The Crown Victoria

A shot came from behind. Parks heard it, which meant the bullet missed its intended target. His wheels sparked along the asphalt on Page Street as his skateboard picked up downhill speed. He’d already seen the car several times that night, but now it was chasing him—fast.

Parks first noticed the car only because it was a Crown Vic, and assumed it was police. Everyone on the street knew if a Ford Crown Victoria wasn’t a taxi, it usually meant cops—marked or unmarked. If you street skate, avoiding cops is just basic instinct—especially when you’re sixteen and a runaway. So for Parks, even at first glance this car was totally worth avoiding.

As it turned out, it wasn’t police inside the car—not the uniformed kind anyway. Minutes earlier, when Parks passed the black Crown Vic at the corner of Cole and Haight Streets, he caught a glimpse of the man and woman inside. They weren’t in uniform, no inspector suits; they were dressed in people clothes—but still, they had that cop look. The man, who was doing the driving, locked eyes with Parks. And at that moment, Parks knew that whoever they were, they were looking for him. This split-second realization of self-survival gave Parks a precious few minutes for the head start he needed. Quickly, he turned off Haight before the car could turn around in pursuit—zigzagging his way out of the business area. He hoped his dark gray hoodie and black hair would help keep him lost under the weaker neighborhood lighting.

In trying to figure out a spot to hide, he ended up here—on Page—one block above the lower Haight. It was a stupid mistake. Page Street was dead. There were no witnesses and no one to help him. Another shot exploded from behind and this time he was sure he felt wind from the passing bullet.

The Crown Vic was right behind him. Parked cars, blocking the curb on both sides, had Parks trapped in the middle of the street; he had no access to the sidewalk. Without that access, any chance of escape—getting to a safe place—just wasn‘t there. Parks braced himself for the next gunshot; the shot didn’t come. As the car pulled in closer—rapidly eliminating the distance between them—he knew what was about to happen.

Inside the car, the pursuers braced themselves for the impact from the collision. The passenger had her feet planted on the floorboard; her arms remained loose but supported against the dash. The driver gripped his fingers tightly around the ring of the steering wheel, hoping to keep the car headed straight as it hit the body. His foot pressed the accelerator flat to the floorboard.

As the front of the car made contact with his body, Parks felt himself slip from his board. The car pulled his feet under—he blacked out for the briefest moment of time—then stumbled from his board as he came to. The black Crown Vic was across the intersection—half a block away. Screams—from tires trying to grab a piece of the asphalt—penetrated the neighborhood.

Parks had felt the car pass through his body.

The Agents

Because the anticipated impact of the collision with Parks didn’t occur, it put Agent Lehr in the situation of over-controlling his cruiser as it sped full-throttle—across the intersection. The combination of over-compensated steering, speed, and surprise, all contributed to the collision of the black Crown Vic into an illegally parked hybrid.

Just two hours earlier, the ill-fated owner of the hybrid—tired of hunting for a space—had given up and left his car blocking the bus zone. The two-hundred and fifty dollar ticket tucked under the wipers would now seem less significant for the scofflaw owner when he saw the damage from the crash.

The cost of repairs—over a grand—was something the owner of the hybrid would be paying, not the government. Exposing their identity here, in an official capacity, wasn’t anything the agents were prepared to let happen—especially not doing what they were doing. Lehr backed the cruiser away from the dented hybrid, fleeing the scene of the accident and heading for their San Francisco office.

“You don’t want to finish this?” Freelyn asked. “I just saw him take off, so he can’t be very far yet.”

Actually, Lehr would’ve preferred to finish the job that night. As the senior of the two agents, he’d have to report the failure to their commander—and take most of the heat from her. But he knew that someone in the neighborhood, hearing the accident, would likely call the city police. Security was too tight an issue for the department to allow police involvement and risk public exposure.

“He’ll be watching for us now—so will SFPD,” Lehr said. “If we leave him for a bit, he’ll think it was some lunatic or drug-related—a mistaken identity.”

“What if he ends up going to the police?”

“Same thing applies—they’ll figure drugs, won’t they? But, I don’t think a runaway will risk going to the police.”

“So we wait to get another chance,” said Freelyn. “You think he’ll try to figure out what happened—how he pulled that escape off?”

“It’s hard to imagine what he would think. On the other hand, he may not need to figure it out; he could know more than we think he knows.”

Freelyn considered this possibility for a moment before rejecting it. “If he knew how to do it, he’d have pulled that stunt sooner—instead of leading us in that chase through the streets.”

“Yes—,” Lehr’s tone turned slightly sarcastic, “but don’t you think it’s possible he could suspect—maybe even know—some things, without having the conscious ability to act on them yet?”

“Well, maybe—assuming he hasn’t been contacted,” said Freelyn.

“That’s exactly right partner; if the terrorists haven’t been in contact with him. Otherwise, everything changes.”

Refuge at the Slot

Shaken from his encounter with the Crown Vic, Parks took his time. Weaving his skateboard through the streets in the lower Haight, he headed toward Market Street. Rather than blow through the intersections—the way any street skater would normally do—he slow-rolled each one, checking for the Crown Vic. Other than a couple of cabs, the streets were quiet. It seemed they had given up the chase; he was safe. He crossed Market, and headed for the Slot.

“The Slot” was the nickname given by its transient tenants to a shabby little residence hotel, not too far from Mission Dolores and Dolores Park. The real name, posted on the brick wall outside, was Manor of the Mission—nobody had called it the Manor since 1980. The Slot was a building inhabited by people who struggled from week to week to pay for their room. Most of the people living there were either very old or very young. Tenants were supposed to be eighteen to rent a room, but management at the Slot wasn’t too fussy about the age rule as long as the rent was at the front desk first thing on Tuesday morning.

Parks climbed the creaky wood stairs to the floor he’d been occupying for two weeks now. It was his second month living here, and already his third room. The hotel manager moved him to a new room every three weeks.

“It’s to avoid rent control issues,” Steve—the pint bottle of Gateway brand vodka drinker—told him when it happened the first time. “If you stay for a full month, it’s harder for them to kick you out legally,” he explained.

Parks didn’t always trust Steve’s explanations, as he was prone to some really weird stories by the time the afternoon rolled around. In this particular case, it made some sense. It didn’t matter for Parks; moving between rooms wasn’t much of an issue. Since his first foster home, he’d never owned more than a few things he could stuff into a bag and carry on his skateboard. From eight years old, he knew he was only waiting for the chance to get away on his own—it took him another eight to make it happen.

On his last room switch, Parks winded up on the third floor—the same floor as Geli. She was a cute girl, with wavy darkish-blond hair and eyes a color Parks had never seen before—they were almost golden. He’d noticed Geli many times around the Slot, had a serious desire to introduce himself from the very first time he saw her, but could never find a comfortable chance to meet her.

When they did finally meet, it was Geli who made the introduction. She was walking past the open door to Parks’ newest room—which he left open because the rooms at the Slot smelled of a hundred years of cigarette smoke—and she just stopped at the doorway to introduce herself and say hi.

It amazed Parks that anyone had enough self-confidence to just go up and introduce themselves to a stranger, without any sort of pretense or manufactured excuse—even an “eighteen in two months” year old like Geli (she was already practically as bossy as an adult).

It was ten days ago they met, but one particular first impression he had of her hadn‘t changed since then; Parks realized right away that her aggressive nature was a way of life for Geli. She didn’t subtly hint at her opinions, issues, or problems; and she didn’t ask her embarrassing questions coyly. She unapologetically forced her tiny body inches into his personal space, focused her eyes directly into his, and said whatever she had on her mind. Although their friendship was only a friendship—and a short one at that—Parks felt as if he’d already willingly exposed every inch of his mind and body to her relentless questions and open scrutiny.

So, after having outrun a car trying to kill him for no reason that he knew of, it wasn’t to his own shabby room that Parks was now heading, it was two doors down—to Geli’s.

A Crazy Connection

Geli’s room, a good reflection of her personality, was orderly but not obsessively neat. Despite the transient nature of living at the Slot, she made it seem as close to home as she could. She’d hung two framed pictures on the wall, scattered the odd stuff she owned around the room, and had even unpacked her clothes to the limited shelves and drawers provided by the meager furniture in the room. She kept the five hardback books she owned displayed upright on the well-worn top of the dresser. Next to her own books, she normally had at least four library books on display as well—sometimes more. Her bedding, always hospital corners in the morning, was bunched and falling halfway off by late afternoon because that’s where she did most of her reading.

In addition to her personalized touches, some obvious things made Geli’s room different from Parks’. There weren’t any crumpled fast food bags on the floor, no dirty and semi-dirty clothes piled on a chair, and carelessly wadded bills and coin mounds were absent from her nightstand. It was a clear difference between Parks and Geli; she liked the feeling of home, he didn’t know what that was.

And there were things that made Geli different from other girls Parks had known. Geli had no body marks: tattoos, piercings—not even her ears. She never wore anything with writing on it—no logos, no concert or band t-shirts. She’d said it was her personal fashion statement not to make one. But she made plenty of other statements—oh God, yes. Geli had an opinion about everything and enough knowledge to back those opinions up. Like everything else about her, Parks found Geli’s intelligence attractive to be around—although it sometimes made him nervous.

Parks tried to predict Geli’s reaction now. Would she think his story about the Crown Vic was crazy—or that he was lying? Would she believe him, but try to talk him into going to the police for help?

He might’ve just kept quiet about the whole thing—he didn’t say anything for the first fifteen minutes—but eventually Geli figured him for something. Once she started in with her routine of relentless questioning, Parks began spitting it out—in as much detail as he could remember.

He told her about first noticing that the car seemed to be everywhere he went. “It couldn’t be coincidence,” he said. “Not that many times.” He told her everything, up to the final point where the car tried to run him down. What he left out—there was just no way to explain this—was how he survived because the car drove through him. He didn’t know how it happened, and he wasn’t even sure what happened. He knew for certain what didn’t happen, but telling her that, sounded far more believable.

“I jumped into the only opening—between two parked cars.” he lied. “I landed and took off down the sidewalk before the Crown Vic could turn around.”

Geli just sat there, unnaturally quiet. Parks could see she was processing the information. But there seemed to be something more on her mind—as if she was weighing the story against something that she already knew. This puzzled Parks for a couple reasons. For one thing, the story was outrageous—a person would expect at least a little surprise or tension from anyone hearing it. The other thing, if there was some sort of knowledge or whatever she had about what happened—a reason someone tried to kill him, or who it was—he wondered why she had to think about telling him.

“Okay, here’s the thing,” Geli finally broke her silence. “I know this old lady—I met her about a month ago—I think you might need to meet her too.”

Parks covered his eyes with his hands and dramatically rocked his head back and forth—as if hitting his head against an invisible wall. “Maybe I’m confused,” he said. He paused a few seconds before continuing. “What could this old lady possibly know about someone in a car trying to kill me?”

His reaction miffed Geli a little. “I don’t know if she knows anything specific—about this car, or the people in it—but I think she might know something that could help.”

Parks made a lame attempt to pull more information from her, but she was clearly resolute in her decision to hold out giving him anything more. She wanted to talk to the old lady first. Parks gave up.

It was late—too late for anything right now. It was decided—by Geli—that she would first go alone in the morning to visit the old lady. If Geli had it right, that some sort of connection existed, she would come back to the hotel for Parks. Then, together they’d go meet with the old lady.

This time, Parks didn’t even bother to ask why he couldn’t just come along in the first place; Geli had laid out the plan in a way that clearly left no other options open for discussion. So basically, by not offering any objection, he’d agreed.

It was late. Both kids, who’d been fighting their eyes for a while, decided they needed to get some sleep. Not wanting to be alone, Parks stayed in Geli‘s room. They fell asleep, cuddled together on top of the bed.

Waiting

At the San Francisco office for the Department of Internal Security, the DIS commander battled with her agitation. Poppers, as everyone—except the Attorney General—called her, had been surprised at the previous night’s failure by her two agents. Completely unaware of his situation, the target should‘ve been handled without issue. There was no reason for the difficulty; he was just a kid.

Poppers disliked the idea—killing an innocent kid. But he wouldn’t stay innocent for long, not once the terrorists recruited him. They didn’t care that he’s just a kid; she couldn’t afford to care either. The stakes were too high. Stabbing at her keyboard, Poppers brought the Parks profile on screen for the ninth time that day.

Parks had no close relatives known to be living. He was without standard associations or friendships. In fact, the report showed a middle-aged drunk from that fleabag residence hotel as the only person in San Francisco with whom he’d established any kind of personal connection. She’d profiled the drunk—as a precaution—but this was no clever cover; he was simply a bottle tipper from morning until he passed out however many hours later.

Poppers understood drunks, her father had been one—few people outside her family ever knew. He’d managed to keep it hidden for as long as she could remember. It certainly never affected his career. Sam Paulsen joined the army as a raw GI and after one war, one conflict and one police action ended as a retired colonel. Her dad had seen a lot, Poppers knew that. She never questioned his addiction once she was old enough to understand. Soldiers see terrible things in war—sometimes it’s necessary for them to do terrible things too. She paged down to the middle of her notes in the target’s profile.

Three foster homes in nine years. When Poppers showed up looking for the kid at the last one, the foster parents were obviously shook up. Having failed to report Parks as missing, they probably assumed Poppers’ appearance was an end to the state maintenance checks—criminal fraud charges were a threat as well.

She clicked a link to the interview audio files in the report—then to the only useful clip she’d recorded with the foster parents. Throughout the interview, they’d lied about most of the details, including the actual date of Parks’ disappearance—by two weeks. But they’d given Poppers something in this particular clip.

“You must have some idea where he’d go,” Poppers said.

“Not really.” Rob Russell’s voice was nasally and had an annoying whine to it. “Parks didn’t talk much—not really.”

“Well, he did mention New York sometimes.” This voice on the recording belongs to Doris, the other half of the foster parent team who—except for some time he spent in juvenile hall—Parks had lived with since he was ten years old.

“That’d be terrible,” Rob says. “I hate to think what would happen to him in New York. You know, he had a hard enough time staying out of trouble here.”

Poppers doubted his concern, but said nothing. At the time, she only wanted to finish the interview and get out. How these two had become and remained foster parents was impossible to understand.

“What about San Francisco?” Doris suggests. “He talked about San Francisco sometimes.”

“Oh? How serious do you think he was?” Poppers asks.

“I would guess, about as serious as anything else he talked about doing with his life.” Rob didn’t attempt to disguise his ill will toward Parks. Poppers had no trouble seeing that now—however they may have started—Rob held few, if any, positive feelings for Parks.

The foster dad’s voice seemed to have gotten more annoying in the time since Poppers last played the recording—and no more informative. The remainder of the recording went on for about ten minutes. Poppers painfully listened through it, hoping for some missed insight into the boy—something she hoped to use tonight—but there was nothing.

At the time of the interview, her ability to narrow the search down to New York and San Francisco did benefit Poppers. Troubled kids usually head for urban centers, and it helped to know which two cities might attract Parks. Even though the information—coming from two people who seemed to know little about the boy who’d lived under their care for six years—was often suspect, it paid off in the end.

The New York files were next in the Parks report, but Poppers just tabbed past them. Despite some promising police reports from the NYPD—petty department store scams, matching Parks’ juvenile record—her team eventually ruled out New York. Wherever he’d been living for the first four months as a runaway, by June, Parks was living in San Francisco. Greg Riley’s police citation exposed that. Poppers broke attention from her computer screen to glance at the large clock on her office wall.

At that moment, alone in Geli‘s room and drenched in sweat, Parks stirred from a rough sleep. The dream—from what he could remember—mostly had him running from marked and unmarked police cars. The monster-like cars tried to run him over on streets, sidewalks and even inside the Slot. The dream felt familiar to Parks—a recurrent nightmare from his past. Yet he couldn’t actually remember having had it before.

Suddenly it occurred to him, looking out the window he realized that he’d slept through the entire day. Geli had left before ten in the morning—which seemed like only an hour ago—now, outside it was getting dark. The streetlights—their sensors no longer detecting sufficient light—were flickering to come on.

Once, when Parks was twelve, Rob showed him a trick with streetlights. It was when Rob tried to give up booze. Taking walks to fight the urge, he’d sometimes bring Parks along. On one of those walks, Rob pulled a boxy piece of plastic from his pocket and showed it to Parks. He said it was the flash attachment to an old camera. It took a few minutes to charge up after he turned it on; then he aimed it toward the top of a streetlight. The flash made a loud popping sound and a bright light—nothing like a weak digital camera flash—splashed against the streetlight, directly from the front, and indirectly as it bounced off the building from behind. For just a second, the bright blue flash lit the sky like lightening, then the streetlight went dark—it was cool. But the walks stopped; Rob found the bottle again.

Despite the apparent fact that Parks had slept nearly eighteen hours, he didn’t feel ready to get out of bed yet. He turned his back to the window and slipped into a sort of waking dream. This one he knew well—it wasn’t just a dream, it was a memory.

The store is empty when the owner of the market—a creepy man, with several brown pea-sized growths on his red face and neck—stops Parks at the door. He gropes the smokes from Parks’ pants pocket and decides to administer on-the-spot punishment for the attempted crime. Holding the boy’s hand flat on the register counter, he rests the cherry of his own burning cigarette against the inside of Parks’ wrist, it creates a quarter-sized welt.

Half-awake, Parks’ left thumb casually covered and uncovered the marks on his right wrist. The charred welt from five years ago had healed to an unusual scar. It resembled the world-famous silhouette of a beloved rodent and theme park ambassador. Though Parks now rather liked the funny little scar, he also enjoyed knowing that worms and maggots had long since made a feast of the storeowner’s decayed body. It was one year after the cigarette incident, that someone shot the puffy pink man in front of his house—DOA. Parks wasn’t involved in the killing; just the same, he appreciated it. He even imagined watching it happen from time to time. He’d been to the house after the fact; he’d read the gory details in the news; it wasn’t hard for him to pretend he saw the shooting go down.

Parks wasn’t sleeping anymore; he was just laying there—thinking.

Poppers had four minutes until her enforcement team would arrive. She hoped this was the last briefing she’d ever need to schedule on the Parks matter. It didn’t look good politically for cases to remain open this long.

She turned to the traffic stop notes on her screen. The skateboarder, stopped for riding on a city street, didn’t have picture ID. He gave a name and address, which the officer used along with a physical description to confirm the kid’s identity over the radio. It could’ve been some kid named Greg Riley—but one detail said it was Parks.

Parks was also thinking about Greg Riley. Greg’s parents would demand an explanation when the Failure to Appear in Court letter showed up in their mailbox. Poor Greg wouldn‘t know why he got the ticket, so he‘d have nothing to tell them. He probably didn’t even own a skateboard.

Greg Riley—the real Greg Riley—might remember that day he was filling out his license paperwork in the Department of Motor Vehicles. At the time, he may even have noticed the other tall teenager standing next to him. But it’s doubtful he ever had a clue what was happening. Greg looked something like Parks—a lot, actually—but with a vacant stare. The obvious similarities between them—hair, eyes, height, weight, and even birthdays less then four months apart—were a good physical match; mental didn’t matter.

Parks duplicated the personal details from Greg’s registration paperwork onto his own. Misusing the handy form provided by the Department of Motor Vehicles, Parks simply filled in the blanks; copied item for item, from the information Greg filled onto his. Unlike Greg, who joined the long DMV application line after completing his form, Parks stuffed his copy in a pocket and walked out with a second identity. From experience, he knew that in a police situation, he could use a name, birthday, address, mother’s maiden name—all that crap—to appease a cop without showing ID. It wasn’t hard to fool cops. A guy just had to be prepared. At the time, Parks had no idea how soon his advance planning was to come into play.

The black and white had been following him with flashing reds for a block and a half before Parks bothered to pull over. Parks knew it was back there, but always got a kick out of playing with the cops a little—just a little—before stopping and pretending to be surprised. With the wrong cop, this sort of thing sometimes got him into trouble. He didn’t care; it was fun. On the second order to stop that blasted through the police PA system, Parks could hear in the cop’s voice that a third one might get rough—so he turned around and feigned surprise.

It took about three minutes for the radio dispatcher to confirm Greg Riley‘s identity: a seventeen-year-old white male juvenile, six foot one inch tall, a hundred fifty pounds, with brown hair and green eyes, living at 1351 Fell Street. Almost perfectly matching the over-the-air description the traffic cop gave; one exception was the hair. The difference being that Parks had dyed black hair. This wasn’t a criminal investigation; the match was enough for a skateboard ticket.

For Parks, at the time, things seemed to work out just fine. He had no concern about the cop’s over-the air description of his scar, because he had no idea that anyone was looking for him—certainly Rob and Doris wouldn’t be bothering. Parks forged Greg’s signature to the ticket, agreed with the officer to have a nice day, and waited for the police cruiser to turn out of sight at the corner. Then he jumped back on his board to finish his street ride.

But the file on Poppers’ computer told a different story. The traffic stop was routine; it could easily have gone unnoticed by the DIS agents who monitored police broadcasts. Instead, something got their attention. The officer included an unusual physical feature in his radio description of the faux Greg Riley—a cartoon-like scar on the kid’s wrist. The scar wouldn’t show up in a DMV record, and Greg Riley had no juvenile court files—but Parks did. The one-of-a-kind scar was more than casual information for the Department of Internal Security; it was proof that their target was living in San Francisco under an assumed name—a name the DIS now knew.

It was a big break for Poppers and her crew. Finding the kid in less populated San Francisco was already much easier than it would’ve been in New York. By having a name, they tracked him to a residence hotel in the Mission district in less than a week.

Two weeks of surveillance brought them to last night‘s embarrassing event; the poorly executed enforcement action that could have seriously complicated things for the secret organization. It was crucial that no one outside a small government circle knew about the Dissimulant threat that existed, or the department charged with eliminating that threat—the President hadn’t wanted the information to go public. Luckily, throughout the screw-up, the DIS had remained in the shadows; they still had a chance to get the job done quietly. Poppers closed the window on her screen.

Parks rolled over to check the wind-up clock on the nightstand; it showed a quarter ‘til eight. The oversized clock belonged to Geli, who, when Parks first commented on it, said she preferred the older wind-up things to the newer current ones and then burst into a long spasm of laughter. It took Parks a couple minutes to get that the word “current” was a stupid electricity pun; this sent her into another—only slightly shorter—fit of laughter. Geli could be corny. The clock was just a part of her collection of dead-school junk—old things, with no possible use in the modern world.

Not that books were dead school—not completely anyhow—but she had a lot of them around. Many of them were library books. Parks never knew anybody who went to the library as much as Geli did. He hadn’t been to one—outside of a school—in five years.

She had one of those cigar boxes, made of darkened wood—Spanish cedar—with a small brass latch to keep it closed. Inside the box, she kept a porcelain thimble, a candlesnuffer, some foreign money and an old TV remote. The remote had only five buttons, pressing any one of them gave the same loud clicking sound—like a snapping bottle top. There was something Geli called an egg topper. Apparently, if you needed to cut the top of the shell off soft-boiled eggs, that‘s what you‘d use. (Parks seriously doubted that Geli ate very many soft-boiled eggs.)

In other places around the room, were a number of similarly old and mostly useless things she’d collected; including the dial—just the dial—from an old telephone. The kind of dial you’d spin with your finger to make a call, if the dial attached to a phone—this one attached to nothing.

When Parks once asked why she collected all these things, Geli didn’t give much of an answer. She brushed him off—saying that they brought back old memories. Park’s figured they’d have to be very old memories, since most of the stuff was from at least thirty years before she was born!

Target: Parks

Poppers thought about the time already wasted on just the one target. If the estimated number of threats were anywhere near accurate, there were at least half a million Dissimulants—in the US alone. Once the terrorists recruited enough of them, the nature of the Dissimulant problem would change. In a war, her department would need to be much larger. She had to make sure her political image had the executive qualities necessary to run a big department—she had to whip her team into shape.

Poppers opened a new window, bringing a file labeled “DIS-EA200” on her screen. Then she turned to acknowledge agents Lehr and Freelyn, who had been hovering outside her office door for the last few minutes. She motioned through her office window for them to enter. The partners came in and took the seats offered by their commander’s gesture. No one spoke for thirty seconds.

“This,” Poppers snarled at last, “is now a total mess.” The two agents locked focus on her face and nodded in agreement. “I don’t like stupid mistakes or the situation stupid mistakes put us in.” The two-person team gave no verbal response, just continued to nod their heads as she continued the scolding.

“Good agents make the decision when to expose their intent. Once they do, they’re supposed to finish the job—that‘s their training. Experienced agents like you don‘t start actions if even a small possibility of an abort exists.”

“We know—” Lehr started to explain.

Poppers signaled her disapproval of his interruption by raising her eyebrows and pressing her index finger to her lips. She continued, “Now we have to act in a big and potentially risky way. We’re out of time!”

She gave a pause, to let the previous statement sink in. “We have to complete the job—your job—and get it done tonight.” Poppers was doing everything in the book of management to make her expectations clear.

To some degree, Lehr had expected this balling out. Freelyn was more surprised. She’d expected a reprimand but nothing to this level of intensity. Her boss’s face had made it to purple before she seemed calm enough to continue.

“From the report the two of you filed last night, I gather you believe he still has no real reason to suspect himself as the actual target; that he’ll think this was an identity mix-up.”

“That’s right,” said Lehr.

“Fair enough. Based on what I read in the report, I agree.”

Two other agents, Sterling and Atkins appeared at the office door. Poppers signaled them into the room, continuing with what she was saying to Lehr and Freelyn. “Up until now, he’d have no reason to suspect anything else. This would all change if we fail tonight. After that, it’s certain he’ll know he’s a target.”

The two men entered, nodding to their colleagues as they took seats in the chairs that rested against the office window.

“Our last chance before it becomes difficult—truly difficult—is tonight.” Poppers was calmer now. “If they’re watching him, he’ll become a prime recruit for the terrorists. Once they know he‘s marked he’ll have nothing to lose; convincing him to join them becomes easy.”

Poppers clicked her mouse. The huge screen on her office wall displayed a satellite photo of the Slot, at a zoom level that included details of the surrounding streets within three blocks. Atkins, Sterling, Lehr and Freelyn turned their attention to the screen, as Poppers activated the speaker on her desk—bringing Carey and Adams into the briefing by phone.

Agents Adams and Carey were already at the target location, recently arriving in advance of the night’s enforcement action. They joined the conference through a secured wireless line via BT Specials—high range blue-tooth devices—connected to the cruiser’s built-in communications system. The BTS’s were comprised of a tiny earpiece—small enough to be worn and remain undetected from as close as two feet—and a separate input device, one function of which was to act as a microphone. The input device most often clipped to the shirt collar or inside a jacket, behind the lapel.

The car’s communication system included a dashboard which dual-purposed as a computer display—in this case, synced with the image from Poppers’ computer. The two men kept an occasional eye on the screen, but their focus was on the front door of the Slot and the street front window of the target’s floor in the hotel. The log showed that Parks was in the building, although not detected in his room since the agents arrived.

Bored of playing with his scar and with looking around Geli’s room at her various oddities, Parks decided to get out of bed for a quick shower. Geli would soon be back from her visit with the old lady. Parks was anxious to grab some dinner with her and find out what—if anything—the old lady had to say about his situation with the Crown Vic. He slipped his jeans on.

Poppers confirmed that the computer‘s remote display was up. “One Papa-one, do you have the visual?”

“Papa-one, Romeo.” The confirmation—Carey’s voice—came through the speaker.

“Alright teams,” Poppers began, “here will be our set-up for tonight.” She guided the mouse, moving the on-screen pointer to each of three marked locations—black rectangles—on the satellite map. The rectangles represented the opening positions for the partnered agents and their cars.

“On the street in front of the location: a vehicle at each end of the block—here, and here. The third car starts on the street behind the hotel—dental offices, with access to the rear of the hotel.”

The display changed to a drawing—a simple interior plan of the hotel’s third floor. Doors for the rooms connected along a common hallway. The main staircase was in the middle. Next to the bathroom at one end of the hall, was the internal fire stairwell. At the other end, a large window with folding fire stairs that dropped to the street. All of the little blue-line boxes, representing the hotel rooms, were exactly the same shape and size—one was shaded in pink.

From the hall, Parks made a stop at his own room to grab a towel, shower gel, and some cleaner clothes. He pulled his towel from its drying spot on the back of his room’s only chair. Rescuing a near-empty shower gel bottle from the trash can—he meant to buy a new one—to shake out what he could for one last use. He still had new underwear from the pack he liberated from an understaffed, overpriced department store—that was good—but he had to select the best of his jeans, hoodies, and socks by sniff test.

Although different from how he’d left it yesterday, in his hurry Parks didn’t catch the subtle changes to his room. Even on a normal day, they might’ve gone unnoticed: slightly repositioned bed, replaced table lamp, minor shift in the power outlet cover—none obvious. He shut the door and headed down to end of the hall, to the bathroom for the third floor tenants.

Through the speakerphone, Agent Carey announced Parks’ movements in his room, confirming that the newly planted motion detector was functioning properly. Poppers reminded her crew that the device would be critical to confirm that Parks was in his room at the start of the scheduled enforcement action. Then joked, “We don’t want to move in to his room if he’s out in the toilet taking care of business; then have him walk up behind and catch us waiting around with our weapons in our hands.” Poppers threw a smirk at the members of the team in the office.

Most of the details were standard, dry and boring, but the agents kept focus as Poppers continued. Poppers, Lehr and Freelyn would comprise the enforcement crew—the others, street support for the enforcement. At 2100 hours, with the target confirmed in his room, Poppers would give the command to execute. The three member EC would leave vehicle one to enter the building and head for the target’s room. Minimum exposure inside was key; at no time during the action would they announce their identity.

As usual in these cases, Poppers was choosing her words carefully, voicing what she needed to say, and leaving certain details to the common understanding of the mission. Specifically, she avoided legally compromising terms regarding the nature of the final action.

“Once in the target’s room—if it’s determined he’s a physical or flight threat—the authority to kill is granted.” Understood but unspoken in the statement, was that even if he was asleep, the members of the EC would consider the suspect a threat—killing Parks was the purpose of the enforcement.

“Weapons, remnants of drugs and drug trafficking paraphernalia will be left at the scene of the shooting as an aid to local authorities in their investigation of the incident.”

These were items of evidence, which the EC would plant at the scene. As far as local police were aware, there was no such authority as the Department of Internal Security—so, it didn’t exist; it couldn‘t be questioned. The police inspectors who showed up to investigate would need to discover their own plausible reason for the hotel shooting. The drugs left behind would serve this purpose.

“Our crew will not remain at the scene, or be a part of subsequent police investigations into the matter.” There was nothing new in what Poppers was saying; the DIS always left it for the local police to sort out the details.

The rest of the plan—also routine for the DIS—had the Sterling and Atkins car pulling around from their position behind the hotel. They would pick the EC up and bring them away from the scene. Adams and Carey would split up, one would drive their vehicle, and the other would remove the original Lehr and Freelyn car—cleaning the scene.

“To enter, execute and exit will take five minutes,” Poppers said as she killed the wall display. “One Papa-one, did you copy all that?”

Poppers waited for a voice from the speakerphone to confirm. When neither Carey nor Adams responded, she repeated the question. “One Papa-one, did you copy?”

If things had gone as hoped by Geli, Parks would have never had the time to complete a shower. She’d have been back to the room already—rushing him out the door.

As Geli came within a half block of the Slot, she made a decision not to continue on her way into the hotel—to her room and the friend waiting inside. She continued instead down the sidewalk across from the Slot, heading toward the next corner.

Poppers’ office was dead silent as everyone in the room waited for some sort of response from their colleagues in the field. The terrorists had successfully identified and recently killed a number of agents as they sat on stakeouts similar to this one. While no one in the room wanted to think about it—it was all they could think about in the silence.

Geli’s redirected path brought her alongside the open window of the very thing that had forced her to change her direction and plan. It was a black Crown Vic, parked, and occupied in the front seat by two men dressed in suits. She could sense the men—aware of her—as she passed. But their focus remained on the front entrance of the Slot. This was the one place on the street, which Geli made certain her eyes avoided.

“Papa-one, Romeo.” Carey finally announced.

“One Papa-one, what was the delay?”

“We had a stranger—WFJ—walking past our ten-twenty.”

“What’s your condition now Papa-one?”

“We’re clear. She went on—turned at the end of the street.”

“Romeo, Papa-one. We’ll be on location at twenty-one hundred hours. This is Echo-one out.” Poppers released the speakerphone with a quick jab to her mouse, and then returned her attention to the agents in her office.

“Just under an hour to gear up and get out there.” She rose from her desk and started for the door. The four agents followed her out and down the hall, headed for the tactical weapons room.