The Last Man

Chapter 40
HAYEK had donned her white paper suit, hood, and booties. She wore her mask and kicked everyone out of the house, including the bomb techs. For more than an hour she thoroughly photographed everything, and in the room where the torture had taken place she took two samples of every fluid she could potentially identify. When she'd been with the FBI, they would have had no fewer than six agents combing over a crime scene like this. She was well aware that she was likely missing a bevy of potential evidence, but her focus here was very different from that of an agent collecting evidence that would be challenged in a courtroom. Her immediate goal was pretty straightforward - she needed to be able to tell Kennedy with near certainty if Joe Rickman had in fact been in this room.

Even as Hayek carefully collected her evidence she knew what she would recommend to Kennedy. She needed to bring in a forensic team from the Joint Expeditionary Forensic Laboratory at Bagram or have the FBI send one of their teams over. Kennedy wouldn't like the idea of bringing in someone from outside the Agency, but the truth was the CIA didn't have the capability to do this job at the level it needed to be done. Hayek's preference was the FBI, but she recognized that she was biased from having worked with them.

When she was finished collecting all of her samples, she was left with one small dilemma. On the floor, across the room from the two dead men, was a digital camera with a tripod screwed into the bottom. It appeared the camera had been knocked over, as only a small wire tethered the viewfinder. Several pieces of the camera's black plastic casing were also cracked and broken. If the FBI were going to get involved they would want her to leave the camera where it was so they could follow their own strict protocols for evidence collection. Hayek was no electronics expert, but she knew that some cameras came equipped with internal memory drives as well as slots for removable memory cards. Using her gloved hands she cradled the camera as if it were a bird with a broken wing. She carefully turned it over in her hands and saw that the slot for the memory card was empty. She was about to leave the camera when she decided that would be foolish.

Hayek chastised herself. There were times where she still thought too much like a law enforcement officer and not enough like a member of the Clandestine Service. The priority was to get Kennedy as much information as possible as quickly as possible. She could always hand the camera over to the FBI later, along with the photographs that would show where she'd found the camera. She carefully unscrewed the tripod from the bottom and placed the camera in a clear evidence bag.

When she stepped into the afternoon sun, she saw that everyone was in a far more relaxed posture.

Rapp was standing just inside the gate with Coleman, who looked like he was about to fall asleep. Rapp asked, "How did it go?"

Hayek pulled the paper hood off her head and the mask from her face. "I've got what we need to get a start, but we need to get someone in there to go over the entire house."

"Like who?" Rapp asked.

"Probably one of the FBI's forensic teams."

"I'm not sure I like that idea."

"I didn't think you would, but they're the best."

"Irene's going to have to make that call."

"I agree. In the meantime we need this place secured. I don't want anyone going in or out, including the local police."

Rapp looked to Coleman. "Any ideas?"

"Well," he said, rubbing his tired eyes, "having the JSOC boys guard an empty house is like asking a thoroughbred horse to plow a field. Besides, I'm sure they have ops they have to run tonight." Coleman was about to say he could call Hubbard and get some grunts from the air base to come over and secure the place, but then he remembered Hubbard was missing. "I'll make some calls. In the meantime, I'll see if we can get the Rangers to keep an eye on things."

Coleman got patched in to the ops boss back at Bagram and explained the situation. A solution was reached in less than sixty seconds. That was one of the nice things about JSOC. There was so much practical experience involving missions that on the surface were very similar, but in the details were unique. The two Black Hawks that had delivered the assault team were standing by on the tarmac only a few miles away at the Jalalabad Air Base. JSOC had already arranged for three MRAPs to transport the assault team and their gear back to the airfield for linkup with their Black Hawks and transport back to Bagram. The interim solution was to have the Rangers close up their position on the house and run security until another force could be found to relieve them. Coleman also arranged to have their Little Bird come back in and pick them up for the return to Bagram. Five minutes after they were airborne, Coleman was asleep and Rapp was wide awake, trying to understand what was gnawing at the edges of his memory.

At this juncture Kennedy was less concerned about maintaining absolute secrecy and more interested in getting results, so Hayek requested access to the Joint Expeditionary Forensic Facility at Bagram. Kennedy explained her situation to the base commander, a two-star from Idaho, who had been an extremely gracious host. One quick phone call from the CO and Hayek had complete access to the lab and any help that the staff could offer.

Hayek was impressed with the facility, which was run by the U.S. Army Criminal Investigative Command. As with all things to do with the Army, they had turned the name into an acronym. Rather than call it the Joint Expeditionary Forensic Facility they called it JEFF. Hayek laid her evidence bags out on a stainless-steel table and double-checked that she had a backup for each sample. She then took the extra bags, placed them in a larger evidence bag, and sealed them. If anything went wrong in the lab, she could rely on these samples and test them on familiar equipment back in the States. She had taken fingerprints and DNA samples from the two dead men. She turned those samples over to the lab's latent-print examiners and DNA analysts and told them which databases to check them against. The two women smiled and reassured her that they had done this more times than either of them could count.

The officer in charge of the lab was a Major Archer. Hayek showed him the clear evidence bag with the damaged camera. "Do you have anyone on staff who could check and see if there are any useful images on this?"

The major wasn't wearing gloves, so he made no attempt to touch the bag. "Yes, ma'am. We have an information technology analyst. This is just his kind of thing. I'll be back in a second."

When the major reappeared, he had a small black man with him who was wearing bulky black U.S. Army - issue eyeglasses. "Agent Hayek, this is Corporal Floyd. He's one of our best. If there's anything in there, he'll find it."

The corporal was wearing a white paper evidence suit. He snapped on a pair of latex gloves, and without saying a word he held out his hands. Hayek gave him the bag and watched him hold the camera up to the light and look at it from several angles.

When he finally spoke he asked, "Do you have a power cord?"

Hayek could have kicked herself. She could see the cord still sitting on the floor. The thought of bringing it with her never crossed her mind. "Sorry . . . no cord."

The corporal shrugged his small shoulders. "I should be able to find something. Canon cameras pretty much use the same power source." He looked at the bottom and then moved to open the bag asking, "Do you mind?"

"Go ahead."

He pulled the camcorder out of the bag and checked the SD card slot.

"No memory card," Hayek pointed out the obvious. "Any chance we can find something on there?"

The corporal nodded. "This is a Canon VIXIA HF R30 SDHC. Comes with an eight-gigabyte internal flash drive. Three hours of high-def recording. If the Wi-Fi is still working, it'll be a snap. If it isn't, I might have to take the flash drive out, which will take some time."

"How much?"

"Maybe a few hours."

Hayek wasn't happy. "Can't you just hook it up to a TV and play it back?"

A small grin formed on the corporal's lips. "If I had all the right cables and the thing wasn't all busted up, yes, I could hook it up to a TV, but I don't have those cables, so it might take a little while to get it running, but don't worry, if there are any images on here I'll retrieve them for you."

The images - that's what this was all about, and this young soldier, if he was able to retrieve them, was in for quite a shock. Hayek still hadn't gotten used to this double life. She hadn't bothered to give the officer in charge, or anyone else for that matter, her alias. There were times where she truly wondered whether she was cut out to be a Clandestine Service officer.

"Listen," she said to the two men in a confidential tone, "the images on that thing are likely to be extremely disturbing. One of our Clandestine officers was kidnapped a few days ago, and we think that camera might contain parts of his interrogation. No one can have access to those images. As soon as you get it working you need to stop."

"Stop . . . doing what?" Floyd asked.

"Stop watching it. If my fears are correct, I don't think I'm cleared to see and hear what's on that drive, and I trust, Corporal, you don't want to have to put yourself through a debriefing on this. It wouldn't be pretty."

"Fair enough. Let me see what I can do. The second I get it working, it's all yours."

Hayek turned her attention to the one thing she could get a fairly quick answer on. Every Clandestine Service officer serving overseas had a DNA sample on file at Langley, and Hayek was in possession of Rickman's. She looked at the six evidence bags that she had collected from the slurry of fluids underneath the hook where it was most likely that Rickman had been beaten. Blood would give her the best match. She took the cleanest sample and gave it to the DNA analyst. "Let's start with this."