59. Chapter Fifty-Nine
Chapter fifty-nine
Oscar Jankowitz had been with CIA for twenty-eight years.
By now, he should have been back at Langley, sitting in Kearn’s seat.
Unfortunately, Station Chief in Belgrade was as high as he would go.
When he was young, fresh out of Camp Peary, he’d had his sights set on upper management.
Maybe even a director’s chair. Good as he was at collecting and collating intel, Jankowitz hadn’t learned to play the political game.
More to the point, he was no good at kissing butt.
And kissing butt was more than half the work if you wanted to get to the top in today’s more enlightened age of HR, DEI, and office politics.
Jankowitz had started out young and eager.
He’d truly believed that working in CIA would help protect America and make the world a better place.
He quickly realized CIA was just another arm of the federal government, and that government, depending on who sat behind the Oval Desk, wasn’t necessarily interested in making the world a better place.
More often than not, it was about making sure greenbacks continued to flow.
That realization, along with his inability to brown-nose, had doomed Jankowitz to a life of middle management.
In addition to being middle management, Jankowitz was only middling at running a station.
He knew this about himself, which is why he was fifty-two, unmarried, and running Belgrade, rather than Paris, or Tokyo, or one of the other major cities around the globe.
He had, in fact, been coasting comfortably toward retirement the last several years.
He had a condo on the beach in South Carolina, a red sport coupe, and a hollow-top Gibson custom that he’d been meaning to pick up and dust off.
He hadn’t played seriously since college.
He figured he’d have time to really get good once he retired.
Maybe he even had a blues album in him. Who knows? Other people had done it. Why not him?
And yet, when the call had come in about an illegal virology lab run by a terror organization in Palilula district, the old lion inside Jankowitz had reared its shaggy mane.
Finally, a chance to really make a difference.
Jankowitz piloted a nondescript grey DS 4 along heavily cracked and busted concrete pavers.
The headlights splashed over long abandoned factories and warehouses with collapsed roofs.
A collection of rusting old shipping containers stood like silent sentinels in a wide clearing in the middle of the complex.
The chainlink fence that circled the facilities had been cut in several places, and the gates had collapsed years ago.
Robby Webber and Horst Denborough rode in the back seat. All three men were armed with Sig pistols and wore ballistic vests under their shirts. They were, for better or worse, the first responders, America’s first line of defense.
Military Joint Special Operations had scrambled a fast reaction team, but they would not be here for another two hours.
Langley, more importantly the President, could not wait that long.
In two hours, the lab and any intelligence might be gone, cleaned out or burned down by the terrorists.
Which meant Jankowitz and his team had to go in and secure the site, then hold it until the SOCOM boys could arrive.
That thought didn’t bother Jankowitz. Not one bit.
In fact, if the virus was as deadly as the CDC claimed, then Jankowitz considered this his time to shine.
At least when he was sitting on his porch watching the waves roll up the shore, he’d be able to say his thirty years had not been wasted.
All of America, and maybe the world, was depending on him.
He spotted a building with a faded Yugo sign hanging by a single bolt still attached to the crumbling brick edifice and eased on the brake. The moon was just a pale yellow rumor behind heavy clouds. The only sound was the quiet hum of the V-4 and the whisper from the air conditioning vents.
“Looks like the place,” Oscar said. “You guys ready?”
“Ready as I’ll ever be,” said Robby Webber.
“Think the intel is good?” Horst Denborough asked.
“Let’s hope so,” Oscar said. “For all our sakes. Lots of people back home depending on us, fellas. Keep it tight. Don’t take any chances. And watch for bobby traps. Our intel says the place is full of tripwires.”