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“I’ll facilitate that,” Watkins replied confidently, and then he looked to Lacy. “Angela, liaise with the Bureau on Jim’s behalf.”
“Yes, sir.”
Pace continued, “And also into DOD. I need to have an idea of what Rick Watt was working on when he died.”
“I agree,” responded the DDO, and he looked again to Lacy.
She wrote notes on a legal pad in front of her. “I’ll talk to the Pentagon as soon as we’re done here, set up a meeting for you.”
Pace thanked her, then turned back to Watkins. “I’ll need to travel. I want to see the crime scenes themselves. To talk in person to the surviving security detail members of those who had them, the coworkers of the deceased. Any other witnesses that might turn up.”
“I’ll assign you an aircraft at Andrews and a staff here at HQ, and Naveen will arrange everything with the embassies and consulates where you travel.”
Pace drummed his fingers on the table a moment.
“Something else?” Watkins asked.
Another slight delay, and then Jim Pace said, “I want a Ground Branch task force traveling with me.”
Watkins cocked his head in surprise. “Shooters? You want shooters? You don’t have execute authority on a kill mission.”
“I’m not suggesting that, sir.” He looked to Angela, who looked back to him in surprise that he was focusing on her suddenly. “It’s just that something Ms. Lacy said rang true. If this is a non-state actor, if this is industrial espionage on an unprecedented scale, then I might not be prepared for what I might stumble into.”
Watkins said, “You’re comfortable with Ground Branch, we all know that.” He looked around the room. “If you all didn’t know, Jim used to be on Golf Sierra, back in the day.”
Pace clarified. “The early days. Before it all went to hell. I, thankfully, missed all that.”
Watkins sighed after a moment. Finally, he said, “Okay. Approved.” He then turned to Steve Hernandez, head of the Special Activities Center. “Who’s on deck?”
Hernandez didn’t have to consult his notes. To Pace he said, “Take Juliet Victor, they’re on a training rotation in Vah Beach, just back from another mountain ops course in Montana. We’ll have them ready to travel in a few hours.”
Watkins held a threatening finger up to the table, his eyes on Pace. “Very low profile. They can bring all their kit, but their kit will remain on the agency aircraft unless they are given an order by Hernandez, an order that will come from the director via me.”
He added, “They can run security for you, Jim, but unarmed security only.”
Pace didn’t love this, but he liked it enough to agree to it, and the meeting wrapped up minutes later.
As he walked back up the fifth-floor hall towards his desk in an office suite surrounded by two dozen others, a woman’s voice called from behind.
“Jim?”
He stopped to see Angela approaching. He fumbled with the folders and the iPad, and then he stretched out a hand, which she took in a firm and friendly shake.
“Nice to meet you officially,” she said.
“Likewise. Thanks in advance for the help.”
She smiled. “Of course. And thanks for sticking up for me in there.”
“You made a good point, and it made me realize I can’t assume I know what I’m going to walk into out in the field. I might find myself talking to a conspirator when I think I’m talking to a victim. If that happens, the Ground Branch team will be close at hand.”
“Well, good luck,” she said. “I’ll get to work on DOD and FBI. If there is anything else you need, anything I can be of service with, please feel free to reach out.”
The two parted in the hallway with another handshake, both hurrying off towards their offices.
SIXTEEN
Zoya Zakharova and Court Gentry walked with tired and sore bodies after jumping off the back of a pickup truck outside the Central Terminal bus depot in Flores, Guatemala. This was in the heart of the state of Petén, in the northern reaches of the country, and while the simple town was on a pretty lake, the pretty lake was all but surrounded by dense and foreboding jungle.
