One Rough Man - Brad Taylor [88]
“You’re right. I shouldn’t have done that. He pushed my buttons. I don’t want to be a prick, but it just happens sometimes. I’m working on it. Can we forget about it?”
She looked confused, then suspicious. “Well . . . okay.”
She waited a second, as if she expected a trick. When none came, her anger deflated a little bit. “Let’s just hope he does something with what we told him.”
I smiled, relieved. “He’ll send the cable. It’s too volatile not to send in this day and age. Easier to pass the responsibility to someone else.”
53
Eric returned to his office, still flustered by the encounter with Pike. On the one hand, he didn’t want to send the cable precisely because Pike had demanded he do so. Yeah, maybe I was a little distracted by Pike’s companion, but that’s no reason to act like such an asshole. On the other hand, if he did nothing and Pike’s wild story proved to be true, there would be hell to pay.
Today was one of the few times he could send a cable out on his own. Ordinarily, he just wrote the cables for release by the chief of station, but Belize had been without a chief for six months, and would probably be without one for the foreseeable future as the CIA pulled experienced hands to fill the gaps created by dealing with a substate threat that couldn’t be seen by satellites. With the deputy chief on leave, and Steve, the only other case officer, out doing what he was paid to do, he was now left alone at the wheel.
A year out of college, six months out of training, Eric had the requisite skills for his position of collating reports and sending cables but had little to no experience in the rough and tumble world of covert operations. He decided it would be better to send the cable and get scolded for clogging up the pipe than not send it and get hammered for missing a terrorist attack.
He typed up Pike’s paragraph, adding some of his own observations, and launched it out, including the Counterterrorism Center on the distro, along with the usual Latin American Affairs desks. He included the crypt that Pike had given him.
THE CABLE TRAVELED AT THE SPEED OF THE INTERNET, instantly residing in the in-boxes of the people he had put on the distro. Because of the crypt, it was rerouted to several select boxes as well.
Seconds later, alarms began to go off in some of the most powerful offices in Washington, D.C. Some had official titles; others were simply oak doors with no indication of what was behind them. The crypt that Pike had given was unique to his last unit, and was guaranteed to get attention. It was a verification, sometimes a distress code that allowed operators working in deep cover to send a message through “ordinary” CIA channels during extreme situations, when established communications had failed. It had never been used. It was designed to get attention, and within a second or two of Eric’s finger depressing the button on his computer’s mouse, it had done its job.
INSIDE TASKFORCE HEADQUARTERS, the duty officer sat staring at a computer screen, bored out of his mind. The man was dressed in casual business attire, but like everyone else in the office, except the little old ladies downstairs, he looked like an athlete. He always wondered if maybe they shouldn’t change their cover to something with professional sports. Maybe be Jerry Maguire’s D.C. office or something. Maybe hire Kelly Preston to roam around here, solidifying the cover. Before his mind could wander to something less savory, the computer at his desk signaled an incoming message. He stood up and printed it out, giving a low whistle when he saw the crypt.
He took the cable directly to Kurt Hale’s office. He knew Kurt was in the process of packing up to go on a date night with his wife, something they hadn’t done in over six months. He saw Kurt’s expression change when he walked in, Kurt recognizing that his night might be shot.
“What’s up, Mike?”
“We got a Prometheus message five minutes ago.”
Kurt stopped what he was doing, running through his mind the two active operations currently ongoing. Only Knuckles was anywhere