Red Cicada, page 8
Without skipping a beat, he asked, “What can you tell me about the abduction?”
She drew a breath steeped in long-suffering and dulled by brain fog. “I was scheduled for a minor surgery the next morning. The orderly who came for me turned out to be a Russian who claimed his name is Petrov Anders. He strapped me into a wheelchair and took me to the basement parking lot and tossed me into his van before I really knew what was happening. Lt. Kipling witnessed the van pulling away. Petrov took me to a seedy warehouse a few miles away. I don’t know the address, but the lieutenant does. All I know is that Lt. Kipling came in just before they were about to kill me.”
Ortiz tipped his head to one side. “You said the hospital staff . . .” He flipped back a page in his tiny notebook. “Just gave you some drugs.”
“Yeah.”
“So what was this scheduled surgery?”
Kipling cleared his throat. “That’s irrelevant, Detective. You should focus on the abduction.”
“Should I?” he asked, not looking up.
“Yes. I am investigating the national security implications of this case,” Kipling explained in an even tone. “The Fort Collins police should only be concerned with the traffic violations in relation to the abduction.”
“Should we?”
“Yes.”
Ortiz scribbled something in his booklet. “Ms. Baker, what time was your surgery scheduled for?”
“Why do you need to know that?” Kipling asked harshly.
“It gives me a perspective on the time Ms. Baker was taken from the hospital.”
“Then, how about you just ask that?”
Ortiz looked up. “How about you let me do my job my way and you do yours your way?”
“Boys,” Lana cut in. “We’re all on the same team here.”
Ortiz turned back to Lana. “Ms. Baker, I can only help if I’m given all the facts, not partial truths. I’m not saying you lied to me, but it wasn’t full disclosure either. Did the surgery have something to do with your head wound?”
Kipling, scowling at the screen of his cell phone, stepped forward and inserted himself between the detective and Lana. “Okay. We’re done here.” He pocketed his phone and handed Ortiz a business card. “This is my liaison at the CIA office in Denver. I’ve already notified him of the situation, but if you’d like to verify my role in this, give him a call. Until then, this patient is under military custody.”
“Military custody, huh?” The detective looked closely at the card.
“Yes. Call my superior if you’d like.”
Ortiz closed his notepad and turned to Lana. “Pleasure to meet you, ma’am. Thank you for your time.”
When Detective Ortiz left, Kipling said, “My superior just texted me. I’ve got to make a secure phone call to make sure this doesn’t get more out of hand. I’ll be right back.”
As he stepped through the curtains, a young nurse entered to attend to Lana—but not before casting a lingering gaze on the departing army officer.
“My, you’re living quite the fairy tale, aren’t you?” she said, checking Lana’s stats.
Unsure she’d heard the nurse correctly, Lana said, “Excuse me?”
“A handsome young lieutenant rescuing you from a dangerous foreign kidnapper.” She nearly swooned. “Some women have all the luck.”
“Luck?” Lana scowled at her bandages and her deplorable state of dress.
“Yes. So what are you—his girlfriend? Fiancée?”
“I’m his prime suspect.”
She blinked. “Prime suspect?” Her tone hovered between humor and disbelief. “What did you do?”
“I’m under investigation for something I didn’t even know about—not anything I did.” The implications from the nurse’s timbre irritated her. “Apparently, the bad guys also know about it. That’s why I got kidn—wait. How did you know the kidnapper was a foreigner?”
“The ambulance following yours brought in a GSW. He’s surrounded by cops in the far bay.”
“GSW?”
“Gunshot wound. The guy doesn’t speak a lick of English, but the EMTs told me what happened.”
“He actually speaks very good English. If his name is Petrov, he’s the man who kidnapped me. There was a second bad guy who got away.”
“Holy cow. You’re lucky the lieutenant was able to find you.”
“He only did because of this tracker,” she said, tugging at her Poudre Hospital wrist ID.
The nurse held up Lana’s arm and examined the thin plastic band. “This is a standard admissions ID. It’s exactly like the one we put on your other wrist.” She held Lana’s two wrist IDs side by side. “See? The printing’s identical. They’re even the same shade of green. The only difference is the PVH band is secured with a black plastic rivet. Ours has a white rivet.”
“Are you saying this isn’t a tracking device?” Lana asked.
“Don’t be silly. It’s just a piece of plastic.”
“Then, how did Lt. Kipling find me?” she asked, almost to herself.
The nurse shrugged. “He must have followed you from the start. Or he knew where they were taking you to begin with. Either way—”
She stopped abruptly as the lieutenant slid open the curtain and pushed in a wheelchair.
“I signed you out so we can—” He too abruptly stopped when he saw Lana wasn’t alone. “Oh. Hi.”
“Hi yourself,” the nurse said, pulling her shoulders back and coyly biting a corner of her lower lip. “My name is Amber.”
Lana rolled her eyes.
“Amber, could I have a moment alone with Ms. Baker?” he asked.
The flirty nurse flashed a wide smile. “Sure. Call me if you need anything.” She paused before closing the curtain and gave him a blatant come-see-me look.
Lana didn’t know whether to laugh or gag or snap at Kipling for lying about her ID band. “You need to answer a few questions,” she said harshly.
“Later. We need to get you out of here. I signed a release form authorizing me to take you back to Poudre Valley Hospital.”
“Really? Not Peterson?”
Kipling said nothing as he helped Lana into the wheelchair and pushed her to the main exit. Outside the hospital, the lieutenant opened the passenger door to his Cherokee and helped her inside, even though she insisted she didn’t need the help. Her knee was sore and her head still pulsed, but the meds in her system kept things to a dull roar.
He buckled in and started the car.
Turning, Lana said, “Seriously. I need to ask you some—”
“Not yet,” he interrupted. Although it was near sunset and cooler out, he turned on the air conditioner and cranked the fan to high. He also turned on the radio and rolled down the windows. When he leaned over to speak, his voice was barely audible with all the background noise. “There’s a chance my car is bugged. I need to check it out before we discuss anything.”
Her frown deepened. “Really?”
“Yes. I’m taking you off-grid until I get a better handle on who all knows about this.”
“Are you allowed to do that?”
“I pretty much make my own schedule.”
“Okay, but why off-grid?”
“It’s a given that if my people know where I am, there’s a chance the bad guys will know too. Which means they’ll know where you are.”
“And you think the bad guys are still after me,” she intuited.
He nodded. “I think it’s best if we go dark.”
Chapter 11
They stopped for gas, then drove for a half hour, heading north along Highway 287. It took only a few minutes before they were in a rugged, alpine-like setting nearly devoid of life. The sun had dipped behind the Rockies and painted the sky a gorgeous orange-pink. But the tranquil setting did little to soothe Lana’s whirlwind emotions.
Most vehicles they passed had their headlights on, probably more to avoid the ubiquitous antelope than to illuminate the road. Kipling had rolled up the windows and turned down the noisy climate-control fan. The music he’d chosen was contemporary country—or perhaps it was the only station he could get out in the middle of nowhere.
“Never figured you for a country-music lover,” she quipped.
“You didn’t, huh?” It was more of a comment than a question. The man looked seriously deep in thought.
Lana had a million questions for him, but she wasn’t sure where to start. More than anything, she wanted to ask about his last comments: There’s a chance my car is bugged and it’s best if we go dark. It wasn’t so much what he’d said as how he’d said it. If he was nervous about the situation, she was scared to death.
Pointing to her ear, she asked, “Are we still . . . being cautious?”
He nodded. “Out here we’re probably safer, but yeah, it’s for the best.”
She lowered her voice. “So why do you think your car is bugged?”
He turned up the music a bit. “My supervisor texted and asked why I was at UCHealth instead of Peterson Air Force Base.”
“So?”
“So how did he know where I was? My phone’s GPS app was off. Same with my car’s GPS. In my line of work, it’s best if I remain undetectable. The bad guys are pretty tech-savvy, and I’d rather they not know where I am 24-7.”
“So you don’t trust your own people either?”
He took a moment, as if organizing his thoughts. “I thought I was the only one assigned to your case—actually, your father’s case. But the more I look into it, the more I think otherwise. I believe other agents are involved. We’re all on the same team, but I’m wondering if we have the same objective. This may get a lot worse before it’s over.”
His tone frightened her. How could it get any worse? In a matter of hours, her life had been turned completely upside down. Now she was on the run from people wanting to kill her for information she didn’t even know she had, with a guy she knew next to nothing about.
After an eon of silence, with nothing in the background but songs about the numbing virtues of beer, Lana was stir-crazy. She turned down the music. “You know, I could really use a shower and some real clothes,” she said, tugging at her hospital gown.
Kipling’s eyes registered surprise, as if just now realizing how little she had on. “Oh. Sorry. Yes, of course.” But he kept driving north, seemingly ignoring her suggestion.
“Um, my place is back thataway,” she said, jabbing her thumb over her shoulder.
“I realize that.” He turned up the radio again—some twangy tune about regret. “We can’t go back to your apartment. The place may be under surveillance. Perhaps even booby-trapped.”
“What about all my stuff?”
“It’s just stuff. You can get more.”
She let fly a derisive snort. “Since you know so much about me, you’ll know my bank account barely clears three figures. I pretty much live check to check, and I don’t have enough credit to go on a wild shopping spree.”
“You just need the basics. I can cover that. Laramie is a few miles ahead. We can grab you some clothes there.”
“What about my personal things? You know, memorabilia, pictures . . . stuff I can’t replace?”
The lieutenant didn’t reply. He looked caught up in some angry thought, his brow furrowed, his eyes intense.
“Please, Lance,” she said, deciding to use his first name in hopes of getting him to open up. “It means the world to me.”
He glanced at her with a critical scowl. “You really have no idea how much danger you’re in, do you?” Again, his comment was more accusatory than questioning. “Unbelievable.”
His flip-flop nature was deeply irritating. Lana’s fatigue and anxiety were such that even an innocent sideways look from him would have set her off. Her head still pounded just below the level of a migraine. She’d had enough.
“I don’t, huh?” she growled, her tone dripping with ire. “Let’s see: I’ve been subjected to medical tests and X-rays against my will; I’ve been questioned as if I were a criminal; I’ve been kidnapped by foreign agents and beaten, cut, scraped, stabbed in the back of the head, threatened with my life; and now I’m being abducted again, this time by the guy who is supposed to be on my side. And all this with a pounding headache that can cross into a migraine at any moment. Yeah, I have no idea.”
“I am on your side,” he said defensively.
She huffed and tightly folded her arms. What had happened to her safe little world? She knew life was full of vagaries, many decidedly unfair, some downright cruel. But the last thirty-some-odd hours had been absolutely insane. She needed full disclosure, not half-truths, half answers. She needed more than assurance from Lance; she needed confirmation. And she needed a friend.
The radio now blared a tune about an unfaithful husband the singer was still in love with. She was tempted to turn off the music but decided to trust what Lance had said about possible eavesdroppers. Even so, her sanity demanded information. If the bad guys already knew so much about her, they probably knew an equal amount about the lieutenant, just as he’d said. But she didn’t. In fact, she knew basically nothing about the man driving her to somewhere “off-grid.” She was tired of being the last to know. It put her at yet another disadvantage.
“Look, I know we can’t discuss anything critical to national security, but I’d like to ask a few questions about other things, if that’s okay.”
Lance regarded her with steely consideration before returning his eyes to the road. “I’ll tell you what I’m allowed to.”
She took a steadying breath. “Tell me about Lt. Lance Kipling.”
He scoffed. “Lana, this isn’t really the time or place for—”
“Stop! Either I get some answers, or you don’t get anything from me,” she snapped, folding her arms even tighter. “I hate, hate, hate being kept in the dark about everything.”
He fumed for a half mile, then said, “I was born in Glasgow.”
“Scotland?” she asked with a grin.
“Delaware. It’s about forty miles north of Dover, a hundred miles east of DC. I pretty much grew up there and attended Glasgow High.”
“Were you a jock or a nerd?”
“Neither, really. Or maybe a little of both. Glasgow High was full of contention, bitterness, even hatred. Testosterone-charged teenagers, you know? PE was the worst. Contact sports took on a whole new meaning. So, to avoid fights in gym class, I joined the Army JROTC program, where we were taught unity, not rivalry. I really liked the discipline and principles they drilled into us.”
“Enough for you to join up right out of high school?”
“Yes. JROTC helped pay for college and put me through OTS.”
“OTS?”
“Officer Training School. I graduated with honors.”
“And college? What did you study there—military history? Politics?”
“Microbiology.”
That made her laugh. It was the last thing she would have guessed. “Seriously? Why?”
He shrugged. “It fascinates me.”
“Yeah, but . . . you’re in the army. Special investigations or something like that. Why—” Lana stopped short as fresh understanding flooded her brain. “Biological warfare? Is that what you do?”
“I can’t comment.”
She turned the music up. “If it is biological weapons, then why, for the love of Mike, are you investigating me? Is that what’s on the disk?”
He leveled a cautionary gaze her way. “I really don’t know at this point.”
“Is that why the Russians are after it? Petrov said they wanted the information on it—but it sounded like he didn’t know what that information was either. If no one knows for sure, why are so many people after it?”
“It’s . . . complicated.”
Another blockade.
“Great,” she mumbled, feeling exactly the opposite. “I’m stuck in the middle of a mystery that you guys don’t have a clue how to solve. If you’d just give me a chance, perhaps I could help you figure it out before they do.”
“Perhaps,” he said, turning up the music even more, indicating he was done with the conversation.
* * *
The somber sky had turned a deep shade of indigo by the time they pulled off the exit to Laramie. Stars were now visible, with Venus showing brightly just above the horizon. They connected with I-80 and followed it a few miles to a Walmart. In the parking lot, Lance stepped out of his Cherokee and opened the rear passenger area. Lana got out of the car too and watched as he pulled a fob that raised the seat cushion to reveal a storage space underneath. A small metal lockbox sat nestled among flares, a flashlight, a laptop computer, boxes of ammo, and several burner phones. He dialed a code on the combination lock and opened the box. Inside were a variety of papers, passports, and a stack of one-hundred-dollar bills bound with an elastic band.
“Gives a whole new meaning to a fully loaded vehicle,” Lana quipped.
Lance peeled off three hundreds and handed them to her. “Get what you need. We shouldn’t be seen together. Everyone knows we left the hospital together, so they’ll be looking for two people.”
“They also know how I’m dressed,” she said, tugging at her hospital gown. “Don’t you think this is kind of obvious?”
He grinned. “It’s Walmart. You’ll fit right in.” He then reached into the cargo hold and pulled out an army windbreaker and ball cap. “Slip these on. It’ll help. But change your clothes ASAP.”
“What are you going to do?” she asked, accepting the light jacket and hat.
“I’ll enter from the other door and will be watching your back the whole time,” he said, removing his tie and collar pins. “Go in and get what you need, but don’t be too rushed. And don’t look around too frequently. It makes you look guilty. Get stuff you’d normally get on a weeknight. Try to blend in.”
