Binder - 02 by David Vinjamuri Page B

taken a serious turn down the rabbit hole, wouldn’t you? Last night I started asking questions about a girl who was protesting with an environmental group. In the span of twenty-four hours I’ve been sideswiped, attacked and nearly bombed.”
    “You’d like to withdraw?”
    “Not at all, sir. But if I keep playing by the same rules, I won’t make it through another day. Which makes me wonder...”
    “Yes, Orion?”
    “While I was driving here I wondered why you would send me on a job that a real private investigator could finish in half a day. Unless you already knew more than you shared with me.”
    The line was silent for a few seconds.
    “When Miss Hernandez’s mother forwarded her note, I made some inquiries. I got a strong reaction from my federal sources. The FBI was very interested in the attack on the protestors, but their motives were unclear. Given that, I wasn’t confident a private detective would be able to operate effectively.”
    “Sir, why didn’t you just tell me this yesterday morning?”
    “If I’d told you there was an FBI investigation, where would you have gone first?”
    “To the FBI,” I said, thinking about the next call I wanted to make.
    “Exactly. And had you approached them first, they might have gone all the way to the National Security Council to force me to recall you.”
    “I very nearly got myself killed, sir.”
    “Perhaps not so nearly, Orion. And now you’ve gained the FBI’s attention by getting the National Front to make an overt move against you. This opens a door to cooperate with them.”
    “Cooperate?”
    “As you said, we need a different approach. Groups like this mistrust outsiders in general and the government in particular. The National Front may be worse. It’s a very serious criminal organization.”
    “What do you have in mind, sir?”
    “We’re looking for a way to get you inside the compound.”
    “Infiltration?”
    “No, something more circumspect. We think we have a viable approach, but we need to do some work overnight. I’ll have more information for you later. In the meantime, call the TOC and give them your current location and any other information they request. We’ll bring you under operational control in the morning.”
    “Yes, sir,” I responded crisply as the call ended. I realized that I’d been pacing back and forth in front of the two full-size beds in my Spartan roadside motel room for over an hour. Suddenly exhausted, I sat down. As I’d told Alpha, I didn’t like the direction things were headed. More to the point, I didn’t like the way he’d used me as bait to tease out the FBI’s interest in the Reclaim killings. Now he wanted to put me inside the National Front compound. That would be a real trick, as I would be in the midst of the same people who’d tried very hard to kill me. All for the daughter of my ex-boss’s friend.
    Don’t get me wrong—I understand loyalty. It’s what brought me to West Virginia. But it surprised me that Alpha would devote government resources to a private project. A single misstep could end his career. It seemed like a big risk to take to find a missing girl. I decided I needed to know more about the girl’s father and Alpha’s connection to him. Some of the things I’d heard about Heather suggested the man might not have been the best parent, and I couldn’t let that lie, either.
    As I pulled another phone from my bag and dialed the number for the tactical operations center at the Activity, I wondered how I managed to get myself into another mess. But I knew the answer. When you’re a hammer, they always find you a nail.
     

13
Saturday
    “Another hundred yards and you can stop bitching,” Roxanne said as we trudged up a muddy trail.
    “I wasn’t complaining. I was pointing out that it’s polite to tell someone when you invite them for coffee that they’ll be climbing a mountain to get to it.”
    “I’m not sure I see the difference,” Roxanne replied without