One Rough Man - Brad Taylor [130]
“What’re you going to do now?”
“I’ll go to Norway and save the fuckin’ world by myself—without any help from your Taskforce.”
“You can’t get on a plane. You’ll be arrested from the Homeland Security database.”
That answer caused me to start swearing like a sailor and punching the seat in front of me.
Kurt put a hand on my shoulder. “Hold on. Look, I can’t launch a force, but I can support you from here. I’ll get you to Norway on one of our aircraft. Give me those e-mail addresses. I can have them monitored 24/7. You said you deleted the meeting message, right?”
That mollified me a little. “Yeah. It’s gone. They couldn’t have made that meet, so I’m thinking they’re still hanging around waiting.”
“Good. I’ll keep an eye on the e-mails. When they set up a new meet, I’ll relay the information to you. Give me an e-mail address.”
I didn’t have one. Jennifer turned around. “I have one. Will any address do?”
“Yeah, I don’t care what it is.”
Jennifer gave him a Hotmail address.
Kurt said, “Good enough. We’ll monitor this 24/7 as well. If you need any analytical help, send us an e-mail.”
Kurt reached into his pocket, pulling out his worldwide pager. “Here. If you find them, and confirm there is a weapon, use this. You remember how, right?”
“Yeah. I remember.”
“You alert us back here, and I’ll assume you’ve found something. I’ll launch a team your way.”
He held the pager in his hands, not yet passing it over. “Pike, I meant what I said. Don’t press this button just because you believe something’s going on. Don’t use it for your own personal vendetta. Once I launch, and we get compromised, there’s an even chance that the U.S. government is going to go through a seizure. Make sure it’s worth it.”
78
Kurt gave me the pager, saying, “One more thing. You really will be on the Impossible Mission Force for this one. You get caught, and you’re going to be hung out to dry. You won’t get any official sanction from here.”
“I didn’t expect it. I won’t get caught. I haven’t been yet.”
We pulled into Arlington and switched to Kurt’s car. We spent the majority of the time it took to drive to the Dulles FBO listening to Kurt set up an aircraft for me. Finally, it was done, and I got to ask about the men who had tried to kill us.
He said, “I’ve been thinking about that quite a bit, but really have no idea. Whoever it is has a lot of power, but all the people with power like that simply wouldn’t do it. It doesn’t make any sense to me. I can’t even figure out why they would want a terrorist attack to occur in the first place. The whole thing is screwy. Anyway, it’s no longer your concern.”
“Huh? It’s exactly my concern. They aren’t trying to kill you. They’re trying to kill Jennifer and me.”
Kurt’s face became hard. “That’s not what I meant. You focus on the terrorists. I’ll find out who killed Ethan and tried to kill you. Don’t worry about them. They have ceased to exist. I can’t bring back Ethan’s family, but I promise you the men who did that will pay.”
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Jennifer visibly blanch. I’d purposely not told her the grisly details of Ethan’s family to spare her feelings, but she had now connected the dots between the body count and who was dead. Maybe realizing for the first time that doing the right thing had consequences outside of our control, and that the good guy doesn’t always win.
Kurt continued, pulling into the general aviation section of Dulles, “Whatever you do, don’t call my cell phone until I have it scanned. Those assholes are tracking either you or me, and I don’t trust my own equipment at this stage. I’ve got the thing dismantled in my pocket right now.”
We pulled into Signature Air at the Dulles FBO. He parked the car and turned around. “Well, I couldn’t get you a junky airplane. All we have available at short notice is the rock-star bird.”
I grinned. “Perfect. Nothing like riding in style.”
Jennifer looked from me to Kurt, asking, “What’s the rock-star bird? Are we flying on a Greyhound tour bus?”
“Better than that. It’s a Gulfstream