CHAPTER 12
"… Smith's the mole."
It was like bomb after bomb had been dropped on this team. Everyone's jaws had dropped to the floor, in disbelief – Mateo, Michael and David especially.
"Smith, as in USMC Sergeant Jonathan Smith?!" David questioned. His voice was slightly raised, and it was understandable – he was a Marine. For a fellow Marine to betray his unit and his country… It was disgraceful and insulting.
Mateo turned around, glaring at Michael.
"I thought Smith was MIA! How come you didn't pick this up earlier?!"
"Sir, we'd been working on tracking Smith down! We were told to just back off, so that's what we did! It was the Corps' responsibility to find him, dead or alive so we didn't bother after that!"
"It's not your fault boys," Emily calmly explained. "None of us would have been able to see this coming."
"He must've turned before the mission started." Aaron deducted. The team began profiling Smith's behaviour.
"Maybe when he learned that he wasn't going to be the team sniper?" Derek added. "I mean, I'd be pretty upset if I'd been serving with the Corps for over ten years, only to get trumped by that Pennsylvania Petite. He must've been the one to take her."
Everyone in the room nodded in agreement.
Emily walked closer toward the screen, grabbing the remote and pulling up Interpol's start-up screen. With the click of a button, tons of files were accessed and displayed.
"I was just out the door when I overheard Matt say something about their unit being targeted, and I found it interesting because we'd also been investigating Alliance operations. Let's just say that their leader, Daniel Barker, has been on the top of our list for quite some time." She pulled up a redacted file, removing the blacked out parts of the document.
"I found it interesting when Matt mentioned that members had been slowly taken out – at first, I definitely thought it was Barker, but when he mentioned the part where someone had been feeding information to Alliance, it couldn't just be a coincidence that Lieutenant-Commander Edwards and Sergeant Johnston had been taken out relatively the same time; Edwards being murdered at the base shortly after JJ, Cruz and Price had left Fallujah, and Sergeant Johnston MIA shortly after Edwards' murder. Who did that leave?" She stared into the eyes of everyone in the room, allowing for someone to state the obvious.
"Smith. Strauss, Cruz, Price and JJ were already in the States." Aaron chimed in.
"Exactly." Emily nodded.
The pieces started to fit together, but Derek was still a bit confused.
"Okay, but why go MIA after that? If he'd already been a part of Alliance, why not declare yourself as 'Killed in Action' so people wouldn't look for you?"
David knew exactly what Smith's point of view was.
"That's exactly what he wanted. If he declared himself KIA there would be no way of redeeming himself if he wanted to pop up as a hero. It's all about being the hero. If he'd failed at sniping, there'd be other ways to get attention. When you serve in any branch of the US military, sniping is like sitting on a throne. When you have that sniper tag, you're in charge. You get the glory. JJ pushing him off the pedestal as sniper must've fueled his motive."
Emily nodded, about to say something when Alex asked something first.
"But wait, how do you know if it was Smith that murdered the Lieutenant-Commander and got rid of the Sergeant? How was Edwards' murdered?"
Emily sighed, making eye contact with Penelope.
"Almost 6 years ago, Penelope had been shot by a man who murdered people by shooting them, then trying to save them to make himself look like a hero. When Interpol got word of Lieutenant-Commander Edwards being murdered, guess who it was that tried to save him."
"Smith." Penelope stuttered, vividly flashing back to when she'd been shot. Emily saw the pained look on her face, momentarily pausing and thinking of the moment they'd found themselves waiting in the hospital on Penelope's condition. She shook off the memory, continuing on with what she'd discovered.
"Exactly. Edwards was murdered by multiple GSW's to the chest while off duty. Coincidentally, Smith had been there, and tried to 'save' him, but was unable to. And, when Sergeant Johnston went missing, it was immediately assumed that she'd been killed in the line of duty. Their first mistake, because guess who ordered the raid to find her?"
"Smith. If he was already working with Alliance, but still keeping low profile about it, he must've fed information about her medical unit being in the field to allow Barker's men to take her underground, somewhere no one would find her." Spence added.
"And if she'd been kept with Alliance, but without her knowing that it'd been Smith ordering her kidnapping, then it was the perfect setup to try to be the hero." Aaron commented.
"Okay, but how come Smith hadn't said anything while JJ was undercover with Alliance? Or even Major Price? Surely their identities would have been immediately compromised," Alex added.
"Double cross. Trying to feed information to Alliance to gain their trust, but also keeping low on Bravo-7 to avoid any means of getting caught in the process." Spencer said. "But what I don't understand is why Barker hasn't suspected Smith as a double."
After moments of silence, Mateo finally spoke up.
"Smith knew something Barker didn't. He knew the location of the Black Box. Barker wouldn't get rid of Smith so easy if it meant getting his hands on the Black Box."
"Okay, wait. I'm going to stop you right there. What the hell is this 'Black Box' you keep talking about?!" Derek questioned. Mateo calmly took over the screens.
"The Black Box is a small black box containing a microchip with an astonishing amount of government intel and secrets on it. JJ's initial assignment was to investigate its location because the last we heard was that Alliance had gotten their hands on it. When JJ told us that she'd gathered all the intel that was needed, that was our go to take down the base. It was our orders. But it was chaotic… She said she found the Black Box, but we never retrieved it from the base,"
He'd paused. He couldn't think of any logical explanation as to why they didn't have the Black Box, nor did Alliance.
There was a prolonged silence in the room, before Emily spoke up.
"Wait, that's it!"
The team exchanged quizzical looks with each other. Emily sighed before starting again.
"Something must have happened when JJ was captured and beaten for information. It's a hell of a long shot, but I think JJ allowed for herself to get captured, because she knew that they'd take her to the only secure place that they had – the real base. The base that JJ, Matt and Michael's unit had infiltrated was just a decoy. I mean, if I were the leader, I wouldn't store something so valuable in an area so exposed. Why keep it there, when you can keep it somewhere that no one could find it? Except, JJ's arm tracker had thrown them off their game – if she didn't have the tracker,"
"Then it would be game over." Aaron concluded. "They didn't count on JJ having that tracker. If the cave they took her to was where they kept the real intel, then JJ must've found it and kept it since then."
Matt and Michael were confused.
"She never told us anything."
Emily continued.
"But that's just it, if she knew there was a mole in the team, why would she tell anyone else about the Black Box? If she kept that secret to herself,"
"She'd have a better chance of getting out of it. Make herself least likely to be targeted. If she said that she had no idea where it was, then Smith wouldn't have suspected that she really did have the intel." Derek commented.
"Except now he does, and there's nothing he won't do to find that information."
They'd found themselves stumped again. They needed to find JJ immediately, but had no physical leads. Something popped into Aaron's head. He turned to Matt.
"Wait, her disappearance has to be connected with all four of you coming back to the states. What happened when you came back?"
"When we came back, Strauss and I thought it would be best for JJ to transfer back to the BAU. We thought it would be safer for her to stick around a civilian agency, away from the State Department. Price and I had agreed to keep contact at a minimum at the department, but the three of us had been maintaining contact to update each other on possible leads. Our… Situation overseas became a pending investigation; it's why Alliance had popped onto Interpol's radar. Things got weird after Edwards was murdered and Johnston went missing. Smith's disappearance and Strauss' murder wasn't just coincidental either. Tampered computer systems, missing microchips… I had to do something, so we opened up that investigation again. JJ and I had been meeting every morning since mid 2013, when Strauss was murdered."
"That's it, Strauss' murder is the connection." Emily addressed.
"What?" Derek, Spence, Alex and Penelope had blurted out at the same time.
"It has something to do with Strauss' murder. Garcia, can you pull up everything you guys might have missed on The Replicator?"
"Will do, Chief Prentiss." Penelope smiled. She liked that her best friend was comfortable with this new position of hers. Emily couldn't help but smile back. The rush of profiling had stirred something in her again. It was like old times.
"What am I looking for, exactly?"
"Contact history. I have a hunch… You guys might've not noticed it before because of how high profile this case was, and how pressured all of you must've been at the time. But I remember seeing something about Barker hiring someone overseas, in the states, but it didn't specify for what. It didn't seem important at the time because the person he hired wasn't the arms dealer and supplier we were looking for."
Penelope scrolled through the endless documents, analyzing each and every word. Countless redacted files had come up, but the access she needed was granted, thanks to Emily.
"There." She pointed to a small box on the screen, hidden away in a small file that was redacted. Penelope uncovered the file, and surely enough; there was Daniel Barker and Jonathan Smith.
"Oh my god!"
"So JJ's been targeted for a while?!" Derek blurted out.
"She didn't know. His original orders were to take JJ and Erin out. Because Alex had just joined the team at the time, John Curtis was derailed from his orders because of the personal matter related to it, targeting our entire team, but targeting Strauss and Alex for the most part." Aaron acknowledged.
"Then they must be keeping JJ somewhere he, Barker and Smith knew – somewhere the three of them could meet if something went south, like a temporary operations base." David added.
"And if it's somewhere around here, then it would be in an abandoned warehouse or factory." Alex continued.
Everyone nodded. They were anxious for answers, but were content because they'd soon get the location of their girl.
"Guys, I found an old text message from last year – it's an address to an abandoned factory. I think it's the factory he was supposed to take Erin and JJ originally, but didn't because he had turned his orders into a personal vendetta against Alex and Erin. Guys, I think that's where JJ is right now!"
Immediately, all eight pairs of eyes had widened. They finally had something.
"Garcia, where's the factory?" Aaron asked. His voice was slightly raised from the stress and anxiety that JJ's kidnapping had over him.
"In Baltimore sir! It's a factory sitting near Curtis Bay. I'll send the address to your phones and tablets and I'll call in SWAT! Go!"
Aaron pulled out his phone, calling in a favour. They'd need the choppers – Baltimore was about an hour's drive. They'd never make it to JJ in time. A chopper ride to Curtis Bay would be a twenty-minute flight.
He'd take it.
So in the blink of an eye, all eight agents had rushed out the door. They knew they were running on a ticking clock, and it would only be a matter of time before irreversible damage would be done. They all promised they'd get to JJ soon – it wasn't a promise they intended to break.