Kill Decision(66)
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McKinney fidgeted in the back of an unmarked government sedan, Agent Blake at the wheel. The car moved through late-night traffic near downtown Kansas City, Christmas decorations on the light poles. Blake had asked her to assume the posture of a suspect being transferred to Homeland Security custody, and accordingly they out-processed her and put her in a vehicle with a metal grille partition that separated her from the driver. Even worse, they’d handcuffed her like they would any other prisoner. She even had her hands chained to her waist, wearing a tan prisoner jumpsuit and booties. With each passing day her life just kept getting stranger.
“Now that we’re away from the FBI office, can you please take these chains off me, Agent Blake?”
He shook his head. “We need to get well clear and make sure we’re not being tailed first.”
McKinney slumped and tried as best she could to get comfortable on the hard plastic seat. As they drove through downtown, she leaned her head against the window, watching the shop and office façades passing by. Normal life. There wasn’t much foot traffic. It looked like the type of downtown that cleared out after dark—after the office workers left.
McKinney wondered if the Feds would raid the secret base. Was it still there? Perhaps Odin’s whole team had picked up or destroyed the evidence and fled. A sudden fear gripped her that she’d been wrong or that the Feds would get involved in a shoot-out with the military team because of her—a miscommunication or misunderstanding that might wind up subverting America’s defenses. Guilt nagged at her as she recalled the dead, burned bodies in those bombing photos. The face of one dead little girl in particular bothered her.
But what other choice had there been? She was a scientist. You don’t just take people’s word for things—you find out. She needed to corroborate their story, and they were unreasonable to expect that she’d do what they asked without official sanction that the operation was legitimate and legal. If the Feds raided the place and it turned out to be an illegal operation—or worse yet, that they were behind the drone attacks—or bombings, or whatever they were—then she would actually have helped stop a serious crime. Wouldn’t she?
McKinney didn’t feel any better. She realized that this was probably what intelligence work was like: no idea what the big picture was, and no clear best course.
She’d been lost in her own thoughts for a while when she suddenly noticed they were moving through a large, empty parking lot. Cones of bright light from towering lamp poles stabbed down at regular intervals. She could see passenger jets taking off in the distance. A car rental lot was visible several hundred yards away, as were illuminated billboards that only occur in the nether regions around airports—shuttle bus and mileage program ads, breakfast buffets. The usual corporate chain hotel logos glowed on towers not far off. Apparently Blake was bringing her to a hotel near the airport. Not a bad idea to remain anonymous.
The sedan slowed in the middle of the parking lot. Blake circled, looking warily in all directions.
McKinney leaned forward. “What are we doing?”
Blake ignored her.
“Agent Blake, what’s going on?”
Without answering Blake stopped the car in the center of the lot, ignoring the parking lines. He got out.
“Hey!” McKinney leaned over to watch him walk out to the edge of the cone of light in his full-length greatcoat, scanning the horizon. “Hey, what’s going on?” Her shouts were magnified in the plastic confines of the sedan’s backseat. She tugged against the chain binding her handcuffed wrists to her waist. “Agent Blake!”
He continued to act as if she didn’t exist.
McKinney glanced around. There were no other cars within two hundred yards of them. It was a vast, empty place beneath floodlights. The winter cold was already creeping into the car—her breath stabbing out vapor. She could hear the engine parts clicking as they cooled.
Agent Blake was now acting as if she were a nonperson, and a terrible realization began to sink in: that she had fallen in with dangerous people. That much was increasingly clear.
She lay back against the seat and tried to remember what normal life was like. Instead all she could remember was how instantaneous the blast wave had been on those attack videos—bodies disintegrated by industrial weaponry, as though they were made of paper.
Would anyone ever discover what happened to her, or would she just become another one of the disappeared in the world? The researcher who disappeared somewhere in Africa. That’s Africa for you, people would say. She thought again of her father.
Just then something dark alighted on the trunk of the car.