Search and Destroy by JT Sawyer (top non fiction books of all time .TXT) 📗

off to eliminate the competition or because of something that he discovered? Or was Shepard a double agent willing to sacrifice his own wife for the cause? And who the hell were the shooters on the bridge?

She bit her lip. Fuck, I’m going to need a whiteboard the size of this building to chart out the possibilities.

As she walked towards her office, she recalled, in vivid detail, that he could have killed her and her team at his house and again on the bridge. If he had no compunction about killing all of those innocent people at Burke’s along with his own wife, then why try to save Tremblay and me?

A young agent named Bedford hastily made his way across the room of cubicles full of other employees towards her. “We just got a hit on a guy possibly matching Shepard’s description near Annapolis.”

“That’s quite a distance for him to have traveled this quickly, but notify our field office there and then circulate his information to the local PD.”

He nodded. “And I already sent out dispatches to the TSA, Coast Guard and law-enforcement agencies up and down the East Coast, Midwest and Southeastern U.S. as you requested. He’s going to be hemmed in.”

“Don’t be too sure of that. This guy was trained to be a ghost.” She looked down at a new text on her phone indicating that Tremblay had made it out of surgery and was stable.

Thank God!

She tucked her phone away, raising up her hand and snapping her fingers. “Listen up. I know this has been an insane morning, but the good news is that Tremblay is in recovery. The not-so-good news is that our fugitive, Shepard, is still on the run, so let’s find him and find whoever was behind those thugs shooting at us on the bridge. What do we have on ’em?”

A redheaded woman with her hair in a tight bun stood up from her desk to the right of Carter. “Nothing showed up on our databases, but our gang taskforce crew downstairs said the tattoo on the youngest shooter was something they usually see amongst the Colombian cartels along the East Coast.”

“Why would those guys be after Shepard?” She saw a bunch of quizzical looks from the twenty agents in the room. “That’s a place to start then.” She nodded at the redheaded woman and those around her. “I want all of you to dig deep on Burke and his staff and see if there are any correlations with the dead shooters.”

She waved her hand over the left half of the cubicles. “I want the rest of you working solely on Shepard. I know most of you have probably seen the media coverage about this guy, but we all know how material is scraped from the bottom of the barrel with these news outlets, so see what turns up on him elsewhere, then canvas his neighbors to see if they noticed anything out of the ordinary going on over these past few weeks. I’m planning to talk to the CIA director later today to see what I can learn, but I’m not optimistic given the way they operate.”

She hoped she was wrong about the latter.

I could use every ounce of help I can get to cut through this never-ending web of deceit and bullshit.

27

Patterson stepped off the elevator onto the sixth floor of the National Intelligence Headquarters building, feeling like his footing was uneven as he contemplated the scandal rocking the agency and his top operative, not to mention that the leak had compromised numerous agents and informants around the world whom Shepard had worked with. Not only was it a breach of national security, but now every journalist was calling the agency seeking confirmation of the story and inquiring whether Burke, a much-loved public figure, was really the target of a hit team led by Shepard, who willingly sacrificed his own wife for the cause.

Patterson had to pull several agents from the field and spent the morning on the phone with case officers from Belize to Turkey in an effort to prevent any catastrophic fallout on ongoing missions.

Patterson’s stomach began churning as he thought of the ludicrous news articles he’d seen about Shepard.

Who’s now on the run and being hunted by his own fucking countrymen! As if the FBI on his trail wasn’t enough of a concern, now terrorist organizations and rival agencies around the world know what Shepard looks like. Where can he hide?

He heard the staff in their cubicles whispering amongst themselves as he walked past, catching brief mentions about Patterson having to resign or being fired by Director of National Intelligence Jason Begley, who had requested a meeting with him to discuss the revelatory claims in the media.

Who the fuck leaked the story about Cal? I’ll hunt them down myself and empty a mag in ’em.

He turned the corner, heading to the large office at the end of the hallway, then paused at the desk of Begley’s secretary.

“How are you today, sir?” She gave a nervous grin as she started to stand.

“It’s OK, Melanie, don’t get up. I know my way in.”

“He’s waiting for you.”

“Thanks.” He gave a forced smile then opened the office door.

Begley was sitting behind his spacious redwood desk, continuing to type on his keyboard as Patterson took a seat in front of him.

The Director of National Intelligence finished, removing his reading glasses and flinging them on the desk. “Absolute clusterfuck, Neil. You want to tell me what’s going on instead of me reading about it in the Times today!”

“This was a false-flag operation. Someone is setting up Shepard. I don’t have all the details yet, but there is a bigger picture here connected with what Burke revealed to us in our meeting. Has to be.”

“So, you don’t have anything concrete…just speculation? You work for the world’s pre-eminent intelligence agency as the fucking director of clandestine affairs and you can only speculate on what is happening?”

“I have a team working on the forensics at Burke’s place,