Chapter 66

Four thirty came early. I seldom used an alarm clock but that morning I set my cell phone to wake me. It took me fifteen minutes to get myself ready to do my morning run. I was still a little groggy, when I went out the front of the apartment building, I waited about five minutes before Jamie came running up to me.

"Morning Laura, let's get a move on," she said grinning at me.

"Surely you can run circle around me. After all you are a cop and I'm a nerd," I said. "How about a little wager. Loser buys breakfast."

"You got it slut," Jamie said.

I started running as soon as I saw her twitch. I was in it for the long haul so I just kept up with her for the first half hour. She was starting to falter as I knew she would. I kept up the same pace as before but I noticed I was pulling ahead. I was ready to quit myself when I saw the restaurant come into view. We had been out less than an hour, so I figure we had gone no more than eight miles. It would be a respectable distance even at Church Camp, but we ran on flat ground not up and down mountains so it wasn't really possible to compare the two.

I made it to the restaurant a few seconds before Jamie. I sat at a table before she could get back from the bathroom. When she returned I said. "Order me the usual with coffee." Then I turned and headed to the bathroom myself.

The food was on the table when I got back. I was tired and pretty much exhausted when I returned to the table. Fortunately Jamie looked as bad as I felt. She had definitely run to the point of exhaustion. However, I had slept all night and she had worked.

I had a mouthful of egg when she said, "God that was a hard run. I expected you to fall out all along the way. You are tougher than you look."

"Not really, I just like the endorphin rush I get from wearing my ass out," I said. "It's almost as good as drugs."

"What do you know about drugs?" Jamie asked.

"Emergency room visits," I said simply. I didn't dare tell her about my previous life style. "I generally do my workout on a bicycle though. Not as much stress on the body for the same results."

"I don't think you would enjoy bikes as much in New York as you do in Mississippi. Too many cars." she said.

I didn't tell her about the motor bike. I decided not to since she was a cop. We had finished breakfast and were working on the last of the coffee when I asked, "So you going to come home for a shower?"

"Thanks but no. I can drive home and shower there," Jamie said.

"Okay, so we part here?" I asked.

"Yeah, I can head back to the car. It will be a shorter distance from here than it would be from your place," she said.

"Okay, so you going to be around in the morning?" I asked.

"Sure I got miles to go before I sleep," she said with a smile.

"Just a few," I replied. I ran home since I had rested over breakfast. I showered and dressed for the day. I was back in my dyke business suit look, which I wore to the UN.

I rode the bike through the midtown traffic. It was a pain in the butt but it was much quicker than calling a cab and the waiting in traffic it would do. I weaved my way around the stopped cars. It probably saved me less than five minutes over all, but it made me feel that I wasn't wasting time in a hot cab.

I went through the day as I had before attending boring press conferences and committee meetings. The meetings were about things I had no interest in whatsoever, but I dutifully went to them. You never knew when I would find something to write about.

First of all let me assure you I knew even then that I was no writer. I would send notes back to Church Camp who had someone write them into a magazine article. I would submit it to 'Out of The Shadows' and see if they wanted to buy it. I didn't care whether they did or not.

I spent the whole week like that working on my cover. The cover was going to be the secret to the operation not turning into a blood bath. If it did there was a good chance that some of the blood would be mine.

Everyday I sent and received a coded message to Church Camp. The morning I had the breakfast with Jamie the coded message read simply, 'Little Big Horn.'

I didn't send a follow up or an acknowledgement. I simply destroyed what I could and sanitized the rest. Then I took the bike to the train station and left it unlocked. Trains were much easier to catch without a reservation and they run fairly often. I caught the first westbound train. I bought the ticket for cash to Cleveland Ohio. I got off the train in Pittsburgh Pa. I hung around the Coffee Shoppe across the street from the station for three hours, then went into the station at the last minute for the southbound train. I bought a ticket to Lexington Kentucky, but only went as far as Charleston West Virginia. I spent the night in a downtown hotel in Charleston. I had packed the jeans and tee shirts from the thrift store and tossed the rest of the crap. Before I checked into the hotel in Charleston I went into a barber shop and got myself a buzz cut.

I had stopped using the credit card and switched to cash in New York City. I looked a lot like a homeless woman or even a man. Since I wore a knit cap in the heat I looked pretty shady however, the cash convinced the clerk at the downtown motel, which had seen better days, to rent me a room.

After the barber shop and before checking into the motel, I had stopped at a grocery store for junk food. I didn't leave the second floor room for the rest of the night. On the second day of my flight I boarded a train for Tampa Florida. A few hours later it made one stop on the outskirts of Metropolis. I exited there carrying my backpack. I had long since dumped the burner phone, so it was a land line pay phone that I used to call home. "Location five," was all I said into the phone. I hung up before anyone had time to trace the call.

I sat in a diner not far from the train station with a BLT and waited. When I was sure enough time had passed, I walked back to the almost empty train station parking lot. As I walked through there was a red light in the window of the blue four door car. The light flashed at me. It was no more than one of those cheap LED mini flashlights with a red filter. It was also the signal that I was expecting.

When I got in the car, my hand was wrapped around the dagger's toy skull ceramic ball I used for the handle. I recognized 'Killer' from the Church Camp. "What the fuck happened?" I asked.

"You got blown," he said.

"How?" I asked.

"Andrew will explain it," he said. I settled in for the ride to Church Camp.

"How about stopping by my house and let me see what is going on there?" I asked.

"Not a chance. First we find out what is going on, then we worry about your cover," he said. "Andrew is pissed. This is the first operation he had to abandon. Sylvia is pissed and some of it is at you. There is going to be a full scale show and tell tonight. We have just been waiting for you to work your way home."

"Well Jeremy and Alice were still at Church Camp," I said. I hoped it was true. I didn't want to think they might be involved.

"Yes, they have been out of touch with everyone. Their week here made them pretty good at digital image surveillance. They know all about camera placement and monitoring. Best of all they haven't been blown as far as we know now. I am not supposed to tell you even that, but I don't want you to doubt them," Killer said.

When we got to the entrance, I got my first look at the parking lot. It was probably not a good sign I decided. It was at the end of a fire road. The difference between the Church Camp's fire road and real fire roads was that under the dirt road of the Church Camp road was a foundation of gravel. No matter how much it rained the road stayed passable.

Once the car was parked, I followed along behind Killer with my backpack. He could have carried it, I thought. Then I decided he was probably not allowed to touch it. I decided that I might be under suspicion and no one would want to come near me till I was cleared. I knew that if I was guilty of anything it was somehow a mistake in judgment. That would get me dropped from the roster as quick as anything else.

Success was the only option in a Swamp Dog operation. I had obviously just failed since they had me come home with my tail between my legs. I hated feeling the way I did, but there was no other way to see it.

They wanted me to feel like I was going to be interrogated. That was meant to make me as uncomfortable as possible. I couldn't go to dinner in the mess hall. I was being treated as a prisoner. The food was brought to me at the cabin on a tray by an operative who said nothing.

I stoked the wood fire and drank coffee until midnight when they came for me. Two of the very strong looking operatives showed up at the door. "Come with us please," the larger one said.

I knew that it was an attempt to intimidate me. Even so I was worried, just like anyone else would be in a situation like it. I had a feeling they knew ways to make me disappear, if they wanted. It just looked like trouble anyway I looked at it.

They led me to a small cabin just a little isolated from the others. "Is it sound proof?" I asked.

"I have no idea," the smaller of my two guards replied. He opened the door for me and I walked into the cabin. I was glad that it was summer. I expected they would have gladly thrown me out in the snow and ran a garden hose over me if it had been winter.

Sylvia Porter, Andrew, and Wilson the geek were there. I had a feeling that it wasn't going to be pretty. Sylvia motioned me to a chair. When I was seated she spoke.

"Rose we don't do cover ups, so I'm going to give it to you straight. You got your operation blown. It wasn't all your fault but you didn't help it any." she said. "Wilson is here because he shares the blame with you. He designed your cover story and it fell apart the first time you walked into the office of 'Out of the Shadows'," she said.

"What the fuck did I do," I said.

"You did nothing at all. Ellie had met Laura Edwards at a career day recruiting drive. It was something no one could have anticipated," Sylvia said.

"Bullshit, why the fuck did you set me up with a real person's ID. We have never done that before," I said bitterly.

"Look, it turns out in hindsight this was a big fuck up. I built the ID and I take most of the blame, but you aggravated it," Wilson said.

"Don't you fucking dare blame me for this fuck up. If I was blown on day one of the operation, how the fuck could I aggravate an already blown op?" I shouted.

"Because when Ellie reached out to the UN Security Liaison at Home Security, she told them there was a breach attempt. First thing Home Security did was tell her to give them a chance to put a tail on you. They ran you back using the CCTV cameras. They also talked to your cab driver. They knew you had eaten in the restaurant closest to you, so they gambled that they could make contact with you," Sylvia said.