Chapter 25
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Suratan
Garrett Locke’s Bangkok preparations were well under way. He continued to refine the schedule, testing the stress points. The potential upside for this client was significant, but the risks were higher, too.
The veranda doors stood open. He heard the gently flowing river below as the house phone rang. He picked up the handset. “Yes?”
“The pilot reached a safe point an hour ago,” Chu said. “We have images and video. Shall I bring them up?”
Locke set the upcoming schedule aside. “How bad is the report?”
“Worse than expected. You should come down.” Chu preferred in-person communications, even inside the compound. For security reasons. He only asked Locke to make the trek for potentially disastrous situations.
“On my way.” Locke returned the handset to its cradle.
Bangkok was still a ways out and the preliminary work was done. The pilot’s report was an immediate problem.
Locke walked from the study to the open veranda and the star-studded sky. Without light pollution, the river ran black between the cliff and the far bank. Downstream, somewhere past the bend, a single running light moved on the water. A fishing boat, probably.
The operations room one level below was well illuminated.
Chu kept the interior lights on around the clock.
Locke took the stone stairs cut into the river side of the cliff.
They were worn smooth in the centers from a hundred years of footsteps, and Locke knew every irregularity in them well enough to walk them in full dark.
By the time he reached the landing, Chu had opened the operations room door.
The room filled more than half the interior of the second level. Chu built it out with unmatched security anywhere in the world. He’d installed the best technical equipment available. What he couldn’t buy, he built himself.
Three monitors lit the long wall above the main desk. Two more above separate forensic workstations. Server cabinets along the back wall ran under their own cooling system, a steady low vibration Locke had stopped hearing long ago.
Beyond the far door, Chu’s private living quarters opened onto the veranda. Locke often wondered how much he actually lived there because Chu was always available.
He stood near the main desk wearing a loose shirt and pants that barely touched his body.
“What’s going on?” Locke asked as he approached.
Before he began, Chu pressed a button and the entire room automatically secured.
Nothing inside could escape and no weapon could invade.
The worst people on earth paid Locke to be reborn here and returned to the world for a fresh start.
Using the system to erase backgrounds for their operatives had proved itself many times over.
“The Keane cleanup operation has taken a stronger negative turn than we realized,” Chu reported without apology. “We have new facts from our pilot. He reached a safe house outside Bangkok a few hours ago and just finished his debrief.”
Locke pulled up the chair beside Chu and sat. “Summarize it for me.”
“We lost four operators on the ground at a Texas airstrip. A fifth man flew out with the pilot. Wheels-up under fire. The target was not recovered. The pilot flew the fifth operator to a small field nineteen miles north,” Chu said flatly.
“He rented a car and went looking for the target. The target’s brother put him down inside an airport pilot’s lounge a few hours later.
Including the man at Flint’s house, that’s six operatives we’ve lost on this one.
The pilot is only aware of five. He’s the only one who came out. ”
Chu turned on the center monitor so Locke could see it clearly. The image on the screen was paused. A man in his mid-forties sat in a windowless room, looking like he hadn’t slept in days. A glass of water rested on the table in front of him. He hadn’t unpacked the bag at his feet.
“The pilot himself has been in motion since the engagement. I want your read on him before we decide what to do with him next,” Chu said before he started the replay. “The operator we had on the ground identified a bigger problem.”
He started the recording.
The pilot’s voice came through the desk speakers. After the preliminaries, he identified the five dead operators he knew by name.
Then he reported what he’d seen.
The sedan had arrived as planned with the target in the back seat. Two men walked the target across the gravel toward the aircraft. The senior operator came down the airstair to meet them. He took hold of the target and turned to bring him to the plane.
From the cockpit, the pilot saw him stop halfway.
The senior operator had looked at the target’s face up close. He said something to one of the escorts. They argued briefly, but the pilot couldn’t hear. Then the senior operator turned toward the aircraft and called out. Again, the pilot couldn’t hear the words.
An SUV came in fast off the south access road. Two men rushed out of it shooting before the vehicle had fully stopped. Four operators went down inside a minute.
The pilot stayed in his seat because his job was flying the plane, and the fifth operator made it up the airstair into the cabin. The pilot took the aircraft off the strip under fire. Rounds hit the fuselage, a tire, and the engine housing. None of it slowed the plane enough to prevent takeoff.
Locke watched the pilot’s face on the monitor while the recording ran. He told his story plainly, without embellishment or protection. He’d worked with Locke for nine years and had never before lost a single man.
The pilot flew the fifth operator to another airfield, as directed. During the flight the fifth operator said the target was not the man they wanted. He was similar but not the same.
The pilot knew no more than that. Not the brother’s name or how the senior man realized it in the moment.
The fifth operator rented a car and drove south. The pilot waited two hours before he left without him.
The pilot hadn’t seen the two men in the SUV clearly. What he could tell Chu was they had come out of the SUV shooting, on comms. He had not heard their names spoken.
“That’s the substance of it,” Chu paused the recording.
Locke watched the paused image for a moment before he spoke. “What’s your read on him?”
“He’s exhausted and angry, but he’s telling the truth. He wasn’t followed.”
“And our man on the ground?”
“He got there at the last second. If our operative had been thirty seconds faster, we might have a different conversation right now,” Chu replied.
“They were all clean, I assume. No available files on any of them anywhere?” Locke said.
“Of course.” Chu did not sound insulted. “We don’t send operatives into the field until the full workup is completed. Histories will terminate when they originally died. They will remain unidentified thereafter.”
Locke considered the point and nodded. “Anything else?”
Chu pulled up two images on the second monitor. On the left, an Indiana driver’s license. On the right, a Carterville PD identification card. Both showed the same man. Fifty-three years old. Heavy through the neck. Cody Arthur Patterson. Retired detective.
Beside that image, on the third monitor, Chu pulled up an old photograph from the case file. Kyle Patterson. The man who had been hunting Quinn for years. The man he’d ordered killed in San Diego. The faces were almost the same.
“Identical twins,” Chu said. “Kyle had a brother.”
Locke looked at the two images side by side. “We didn’t catch that in the original workup?”
“When Quinn first came to us, we had families for three dead kids to work up. One of Quinn’s victims was Kyle’s son, Walt Patterson.
Which meant Kyle was a potential problem from the start.
We did the standard background. Wife, job, finances, history.
We should have run Patterson’s extended family, but it looks like we didn’t.
Cody Patterson, the twin brother who worked Carterville PD. We missed him.”
Locke stared at the two faces on the monitor. “What else have we missed.”
It wasn’t a question Chu could answer, and Locke didn’t expect him to.
Chu added another image to the screen. It showed a long flat line, broken by short upward spikes at irregular intervals.
“This is the signal history for Kyle Patterson’s SIM. The SIM is what connects a phone to the network,” Chu said. “On the day the pilots were set to grab him in San Diego, Kyle’s SIM stopped sending a signal.”
Locke nodded. “Which can only mean that Kyle either removed it from his phone or turned the phone off.”
“Weeks later, the SIM began sending its signal again. This time, it came from Indiana and lasted only a few minutes at a time,” Chu said.
“Suggesting the phone was being turned off and on, or the SIM was being removed and reinstalled, over and over,” Locke replied.
“And later still, the signal connected again, and again, from various locations, most recently Texas.”
Locke analyzed the pattern quickly. The connections were too short and too irregular for normal phone use. “Cody Patterson has possession of his brother’s physical SIM card, and he’s been reading it intermittently.”
“The first signal started a few weeks after Cody retired from Carterville PD,” Chu said. “He is going through his missing brother’s last messages and contacts.”
“Suggests Kyle Patterson pulled the SIM from his phone before the meeting because he knew the meeting was a trap. He didn’t go,” Locke said. “The Gulfstream pilots didn’t kill him.”
“Agreed.” Chu nodded again. “The same two pilots failed to put Nancy Keane onto the Gulfstream as well.”
“And both pilots died in the explosion,” Locke said. “Which means Kyle Patterson could also be alive. Just like Nancy Keane.”
“We have no proof,” Chu replied. “So far.”
Locke turned away from the screen. “What else have you got?”
“We’ve been tracking Cody Patterson’s activities since we identified him as Kyle Patterson’s brother.” Chu pulled up Cody’s contact list and recent call history on the second monitor.
He displayed three names and offered a quick brief. “As I mentioned, Houston-based private investigators. Kathryn Scarlett, Michael Flint, and Alonzo Drake. All three have military backgrounds. So far, I’ve got standard information only. Nothing particularly remarkable has surfaced yet.”
“Keep me updated on that,” Locke said. “Where is Cody Patterson now?”
Chu brought up a map on the third monitor. “A hospital in West Texas. Scarlett is with him. They drove out there together a few hours ago. At this point, we don’t know why.”
“What about Flint and Drake? Where are they?”
“Unclear. They flew to Miami. Another investigator, Carlos Gaspar, has a residence in Coconut Grove. Either they’re still inside the house with Gaspar, or more likely, they left without their gear.”
“Could Kyle Patterson be a patient at the hospital or secluded at Gaspar’s home?” Locke asked.
“Possibly. I’ll attempt to confirm.” Chu pulled up another image on the screen. “Each of our operatives had phones. When they were killed, the phones stopped sending signals. They haven’t resurfaced.”
Locke processed the implications quickly. “Flint and Drake took them.”
“That’s the most likely explanation. Flint and Drake’s phones also stopped sending a signal when they reached Gaspar’s house.”
“So all six phones are there, all bagged,” Locke replied.
“That’s a solid working assumption.”
“If he successfully analyzes our operatives’ phones, what does Gaspar get?”
“Not the full database. The phones are built to resist that kind of access,” Chu said. “What he’d get is the architecture. Which is enough to identify other phones on the same private network.”
“How long before that becomes a problem for us?” Locke asked.
“Days. Possibly less if he’s skilled in this kind of forensics.”
Locke’s first instinct was to burn the architecture now. Sever connections while they still could. But that would reveal Locke had noticed him. Which would tell Gaspar the network existed in a form capable of noticing. Which was much more than Locke wanted him to know.
“Leave everything in place for now,” he said. “Let Gaspar find what he finds. He’ll think he got there on his own. We can watch him and see what he does.”
Chu typed a short instruction into the workstation. The order went out to his cyber security team.
“Run a deep workup on these four. Cody Patterson, too. Background, family, finances, every government contract, every case they’ve worked. I want to know exactly who is working against us,” Locke said, running through the plan aloud.
Chu waited.
“Any progress on Nancy Keane?” Locke asked. “She’s worrisome.”
“Not yet. Cody Patterson was in her house, so we know she’s not hiding there. She’ll surface soon enough.” Chu started the queries. The first results began returning to the workstation instantly. “And what about Bangkok? Shall we postpone until we deal with all of this?”
“Sear is on the calendar. Let the arrangements stand,” Locke said. “Whatever this Patterson situation produces won’t impact Sear.”
“Shall we send Ming to clean up the Keane matter?” Chu asked.
Locke considered it. Ming was the best choice. Ming never failed.
He shook his head. “We need her for Sear.”
“Bolivar, then. He’s finished in Caracas. He can be on the ground in Houston by evening,” Chu suggested.
Bolivar was Ming’s most accomplished protege. He’d completed jobs of comparable difficulty without incident. The Keane situation was within his scope.
Locke said, “Give him clear instructions. Cody Patterson is the first to die. Recover electronics and destroy his brother’s physical SIM. No trace. No exposure.”
Chu sent the orders over secure encrypted networks.
“Tell him to remain invisible to Scarlett, Flint, Drake, and Gaspar,” Locke said.
“And if Bolivar finds himself in conflict with them?” Chu asked.
“Abort. Find another approach. We don’t need four dead civilians at the moment.”
Chu sent that order out. Bolivar would have it instantly.
“Bangkok still goes as planned,” Locke said before he walked out of the operations room and climbed the stairs.