Trace
Saturday, 22nd of September, 2018
02:32pm LT, Blue Ridge, Virginia
Jack threw the helmet and his gloves at the front passenger's seat while driving. He vaguely remembered the layout of the streets. He had to go back to the freeway and then turn left towards north again. He'd have to continue about three miles on the freeway until the reaching two junctions.
He listened to the radio. He didn't hear any good news. Though Rubens was acting against his orders, he said nothing. It was too late to call them off without endangering their mission even more. All he could do at this point was listening to Ruben's radio communication.
It was devastating. They had tried to stop the convoy by shooting out of the helicopter. The men on the ground had answered with a rocket launcher and automatic gun fire, taking down the unarmed helicopter.
They had tried an emergency landing, blocking the streets, but they had crashed into the woods next to the street. That had been their last communication.
Jack looked to his left and saw a trail of smoke rising out of the woods. That was about a mile left of his position. They seemed to be driving at a parallel street through the woods.
"Audrey, how long do they stay inside the coverage area?", he asked on the second radio channel.
"About two miles are left. We're still working on the trace uplink.", she answered.
"Copy that. Do you have two crossroads at the freeway on your screen?"
"Yes. They're heading for the one near you."
He was already too close. The junction was in sight- even worse- anyone at the junction could clearly see his car from over there.
Jack turned right into a street to hide his position.
"Forty seconds.", Audrey told him. Saunders, next to her, was still trying to get in contact with Sergeant Rubens again.
Tensely Jack sat there. A row of trees and bushes hid most of his Humvee.
"Thirty seconds."
He heard how changed her voice was. She was answering him concisely.
"Twenty seconds." Her voice sounded angry.
He leant back into the seat and closed his eyes for a moment. He would have given anything to have a moment to speak with her- privately, and not over their radio frequencies.
"Ten seconds."
The road coming from the settlement in the woods was in his sight. It was a broad and dusty lane. From far he could already see a plume of dust rising – before he even saw the convoy.
Finally, two black jeeps appeared.
"I've got them in sight. They turn northeast."
"I see it, Jack. They're leaving our field of sight in five hundred yards."
He engaged a gear and slowly went forward. As their cars were just past the brow of the hill he started to drive. There was nobody else but them three cars on the streets. If he came to close- even if the only got into their field of sight – they'd spot him.
He had seen their armament before. If they saw him, he knew, he'd not have a chance to defend.
"I've got news from Sergeant Rubens' team", she said after having talked to Saunders. "Major Saunders is always on our channel now."
"Go ahead.", Jack murmured. He slowed down as he reached the crest of the hill. Slowly he rolled over it, until he saw their two jeeps in the far. He'd stop here and let them get a bigger lead.
"Sergeant Rubens and three of his men survived the helicopter crash.", Saunders reported.
"Copy that. How long until you've got the trace uplink?" He watched their cars from the far, wishing he'd not have lost his monocular and the rest of his gear in the basement of that building.
"Three minutes at least.", Audrey answered. "Our analysts are working as fast as they can."
Jack saw their cars disappear behind a bend of the road. He stepped onto the gas pedal and raced down the hill. He was out of their coverage area now.
As he approached the bend, he slowed down, letting the car roll slowly until he got a sight of the black jeeps again. They had slowed down and had stopped.
Jack braked the Humvee to a standstill, too. He hadn't expected them to stop.
"Looks like they're turning left.", he hesitatingly said, "We're now five miles from the intersection. 300 yards behind a left bend."
"Alright. I see it on the street map. The trace signal is ready any second.", Audrey told him.
Jack watched the convoy. They started again, turning left, as he had said. But they moved surprisingly slowly. For a second he thought they had spotted him. He considered backing off, but a moving point in the far would even attract more attention than the military fatigue green car at the edge of the dusty freeway in the far.
"Jack, the trace signal is on. We're putting it to the sector to your northwest."
"They should be passing any minute.", he murmured and watched them speed up. "I'm not sure if they have seen me."
"What does that mean, Jack?", Saunders spat, "Have they seen you or not?"
"I'm not sure. They went slowly but didn't stop.", Jack tensely answered.
"Before or after they turned?"
"Right as they turned." He shifted to reverse and backed up to turn the car around. "Do you have them on the screen?"
"Yes, right now. Trace is working." Audrey cut in. She passed on a message from Colonel Tusker that had just appeared at her screen. "Backup is coming. Their choppers are thirty minutes out."
"Good. I'm going back to look after Rubens and his team. We'll secure a landing area.", Jack answered and before Saunders could reply anything in his angry mood he ripped the communications unit out of his ear.
Like a maniac he raced back to the town center. Anything that could go wrong had gone wrong. From what he had seen a dozen of men were wounded or dead. Their enemies had also sustained heavy losses, but he still didn't like the proportion.
He had come to the intelligence unit this morning to lead the men into a exploratory mission and not into a war scene.
2 hours later
04:30pm LT, Defense Intelligence Agency, Bolling Airforce Base, Washington DC
Audrey stood up and left the situation room. She closed the glass door behind her, facing the colonel. "Sir?", she asked.
He handed her the transfer order wordlessly.
She took it and read it through. Effective immediately, she should report in the DoD administration in the Pentagon. This was her old job.
"I just got off the phone with the Secretary of Defense.", Colonel Tusker silently said to her. "He's awaiting you."
She handed the paper back to him, saying nothing.
"I'm sorry, Audrey… But I can't do anything against this order.", he murmured, watching her closely. She stood upright, looking at the concrete wall on the opposite side. She looked angry and upset but at the same time also like the saddest woman he'd ever seen.
"Audrey?", he silently asked.
She needed a few seconds to respond. Taking a deep breath she turned to him again. "Yes?"
"I know I promised not to… let these things interfere with your work here but my hands are tied. I can't disobey that order.", he explained.
She nodded silently. "I understand. Thank you for all you've done for me, Colonel. I know how your situation is. Really."
He was glad that she understood it, glad that she didn't make a scene. "I'd really like to understand this all, Audrey.", he began, guiding her away from the situation room, down the hallway. "Tell me the truth - why have you really applied for my unit?"
Audrey hesitated for a moment. Should she really tell him everything?
"Audrey, I just read Bauer's file. All of it."
Her heart sank. The truth was out.
Reluctantly, she let him into her office. He didn't care to close the door behind them. "What do you want to know?" As the mobile phone in his trouser pocket rang he switched it off without even looking at the display.
"Why did you apply?"
"I needed access. I wanted to find Bauer.", she directly answered. There was no point in lying. The worst he could do was fire her and even that didn't really matter to her. She had found Jack. Her job here was done.
"Why did you take parts out of his file before you passed it on to Saunders? Were you afraid I wouldn't instate him if I knew your both past?" He leant against the open wing of the door, watching Audrey, how she went back over to her table. She went past it, over to the large windows at the opposite side of the office.
"The funny thing is…", she laughed bitterly, "…that I never wanted him to be instated here. I just wanted to find him."
"But why did you give his file to Major Saunders then?"
She leant against the large glass pane, looking outside. "He had found out that I had been looking for Jack. I had used his access code to print out the file, and I took some parts out of it. That's why something was missing as I gave it to him."
Tusker stepped closer. "Where are these parts?"
"I took them home. I burned them after reading.", she answered. It was the truth.
"You know that you committed a federal crime, do you?", he asked her. He had approached her. Only two feet parted them. He saw that she was fighting with some tears.
"I know.", she spoke under her breath. Tears welled in her eyes. "What I did was far worse than a federal crime."
"You used a superior's key card for unauthorized access to classified material. You brought confidential DoD material out of the building to read it at home.", he continued the list of her crimes. He made a short pause and took a deep breath. "Besides, you could have just asked me.", he said, looking directly into her eyes. "I would have told you his location if you had asked me."
She couldn't hold back the tears any more. "I couldn't have lived with it if something had happened to him today." She took a few deep breaths, wiping the tears away from her face. But it was of no use. New tears came after she had wiped the old ones away. "What I did to Jack was so much worse than all these other crimes.", she sobbed. "And you were wrong as you thought I could make dispassionate decisions. It was damn hard to do that."
Audrey had a final look at him and then turned around to her desk. She didn't have many personal things here. She hadn't even been here for one complete week. "I'm getting ready to go.", she sighed. "That's best for all of us. Dad was right."
Colonel Tusker said nothing. He watched her back as she opened the drawers and took out her few personal things.
He had all the answers that he had needed. He took out his mobile phone and read the messages that had heaped up in the meantime. Field units are back, he read. The message was five minutes old. It was about time to get back to work.
A final time he turned to Audrey. "We're sending a convoy with the captives over to the Pentagon for interrogation. You can go with them- I'll have them call you when they're ready."
She nodded, wordlessly.
Tusker left the room, pulling the door closed behind him.
Suddenly he jerked, as he found Jack standing right in front of him.
Judging from the look on his face, he had stood out here, listening to their conversation for a couple of minutes already.
Tusker looked him over from head to toe. Apart from the cold stare in his eyes he looked awful. His uniform was dirty at all spots that hadn't been covered by the bulletproof vest. The right arm's sleeve was bloody at its end, the same as his right hand and one side of his face were covered with coagulated blood.
Jack held the hard drive from the server stack in the basement in his hands. He passed it on to Tusker. "Do you have any specialists to analyze that thing?", he asked.
Tusker shook his head. "No. We're sending it over to the Pentagon, along with the prisoners. I'll keep this in the meantime."
"Were you able to trace their convoy?", Jack asked.
Tusker shook his head no. "It looks like they found you. They went into the Staten Road tunnel, changed cars there and got lost in the traffic."
Jack replied nothing. He was the reason for this failure. It was just another thing that had gone wrong this day. He asked for permission to step away.
He needed to go back to the remains of his unit, he said. But actually he just wanted to get away.
From this place.
From Tusker.
From the thought of getting a next assignment.
But especially from the spot in front of Audrey's office.