Blackbird, Chapter 9

Pay it forward

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If you missed earlier chapters, here: https://wyattwerne.substack.com/s/blackbird

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THREE YEARS EARLIER

MCLEAN, VIRGINIA

The building was red brick, colonial style, with three white-trimmed windows bordered by green shutters on the second floor, two identical windows on the first floor, and a cherry red door. It could have been a condo, but it wasn’t. The sign read HEALTHY MASSAGE in oiled bronze block letters, and below that, Burton Park Esq and Associates Attorneys at Law.

It was a sunny, clear blue day. One of those crisp, Virginia winter days where the sky belied the frigid air. The parking lot was a quadrangle encircled by conjoined fraternal twin buildings, all colonial style, but with varied masonry. To the right of HEALTHY MASSAGE, two units with a sandy yellow brick facade, red trim windows, black shutters, and a black-on-blue plaque Transitwide National Insurance Company and Benjamin, Harper, Greenwood Physiotherapy Associates. Around the circle, counseling offices, another law firm, WINNING PURPLE STRATEGIES, two realty offices, a two-story rock and quarry stone-style building holding LOFT LASH AND BEAUTY LOUNGE, a few unlabeled doors that could be apartments, and so on.

There were three empty parking spaces in front of HEALTHY MASSAGE, so they pulled their stolen Mercedes EQS 680, Alpine Gray, with tinted windows affixed with the Virginia Tech logo, cat paw stickers, and a rainbow MOLON LABE Gadsden flag, to the space two from the door. Kane replaced the license plates and hacked the car’s GPS and cameras. They had three days. A stolen car in Virginia was returned on average three days later, and if they didn’t meet that, they’d return the Mercedes gently used with a car wash and steal another.

On such a bright day, the Mercedes’ deep tinted windows would conceal them, but the Mercedes was flashy, even for suburban McClean, and they were exposed in this parking lot, hemmed in by four dozen windows and a tight exit to Leesburg Pike. But that was the idea. They made themselves bait. The eye-catching rainbow Gadsden flag was Kane’s brilliant addition.

Kane, looking snug in the tan leather passenger seat, her black hair freshly cut and wearing a smart blue blazer that covered her white blouse and holstered black Glock, flicked the tablet in her lap with her middle finger. Then, she cast her sapphire-blue eyes three buildings down as she rapped her tablet with her blue-polished fingernails. Stone knew what she was thinking because it was the same thing he was: they were missing something.

More precisely, the previous team had missed something. This, their first assignment as civilian contractors, was to handle a hand-me-down asset, a sex worker who called herself Caroline, no-last-name, and who’d been funneling information on a potential target. They followed Caroline 33.4 miles, from a little strip mall in Laurel, Maryland, to this location in McLean, Virginia. The buildings in this McClean plaza were as clean as the ones at the Laurel strip mall were filthy. Here, not a speck of pollution sullied the perfectly pointed masonry. In Laurel, roofs leaked and the asphalt lot had been reduced to potholes and gravel. Caroline came out of a door labeled Jute Massage, entered a smoke shop with neon signs hawking HOOKAH KRATOM SHISHA GLASS VAPE CBD, then exited, walking past a greasy pizza shop, a nail salon, SUSHI CHICKEN AND BEER, KEBAP PALACE, a boarded-up former liquor store, finally getting in her pink Jeep, which Kane had twenty minutes earlier hacked so they could track its GPS signal. Caroline led them to McClean. Kane shook her head and swore at the Jeep in the cold, wondering why the previous team hadn’t done it. Sloppy work. They’d been handed this assignment because the previous team was burned, and it became obvious by the minute why.

The asset, Caroline, drove straight to HEALTHY MASSAGE, while he and Kane meandered, running a surveillance detection route, or SDR, randomly zigging and zagging off and on beltway exits on the way over. To their disappointment, they weren’t followed.

Kane’s blue eyes stared through the tinted glass of the Mercedes, surveying the rest of the cars in the parking lot. Caroline had parked her pink Jeep ten spots over.

“The file only goes back 3 years,” Kane said, clicking her fingernail polish against her tablet’s glass.

Stone shrugged. Caroline’s real name, confirmed by Maryland motor vehicle records and Howard County police, was Ciara Ruffin Gaffney, 33 years old, of Atlantic City, New Jersey. She’d lived in the area at least three years, in an apartment in Laurel, Maryland, and while she’d never been arrested, Howard County Police had long ago stopped arresting the sex workers. Instead, HCPD arrested the johns and human traffickers. But her name was all over the reports.

“We have no surveillance inside her place,” Kane clicked.

Stone shrugged again. The target Zhi Zhang, who went by Jeff, was a Chinese executive for their largest video game company, Lóng Huǒ Inc., which translated to Dragon Fire. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence wasn’t interested in video games, of course. ODNI was interested in Lóng Huǒ's other businesses, including military contracts for drone avionics, rocket guidance, and military simulation software.

Jeff was in the US on an economic development visa. There was little in the file about Jeff’s life in Hong Kong, but while here, he had a healthy appetite for alcohol and women. Caroline, or Ciara Gaffney, was the asset, the honeypot used for bait, and the previous team only dug far enough to confirm her qualifications: She loved her country, for a price, and Jeff liked her enough to be a repeat customer.

For five months, the previous team reported little progress. His laptops and phones were pristine. He didn’t download porn. He rarely had people to his condo, except Caroline and a few of her associates for drunk romps in the sheets, and when he did, he never said anything useful. His business meetings were snoozefests, discussions of data hosting contracts and reducing game latency rates and ping times. Caroline reported every sweaty thrust and dirty word. The previous team dutifully recorded it all and forwarded to a team of ODNI behavioral profilers, who recommended standing down until the CIA uncovered more about Jeff’s personal life in China. The CIA was in its own logic trap, unwilling to prioritize fieldwork in Hong Kong. Absence of evidence either meant he was Mr. Big Player, who maintained the strictest professional operational security throughout his visit (the prostitutes simply being dismissed as a common lifestyle choice), or meant he was Mr. Small Fry with nothing valuable to reveal. The CIA was short-staffed and wouldn’t authorize fieldwork in Hong Kong until someone proved he was Mr. Big, but no one could prove he was Mr. Big without CIA fieldwork.

So, Jeff’s reports spun around D.C. like cars on the beltway, a lot of traffic but little movement. Jeff’s visa was up in a month, and the team was ready to give up.

The problem with the intelligence business is that you don’t know what you don’t know until it sneaks up and shoots you in the back of the head.

The previous team, now recovering in a guarded critical care ward at Inova Fairfax Hospital under induced comas, got lucky, saved because the white panel van that pulled up behind Hot Pig, the restaurant where Jeff took lunch every day at 12:15 PM, unknowingly parked in the middle of a DEA sting, because the Hot Pig’s secret menu included Cocaine Congee. Machine pistols out, a hooded fire team of unknown nationality attempted to abduct them after they’d dutifully recorded Jeff eating dim sum. The DEA crew, thinking they had a cartel kidnapping, moved in. Bullets and fists flew. Miraculously, no one died, but the hooded fire team in the white panel van melted into the confusion, and their predecessors went to the hospital, bruised, beaten, and broken. Burned.

ODNI shifted the case to NextGenSys LLC, to Kane and Stone, although the chain of command didn’t change. Their three-up boss was the President of the United States, their two-up boss was the Director of National Intelligence, and their immediate boss was a four-star Space Force general, with a vision of special operators in space and who preferred to disguise her voice with AI and communicate over burner phones. NextGenSys LLC itself was a shell company, with an empty office and a bored receptionist in Vienna, Virginia, created for maximum budget flexibility and minimal Congressional oversight.

The AI-disguised voice on the burner told them they needed to find how the previous team was burned. A higher priority, milk Jeff, who had gone from “meh” to “fuck yeah” on the ODNI-target tier list in the time it took a hooded fire team in a panel van to slide the safeties on their machine pistols. But being free of the oversight and paperwork also meant they had none of the usual bureaucratic excuses for failure. With great pay and freedom comes great responsibility and personal accountability. The burner told them to get results, fast.

“I think its got to be the asset, Caroline, or Ciara Gaffney, if that’s even her real name,” Kane said to the window. “Her trail only goes back three years.”

“Something in her past.” Stone was watching a mother in a thick yellow winter coat through the rearview mirror. She’d exited a red-brick counseling office and was now wedging her stroller into the back of her champagne SUV after buckling her toddler into his car seat. It was a sunny day; cold; she was wearing the appropriate gear; but the coat was puffy and she could be carrying a hand cannon underneath. But this was Virginia, a shall-issue state, and she’d have the right. There were probably a lot of guns in the buildings around the parking lot, but he didn’t see any pointed at them.

“Could be," Kane said. “Or just Occam’s Razor for hookers. Why sell the information once, when you can sell it twice at twice the price? I’ll bet a taco the leak is her.”

“All she’s reported is his dick size.”

“The previous team met with her and took notes. Someone comes into Jute Massage, asking Caroline the same questions. Caroline lets it slip there is another team looking into Jeff…and sells the information.”

“A theory.”

“I want to go in and talk to her. If he sticks to his schedule, he’ll be out soon.”

“We should stay on him.” They could track his cellphone and car GPS, and had access to every traffic camera between here and his house, but without direct eyes, Jeff could vanish into electronic background noise. He had a month on his visa, but high value targets were known to disappear early.

“If he sticks to his routine, he’s headed back to his house,” Kane said. “He’s never run an SDR, not once, and so far we haven’t seen the slightest tremor in his pattern.”

“He’s a trained operative pretending to be a low level gaming exec who knows he’s being watched.”

“Which also means he’s unlikely to deviate from his cover.” She looked at him, one eyebrow higher than the other, her blue eyes transmitting, checkmate.

As if for emphasis, Jeff opened the cherry-red white-framed door of HEALTHY MASSAGE and Burton Park, Esq. He was tall, six foot two, in aviator sunglasses, wearing a gray seersucker suit, power red tie, and matching polished maroon suede shoes. He let the door swing closed on its spring and proceeded away from them with the pace of a businessman onto his next meeting, never looking their way.

Stone took a good long look, watching Jeff stride to his blue Bentley, his gut twisting with each step. The Bentley chirped. Jeff opened the door and got in. The door thunked closed. The Bentley’s ten cylinders woke with a deep growl, and then Jeff was backing out. Getting away.

“Wait until he’s out of sight, then we go in,” he said, knowing they’d just made a mistake.

Kane leaned forward in the Mercedes’ luxurious tan leather seats and reached under the seat. She retrieved a blue pen, twisted it, and shoved it in her left pants pocket.

“You think?” Stone asked.

“Leave nothing to chance,” she said, reaching for the black door handle and then opening the door to the bright winter sun.

The pen delivered an ampule of ketamine and scopolamine through a compressed air dart. After sixty seconds, Caroline, aka Ciara Ruffin Gaffney, would tell them the truth.

Stone stepped out, squinting into the blue sky over the colonial red brick office building for a few seconds before donning sunglasses. On the second floor, a shadow wisped over the white curtains.

The cherry red door opened to a foyer, a short oatmeal-colored hall with stairs to the second floor, and a door to the right with a sign, 101 Burton Park Esq. and Associates, Attorneys at Law. Kane was three steps ahead, climbing the hall stairs to HEALTHY MASSAGE.

Once at the top, Kane opened the door, peeked around, and then gestured thumbs up. He followed, entering an empty reception area with the personality of a doctor’s office. Bulging from the center of the puke-yellow ceiling, a mirrored half-sphere the size of an apple. A camera wired to a security system. His adrenaline spiked, and he had the urge to go back down the stairs. If a fire team was on their way, they were trapped at the top of a long hall with stairs and no cover.

To his left, Kane had her hand on a doorknob and her shoulder on a door marked NO EXIT. Holding one finger up, he retrieved his phone from his jacket pocket, pressed his fingerprint, and swiped through to the map tracking Jeff, who was on his usual route, delayed by predictable traffic denoted by red lines on Leesburg Pike. He swiped to the Mercedes’ 360-view exterior cameras. Seeing nothing but a bright sunny parking lot, he exhaled and put his phone away, nodding for Kane to open the door, still unable to convince his gut that Jeff was getting away.

She opened the door to a hall with six massage rooms, each the size doctors use for exams, three on either side. All the doors were open, confessing they were empty. At the end of the hall, what looked like a break room or kitchen, and the unmistakable odor of cigarette smoke. Illegal indoors, but so was prostitution.

They proceeded slowly, double-checking each room. Towards the end of the hall, Stone realized that they’d gone to the back of the building, up the stairs, made a u-turn, and were now returning to the front of the building. The sunlight in the break room was from the center window overlooking the parking lot.

Caroline waited for them in the kitchen, lingering in the sun, her back to the sink, with her left hand holding a cigarette at high-ready and blue smoke drifting over her aniline black shoulder-length hair. She crossed her right arm to hold her left elbow. Her Middle Eastern, or maybe Southern Indian, complexion was darker than her most recent photo and her half-almond eyes curled into sarcasm.

“You are my new Space Force handlers?”

Stone blocked the exit. Kane stepped through the fog of second-hand smoke to the window over the sink. Caroline didn’t budge, instead letting the smoke curl over Kane’s face.

Kane peeked out of the window and then announced, “Clear.”

“He’s gone. There is no one else coming,” Caroline said as she tapped ashes in the sink.

Kane stepped back and then opened the fridge. “Who did you talk to about our arrangement?”

“I didn’t tell anyone,” Caroline said, taking a puff and then blowing it towards Kane. “Those two stuck out like a hemorrhoid.”

“You have a lot of experience?” Stone asked.

“This is D.C. And this isn’t my first rodeo.” She took another puff, this time making a small O with her lips and blowing it high and away from Kane. “Amateur tradecraft, really. They may as well have worn blazing neon signs.”

Kane closed the fridge door. She twisted her eyes and nose like she’d smelled spoiled meat in the fridge. “You told no one? I don’t believe you.”

Caroline unfurled the hand holding her elbow slowly, like a magician, and reached behind her. From her back pocket, she withdrew a black phone and offered it to Kane. “Check. I am sure you’ve already gone through my apartment, my iPad, my whole life.”

Kane looked at the phone as if it were a ticking time bomb, but then accepted it. “I will.”

“If you had any proof I’d given information to the Chinese, or the Russians, or whoever Jeff works for, I’d already be hooded and in a van.”

“Spy movie stuff,” Stone said, trying to produce a weak smile.

“I am a patriot,” Caroline said, followed by a long drag and a pivot to put the butt out in the sink. “Now if you’ll excuse me, he’s expecting me at his place.”

Stone froze, unsure whether he should let her go. His gut screamed no.

Caroline, aka Ciara Ruffin Gaffney, 33 years old, of Atlantic City, New Jersey, cocked her head to one side, her brown eyes searing Stone and her black hair falling across her shoulders. “Or should I not show up at his condo? Then he’ll know he’s as burned as your other agents.”

Kane shrugged and gestured with her eyebrows towards her pocket. Stone stepped aside, second-hand cigarette smoke drifting under his nose as Caroline marched past him and down the hall. Kane stepped to the threshold, her hand out, and he heard the pop whoosh of the dart.

Caroline slowed a half step, but then resumed her pace, stepping through the far door to the reception area with a wink.

They waited, listening to a door closing; footfalls on the stairs; another door clicking; a clip-clop of heels on concrete; a car chirping; its door opening; then slamming closed; finally it starting.

The drugs only needed one to two minutes. Hurrying through the massage parlor hall, he pictured Caroline slumped over in the driver’s seat. If her pink Jeep had automatic locks, extracting her in the middle of a parking lot during the day would be a complication. They’d have to go in through the rear hatch to avoid the side curtain airbags.

Outside, the car’s engine revved, and it pulled away. Kane jumped stairs two at a time yelling, “shit,” and he ran behind her.

In the parking lot, shimmering in the sun, he saw the pink Jeep. It was still here, which meant Caroline, aka Ciara Ruffin Gaffney, or whatever her name was, took a different car. Unknown make, unknown model, with no tracker.

“Fuck me,” Kane said, walking to the Mercedes and opening the passenger side door. “You drive.”

As he got in and started the car, he said, “The drugs have to take effect sometime, right?”

“My new Space Force handlers. That’s what she said. I am so fucking stupid.”

“And?” He checked his mirrors and reversed from the parking spot.

“OPSEC one-oh-one, jefe. The previous team told her we were FBI.”

“Shit.” He pressed the gas pedal, but then slammed the brake and jolted to a halt. There was a line of three gray SUVs trying to make a left out of the parking lot against heavy traffic.

“Amateur tradecraft is what she said,” Kane said, swiping through her phone. “And she’s not wrong. We’ve been played.”

“These amateur drivers need to get out of my way.” He honked the horn. “Did you miss with the dart?”

“I hit. I think she was wearing a vest. She’s a fucking spook, jefe, and saw us coming a mile away.”

One SUV turned left. He pulled forward, two to go, and then beat the wheel with his palms. “God fucking dammit.”

“Only one agency has the access to hack files and find who we work for—wait I got her.” Kane grinned like Christmas morning and held up an image of a blue Honda civic leaving the parking lot, front view, with a white Maryland license plate and Caroline the spook driving. Alone. “Traffic cameras have her headed out I-66 towards Dulles.”

As Stone exhaled, the gray SUV ahead turned left, and the car in front pulled forward enough that he could jump the curb and turn right. “Lets get her.”

“Another problem, though.”

“Traffic?”

“No. Well—yes. An accident. Looks like a bad one, and Jeff’s car is in the middle of it.”

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They slowed on I-66 West. A Virginia State Trooper directed traffic to the left lanes as they passed the firetrucks, police, and flares surrounding the overturned blue Bentley in the grass at the side of the road.

On the shoulder, Zhi ‘Jeff’ Zhang’s body rested on a gurney under an orange sheet, ready to load into an ambulance, his scuffed, oil-stained maroon suede shoes peeking out.

“Should we stop?” Stone asked.

“I don’t know. We need to be sure it’s him. But, Caroline is headed south on 28, towards Manassas.”

“Manassas Regional Airport. That’s her exfil.”

Kane held up one finger and rolled her window down as they approached the State Trooper. From her jacket pocket, she produced fake credentials and waved them at him. “FBI. Need any help here?”

“Can you make the tow truck come faster?”

“That I can’t do.” She smiled. “What happened?”

The trooper sighed, like he’d already explained the story to five other federal agencies. “Driver lost control. Paramedics think he had a heart attack, or fell asleep.”

“Alcohol involved?”

“Paramedics said no.”

Kane scanned the wreckage behind the trooper. “No other injuries?”

“Luckily. Witnesses say he was drifting across lanes for a few miles, until he went off the embankment.”

“Thanks, officer. Stay safe.” Kane rolled up her window and gestured forward. When they were rolling, she said, “She drugged him.”

Stone sped up in silence. They weren’t going to make the airport.

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Caroline, aka Ciara Ruffin Gaffney, aka spook, hopped aboard a helicopter and lifted off as they drove up, even waving at them as she got on.

Kane punched the window, the sound reverberating in the Mercedes like a bass drum. “Fucking Mossad. They were running this guy right under our nose.”

They sat in silence until long after sunset, watching a map as the red landing lights of Manassas Regional Airport flashed their failure.

Radar tracked the helicopter to a container ship in the Chesapeake, where it hovered for five minutes and then returned to the airport. The container ship was registered to a Greek holding company, the helicopter to a foreign trust based in Mumbai. The Coast Guard refused to interdict the ship. In the dark, as the airport’s landing lights blinked, they watched the container ship on a live map, on its trek through the Panama Canal and into the Pacific unmolested. Caroline the spook might not even be on the boat anymore. By the time darkness fell, she could be on a plane out of Bermuda to Tel Aviv.

“You want to hop the fence and search the helicopter, blue eyes?”

“It’s a waste of time, jefe. Mossad. They don’t leave evidence.”

He was thinking, they don’t wink, or wave goodbye, either.

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At sunrise, they were still in the Mercedes, parked at the side of the airport. Despite the winter chill outside, it was well-insulated, the leather seats comfortable, and they both caught a few hours of sleep.

Caroline’s cell phone vibrated Kane awake. One, two, then three messages buzzed with increasing urgency.

Drowsily, Kane reached into her pocket and fished out the phone. Caroline the spook, whose name was certainly not Ciara Ruffin Gaffney, sent a selfie. She wore a fiery orange dress, smiling, sitting in a comfortable looking private jet.

Sorry about the other agents. It was a misunderstanding. They were amateurs, and we needed to remove them from harm’s way until we completed our mission. We meant no harm. DEA interference was an unwelcome surprise.

The next message had a link, which Kane, as tired as she was, didn’t click. Zhi Zhang was responsible for a hack of our intelligence satellite system, Varuna. For that, we held him responsible. There will be others. As an apology I am sending information on Dragon Fire, which Space Force cyberintelligence will find valuable.

Stone rubbed his eyes and started the Mercedes.

“I’ve never heard of Mossad apologizing,” Kane said.

“It’s not an apology. She isn’t Mossad.” He spun the car, gravel crunching under the Mercedes tires, and headed north, returning to D.C.

“Running Jeff under our nose? Drugging him and making his death look like an accident? An attempted rendition of two agents in a McLean restaurant—hell that’s Mossad, jefe.”

“Varuna is the Indian top secret surveillance satellite network. Better than ours, I’m told. They’ve been putting up rockets and sending habitats to lunar orbit while we’ve been twiddling our thumbs and cutting funding.”

Kane stared at the screen. “You think this intel is legit?”

“Eighty percent. Still, don’t open it until we are in containment, in case there is a virus.”

Kane put the phone face down in her lap and looked out the window. The sun streaked over trees to the East. “They’re bragging, not apologizing.”

“That, and if that intelligence is worth anything—” Stone put his blinker on, checked his mirrors, and then turned onto 28, towards breakfast and coffee. “They will have saved our bacon, and the State Department will call it a win.”

“And we will owe them,” Kane mused, her breath fogging her window. “Payback is always a bitch.”

*******************

PRESENT DAY

U.S.S. ENTERPRISE

Stone had a lot of questions for Chandni Faridi, the Indian Intelligence Bureau operative aboard Enterprise, and no good way to get answers. Sitting in Enterprise’s mess hall, he and Kane debated approaches while gobbling their food before wheels-up in an hour. They’d agreed to a rescue mission of sorts, to sneak onto the Chinese mainland, rescue and exfiltrate a Chinese naval officer’s family, and in return he’d deliver Blackbird.

He had no doubt he and Kane were being played, but he just couldn’t see the angle yet. It was high-risk, high-reward. Murphy’s Law predicted that anything that could go wrong, would, and if it went wrong for them in China, the odds were zero they’d return. Their best future would be a bullet, their worst, torture in a shipping container at the bottom of a stack of nine thousand other containers, on a ship perennially sailing the world.

“A 3 A.M. syringe of scopolamine and ketamine,” Kane said, pushing a french fry through the sticky orange-brown goop that a Navy chef had passed off as honey mustard.

He shook his head, taking a bite of his bacon cheeseburger. “This time don’t miss.”

“I didn’t miss last time.” Kane double raised her eyebrows. “You know, honeypot is still an approved approach.”

“My seduction skills are rusty. And that takes years.”

“Not you. Me, jefe.”

“What makes you think she’s your type?”

“I already put in the requisition for separate cabins,” Kane let a wry smile lift her blue eyes. “Just be on standby for a three A.M. handoff of a cellphone.”

“Maybe she’ll just give up what she knows if we ask nicely.”

Kane chuckled. “You’re the one that said she kicked that broken circuit board off the deck. She’s hiding something.”

“Now you believe me?”

Kane dipped a fry in orange goo and pointed it at him. “You reminded me that there are only two kinds of people in the intelligence business, snakes and bigger snakes. Only the biggest snakes survive in this business.”

“You know what else they say?”

Kane double-raised her eyebrows and grinned. Then she raised her blue eyes, focusing on something over Stone’s shoulder. It meant incoming.

He leaned back as Faridi sat next to him. She asked, “Am I interrupting?”

Kane looked down at her tray and half-smiled. “We were talking about his ex-wife.”

Stone picked up his glass and gulped his half ice tea, half lemonade. While crunching ice, he studied Faridi and decided Kane was right. She looked like his soon-to-be-ex.

Faridi looked from Kane to Stone, and then back.

After swallowing a snicker, he said, “And you know what they say about exes. Payback is a bitch.”

Blackbird, Chapter 10