Rogue Empire Read online

  To Americans everywhere, I say do not be afraid. Instead, let us find strength in who we are as a people: one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

  Thank you. May God bless you. And may God bless the United States of America.”

  Fairfax, Virginia

  Two black SUVs powered through the neighborhood of two-story colonial homes and red maple trees, kicking up autumn leaves that rose and fell behind the convoy like confetti. The vehicles parked before a stately home with a white picket fence and a red front door. On the porch, a startled elderly couple steadied their swing, their lunch ritual ruined by the sudden presence of federal agents.

  The convoy wasn’t here for them. All attention was focused on the home across the street. A white commercial van was parked in the driveway with the words CAPITAL HOME HEALTH CARE printed in cursive on the side. The lawn hadn’t been mowed in about two weeks.

  A cool breeze hit Blake Carver as he stepped out of the lead vehicle. He buttoned his coat and watched Haley Ellis step out of the second vehicle. She wore a gray knee-length coat over a plaid skirt, a black blouse and black pumps. A bit upscale for fieldwork, Carver noted.

  Carver gestured to four men in FBI jackets. They fanned out across the front lawn. Two entered the backyard through the side gate. The others would await Carver’s signal to come inside and begin searching the place.

  Ellis joined Carver as they crossed the street. “I need a word before we go inside.”

  “About?”

  She folded her arms across her chest. “The operation in Tripoli. You disobeyed my direct order. Do you have any idea how embarrassing that was for me?”

  Carver stuffed his hands into his pants pockets. “It was the wrong call, Ellis. And Kyra is alive. That should count for something.”

  “We all have to follow rules, Blake. If we don’t, the whole system falls apart. This is my investigation, and I need you to show me the respect I deserve.”

  Carver leaned close to her, his nose confirming what he had suspected by the recent congestion in her voice. “When did you start smoking?”

  Her lips pursed. “I swear you’re more canine than human.”

  “So I’m a werewolf. You’re ruining your complexion and your lungs with cigarettes. Why?”

  Her face tightened until it resembled a fist. She started a rebuttal, and then pulled it back. “Let’s just focus on Jack Samuel Brenner, shall we?”

  The two started walking toward the Brenner home. “He was a senior developer on weapons guidance systems for LithiumXI’s latest generation drones,” Ellis said. “Parents are both dead. He has a sister with cerebral palsy that lives with him here. Late last year, he fell behind in the payments for his sister’s home health care. He liquidated his assets and converted them to Bitcoin. A hacker stole all the Bitcoin from his account, and a week later, the Pink Dragon allegedly approached him.”

  “Any big money transfers?”

  “We’re working on that. But two months ago, the bank had been ready to foreclose on this place. Today the mortgage is paid in full.”

  “So Brenner had financial motivation for selling out his country.” Carver peered into the van’s front windshield. “Is this his van?”

  Ellis shook her head. “It belongs to the nurse who cares for the sister. Brenner drives a BMW, but we don’t know where it is. I put out a BOLO with local law enforcement.”

  Carver tapped the van’s hood en route to the front door. “You know what I can never figure out? Why anyone would own a creepy white van.”

  “Not everyone thinks of white vans as creepy.”

  “Like who? That’s like saying clowns aren’t creepy.”

  The front door opened. A woman in white coveralls emblazoned with the Capital Home Healthcare logo stood in the doorway. “Can I help you?”

  Ellis presented her ID, which identified her as an employee of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. “We’re looking for Jack Brenner.”

  The nurse looked about as puzzled as Carver expected. In his experience working white-collar espionage cases, those close to the perpetrator were rarely aware of the crimes being committed.

  “He’s not here,” the nurse said.

  Ellis was quick with a follow-up. “Is Jack’s sister home?”

  “Heidi? Yes, but what’s this about? Is Jack all right?”

  Carver left Ellis to present the search warrant and deal with the nurse. He slipped past her and began exploring the home. The living room was tidy, with a large TV, two cloth-covered chairs, a white couch and a few family photos. Carver opened the French doors to the back yard. He whistled and waved at two FBI agents who had been stationed in the backyard in case Brenner tried to flee out the back.

  He headed upstairs. “Federal agent coming up,” he announced as he went. The railing next to the stairway was outfitted with a mechanized wheelchair lift. Judging by the lack of wear on the rails, it looked to have been installed recently. That had to have been expensive.

  Heidi Brenner was waiting for Carver when he reached the second floor landing. The 26-year-old was in a wheelchair. She was pretty. The hair was bad, though. A square-shaped brown mop of a haircut. Carver figured the nurse was to blame for that. Any beauty school dropout could have done better.

  He noted Heidi’s legs. She was wearing yoga pants, and the outline of her left leg was considerably smaller than the right one.

  “We’re with the Office of the Director of National Security,” he said. “Jack is your brother?”

  “Yes.” Porcelain hands were folded tightly in her lap. “What’s he done?”

  Considering that Brenner had no criminal history, Carver found the question odd. “I don’t really know, and that’s the truth. But I’d like to talk to him.”

  “Good luck with that. I’ve been trying to get hold of him all day.” She wheeled just past Carver to an antique mahogany desk that was situated in the hallway. She opened the top drawer and pulled out a stack of legal papers, then handed them to Carver. “He left all this on my pillow this morning.”

  The document on top was the deed to the home, which by the looks of it, Brenner had signed over to his sister. The second document was a generic will that he had printed up from an online legal site and signed that morning.

  She was on the verge of tears. “I’ve been so worried. He takes anti-depression meds. He’s been stressed lately. Unusually so. I thought maybe…”

  “Maybe what?”

  “He brought a gun a couple weeks ago. He wouldn’t say why.”

  Carver called for Ellis. She was better at dealing with emotional people than he was. Or at least she used to be. She hadn’t been quite the same since the injury.

  He refocused on the sister. “Heidi, what time did your brother leave?”

  “Must have been just before midnight.” She nodded to a pad of paper on the desk. “Do you need to write this all down?”

  “That’s not necessary. You said he left before midnight. Are you sure?”

  “Yes. He was here at eleven, which is when I went to bed. I got up a little after that to go to the toilet. I saw those documents and went into his room. He wasn’t there.”

  That meant Brenner left about the same local time as the drone strike in Tripoli. “Did he take anything with him?”

  “His entire supply of insulin.”

  “He’s diabetic?”

  She nodded. “When I saw it was all gone, that gave me hope that he wasn’t going to, you know, harm himself.”

  “How often does he take it?”

  “He wears one of those insulin pumps. Oh, also, his computer was gone. He took Molly, too.”

  “Molly?”

  “His boa constrictor.”

  “Ah. Can I see Jack’s room?”

  Carver followed as Brenner’s sister rolled down the hallway to the master bedroom. It could have easily passed for the room of a 15-year-old, decorated as it was with framed superhero posters.

  On one
wall, several shelves were filled with Marvel, Dr. Who and Game of Thrones action figures in their original packages. On other shelves, he had several gaming consoles from the 1970s and 1980s, all in mint condition under plastic.

  In a corner sat an empty 20-gallon aquarium. The snake must have fed recently, because there was a significant amount of dung in the enclosure.

  There were books, too. Mostly educational texts about programming. PBASIC Essentials, Intro to LabVIEW, Programming with C++, Advanced Ruby on Rails. And amidst all the technical books, a little something for Brenner’s financial life: The Ultimate guide to Gaining Wealth through Fantasy Sports Betting.

  “Your brother likes to gamble?”

  Heidi’s lips pursed. “Mother said that would be the end of him. Isn’t that why you’re here?”

  Ellis appeared in the doorway. “Found these downstairs.” She held a cluster of papers with the CarMax logo at the top. It was a bill of sale. “He sold his car.”

  The sister threw her hands up. “He told me the BMW was getting repaired. I should have known. He probably sold it to bet on some games. And that explains the Subaru.”

  “Subaru?”

  “He’s been driving a Subaru these past few days. Real piece of work.”

  “Can you be more specific?”

  “One of the side mirrors was actually held onto the car with duct tape. He said it was just a loaner from the shop while his BMW was getting fixed. I asked him what kind of shop would loan out such a terrible car?”

  They wouldn’t, Carver thought. The question was, what kind of dealership would sell such a terrible car?

  Manassas, Virginia

  Hullman Brothers Used Auto was a family-run dealership at the edge of a strip mall. Ellis and Carver pulled into the four-acre lot, which seemed to be populated with cars from every conceivable make, model and decade. While there had been no evidence on Jack Brenner’s credit card or banking statements linking him to Hullman Brothers, the dealership had reported the recent sale of an old Subaru with the state department of motor vehicles to a Robert Wallace. The associated mailing address led to a post office box, increasing the possibility that the buyer had used a false identity. And the sale price — just $1,200, paid in cash — suggested that the car was probably wretched enough to fit Heidi Brenner’s description.

  As the two federal agents exited the vehicle, Carver noted Ellis’s shaky hands. She hadn’t been out of his sight all day, which meant that she probably hadn’t had a cigarette. Earlier, he had discovered a package of Newport Lights she had stashed in the storage bin between the seats. He had no idea how long she could hold out, but he certainly wasn’t going to give his blessing to smoke in the car.

  The showroom smelled of popcorn and instant coffee. Carver lingered beside a vintage Ford Mustang with 10 helium balloons tied to its passenger-side door handle. “I spent the summer of my junior year in high school fixing up one of these,” he said with pain evident in his voice. He recalled with remarkable vividness how he had, in frustration, hurled a wrench across the garage with such velocity that it punched through the drywall. For that, his father had grounded him for three months.

  A grey-haired salesman closed in, grinning, hand outstretched. The sight of Ellis’s federal ID cooled his charm.

  Ellis cut right to the chase, handing the salesman the last known photograph of Jack Brenner. “You recognize this man?”

  The salesman nodded, stroking his mustache with his thumb and forefinger. “Yeah. Fastest sale I ever made.”

  “How so?”

  “That guy had only one thing on his mind. Privacy. He wanted a completely unconnected car.”

  Carver whistled at the audacity of the request. “That rules out GPS, navigation, anti-theft and remote diagnostics.”

  “Yup. The only thing I had for him was a super old Subaru. I would have to look up the file to even tell you the year.”

  “We’re going to need everything you’ve got.”

  The salesman handed the photograph back to Ellis. “I don’t mean to be a pain, but do you guys have a warrant?”

  Carver looked at the salesman sideways. “Sir, this is a very fast-moving federal investigation. Your swift cooperation would be considered a patriotic duty. People at the very top are watching this one.”

  “The very top?”

  “That’s right.” Carver winked, for added effect.

  The salesman nodded furiously, as if he had been inducted into a secret brotherhood. “I’m with you! My daughter looks up to President Hudson. She’s a role model.” He hustled toward the office, waving for the two feds to follow him. “That car had no plates, but I can get you the VIN number out of the file. And full disclosure, I want you to know that I was honest about that car with him. Completely by the book!”

  “Honest about what?”

  “I told him straight up I didn’t even know if that car would pass emissions testing. It had just come onto the lot. Bald tires. Hadn’t even been washed yet. But for someone that paranoid about privacy, an old car like that is about the only thing you can buy.”

  “Makes sense,” Ellis said. “I think we can guess the answer to this question, but I just have to ask. How did he pay?”

  The salesman grinned. “All cash. Of course.”

  Rural Virginia

  Carver drove the lead vehicle as the convoy powered down the two-lane highway and the sun dipped near the horizon. They were only a little more than an hour away from D.C., but it was another world out here. Vineyards, horse farms and road kill that looked almost fresh enough to eat.

  Every little bump in the road felt like a knife in Carver’s bruised ribs, but he had reason to smile. He and Ellis had just caught the break they needed. AAA had received a call for roadside assistant for a Subaru matching Brenner’s. The car’s left front passenger tire had blown out. Carver smirked at the irony. The escape plans of such a gifted engineer, entrusted to work on one of the military’s most advanced technological achievements, had been derailed by the failure of something as ancient as a wheel.

  Ellis rode shotgun, driven mad by her desire to suppress her nicotine craving. She fidgeted endlessly, first with her phone, then with her hair. Carver drove wordlessly, watching out of the corner of his eye as his reluctant partner eventually reached into the storage bin between the seats. Her fingers did not locate the package of Newport cigarettes she had stashed there. They instead found a book with a yellow cover and black letters called The Power of Habit.

  “What the…?”

  Carver allowed himself a smug grin. “I took the liberty of ducking into that bookstore next to the dealership. I promise you, that book will help you quit smoking.”

  Ellis’s face filled with disgust. “You actually threw out my smokes?”

  “There’s a twenty-dollar bill inside. You can use it as a bookmark, or to buy a new pack of Newports. Your choice. But I do hope you’ll at least check out the first couple of chapters. I’m worried about you, Ellis.”

  “Mind your own business.”

  The onboard navigation announced their destination coming up in a quarter mile. Carver feathered the brakes and pointed to a stone building that appeared like a mirage in the fading daylight. An old-fashioned roadhouse. If they were lucky, Brenner would be inside waiting for AAA.

  Following Carver’s lead, the convoy slowed and pulled off the highway, squeezing into a clearing between the roadhouse and a grove of locust trees. Through the foliage, Carver could make out the old Subaru.

  He shut off the engine, pulled his SIG out of its holster, and chambered a round into the barrel.

  “Easy,” Ellis said. “Brenner may be a traitor, but there’s nothing to suggest that he’s violent.”

  “His sister did say he had bought a gun last week.”

  “I’m saying use restraint. The mortality rate tends to spike when you’re around, and I’m sick of internal investigations.”

  Carver knew he didn’t have to justify his body count to Ellis, but the
remark bothered him all the same. He had no regrets. He had been put in difficult situations and had done what had to be done. Nothing more.

  He tapped a button on his coat, activating the closed communications system he shared with the team in the other vehicle. “I’m going in solo while you cover the rear exit. I want to try talking to him before we take him into custody. I’ll leave my mic on, so just listen for my cue.”

  He exited the SUV, pulled his weapon and held it low at his side as he passed through the locust grove and slowly approached the sedan. Just as the car salesman in Manassas had mentioned, there were no plates on the car.

  He approached with caution, half-expecting Brenner to be sleeping in the back seat. Instead he spotted a nylon duffel bag that was stuffed too full to be zipped completely. And next to it, a white pillowcase tied in a knot. Something inside it was moving in a slow, insistent rhythm. It had to be Molly, the boa constrictor Brenner’s sister had mentioned.

  “Hello Molly,” Carver said. “We’ll find you a good home. I promise.”

  He holstered his weapon, buttoned his coat to cover it, and headed inside. The scent of barbecue filled him with hunger. Dale Watson was playing on the bar’s sound system.

  I lie when I drink,

  and I drink a lot.

  I only drink when I’m missing you...

  Brenner was one of just six customers in the place. He was seated at the bar, sipping a pint of some urine-colored beer. A plate of pulled pork sat before him. He was a portly fellow, with a bushy beard resembling the one Carver had just shaved off. His t-shirt rode a little too high on his back, and his jeans rode a little too low in the seat. His crack was showing.

  Carver sidled up on the stool beside him and picked up the menu. He turned to Brenner. “What’s good?”

  Brenner shrugged without making eye contact. “Coors Light.”

  “Amen to that. But I’m hungry. You tried the pulled pork?”

  Brenner shook his head. “No offense, buddy, but I didn’t come here to chat.”