Page 26 of Identity Unknown
“This is the first I’ve heard that he was doing work at Sugar Grove,” I reply. “He’s talked about research projects at Green Bank but not the NSA station.”
Within fifty miles of each other, their massive radio telescopes are critical to global security, only the NSA isn’t scanningfor black holes, asteroids and signs of life in the universe. Their mission is to intercept all electronic transmissions entering the eastern U.S. In other words, to spy, mainly on Russia and other enemy nations, but also on Americans.
“Sal never mentioned Sugar Grove to me,” I tell Lucy.
“He wasn’t going to discuss something like that with you or most people,” Lucy says.
We’re following I-66 now, nothing below us but farmland. I’m feeling the winds intensifying, pushing us around, and I ask about Marino. She can see him on camera in her “smart” glasses.
“Headset off, eyes shut, gripping the armrests,” she reports. “Just like last time I checked.”
“Green Bank isn’t actively engaged in spying that I’m aware of, but Sugar Grove is.” I get back to that. “And this leads me to the Russians.”
I look at Lucy, checking for any sign that she might be thinking about the enemy we tangled with not long ago and have been plagued by forever. A devil as old as evil itself. Someone I would eradicate given the chance, and I try very hard not to go into that dark space. I don’t want to give anyone that much power, but Carrie Grethen has it by the sheer dint of her existence.
An internationally wanted criminal and perhaps one of the most dangerous psychopaths I’ve ever dealt with, she managed to weave herself into the tapestry of my life. There’s scarcely any part of it she’s not touched since I was first confronted with her violence during the early days of my career. It was a reliefbeyond description when I heard she was captured and had died in a psychiatric hospital for the criminally insane.
For years I believed she was gone, only to discover months ago that it wasn’t true. Since then, I’ve assumed she’s in Russia, where she ended up after a prisoner swap, and I bring her up while Marino can’t hear us.
“Any chance it’s her? That she’s behind this? Maybe she has some nefarious connection with Ryder Briley?” I suggest, and the thought is appalling. “Is it possible she orchestrated the kidnapping and murder of Sal? And staged it to look like so-called aliens did it?”
“Yes and no,” Lucy says. “Carrie very well may be the mastermind of whatever is going on. But I don’t believe Sal’s death was staged to look like an attack by ETs. I don’t think it was staged at all. The UAP on radar was real. We just don’t know what it means.”
She explains that the unidentified object was picked up intermittently before vanishing near the Oz theme park. Then the UAP was picked up again on and off in the area of Waynesville. Apparently, the mysterious craft caused spikes and flashes on multiple sensors, including those at Green Bank and Sugar Grove.
“It stayed below five hundred feet, the signal difficult to distinguish from the noise floor,” Lucy is saying. “Which I believe was a deliberate evasive maneuver.”
“What’s the explanation, assuming Carrie’s involved in Sal’s death somehow?” I watch blossoming orchards flow by through the plexiglass beneath my feet. “How would that account for a UAP dropping the body overboard?”
“I don’t have an explanation yet.”
“She obviously has a score to settle,” I suggest.
“Carrie’s had a score to settle for as long as I’ve known her and doesn’t need a reason. But yes, it’s possible she’s responsible for having Sal assassinated. This is the sort of thing she would do if it serves her bigger purposes while punishing whoever she decides.”
“I just hope we’re not the reason he’s dead.” I look out my side window, the sky not as blue, more like washed-out denim. The storm continues to build above the mountains.
“That’s exactly the sort of thing Carrie would want you to start obsessing about,” Lucy says. “And if she’s to blame, she has more than one reason. Hurting us and those we care about is her dessert. It’s not the main course. What feeds her is power.”
I find it disturbing that Lucy talks about her in a familiar tone as if they still have a relationship. And maybe they do in a horrible way.
“The Oz theme park is connected to us because I used to take you there when you’d come visit,” I say to Lucy. “Does she know that?”
“I might have mentioned it during our time at Quantico. Probably when we were running the Yellow Brick Road.”
She’s talking about the FBI Academy’s obstacle course, and I still have the yellow-painted brick from when I completed it with her the first time. She often ran the Yellow Brick Road with Carrie, and it would make sense if Lucy mentioned the Oz theme park. She was a college intern at the academy when the two of them met. Carrie is twelve years older and can be irresistibly charismatic, like any successful psychopath.
An IT contractor working at the FBI’s Engineering Research Facility on the academy grounds, she was tasked with supervising Lucy while developing the Criminal Artificial Intelligence Network known as CAIN. It wasn’t long before I realized that they had become more than colleagues and friends.
“If she’s formed an alliance with the likes of Ryder Briley, that would seem of great concern to all of us,” I point out.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s gotten involved with him,” Lucy says. “He funnels untold millions into elections across the country, all of the candidates having the same thing in common. They’re extremists who want to destroy our democracy.”
The old city of Front Royal is beneath us, its farmland and orchards drawing visitors from all over. I can make out the white-columned courthouse where I’ve testified in murder trials, often stopping for lunch in a former feed mill converted into a diner. I always order the fried chicken salad. Marino is partial to the cheeseburger, and I shouldn’t think about food as hungry as I am.
I catch glimpses of silos and barns, of railroad tracks and aboveground swimming pools as we near the Front Royal-Warren County Airport. Lucy makes a traffic call over the radio, alerting other pilots that we’re out here, announcing our altitude and heading. No one answers, and we cross over the center of the single paved airstrip, not an aircraft in sight, the hangar doors closed.
The Shenandoah River is bright with colorful canoes and kayaks. The elevation is climbing, and we reach the first foothills.The storm front is mounting like a tsunami behind the mountain ranges where we’re headed.