Chapter 5
I woke suddenly about an hour and a half later, according to my internal sense of time. The woods were pitch dark and quiet around me, just the sounds of wind and the single distinctive who cooks for you hoot of a barred owl calling its mate.
Then the reason I woke up solidified in my head and I clicked on my LED light. Pulling my phone back out of its case, I put a new SIM card in, noting I only had two others left. I spent a few minutes using up data by visiting the internet, then I placed a call. This time, I dialed direct.
It picked up on the second ring. “Hello?”
“Sheriff, it’s me again. Cassie. I just realized something else.”
‘What’s that, Cassie?” she asked.
“I’ve seen that tattoo before. Not the template; the actual tattoo on that actual arm. And I think your brother needs to know about it.”
“Well, he’s on the other line.”
“Oh. Can you merge the calls? I could just tell him directly.”
“Hold on. There; you still there, Cassie?”
“Yes, Sheriff. Am I on with Special Agent Steele too?”
“Hello Cassandra,” a deep male voice said.
“It sounds like I’m on speaker?”
There was a pause. “My team is listening,” Agent Steele said finally.
“Good. Hi, team. Listen, I think there’s gonna be another attack. Maybe tomorrow… probably tomorrow. This one is going to be somewhere in Washington, maybe the Capitol or maybe the Supreme Court building.”
“Explain,” he demanded. I liked that he didn’t just pooh-pooh my words right off the bat. That would probably come next, but at least he was listening now.
“This is gonna sound odd, but I remember that tattoo. I’ve seen that man before.”
“When?”
“Okay, try to keep an open mind here, okay? I saw him when I was… young. He was a bodyguard for someone who came to see my mother … before she left.”
“You remember an incident from when you were five months old?” he asked, his tone professional.
Shit, they already knew way, way too much about me.
“Been digging a bit, huh. Should have climbed on my bike and kept going. Anyway, believe what you want, but that man worked for William Cramer.”
“Fascinating story, Cassie,” Agent Steele said. “But what does it have to do with an attack on Washington?”
“Understandable attitude, Agent, but for argument’s sake, I’ll lay it out.
William Cramer, founder of American Vigilance Tech, is a major investor in Rifle Springs Casino.
He bought in the year I was born. Also, a billionaire who is deep into various forms of artificial intelligence.
He has been building out a defense intelligence large learning model to use it for predictive work.
He has lately been attempting to sell it to his government contacts.
They already use his intelligence management software,” I said, laughing a little.
“Sorry. Such an oxymoron. Anyway, he made a public claim a week ago that his system had identified threats to US security that were imminent. Now a guy that worked for him—ex-military, Ranger-qualified—participated in a raid designed to look like a terrorist attack. You all have already painted it as the work of criminals, not terrorists, so he needs to double down, and he will have already planned a second and perhaps third attack. That’s my take.
Do with it what you will. Believe me or don’t. ”
“You have faced a lot of disbelief in your time, huh?” Agent Steele asked.
“Astute, Agent, astute. Or did your profiler throw that out?”
“Most of us realized it at the same time,” he said. “Why the Capitol or SCOTUS?”
“The stakes are higher; he has to do something big to overcome the New York attempt that you shot down.”
“Why not the White House?”
“It’s not out of the realm of possibility, but he’s friends with the president, so I don’t think he would do that; at least not yet. But maybe that would be the third attack.”
“Ah, one of my team has a question,” Agent Steele said.
“Just one? Okay. I know you’re working on cellular triangulation, but there is only one active cell tower within range of my phone, so it won’t help you much. What’s the question?”
“Hi Cassie, this is Dr. Chen,” a woman said. “You show impressive skill at blackjack. How did you do it? How did you beat the casino?”
“Hm… interesting. Doctor, huh? Profiler? Well, that doesn’t feel like a first date question, Doctor. Maybe a bit accusatory. My dad was a dealer. We played at home, a few hands every night. I was a good student.”
“Good? You seem far beyond good… like statistically improbable,” Dr. Chen said.
“We’ve strayed off topic, Doctor. I wanted to warn you, the authorities, about a follow-on attack. My hobbies aren’t really important in the scheme of things.”
“Well, Cassie, I’m just trying to validate your credibility. A gambling cheat is not really credible.”
“Actually, you’re fishing. Trying to get me to strike at your bait. More digging. Listen, I screwed up today and gave away my anonymity in front of Agent Steele’s very perceptive sister. But there will be an attack, believe me or not.”
“Cassie, please tell me you have a plan,” Sheriff Steele said suddenly. “I believe you do, but I want to hear you admit it for my own piece of mind.”
“Sheriff, I have a plan. This call is likely a mistake from a purely operational standpoint as well, but not from a patriotic, altruistic viewpoint, and I have taken steps to mitigate my own errors. That said, I must go back to sleep now. Long day tomorrow. Good night.”
I cut the call as they were all trying to speak.
Then I crushed the barely used SIM card, powered off the phone, and returned it to its case.
Lying back down, I ran a list of my supplies and assets through my mind, recalling my favorite musical performance as the list streamed past. My memory is such that I can play music in my head as if I were listening to it live.
Cash. Forty-one thousand six hundred seventy-two dollars and fifty-five cents.
Various clothes, each combinable with the others for maximum urban camouflage, CAT tourniquet, trauma kit, IFAK, several flashlights, multi-tool, titanium pry bar, solar charger, cell phone, four prepaid Visa cards, lock picks, water bottle, water purifier, and a couple of pull cord fire starters that are meant for fire morons but make great perimeter alarms and booby traps.
Pepper spray, a push dagger, my utility knife, and an expandable baton.
Cold crypto wallet, passport, two drivers licenses, hair dye kit, black.
Two syringes, 2 ml, preloaded, hiking boots, white running shoes…
And then sometime around there, everything faded.