Sarah’s recovery was slow and frustrating. She hated being confined to an immovable object, be it a bed, chair or building. Her mind was putting together the pieces of what she’d seen and heard on the news, statements taken from her fellow agents and the leads she and her partner garnered before the disaster.
She fought off the guilt and remorse she felt for not being able to attend Adam’s funeral. His wife visited her in the hospital once she could stay coherent enough to talk to visitors for more than two or three minutes at a time. She still had questions about what happened, but Sarah could not answer any of them; recalling the details of the ordeal proved to be an arduous and painstaking process. Her discovery and recovery were exhausting.
Sarah had difficulty maintaining her balance and focus. This made it impossible for her to start any physical therapy or to work on her laptop. The hospital was not going to release her until her mobility improved, and she could regain her equilibrium.
Sarah got wind of the failed sting operation in Minnesota. It seemed inconceivable that the agents were not able to apprehend and detain even one person of interest. She could imagine what the lead agent was facing back at his local office; the failed operation reeked of professional ineptitude and botched police work. Sarah wished that there was some way that she could have selected the replacement agent for the operation; she knew two or three competent leads in the area that would have gotten the job done.
After nearly three weeks in the hospital, Sarah was released. Much to her chagrin, she was assigned light duty; desk work. What she wanted was to get back to the field. She was anxious to get on a plane and get back in the fray. Sitting at the desk would give her an opportunity to plan out and fully vet all her leads, but she knew she could do that on the road in the hotel room. At the end of the week, she marched into her boss’ office and all but demanded that he “put her back in the game.”
She knew that they would be watching her. Any group of terrorists that were organized enough to pull off a job like the one at the airport was probably keeping tabs on her whereabouts. She decided to stay off the grid by driving to Minneapolis.
Sarah scheduled her follow-up appointment at the hospital but instead of taking her personal vehicle, she scheduled and took an UBER. She had one of the undercover agents leave a nondescript looking vehicle in the hospital garage. Sarah donned a quick disguise consisting of a wig, a baggy coat, and some hospital scrubs. From a distance, she looked like a nurse leaving work after a long shift. She grabbed a quick cup of coffee for added theatrical effect, leisurely turned out of the garage and hit the on-ramp to I-35N. Sarah made sure she paid close attention to her rear-view mirror to make sure she was not being followed; she took every sensible detour and local highway possible on her way north. She knew that they would be looking for her once she got into town. Sarah met a fellow agent at a seedy motel, and they rode together to her home in Anoka, MN about 25 miles northwest of Minneapolis. Sarah was certain that she was poised to make a couple of quick bursts and start to put pressure on them to get to the kingpin of the terrorist operation.
The local bureau practically had to start over in its efforts to locate the members of the cell that met at the thwarted planning meeting in the park. The last report was that they’d gone dark and had moved on to their respective mission assignment. This meant that a legitimate threat existed on a plethora of fronts; the U.S. could be faced with anywhere from five to ten attacks in highly populated areas. Would they target airports? Malls? Sports venues? Sarah and her team would have to dig deep to find and track the movements of the malcontents that attacked without a cause.
Now she was back in her element. Her tenacity and drive often took her coworkers aback. She wished she had a dollar for every time one of her female associates accused her of “acting like a man”. Nothing upset her more than listening to this sexist rhetoric from people who should have known better. She was good at what she did, and she enjoyed her work. Any need for companionship and company came from her work family. Sarah never once felt like she was missing out on anything life had to offer. She’d often reasoned that the contentment that was present in her life was her reward; and right now, it paid her great dividends.
Sarah was able to visualize and discover details that proved to be turning points in every case she was assigned to. She’d grown accustomed to seeing the look of astonishment on the faces of her fellow agents and malevolent characters she caught up to who thought they were smarter than any law enforcement agent. She’d seen everything. Her insight into human nature and her ability to distinguish random convergence from solid leads made her an otherworldly seer of sorts. To say that she was the best was an understatement.
Sarah reviewed the footage from the dash cam of the vehicle that was on the scene of the failed bust. Now the real detective work was starting. She disseminated a montage of grainy photos to the other field agents and beat cops and waited. “Patterns of Behavior” were the one indelible trademark of every individual walking the face of the planet. She knew that they were as indelible and unchangeable as fingerprints. Perpetrators of crime were even more predictable than the general population. Sarah’s wait was not one of anxiety, but of anticipation. She knew that the longer she waited, the closer she was to hitting the mother lode. This was one case she knew would not find its way into the cold case files.
Sarah did not have to wait long. Local police had a man in custody that looked like one of the individuals in the video. They’d picked him up during a routine traffic stop; he had a headlight out. She often wondered why someone who’d decided to undertake a life of criminal activity would not think to make themselves less inconspicuous to local law enforcement. Before she let it marinate any length of time in her head, she remembered her patterns of behavior mantra and took “the win”.
The crooks that didn’t pay attention to details, like headlights that were out, were often the ones with the weakest constitutions when it came to interrogations and watching what they said. They often waited too late into their conversations with the agents to ask for a lawyer. Sarah’s customary practice was to watch while the other cops pressured a perp into a confession, but she didn’t have a problem rolling up her sleeves whenever she thought that the other agents weren’t getting anywhere. She made sure that she had a definite plan of attack and line of questioning whenever she tried extracting information. The conversation went where she wanted to go, it crested when she wanted and resolved when she was finished. Sarah was a master at her craft.
Something with this interrogation didn’t sit well with Sarah. It wasn’t that it went too easy — the dance was too textbook; too perfect. It played out like it did in the movies; a little give and a little take. Some pressure and some resistance. A slip up here and there and a rehashing of the facts. After nearly four hours, the guy hit the breaking point after started to lose his cool, confident demeanor. He unraveled bit-by-bit, started squirming in his chair and searched in the upper right-hand corner of the room for answers to questions. The guy gave classic responses to the agent’s attempts to get at the truth. The agent emerged from the interrogation room with a smug look of triumph. Sarah sipped coffee, chewed gum and watched the entire production.
As they were leaving to go and decimate the next link in the chain, she noticed an ever so slight look of relief on the perp’s face. At this point, the customary behavior she’d noticed over the years was that the criminal sat there in shock; wondering what they’d done and how everything was going to play out. She and the other three agents strapped up and headed out to make what they thought would be the next in a series of arrests leading to the discovery of the mastermind behind the terrorist attacks. Sarah voiced her concerns on her way over to a block of student housing in the vicinity of a major university. The other agents accused her of overthinking the situation. “Sometimes, a cigar is just a cigar.” The agent in the back seat was proud of herself for making that statement and resolving Sarah’s angst. She hoped she was wrong. She hoped what she’d seen was a cigar and not an exploding one at that.
Get Ray Jarrett’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
Dusk. Sarah hated this time of day. You could never be sure, never certain at what you were looking at when the world and the landscape turned a murky blue color. Everyone moved into position and Sarah made the call to move in.
When they broke into the small, two-story unit, there was no one there. Sarah was posted up in the vehicle on the radio. She listened to the agents talking over the comm while they painstakingly cased the house looking for people and clues. This scenario didn’t add up. The more they walked around inside without turning up anything, the more she got the feeling that something was wrong. One of the agents opened a door and mentioned that he heard a hissing sound…
“Get out!” Sarah screamed. The response she got was muffled coughing and choking. She called for backup and resisted the urge to rush into the small bungalow. She and her team had been set up.
Before she could say anything else, the front windshield of her car shattered into a million smaller shards of glass. Sarah ducked down and reached for the car handle. The vehicle was being peppered with bullet after bullet. She heard a familiar voice; one of the agents was on the front lawn screaming at Sarah — trying to get a response, trying to see if she was O.K.
Sarah did not know what the situation was inside the house. When she was sure the shooting was over, she crawled on her knees to a nearby tree. She darted from object to object until she was close to the front window of the house. The other agent made his way over to where she was.
“Damn it!” Sarah yelled under her breath, “I knew it! What the heck happened in there?!”
“I dunno. Did you call for an ambulance?”
“Yes.” Sarah was still scanning the landscape. “Did you see who was shooting at us? Did you see anything?!”
“No!!! I still can’t believe I got out in time. We have to get them out of there!”
“Sit tight and stay low. Help is coming!”
By the time help arrived, and they were able to clear and secure the area, she heard the ambulance sirens wailing in the distance. None of the other agents had come out of the house; Sarah knew this was not good. Over the comm, it sounded like they’d been tear-gassed, but she knew that was not enough to incapacitate them. The suspense was killing her, and Sarah feared the worse.
Sarah and the ambulance crew donned tear gas masks and went into the house. They saw the first agent lying in the doorway of the kitchen, face down. The ambulance techs were unprepared for what they were looking at, but Sarah had seen this before.
The agent looked to be half her normal size, and they noticed that her hand was brownish-blue and shriveled. Her weapon was still in the grip of her withered hand. When the technicians rolled her over, they saw the full effect of her condition; her facial skin appeared to sag off her skull, and in other places, the skin was stretched tight. Her eye sockets were hollow, and her visage looked like she was a well-preserved, 2000-year-old mummy.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” Sarah instructed, “Whatever cause them to desiccate like this may still be airborne.”
Sarah couldn’t wait to get back to the FBI office where they were holding the first guy.
The other agent followed her back to her vehicle and peppered her with questions.
“What happened? What did you see?”
Sarah looked past him as if she were looking right through him. “We got set up, that’s what happened. I knew something was wrong and I led us straight into a trap. I’m gonna kill that guy…”
