assassinations and attempts killed her father and tried to kill her father’s close friend, Oscar Melton. Both of them were top-notch CIA agents working with the congressional Subcommittee on Terrorism, Drug Trafficking and International Operations.”
Turning to his left, Fontaine held his hand out to a nice-looking woman with blond hair and blue eyes. She, too, had been involved in the chaos of Cancun. “Natalie Layne is another SOS agent who has been a part of the ongoing issues we’ve encountered thus far. Her sister was one of the women abducted, with the intent to sell her in a human trafficking ring located out of Cancun, Mexico.”
Fontaine continued around the table. “Besides the SOS operatives, please welcome Kate McKenzie, an agent with the CIA. We’ve also been augmented by six Navy SEALs, on loan to us from Stennis, Mississippi.”
Starting around the room, Fontaine introduced them. “Dutton Callaway, who goes by Duff. Sawyer Houston, Quentin Lovett, Jace Hunter, Cord Schafer, who goes by Rip, and Benjamin Raines, nicknamed after his home state of Montana.”
Montana nodded acknowledgment.
“A six pack of SEALs,” Geek muttered, as he connected the laptop to an Ethernet cable and clicked a remote that lit a projection screen at one end of the long room.
“Are we planning to start a war with all of these people in the room?” Duff, one of Montana’s SEAL teammates, asked.
Fontaine shook his head, his jaw tightening. “No, but by the looks of it, we might be stopping one that’s been going on longer than we knew.” He turned to Geek. “Ready?”
Geek nodded. “Someone get the door.”
Navy SEAL Quentin Lovett, standing near the back of the room, shut the door.
At the same time, Geek clicked a handheld remote control device and the image on his laptop projected onto the screen. He touched the keyboard and the screen filled with a lot of what appeared to be random numbers.
“This is what we have so far,” Fontaine said. “Thanks to Becca’s father, God rest his soul, who knew he was in trouble and might not live to tell about it.”
“All I see are numbers,” Montana pointed out. “Do they represent something?”
“Geek has spent the past week crunching these numbers, trying to decode them, thinking they were a special message.” Fontaine nodded toward him. “Tell them what you discovered.”
“Well, I couldn’t make secret messages out of them, and I was getting really frustrated, until I took a step back and just stared at the groupings. Then it hit me.” He stood and pointed to the wall. “This half of each sixteen-digit number is a date.” He pointed to the other half. “The other eight digits could have been bank accounts, safe-deposit box numbers or anything else in the world. Given that they were all eight digits in length, I made a calculated guess and ran a program, entering them as coordinates.”
He walked back to the computer and clicked another key. A world map replaced the numbers. Bright red dots overlaid the map.
Montana leaned forward, his eyes narrowed, and studied the information depicted on the image.
Geek zoomed in on the map, focusing on Europe. He walked toward the screen again. “On the date for this location, in Paris, France, a terrorist attack took place, killing everyone in a certain restaurant, including Harmon Whitlow, his wife, son and daughter-in-law.”
“I heard about that,” Sawyer said. One of the six SEALs at the table, he knew the most about politics. As the son of a former US Senator, he kept up with the political scene, though he claimed he couldn’t care less.
He always amazed Montana with his insight on what was going on in Washington, DC.
After the fiasco in Cancun, where someone had attempted to kill him and his father, Sawyer had been a little less adamant about his distaste for politics. With his father now in the equivalent of the witness protection program, starting a new life as someone else, Sawyer had volunteered for this mission, determined to find the person or persons responsible for trying to kill them. “Harmon Whitlow was the undersecretary for political affairs in the US State Department,” he stated.
Geek nodded and pointed to another dot, this time on the map of the US. “On this date in New York City, a bomb went off near a set of bleachers during the NYC Marathon. Two people died in that attack, over two hundred people were injured and one went missing.”
“Who?” Kate asked.
“Emily Brantley, daughter of Trevor Brantley, multimillionaire.” Geek pressed a key on the laptop, displaying a photo of a pretty young lady standing between a man in a suit and a well-dressed woman. “She was running the marathon. When the smoke cleared, she was gone. Her bodyguards had been killed not by the bomb, but by bullets that expertly pierced their skulls.”
Montana knew about Brantley’s missing daughter. It had been all over the news, with pleas and a reward posted from the Brantleys for their daughter’s safe return.
Fontaine interjected, “The authorities assumed it was a terrorist bombing by members of ISIS, a copycat of the 2013 attack at the Boston Marathon. We think it was a diversion allowing the bombers to kill the bodyguards and nab the Brantley woman.”
“How soon after the bombing was Trevor Brantley murdered?” Montana asked.
Geek pointed to a larger dot on the map in the vicinity of Washington, DC. “On this date, at this coordinate, less than two weeks later, Trevor Brantley was gunned down in his mansion here.”
Sawyer pointed at the double dots on the Yucatan Peninsula. “Were those the dates and locations of the attempts on my life and my father’s?”
Geek nodded. “Yes. Obviously those attempts weren’t successful.”
Becca Smith, her face pale, asked, “Was one of those dots on the nation’s capital the day my father was killed near his apartment here? Is that why there are more dots in the DC area? Multiple killings?”
Geek’s lips twisted. “The date your father died and the date there was an attempt on his colleague Oscar Melton’s life were both on that list, with the coordinates of the attacks.”
Montana’s teammate Quentin Lovett slipped an arm around Becca’s waist. “We know the connection between Marcus Smith and Oscar Melton. What connection is there between them and all the others?”
“Besides investigating the drug and human trafficking issues worldwide, the two CIA agents were investigating these codes. I can only assume they thought they were connected. Marcus Smith was able to mail the disk containing the information to Becca before he was killed. Oscar Melton is still in critical condition in a coma.”
“We suspect Sawyer’s father, Rand Houston, was targeted because he was on the Subcommittee for Terrorism, Drug Trafficking and International Operations,” Fontaine said. “What we can’t connect is Trevor Brantley and his family to the others. Which leads me to one more introduction, for those who haven’t had the pleasure of meeting her.” He turned toward the door, smiled and held out his hand. “Perfect timing. Please, come in.”
A woman with long dark hair, wearing a tailored gray skirt suit, stepped into the room. Montana remembered her from their operation to rescue women in Cancun. She’d come undercover as
