding to know everything that was happening with Agents Coleman and Martin under the threat of carving Jack’s divisional budget into pieces if he wasn’t forthright with every new development. He was also the only person with whom Preston had shared the Dongying intelligence. And of course, Connolly was ex-NSA. He could have easily used his knowledge and connections within the government’s most clandestine organization to submit a kill-order request, then concealed his tracks beneath the agency’s thick layer of surreptitious protocols.