Rendition Protocol Read online

  “Sort of.”

  “The computer couldn’t find a match?”

  “Not exactly. Weirdest thing I’ve ever seen. The computer found a match, but the results were redacted.”

  “What do you mean, redacted?”

  “Just like I said, redacted. They were blacked out on the computer monitor.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  “I printed it out so you could see.” The detective held out a piece of paper.

  As Lieutenant Pence studied the printout, he shook his head. “What the hell?” Everything that would normally identity the matching fingerprints was blacked out. “Is she CIA or something?”

  “No idea, but she’s highly trained, that’s for sure.”

  “You try to talk to her?”

  “Yup, twice. Doesn’t even look you in the eye.”

  “This is bullshit,” the lieutenant said. He took a deep breath, opened the door, and walked into the hospital room. He placed his hand on an empty chair near the bed .“Mind if I have a seat?” he said, but didn’t bother waiting for a reply. As he pulled the chair closer to the bedside, he said, “So? How are things going with you?”

  Her eyes flared. His attempt at levity had gone nowhere.

  He glanced at her deep-bronze skin and sun-bleached hair and knew she was likely a local. “Tourist season has been good this year. It’s great for the island economy, don’t you think?” He craned his neck to make eye contact but the effort proved futile. “Look, I’m just trying to make small talk. You seem like a person in need of a friend right now.”

  Without looking over, Jana said, “Some women would take offense to what you just said.”

  “Really? Why is that?”

  “A lot of guys walk up to you in bars and say things like that. ‘Hey, babe, looking for a friend?’ But it’s not your friendship they’re interested in.”

  “My name is Jack. I’m not trying to make a pass at you. I’m a detective. You know, this conversation would go much better if I knew what to call you.”

  Jana said nothing.

  The lieutenant continued. “You busted that guy up pretty good. He’s in surgery, in case you were wondering. Where’d you learn to do that?”

  She shifted in her bed and looked at the restraints on her wrists.

  “It doesn’t look good, you know?” Pence continued. “You not talking to me. We’ve got a man broken to pieces and, unless you can tell me what happened, the district attorney is going to push for attempted murder.” He paused a moment to let the statement sink in.

  “The prick didn’t try to kill me.”

  “The charge of attempted murder wouldn’t be filed against him, it would be filed against you.” He watched her facial expression. “I take it you disagree? The charges are real, miss. I tell you what, why don’t we share information? I tell you something, you tell me something. Is that fair? And since I don’t know your name, I’m going to call you Jane, Jane Doe. That’s what we do in an investigation where we don’t know the name of the subject. So, Jane, I’ll start. What interests me about the victim’s injuries are the gunshot wounds. One to the kneecap, one to the groin. Those kind of makes a statement, don’t they? Did you find yourself in a bad position, and this, perhaps, was self-defense?” But when she made no response, the lieutenant got up to leave. “Listen, Jane. If you aren’t going to talk, you don’t give me any choice. Once the headshrinker clears you, you’ll be taken back to police headquarters. And you might as well make yourself at home. You might be there quite a while.”

  6

  Off the Reservation

  Sometime the next morning Jana awoke at the police precinct to the sound of metallic keys throwing a heavy bolt. A uniformed officer stared down at her. “Jane Doe, number zero six six seven three? Right this way, you have a visitor.”

  “A visitor?” she said. She rubbed sleep from her eyes and sat up then looked at the officer. “Get a good look? You like watching women while they sleep?”

  The officer rolled his eyes.

  Jana stood. “How can I have a visitor? There isn’t even anyone on this island that knows I’m here.”

  “This way.”

  He held her by the arm and escorted her down the cinder-block hallway toward the interrogation room. The officer opened the door and motioned to an open chair. Seated at the table were Lieutenant Pence and a man whose back was to her. When he turned around, she immediately recognized him. He was a man from her past, a man named Cade Williams.

  The lieutenant looked at Cade and said, “Alright, Mr. Williams, she’s here.” He glanced at the uniformed officer standing by the door. “You don’t need to stay. But make sure no one is in the observation room,” he said as he pointed to the mirrored wall of glass. He looked back at Cade. “Now, can you tell me what the hell is going on? Why is the National Security Agency on my island?”

  Cade looked at her. “Jana, sit down for God’s sake. You want to tell him, or should I?”

  Her eyes were locked on his as she approached the table. She leaned her knuckles onto it and spoke through gritted teeth. “I was doing just fine on my own. I don’t need your help.”

  “That’s not the way I see it,” Cade replied. “Let’s see if I can recap the last many months of your life for you. Then we’ll see whether or not you need my help. First, you leave us without a trace. You don’t tell anyone where you’re going. It was as though you disappeared off the face of the earth. You go off the grid and assume a new identity. And from what the lieutenant tells me, and from the looks of you, you’ve apparently acquired a bit of field training during that time. A new-found penchant for snapping femur bones as if they were twigs, then shooting men in the balls? Should I continue, or do you want to take over from here?”

  Jana yanked the metal chair back. It scraped against the cement floor, and she sat.

  Cade shook his head. “I don’t even know you anymore.”

  “Wait a minute,” the lieutenant said. “This is not exactly the type of cooperation I was hoping for. If there’s history between the two of you, and from the looks of it, bad history, why didn’t you send someone else?” He leveled a finger at Jana. “I want to know who she is She’s charged with aggravated assault and attempted murder. This is not the United States. The isle of Antigua is a sovereign country, sir. And you are withholding state’s evidence.”

  “Relax, Lieutenant,” Cade said as he leaned back in his chair. “I just wanted to give Jana a chance to speak for herself. She doesn’t appreciate it when people speak for her. At least she didn’t back when I knew her.” Cade shook his head. “Lieutenant, meet Special Agent Jana Baker, formerly of the FBI.”

  The lieutenant traced his thoughts. “You’re telling me this is Agent Baker? The one that stopped those two bombings?”

  “And I can tell you she certainly did not commit assault or attempted murder on your island.”

  The lieutenant stood to emphasize his point. “Agent Baker, is it? I suggest you start talking so we can straighten this thing out. And your story better be pretty good. Mr. Williams is not apprised of all the evidence against you, but I am. And the DA is more than a little agitated. He wants to throw you under the prison.”

  A tense silence ensued, then Cade said, “I’ve seen all the evidence against her.”

  The lieutenant glared at him. “You couldn’t have seen the evidence.”

  Cade saw no point in explaining that NSA had accessed the police computer during the night and downloaded everything. “Jana,” he said, “this thing could get ugly. The assistant US attorney is on a plane right now. He’ll be here in an hour. And if you don’t start cooperating with Antiguan authorities, he’s going to be pissed.”

  Jana almost yelled. “I don’t work for him anymore, do I?”

  “That may be, but Uncle Bill pulled a lot of strings to get him sent down here. He’s coming to help you, you understand that?”

  She spoke as though her jaw would not open. “He shouldn’t have put
his hands on me.”

  The lieutenant turned to listen closer. “Who? Who shouldn’t have put his hands on you? Are you saying you were assaulted?”

  “He would have liked to assault me. He would have liked that very much. So, I defended myself.”

  The lieutenant crossed his arms. “You’re telling me you acted in self-defense? I’ve got a man lying in intensive care with multiple compound fractures and gunshot wounds. The surgeons spent most of the night rebuilding the bones in his face. Is that what you call self-defense?”

  Jana slammed a fist into the table. “Got what he deserved!”

  “Oh boy, here we go,” Cade said.

  “I told the prick to keep his paws off of me, and I meant it.”

  The lieutenant paced the room. “Apparently so. And after that gunshot to the groin, I suppose he’ll think twice before trying that on another woman, is that it?”

  “Lieutenant,” Cade said, “it’s obvious this was an attempted sexual assault. The victim defended herself. Case closed.”

  “Case closed, my ass,” Lieutenant Pence said. “The district attorney will decide that, the local district attorney. We are holding her until the investigation is complete.”

  “That won’t be necessary,” Cade said.

  “Oh really?”

  Cade cocked his head. “Lieutenant, let me ask you a question. When were you going to disclose the perpetrator’s criminal record to Agent Baker here?”

  The lieutenant’s arms dropped. “How do you know about that?”

  “We are the National Security Agency, we know what we know. And what we don’t know, we find out. Take you for example. An American, born in Brooklyn. Seventeen years with the NYPD. Got hired by the island recently to head up the police forces. Very impressive, Lieutenant, really. But let me help you.” Cade pulled a piece of paper from his jacket pocket. “Montes Lima Perez, attempted burglary, 1992, investigated for arson, 1994, looks like he started running drugs in ’95. Three counts of possession in that year. Not a bad start, is it? Now we’re on to 2002 when he resurfaced after doing six hard. Didn’t take him long to catch up with his old friends though. Three counts of attempted rape, did another year hard. Then he hits the big time. 2005, busted with sixteen kilos of cocaine. Now suspected of having ties to the Oficina de Envigado Cartel. Goes inside one more time for ten long. Then shows up here a month ago. So I’ll ask you again, when were you going to mention the fact that her attacker had a criminal record as long as my Johnson?”

  The lieutenant never broke eye contact. “So it’s your decided opinion, in all your years investigating homicides, sexual assaults, and the like, that I am out of line here? I worked homicide for twelve years.”

  The sarcasm stabbed Cade in the gut but he did not flinch. He knew as well as the lieutenant that the NSA didn’t investigate crimes of that nature, unless they intersected with a matter of national security.

  “Is that what the NSA teaches you? Homicide investigation?” the lieutenant said.

  “Don’t hand me that crap,” Cade said. “I may not be a homicide detective, but as a top-level analyst at NSA, I see some pretty awful shit.”

  “And if it were up to you,” the lieutenant continued, “I suppose you would let Miss Congeniality here go? No questions asked? National hero to the United States and all?”

  “You’re an American,” Cade said.

  “And I’ve got a duty to my employer, the government of Antigua, and I say her story stinks.”

  Jana glared at the lieutenant through the slits of her eyes.

  Cade said, “Lieutenant, I suggest you give me an answer, and give it to me right now. If the US attorney gets here and finds you not cooperating, he’s going to rip your Adam’s apple out and hand it back to you.”

  “I may be an American, but the Antiguan government does not respond to idle threats of the United States!”

  “No?” Cade jabbed. “Since you’re new here, maybe you weren’t aware that Antiqua receives a lot of aid from the US. When a senior member of the US administration shows up at your doorstep and makes a request, you jump or have your ass handed to you.”

  “So here’s my problem, Mr. Williams. I started out investigating a case that looks suspiciously like attempted murder. It turns out, allegedly, it was simply a woman defending herself against an attacker. Where I get a little hazy is when I come across the fact that we have a highly trained special agent here. In a court room, whether on the isle of Antigua or in the United States, the law divides us into two simple categories: those that are untrained and have little control over their actions during a crisis situation, and people like her,” he pointed to Jana, “those with training. Extensive training. People like that are the ones expected to use restraint. After she hyperextended the perp’s elbow so far that it snapped backwards, he was down and would not have been able to continue the assault. But she didn’t stop there.” He squared off in front of Jana. “Did you? No. You proceeded to snap his leg nearly in half. And when did the face beating commence? After he was flailing on the ground in pain? Huh? How about the gunshot wounds? They look suspiciously like the type of GSWs we see in execution-style killings. Did you kneecap him first, or was that after you blew his dick off?”

  Cade stood and placed a pointed finger in the man’s face. “Hey, she defended her life. It’s as simple as that.”

  “Is it?” the lieutenant said as he again looked at Jana. “And what about the silencer? I want an answer, Agent Baker. Nothing? Once my forensic team does an analysis of the crime scene, are they going to tell me that I’m right? He was lying on the ground when you shot him, twice?”

  Jana’s hands formed into fists and her jaw clenched. “Got what he deserved,” she said again.

  The lieutenant walked back to Cade. “Your,” he searched for the right word, “asset is out of control. When I was in Desert Storm, we called it going off the reservation.”

  “Are you going to formally charge her?” Cade pressed.

  The lieutenant started to leave but paused. “No, not just yet. But she is not to leave this island.”

  Cade pulled Jana up and said, “This interview is over.”

  7

  The Pop of the Mind

  4:00 a.m.

  Jana lay in bed with a sheet draped over her body. Her pupils darted from side to side as she entered the deepest stage of sleep, stage five, rapid eye movement. Her right hand trembled and goosebumps formed on her arms. She had descended into a dream and began to hear frightening voices, although she couldn’t tell where they were coming from. Her body was cold and all she could see was darkness. Fear built in the pit of her stomach, yet no matter how hard she tried, she could not pry her eyes open. It was as if they were draped in heavy sheets of lead.

  Jana’s heart began to pound as the voices became clearer, and the clearer they became, the harder her heart pounded. She recognized them, yet there was something different this time, something that sounded close and unholy, like the sound of a trio of beasts consorting against her. She’d never heard them with such vividness, and panic filled her soul.

  There were three voices in total, each with its own distinct tone.

  The first whispered to the others, “We should kill her.”

  Jana struggled to open her eyes and wake from the nightmare. She had become locked into the dream, a dream from which there was no escape.

  She’d previously fled the life of a federal agent and retreated to Antigua, a place of tranquil waters and calm ocean breezes, in the hopes that her nightmares would subside. But now in the dead space of night, she knew they might never end.

  Then another replied, “We will kill her. The jihad will not be complete until she is dead.”

  The more the voices spoke, the colder Jana’s skin became. She had entered a place of terror where past events tore at her psyche. She found herself tumbling down what looked like a long, dark tube that led into the pit of the nightmare. She backpedaled with her feet, but could not stop the downward f
all.

  Each time one of the voices spoke, Jana felt a burning sensation across the upper part of her torso. And since her skin had become cold and clammy, the pain was intensified.

  “Retribution will be ours,” another voice said. “She is so much like her father before her, a traitor to his own country, his own blood. Yet she does not see it,” the voice laughed, “but she is a criminal to the core, just like he was.”

  No, Jana thought, I’m not like my father. I can’t be. I can’t—a shiver rode the length of her body and the tremor in her right hand intensified.

  “How will we kill her?”

  “She will do it herself,” the centermost voice said through a laugh that curdled Jana’s stomach.

  “But how?”

  “It will be simple. We will show her,” the laughing voice said. “We will show her again and again.” The voice lowered to a whisper, “Show her now.”

  Suddenly, and as though someone had flipped the power switch on an old movie projector, what looked like home movies appeared in front of her. Light popped and flickered and Jana squinted into the brightness. Her heart beat faster and she struggled to focus on the images. She could see herself, it was like watching one’s life from a distance. These weren’t old home movies from her childhood, these were her worst terrors. It was the nightmare, the same nightmare she had relived over the past year, only this time it was worse.

  As the movie rolled on, she saw herself again seated in a wooden chair in the center room of a remote cabin, her hands and feet bound. She had been stripped down to her undergarments. This was the same cabin she had awakened in after having been abducted during the throes of a horrific terrorism investigation the previous year. The scene was so vivid, yet against the backdrop of her present life here on Antigua, it represented a complete and total paradox; one she could not reconcile.

  And there the vision was. A Middle Eastern man towered over her and glared with coal-black eyes; the smile of a madman painted on his face. His thick, black hair, broken by a single shock of white, was wild and unkempt. It was Waseem Jarrah, the most wanted terrorist in the world.