The men flipped through the memos and each made their particular notes. “Where, exactly, will this operation be taking place?”
“Karachi is where the insertion will be made. Once the media has been applied, our team will exit and simply wait.” Chesterfield stood at the front of the room and eyed each of those assembled.
Another suit raised his eyes to meet Darren’s. “How does this not throw suspicion directly back upon us or one of our allies?”
Chesterfield smiled. “So what if it does?” He paced the front of the room slowly and watched as each man gradually looked up and stared at him. “The point of this operation is to target al-Abadi and show the extremists that we can slip in and out without detection. That we can ‘slit their throats while they sleep’ without even being in the same room. That we don’t need to rely on drones or ‘boots on the ground’. That we can play just as dirty as they do. Of course, we will have plausible deniability…we’ve never cared if they did this sort of thing before, right? I mean, hell…our own people do this right here on American soil and, while we may not care for it, we celebrate their right to freedom of expression. Or am I mistaken?” His sardonic smile was not wasted on the assembled crowd. “So even if they do blame us, and believe me, they will, our own people, including the press, will decry the act as a way to draw attention to their weakening status in their own homeland.”
William Jameson, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency pushed his chair back and crossed his legs. “It sounds to me like you have all your t’s dotted and i’s crossed.”
Darren tried to hide his smirk as he addressed the director. “Sir, I won’t try to blow smoke up your ass. There are still a few details to iron out, but as it stands, we have everything in place and ready to go. All we really need is a green light from this assemblage to proceed.” He motioned toward the collection of memos he had handed out previously. “If you’ll refer to the list of domestic terrorist groups in Appendix B? We can choose any of those groups at will.”
“And which of these groups have personnel available with the resources to travel to Pakistan?” Robert Ingram, Assistant Director of the NSA couldn’t help but try to put Chesterfield on the spot. If the man was to come in and state that he was prepared, he’d better damn well be prepared. If he couldn’t handle minor questions from a group like this, he’d never stand up to public scrutiny if things ever went south.
“Two of the aforementioned groups have personnel who claim to have traveled there in the recent past. I have a man on that now, verifying it.” Darren stepped closer to the table and never broke eye contact with the Assistant Director. “However, even if none of them had actually traveled there before, we both know how easy it would be to make it look like they had.”
Ingram nodded. “True enough. But you’d better make damn sure that if you end up going that route that they can’t come back and show you home movies of their family vacation to Big Sur taken the same time they’re supposed to be overseas.”
“Understood, sir. I promise you, this isn’t my first rodeo.” Chesterfield moved back to the front of the room and pulled a remote from his pocket. With the click of a button, a white screen descended from the ceiling. “If you’ll turn your attentions to the screen up front…”
Darren began clicking through slides and explaining the different steps that the operation would be taking. He had allowed each step of the operation to have three possible outcomes and each of those outcomes to eventually lead back to the main goal. As he finished his outline, he clicked the slide projector off and turned back to the assemblage of men. “Any questions?”
“One.” Jameson watched the man cautiously, his finger gently tapping the memos. “What is your timeline on this operation?”
“We can be ready to implement by Monday of next week. If everything goes as planned, you should see the end result by Friday at the latest.”
Ingram turned to Jameson and whispered in his ear. Jameson nodded and mumbled back, “With the unrest in that region, we could see results much earlier.”
Ingram nodded then turned back to Darren. “You have your green light, agent Chesterfield.” He stood and slid the memos across the table. “But if you screw the pooch on this, it will be much more than your career on the line.”
Jameson nodded as he stepped past the ambitious young agent. “It will be your nuts.”
2
Wood County, TX
BOBBY CONTINUALLY SCANNED the different chatrooms, searching for the ever elusive GabrielsButler_72. The user couldn’t be found anywhere in the chatrooms or any of the forums that Bridger had been associating with. Bobby leaned back in his chair and stretched his neck and shoulders. The cramps he had developed from bending over the stupid machine were enough to give him headaches. He honestly could not understand how anybody could stand to be on a computer for more than a few minutes at a time without permanently slumping their shoulders and curving their back.
He pushed away from the machine and shut the lid. He needed to get outside and get some fresh air. This type of “surveillance” sucked balls and he was getting sick of it quickly. Bobby pulled another water bottle from the fridge and
