The United States has a wealth of special operations folks who have left the service and are now in both the public and private sector doing everything from teaching school to selling insurance. Quite a few are in law enforcement.
After doing a scrub of service records like we were validating a recruit for Taskforce selection, we reached out to a select few with the requisite security clearances who we believed would help without asking too many questions as to why. The idea was to stash the terrorist in a jail that was run by the special operations veteran, leveraging the infrastructure already in place for life support. Sprinkled throughout rural areas all over the United States, we called the network of jails the Cloud.
The name was a play on the computer use of the term, but instead of storing pictures or text messages, we’d “store” the terrorist in a place where nobody on the outside would ever look. Only those with the correct“password”—namely members of Project Prometheus—would even know they existed.
The Utah jail was one such Cloud node, this location dedicated to a terrorist I’d captured years ago. How he’d managed to escape was still a mystery, but I learned as soon as I’d arrived in Washington, DC, that the Oversight Council wasn’t really worried about the how. They were only concerned about the possible repercussions to their careers, now that he had.
After Wolffe’s call, we’d immediately stopped the exercise in Charleston, pulling in the candidates and closing out the various safe houses. Wolffe had already launched a private aircraft to pick us up by the time we’d talked, which told me how big an issue he considered the Ghost’s disappearance. Within six hours of the phone call we were walking into the sensitive compartmented information facility—or SCIF—on the fourth floor of Blaisdell Consulting, the cover name on the headquarters building for Project Prometheus.
Wolffe was seated at the head of a polished conference room table facing a far wall with a gigantic television screen. He saw us at the door and motioned us to the side, off camera. We took a seat along the wall, and I saw a similar conference room table on the screen, this one surrounded by the members of the Oversight Council, with the president of the United States at the head.
He alone appeared calm, with the rest of the members taking turns rotating the panic knob to eleven. Amanda Croft, the secretary of state, was speaking when we entered, and she was in rare form.
“I have repeatedly said this whole ‘Cloud’ construct was a recipe for disaster. It was only a matter of time before it was discovered. The CIA learned that through their black site program right after 9/11. Secret prisonsneverstay secret.”
The director of the CIA, Kerry Bostwick, piped up, saying, “What the hell was the alternative? I suppose we could have just put a bullet in their heads after interrogation. That would have saved us some risk, but come on, just because the Taskforce is extrajudicial doesn’t mean we’re sanctioning flat-out murder.”
She spat back, “That will be open to interpretation when this spills out in the press and we’re all standing in front of a judge defending our actions.”
Mark Oglethorpe, the secretary of defense—or secretary of war, depending on what day it was—said, “The Cloud wasn’t exposed by a leak. This isn’t due to our methods or infrastructure.”
The president’s national security advisor, Alexander Palmer, threw up his hands and said, “For God’s sake, a damn detainee escaped! I’d say that points to an infrastructure flaw somewhere!”
As usual, they were more concerned with their political careers and placing blame than they were about the actual problem set. I let them continue bickering and caught Wolffe’s eye, mouthing,On mute?
He nodded, saying, “Yeah, they can’t hear anything, but they can see, so stay off the camera.”
I chuckled and said, “Why’d you call us up here if you’re afraid they’ll see us?”
He said, “Nobody’s asked for you yet, but I haven’t weighed in. It’s coming.”
I said, “What the hell happened? How’d the Ghost escape?”
“We don’t know yet. The sheriff in Utah was simply conducting a transfer, taking him to a new location, and their vehicle was ambushed. A couple of civilians found him bleeding out, but no sign of the Ghost.”
I said, “Bob Marley?”
“Yeah,” he paused, then said, “Did you know him?”
I shook my head, saying, “Not really. He was Ranger. An old first-batt guy. I met him briefly when I used the Ghost for that operation in Mexico a few years ago. We knew some of the same people. He was a good man. What happened? Why the transfer?”
“Well, it turns out Sheriff Marley was retiring. He was hanging up his spurs, and after that happened, we were going to lose our ability to utilize his jail and authority for the Cloud. He gave us plenty of notice, and we developed another Cloud node. It wasn’t ready yet, but he was going to transfer the detainee to a waystation at Mercury, Nevada. The Ghost was going to be held there for a month or two before moving to his final destination.”
“Mercury? As in Groom Lake?”
Mercury and Groom Lake were part of the Nevada Test Site, a highly classified piece of desert known to the public as the mystical Area 51. It was a good choice, as there was so much classified and strange shit going on there from every three-letter agency in the US that it would be easy to sneak in and out. Nobody at that location asked any questions about any activity that occurred.
He said, “Yeah. It was an overnight trip from Utah. About six hours to transfer, a night in Vegas for Marley, then he’d head home. Should have been a clean and easy in-and-out.”
“So who hit them?”
“At this point, we have no idea. The police in Utah are at a loss. The only lead they have is a retired couple who found the vehicle. It was on fire and Marley was bleeding out on the ground. The Ghost was gone.”
“What do theythinkhappened?”
“They’re considering all possibilities. The retired couple said a group of bikers raced by them just before they found the burning truck. There’s a constant fight against marijuana patches and meth labs in the national forests, so it could have been a vendetta against Marley and nothing to do with the Ghost.”
Knuckles said, “Was the hit on a high-speed avenue of approach? Like an interstate? Or on the road going to the Ghost detention site?”
