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

the presence of dead Colombian cartel members and their drugs and money.

The first house in Elkton, Maryland was little more than a crater in the ground after the explosion that ripped through the place, which was a known safehouse for Colombian cocaine dealers. The second home was an upscale residence in the Bethesda foothills owned by oil lobbyist Ian Landis, where a stack of coke and three dead cartel members were found.

She fixed her eyes on the last photo, of the man who had died of a heart attack in his home five days ago.

Tim Rourke…how the hell is the assistant director of the NSA tied up in all of this?

Other than the bundle of cash atop his desk, which had blood stains connected with DNA samples found amongst the few intact bodies from the cartel safehouse, there was little to show that he even knew the others.

Though she didn’t have any definitive evidence, eyewitnesses or surveillance videos, she was sure Shepard was connected with what felt more like a vigilante killing spree than a cartel turf war.

She looked down at the open file on her computer, which had been heavily redacted but which showed the employment history of Rourke. The NSA had been slightly more cooperative than the CIA in providing her with some details about their staff, and Rourke’s indicated a stint at the National Reconnaissance Office, which handled satellite retasking and distribution of intelligence.

She thought back to the conversation with the mystery man at the park whom she knew was Shepard’s handler.

Project 284 kept echoing in her brain. She sat down at her desk, using the FBI’s search engine to pull up one of two files on the topic.

Carter leaned back, scanning the tedious notes on the government think-tank project from twelve years ago. Some of the names and places were redacted on the open-source document, but the common thread that ran through the project was the emphasis on a prominent false-flag event. From what she understood, it involved violence perpetrated by an anti-government group opposed to the new regime, along with reliance on outside sources providing real-time intelligence to the players behind the curtain.

This was the goddam playbook for what happened to Burke…and then Shepard.

She thought about the circumstances surrounding the explosion and Shepard’s subsequent exposure by the media.

He wasn’t supposed to survive the blast, so they had to get rid of him before he found out what the hell was going on.

She looked up at his wanted poster on the whiteboard, trying to convince herself that he was a ruthless criminal trying to cover his tracks and remove everyone who got in his way.

And yet he tried to save Tremblay’s life—and spared mine during the assault on his house.

Her gut told her something was amiss. She reread the highlights of Project 284 then scrolled to the bottom, which showed the contributors and panel members. Her eyes settled on a familiar name.

Shit…that’s the guy I’ve been leaving messages for at the agency all week.

Neil J. Patterson

Carter pulled up another screen, entering the man’s name in the federal search engine. She clicked on the link, pulling up the biography for the Director of the CIA’s Clandestine Affairs. Her mouth hung open as she looked at the photo of the man who had met with her in the park.

Christ, he’s not just Shepard’s handler—he’s one of the top dogs at Langley, so he’s got a lot invested on many levels in Perseus and what happened at Burke’s.

She thought over recent events and the killings at the three related crime scenes. Is Patterson letting Shepard run amuck so he buries everything related to Project 284, which he himself had a hand in creating, or is he trying to prevent it from unfolding any further? If the project was connected with a coming coup, then which government is at risk from the players behind all this shit that’s gone down lately?

She heard footsteps approaching her office door and looked up to see James Corelli entering. The head forensics tech had a grin on his face, which usually meant he was about to spend thirty minutes extrapolating on a breakthrough he just had.

“What ya got?” she said as he came up beside her with a laptop in his gloved hands.

“So, I was digging deep on the data on the personal computer we got from Rourke’s house, and I was able to extract a few deleted files.” He shoved aside some of Carter’s belongings then put the laptop down, pulling up an image of a topographic map for a ranch in Texas.

“The guy stared at satellite images all day, so big deal,” she said. “What am I supposed to be looking at?”

“I found a few other large properties around the country, but Rourke spent the most time studying this one. It’s a 64,000-acre ranch that belongs to Vincent Roth.”

She sat up straight. “Roth…as in the oil baron?”

“Yeah, the same guy who was in a photo with Ian Landis at his home with those dead Colombians.”

“Landis was an oil lobbyist, so that’s not too much of a surprise.”

Corelli cracked a knuckle then moved up alongside Carter, minimizing the screen on her laptop and pulling up a new search bar. He accessed his computer down in the digital forensics lab, showing her a black-and-white video from a regional airstrip near Baltimore.

“When my staff looked into Landis’ holdings, we found he had a private jet at McMillan Airport, so I had them check on the flight manifests, which weren’t remarkable in themselves, but we also went through the closed-circuit security videos from inside and outside the terminal near his plane.” He clicked on the play button for the first video clip, which showed two men meeting near the hangar and exchanging a briefcase.

“God, that’s Tim Rourke,” she said, tapping the image.

“And the other guy is Carlos Montoya—the Colombian cartel enforcer that you showed me before.”

She leaned back, her eyes darting along the plethora of photographs and flow charts on the whiteboard to her left.

“It gets