Jeff finds himself in Washington DC on business trying to close a big deal for his company where he meets up with Nancy again, the FBI agent he had fallen in love with in Atlanta nearly two years ago. Jeff is separated from his wife because of Nancy
Chapter 25 of
Jeff
fears the murderer wants to kill everyone!
Tuesday, 9:03 AM: Kill Everyone
- Chris Lamela
------------------------------------------------------------------
Author contact: Chris Lamela,
---------------------------------------------------------------------
K Street, Chapter 25
Tuesday,
9:03 AM: Kill Everyone
Jeff woke with a start at the sound of four knocks on his door. He sat
up startled, looking around the darkened room trying to remember where he was,
sunlight creeping around the drapes.
Four knocks rattled again.
“Coming! Coming!” He swung his legs onto the floor standing up starting
for the door, looking down realizing he had no pants on, turned to snatch his
PJ bottoms sliding into them.
Opening the door he saw Hank’s face, “Good morning, I see you’re still
alive.” Jeff frowned. “You need to place your room service order,” glancing at
his watch, “we need to be at the ops center in an hour and ten minutes.
Jeff nodded without a word, closing the door. He walked up to the
window, pulled open the drapes, light flooding into the room. Turning to the
little coffee machine he picked up a little packet of coffee ripping off the
top with his teeth, reached for the coffee carafe, went into the bathroom. A
minute later he emerged, poured water into the machine, setting it all up for
his first cup. As the machine started to bubble he looked to the phone on the
desk, saw the room service menu. He glanced at it realizing he was really hungry so he placed an order for
a three-egg omelet, bacon, toast with a large glass of orange juice.
Setting the phone down he headed into the shower. He heard the door
open, he turned the water off hearing, “Room service!”
“Yeah, hold on, give me a second!” he called through the door, hurried
to dry off, realizing he didn’t bring any clothes into the bathroom with him.
He opened the bathroom door looking out at a young man in a dapper uniform
facing the door, “Sorry, but can I catch your tip next time?”
“Sir, your room is fully covered including tips. Is there anything else
you need besides your breakfast?”
Jeff could smell the wretched coffee from the little package, “Do you
guys have real coffee that you can
bring up?”
“Yes sir, you mean like a cappuccino?”
“Yeah, that sounds good, a double maybe?”
“Yes sir, I can have that up here in less than ten minutes.”
Jeff nodded, “Thanks, that would be great,” closing the door.
A couple minutes later he emerged from the bathroom naked, looked to the
food tray laying on a stand next to the bed.
“Nice!” came a voice.
Jeff turned with a start. There
was Nancy
“Jesus Nancy, can’t you wait until I actually let you in or are you that
determined to see me naked every chance you get?”
She stood up, carefully scanning
Jeff up and down smiling, “I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”
“You mean that I am still alive?”
“Yeah, Arnie says that you had another close call.”
He walked to the closet, pulled an ironed
shirt off a hanger, putting it on, “Yeah, I sure could have used you bursting
in last night,” laughing thinking to himself but only the first time I saw her last night! Stepping over to his
luggage, he rooted around for underwear putting them on, sat on the bed next to
the tray of food, pulling the metal dome cover off the plate, the room filling
with the smell of eggs and bacon.
“Can I eat?” he smiled picking up a fork.
“Yes, that’s fine, I just wanted to stop by. I’m going over, we’ll see
you in a bit.”
He waved to her, his mouth full
of omelet, she smiled walking out the door. A minute later there was the four
quick knocks, the door opened, the room service waiter came in holding a saucer
with a huge cappuccino, “Here you go sir, real
coffee!” Jeff laughed, his mouth full of food motioning to the tray for him
to set it down.
Thirty minutes later Jeff was in the back seat behind darkened windows driving
in Hank’s Crown Vic heading to the ops center in Cookes Park
Jeff laughed, “Yeah, I guess word gets around with you guys, huh?”
“Rumor has is that you had a hell
of a good night!”
Jeff sat back wistfully, “Yeah, a hell
of a good night.”
Hank laughed, “We all have to know what’s going on,” glancing a grin to
Jeff, “and I mean everything.”
Jeff looked up at the overcast sky, “Yeah, I had a hell of a day
yesterday. A hell of a day. Hell of a night.” Smiling to himself, “Yep, hell of
a night.”
Soon Jeff was walking into the ops center behind Hank. There were
probably twenty people in the room, all intently heads down. Suddenly Jeff
realized that there were voices yelling in another room with the door closed.
He walked toward the door to listen realizing the voices were Nancy and Arnie.
Jeff looked around nervously not sure if he should be listening, but
everyone was so busy trying to conspicuously ignore this that nobody made any
motion about his standing at the door.
“I already told you. I didn’t call because you told me you needed a
night alone. You’ve been on how many nights straight!” Arnie sounded
exasperated like this argument had been going on for a while.
“But that stupid son-of-a-bitch found himself that goddam slut that was
going to kill him! You should have called me!”
Stupid son-of-a-bitch?
“It was all done by the time I got there, I told you she lost her nerve,
it was all done before I even got there. There was no reason to call you!”
“But why did he call you?”
“Because you forgot to give him your phone number. At least I knew
enough to plug mine into his phone’s memory! What was he supposed to do? Call
911?”
“Jesus, you’re right.” Jeff could hear her voice subsiding. “I forgot to
give him my number, we talked about it, but so much happened yesterday. I just
forgot.”
“Plus you told me how Shawn is getting so pissed off that you are never
around, I really wanted to give you a break.”
“Come on, we need to get to the meeting,” Jeff heard Nancy
Jeff made to turn nonchalantly, “Hey you guys, I just got here!”
Jeff laughed turning to the conference room following Arnie in, sighing
at the thought of laying with her last night.
Even if for only an hour.
Walking into the room there was the familiar cast with the addition of
the last surviving congressman, Roger Clement. Impulsively Jeff walked around
the table sitting next to Roger, turning to him, “You remember me, from the
other day?”
Roger had been looking forward vacantly, suddenly snapping to, he turned
to Jeff, “Yes, I remember, Jeff, right?” holding out his to hand. Jeff took it,
they shook, the congressman’s dead-fish grip telling Jeff everything he needed
to know about his frame of mind.
“So I hear we have both been having a hell of a few days,” Jeff spoke
ironically.
“I haven’t heard anything about you, but yeah, this situation is really
out of hand.”
“Okay everybody,” Nancy
“Pretty classic stuff, arsenic.”
Jeff clutched his hand to his throat at the thought that he was a second
away from a big gulp of arsenic.
“Arsenic, not very creative,” Nancy Nancy
“You could say that, it turns out that Jeff’s room at the Hilton was
wired to the teeth.”
Jeff turned quizzically, “Probably?”
“Yeah, they managed to get in there to strip it out, but they must have
been in a hurry because of the mess they made of the smoke alarm, they even left
foam tape inside the phone. They broke the flange on the smoke alarm, when our
guys tapped it the whole thing fell to the floor.”
“They had a camera in there?”
“Oh, man, I’ll bet that was some
entertaining video!” Nancy
Jeff turned to her with a hurt expression, “Not funny!”
She raised her hands, though really to quell her own amusement. “So this
really makes sense, how our shooter knew so much about that woman, how the
Iranians knew so much when you met them, right?” Jeff nodded. “The question is
who set that all up.”
“You all know about the kidnapping yesterday and this other incident
last night,” pointing to Jeff, “that is relevant only to our murderer
definitely still out there, that he is very resourceful.” She pointed to Jeff
again, “What you don’t know is that our good friend here came up with a
brilliant idea about how to try to bring this all under control. That’s the first
part of this meeting. After we are done with that briefing, we will be playing
scenarios to try to map out the rest of the day at least. We are all ears to
ideas about how to find our man.”
She turned to Jeff, “It was your idea about the Iranians so please tell
everyone, then I will tell about the meeting with the General.”
Jeff took a deep breath, explained his
proposal about balancing the equation by providing Iran with the same UAV
systems that they were sending to Saddam, how it all came to him as he pointed
to Earl.
Earl beamed that he had planted the seeds for Jeff’s idea, though Jeff
could tell by his expression that Earl wasn’t too certain about whether he actually
was getting to claim any credit. Earl couldn’t help but speak up to test if
credit might still be forthcoming, “I don’t remember exactly what I said, but
if I planted any seeds for this―and Jeff, this is brilliant!―then I am really happy that I helped.”
Nancy looked away from Earl dismissively, “So we met last night with the
General,” Nancy continued, Jeff noticed Earl’s deflation that nobody even
hinted at an accolade aimed his direction, “he is going to try to get to the Joint
Chiefs this morning. With any luck we should get word after lunch that it’s a
go. If that happens we’ll try to get another meeting with the Iranians to see
if we can get them to call off their pit bull.”
“Wow, a happy ending!” came a
voice in the room.
Jeff noticed the congressman wince, feeling he needed to correct the
comment Jeff spoke out instructively, “Hey, two dead congressmen don’t make a
happy ending!”
The congressman flashed a grateful glance toward Jeff.
“So now, even if the Iranians call off their little dog, we still need
to catch the bastard,” Arnie spoke up. “We need to figure out how to use all
that we are planning here to draw him out.” He glanced around the room
fiercely, “We really need to get this
bastard.”
Jeff glanced to the congressman’s morose face, then from face-to-face
around the table.
Think think think.
“What can we use, bait?” Jeff said almost to himself.
“Bait,” a voice came up in echo.
“Yeah, bait,” he looked back and forth to Nancy and Arnie, “you know,
bait. Like in Atlanta
Startled, the congressman’s head jerked toward Jeff.
Arnie put up his hands directed to the congressman, “No, no, don’t worry
congressman, it’s way too dangerous, we wouldn’t even think of using you like
this.”
Roger smiled appreciatively at Arnie.
“Okay,” Jeff persisted, “it could be dangerous. But show me better
bait!” He looked sternly at Arnie, “I mean make up your mind, do you want to
catch this guy or not? Once the deal gets done with the Iranians, this guy is
just going to disappear. You know it!”
Arnie gave Jeff the same encouraging smile he’d seen before, a smile
that said okay, keep going…
“Let’s think this through. The bad guy thinks that the deal is going to
be done this afternoon at four, right?” Nods. “The meeting is being held at the
ODS office, right?” More nods. “That means that he has,” he glanced at his
watch, “less than six hours to make his move.”
“What’s your sense the move will be?”
Jeff leaned back reflectively, “I don’t know, but this son-of-a-gun is really determined. I can imagine that he
feels like he has been more successful than not, right? This guy thinks big by killing congressmen, trying to
poison me, god knows who else. This guy likely has lots of weapons connections,
right? But he’s got to be losing patience. I mean think about it, all this work
with that woman to poison me, that takes a lot of time and planning. Time is
running out, so now he feels pressure to make his move. And I mean to make a really big move!”
“Like what?” came a voice.
“If it were me, if I was in this guy’s shoes, I’d blow up the whole
damned ODS office with all of us in it!”
“Blow up the whole office? That’s ridiculous!” came another voice.
“Why is that ridiculous? If you want to really make sure you kill a
deal, you don’t just kill a congressman or two.”
“What else would you do?”
“The answer’s simple,” Jeff studied the eyes locked on him.
“It would be easy,” he almost whispered, necks craned to hear his words,
he felt even more certain.
“You kill everyone!”
-----------------------------------------------
NOW READ THE NEXT CHAPTER IN
K STREET!
http://chrislamela.blogspot.com/2012/09/k-street-chapter-26.html
No comments:
Post a Comment