BIN LADEN IS DEAD! THE SONOFABITCH IS DEAD!

Trev

When I was a kid, I already had an eye for the details. For example, when I was four, Pa was cleaning one of his handguns. I watched him take the gun, a Glock 17, out of the gunsafe, take it apart, clean it, then put it back in. A few days later, I took the Glock out of the safe, remembering the combination when I saw him open it, took it apart, cleaned it, put it together, then put it back in the safe without my father knowing.

As I got older, my Pa saw this skill, and being a former CIA-paramilitary and of a long line of spies and wet-workers, and trained it. By the time I was thirteen, I could tell which end of the house Sam was going to try to sneak his squeeze out of before he got there. Of course, Ma invited the girl for dinner that night. Awkward.

It wasn't until I got to working with some not-nice people in the State Department that I reached my full potential. The Tracker Team was the brain-child the director of the Political Stabilization Unit. It had everything needed to track down the worst of America's enemies, political or otherwise. Hackers? Had it. Analysts? Them too. But what they didn't have was a very rare skill.

People skills.

The director, Ambler, could read a man like a book. A living, breathing lie detector. He could see when someone ment him harm, was hungry, nervous, high, or all of the above. Of course, he couldn't be out in the field when he had a Unit to run. So when he heard of a young rising star in Iraq working for JSOC who had an uncanny knack for telling when a person was lying during a "field interrogation", he leaped at the chance, recruited me, and taught me the skills of lie spotting.

Which is what screamed in my head when I stepped out into the lobby.

Some one was dangerous in this place, and it wasn't just me.

I ducked my head and focused my gaze onto one of the computers at the far wall. I sat down, opened the web browser, and logged onto a porn site. I used it as an excuse to look around. People tend to notice when you look like your looking for something. If you are logged onto a porn site in a public area, like a lobby, you have an excuse.

Found him. Medium height, nondescript suit, comfortable shoes, skinny, longish hair. Kind a guy you only notice if you look him in the eye.

Scars on his knuckles. Hand-to-hand combat. Perfect balance. Callouses on his palms. The kind you get from shooting a gun non-stop for days. Yeah, he's my guy.

And more importantly, he had the same... look, as Lyn did.

I exited my porn site, got up, and made for the front entrance. I bumped shoulders, recoiled, mumbled "sorry," and continued out with his car keys.

I made my way into the parking structure and walked through, pressing the unlock button every five meters. His was on the third floor. I put on the black plastic gloves I always had on me.

First things first: intel. I checked the glove compartment. Rental agreement. Owners manual. Armrest compartment. Empty. Trunk. Empty. This car was sanitized. Not even a candy wrapper.

I reached into the small of my back and withdrew the SIG Saur I had there. I stored it under the seat.

One quick call later, and the Maimi-Dade Police Department sent a nearby unit to check up on a anonymous call that reported a suspicious person hiding a gun in his car.

I can't wait to see what surprises Patriks has set up for them.

CSI Crime Lab

"Hey, Erick," Calleigh greeted as she opened the evidence box.

"That the murder weapon?" Erick asked.

"No, it was found in a car in Miami springs," she said, checking the serial number, "Serial number is intact. I'm just gonna run it through the database for now."

She wasn't prepared for what happened when she pressed "enter"

"What the-" the computer went crazy. The format broke away and code streamed at light-speed across her desktop. She frantically typed in abort codes, "Someone's burning through our firewall!"

"What's going one?" Erick demanded, taking position at another computer, "This one too!"

The entire lab was in frantic disarray, everyone trying to do something. The worst was going through their minds. Cyber-terrorist attack. System-wide crash. Network hack. Someone gaining access to case notes, safe-house locations, witnesses, undercover NOC lists, everything.

Then the alarm blared, and a building wide quarantine was enacted. Automatically, the cages on the windows closed, doors locked, and everyone was trapped inside.

All the while, a snooper pinged at a computer in Quantico.

"Boss!" an analyst shouted, "One of our snoopers just pinged!"

"Which one?" he demanded.

The analyst brought up a picture of a man, about fifty, with steel-gray hair and an even more imposing glare, "Someone just ran his weapon through the system."

"Where?"

"Miami-Dade Crime Lab," that's strike two, "Could just be a coincidence."

"With this guy, nothing is ever a coincidence," he growled, "What do we have on Córtez?"

"Small time smuggler, specializes in small items," an analyst replied, "Mostly specializes in guns and drugs for the cartels. This guy is local. ATF and ICE have been trying to get him for years, and the only reason is that he has been so hard to get. Small fish who managed to live a while."

"We have the gun he stole from an NCIS agent when he escaped the Navy Yard," he was still pissed that they arrived literally seconds before he escaped, "And a local small time fish kidnapped, then murdered, both incidents happened in Miami. Any report on the evidence collected on the murder?"

"The crime lab is hitting a stonewall," one of them replied, "Witness statements are almost non-existent."

"Johnson," he said, "Book me and, let's see, Cobry, Anton, Jones, Bizerkwitz, Tomazaki, Risher, and Riviera on the next flight to Miami. You hold down the fort here. If anything else pops up, call me and deal with it, got it?"

"Want a private jet, sir?" Johnson asked.

"Doesn't matter," Special Agent Patriks, Office of Naval Intelligence replied. He whispered, "I hope that for once, Trev, you've made a mistake."