Ingrams & Assoc 6: Downfall Ch. 03

April could see Morgan was an effective leader. If he ever went into politics, the world was in very real danger of having a despot.

Lindsey sighed. "You always know how to get to me," she said, almost bitterly. "Fine, I'm in."

"Darrel?"

"Okay. Not thrilled about this, but I'd hate to waste all the prep."

"Goddammit. You're insane. All of you," vented Beatrice. "But you'll be dead without me. Okay, I'm in. You sure about missy over there?" She nodded at April.

"Yeah, I think so. It all fits together. I think April may be the piece we've been missing. And... I trust her. There. I said it."

"Your dick trusts her, you mean," said Beatrice, quietly.

"Well, he's generally been a pretty good judge of character, so far," replied Chris, grinning.

"Apart from your wife," said April, equally quietly, and then wished she hadn't. Chris' smile vanished, but he didn't reply.

"So, what's the plan? Also, I'm going to need to contact my people. Let them know I am alright."

Chris nodded, but then looked at Beatrice.

"Okay, yeah, but here's the deal. We use a burner phone from elsewhere in the city. Beatrice, you take two. You can call them, and call April on the other phone, while she stays here. You can relay all she needs to say."

April arched an eyebrow at Morgan.

"I may trust you April, but I've been wrong before. Better safe than sorry. And if you are who you say you are, then you'll understand the need for abstraction."

Beatrice nodded, got up, scooped up three phones. She checked one phone for its number, entered that on another, then tossed the phone she'd checked to April.

"I'll call you in an hour, when I'm in another part of the city. It may seem paranoid to you, but we've survived this long by being paranoid."

She nodded at Morgan, then headed to the door.

The next hour was spent both in nervous energy, and in pure frustration and boredom. For April, she spent the time watching everyone else, doing her best not to bother them too much. Everyone else had things to do. Lindsey sat at the computer, checking whatever she was checking, Darrel doing the same at the other terminal. Mike and Morgan checked equipment, and went over the rack of clothes April had noticed the day before.

As she was just wondering if there was anything she could do, for the twentieth time, her phone buzzed.

"Hello?"

"Hey, Ms. Secret Agent. Give me a number to call. I'm going to be switching back and forth between phones, okay?"

April gave her Steve's number, and then waited. She could hear Beatrice murmuring in the back ground. Eventually, her voice came over the phone clear.

"This guy wants to know you are okay. What can I tell him that will say that?"

"Tell him, 'baby wants his mama'."

"Right."

There was thirty seconds of murmuring again.

"He wants to know where you are. I've told him that you are safe, that you were in the middle of the bombing yesterday, and we are taking care of you, and you are alright. He wants to talk to you directly, but I've told him we are using a cutout. For safety's sake. What do you want to say to him?"

"Tell him to stay put. All of them. Some of them were due to go home today, but I want the team to stay where they are. Tell them I want to talk to Jessica, and I'll be back at the hotel tomorrow, midday, assuming tonight goes well. Tell them there is far more to this job than we imagined, and it can be life threatening. Tell them this relates to my last case. That I have to see tonight through. I need to know."

"I'm not going to tell him anything about tonight. Operational security."

"Yes, I know. Just let him know I'll be back to tomorrow, and I want Jessica on a secure line. I don't care what she's doing. This matters. Oh, and tell them to tell Jessica to not talk to the client again. She needs to cut off all communication with them."

"Wilco."

There was more murmuring. Eventually, "Well, he's not happy about it. But he understands. He says, 'twelve-thirty, he'll have the coffee on'."

That was another code phrase. It meant that they would be loaded for bear when April returned. Most of the time Ingrams agents and support were not armed, but for this, they would be. It meant that it was likely that the UK contingent of Ingrams would be on station too, which meant Mark Hugget and her two favorite Brits. April smiled at the prospect. Both knew how to handle themselves, and she owed her life to Dan Boutrous.

She sighed a heavy sigh of relief. Being able to reach out, to communicate with her people was more stress relieving than she had anticipated.

"Okay, I'm heading back. See you in an hour. You'd better be for real, or I'll put you down myself." With that, the connection closed, and April withdrew the phone from her ear. She'd heard the threat, but no one else had. She was in two minds as to whether she could take Beatrice or not, if she had to. April had her fair share of hand to hand combat training, - the Ingrams quartermaster was their instructor, and very good she was too, - but Beatrice seemed just a little too eager to hand out a beating; a little too eager to express violence. She was, if April was any judge, one of those people who would not know how to quit when she needed to.

Rather than revealing her unsettled feelings, she turned to Morgan, gave him a bright smile and said, "So, what's the plan?"

* * * * *

As the night closed in, April and Morgan sat in a recently stolen car, - one blue Peugeot, a French brand of car, not seen in the US. It was a sedan, and already had new plates on it.

They were sitting down a countryside track, about an hour out of the city. It was dark, with no streetlights, and Morgan had insisted on no inside lights, so all they had was the lights of the moon. They were pulled off to the side, so they wouldn't impede the flow of traffic, and with nothing much to do, they just sat and talked. So far they'd covered April's early life, the episode with her Uncle/Father and her recruitment by Ingrams. He'd regaled her with some stories of his time in the army, and she noted he didn't go anywhere near what his real occupation had been. She knew, because she'd read his file, but he wasn't volunteering anything about that. Once a soldier, always a solider, she guessed.

At two am, the burner phone he carried rang, and he took a call, of one sentence. Closing the phone, he looked over at April and said, "They are done. We're on."

April fingered the ID she had in her hands, complete with lanyard. It was very convincing, or at least it looked so to her. She'd never seen an Interpol Identity card before, but it looked good to her. Lindsey, it turned out, was quite the forger.

They both stared and strained, looking west, across a field and past some trees, looking for signs of life. Over the next twenty minutes, they started to see dancing flickers of yellow light, growing stronger.

Then, suddenly, there were sirens in the distance. A few minutes later, two fire engines whipped past them, moving at high speed, followed a minute later by two ambulances, lights flashing and sirens blaring. Their parked car rocked gently at the force of the vehicles passing them.

Morgan checked his watch and said, "Right, let's give them five or six minutes, and we'll follow."

April nodded at him.

"Time for those cheek things," he said, pulling out a small package from his pocket. Morgan was already disguised with an artificial close-trimmed beard, large glasses and a hat, thrown in the back of the car. From the Ziploc bag from his pocket, he pulled over four small slabs of what looked like plasticine. He carefully inserted them into his mouth, maneuvering them into position, so they pushed out his cheeks and widened his jaw line. Once that was done, he pulled out some rings, being careful since they had adhesive on them, and inserted them into his nostrils, flaring them out. He already had putty on the side of his nose, expertly blended in with his skin tone, so his nose looked wider and flatter.

He'd explained to April that the houses had facial recognition systems, and his face was well known to the people running the chain of clubs, and they'd recognize him immediately without some adjustments. Happily, most facial recognition systems are relatively easy to fool; some basic face adjustments, darken some aspects of the face, - having dark facial hair where the jaw meets the neck, for example, means that cameras can't work out where the jawline ends, which is a big part of getting an outline. Glasses and a good hat with a brim, and just simply keeping the face tilted is often enough.

For her part, April did similar to Morgan, although she had no beard. They weren't certain if the Stormy Clouds facial recognition would have her programmed in, but it was silly to take the risk and easy to mitigate, so April had a bob wig on, wide rimmed glasses and also sported the blended putty on her nose. She fished out her own package with cheek and jaw inserts, to subtly change her face characteristics, and once applied, they were ready.

She put on her seat belt, and looked over at Morgan, who was looking intently at her. "Ready for this?" he asked.

She nodded, and he pressed the starter, and gunned the engine. April lowered her window and clamped the police light Morgan's crew had acquired weeks earlier to the roof of the car, and then plugged it into the lighter socket. Immediately the light started flashing blue to red and back again, and the siren started up.

Morgan drove down country lanes, - April marveling again at how narrow they were in Europe, something she'd noticed in her last mission in the UK, - and eventually pulled into a long drive way, leading to a large building at the end. Flames were pouring from one side of the building and there were throngs of people wandering around, staring at the situation. Two fire engines were in attendance, the two ambulances they'd seen earlier, three cop cars and one large medical van were parked haphazardly outside. All the emergency vehicles had their flashers going, bathing the scene in decidedly blue pulsing hue, since, - unlike their American cousins, - Spanish first responder vehicles only used flashing blue lights.

Morgan screeched to a halt and bounded out of the car, only pausing to wink at April, who followed him closely. April realized that Chris Morgan was undoubtedly a thrill junkie, and was actually enjoying this adventure, into the lion's den. She rolled her eyes before following him as he hurried forward.

"Right, who is in charge here?" he bellowed, with a terrible German accent. Morgan actually spoke fluent German, - and Farsi, - April knew from his file. If they were Interpol, then he'd have to be European, even though he was using English. English was the international language of policing and so English it was, even with the awful put on accent. They'd decided earlier that April would be a 'lootenent', on secondment from the NYPD, which would explain her accent, if she was called on to speak.

One of the cops hurried forward, and Morgan held up his impressive looking ID.

"Inspector Schriber, Interpol. This is my colleague, Lieutenant Casper, from the NYPD. We are in town to cover the bombing, and we heard about this. We thought it might be connected. Arson suspected, right?"

The Sergeant he addressed nodded and replied with passable English, "Yes. I'm glad you are here. There seems to be a fair number of people from the building here, a few with smoke inhalation issues. We have medics on hand to cope, and the fire is slowly coming under control. We have no idea of cause currently though, Inspector."

"Hmmm," Morgan replied, rubbing his jaw. He glanced over at April, before turning his attention back to the sergeant. "Is everyone out?"

"We think so."

"Think so, man? Are you not sure?"

"We sent in a few men, and the ground and upper floors are cleared. The firemen also investigated."

"Is there a basement?" demanded Morgan, stepping close to the sergeant.

"I... don't think so... Hey, Carlos, is there a basement to this building?" called out the sergeant to another of his subordinates.

The man shrugged, and turned back to talking to one of the firemen.

"Oh, for god's sake, Man. We'll go in and check. You keep control out here. Liaise with base control."

Morgan nodded at April, and started running at the building. She followed, as was the plan, running as fast as possible. From the outside, it looked like they were eager to be inside. It also stopped the firemen, - and any security personnel from the building, - from noticing what they were doing and trying to stop them.

They ran to the front double doors, which were still open, and pausing only to pull out a flashlight each, they stumbled inside.

At this end of the house, there wasn't any smoke wafting, although there was an acrid smell.

For April's part, she looked around. It looked distinctly similar to the memory she had of the club in Washington DC, the one she'd been in so many years before. Over there was the door to the great room, over there, what looked like a security booth, - all decorated in the same wall-to-ceiling wood panel style of the other building. She grinned, - must be a hell of a fire hazard.

There were lights blinking and a siren whooping, and the exit signs on various doors were lit up like Christmas tree lights.

Then, realizing she was inside a burning building and what that meant, she stopped smiling.

"We are in luck. Looks like their security system is offline," murmured Morgan, gesturing at a small black knob on the wall. "No lights on the cameras. Means the system is down. Hopefully."

Like magic, there was a sudden down pour as the fire suppression water sprinkler system abruptly kicked in.

"Better late than never, eh?" grinned Morgan at her. Yes, he did enjoy this sort of thing. There was going to be a fascinating conversation with him about this later, for sure.

April looked up at the cameras and resisted the urge to ask if the cameras didn't have lights to begin with. She didn't remember there being any lights on those cameras when she was last in a building like this.

"Here, come this way," urged Morgan, directing his flashlight to a particular door. He pulled April to him, and, finding the door locked, he launched a kick at it, with his full weight behind it. It had a hand panel on the outside requiring a palm print from some approved person, so it was not going to be opened any other way.

The door took the pounding and it took two more attempts before the lock burst out of the door and it burst open.

"It's back here," murmured Morgan. "Don't worry about the fire. It's in the corner of the building, where Mike set it. It won't consume the whole house, it's not had enough time for that. The fire services will get it under control shortly. We have to get the people down there out first."

The room was a small storage room, with storage cupboards inset on one wall. Morgan walked up to the last cupboard, and shone his flashlight on it, opening the door and leaning it, to fiddle with something inside.

There was a click, and the entire last set of cupboards swung away from the wall, noiselessly, folding against the back wall. Behind, there was a set of steel stairs, leading down into a concrete corridor like bunker.

"You know this? How do you know this is even here?" asked April, wonderingly.

"All these buildings follow the same basic blueprint. Normal ground floor, play rooms and suites upstairs, and the hired help downstairs. And when I say 'hired', I don't mean they can leave. Come on. They'll be after us in a minute if security for here saw us enter. And I've got to believe they did. They notice things like this, and they'll be looking for us, now there's a fire here. Too much coincidence."

They ran down the steps, into the rough concrete corridor beneath, April noticing there was no sprinkler system down in the bowels of the building. There was a steel bar door, like in a jail, at the bottom, with a lock in it. Morgan didn't waste any time and pulled out a gun like skeleton key, and inserted it into the locked door. Within moments, the lock was open and he yanked the door back, jamming it open with a piece of rubber he pulled from another pocket.

"Be prepared. I was a boy scout," he smiled at April, as they raced through the door.

Beyond, there was a concrete walled corridor of about fifty feet, with several inset doors off it. At the end was a T junction, with more corridor leading off left and right.

The strip lighting flickered on as they moved forward, bathing the corridor in harsh white like, making it look unfinished but also antiseptic. April noticed that each room had a flat iPad like panel on the outside, the same as the door above. She shivered involuntarily. This becoming too real.

Morgan was intent on reaching the T junction but April pulled him to a stop outside of one of the rooms.

"These are always empty," he protested, as she reached out and touched the panel. The screen sprung into life, showing the inside of the room. Various technical readouts appeared along the bottom of the screen. The room itself was exactly as she remembered it. Only this time, there was an occupant.

"Look," she said, gesturing at the screen. "We have to get in there, let her out."

There was a woman, dressed in green scrubs, curled up on a small cot in the corner of the room.

April fussed at the controls, and eventually, pressing random buttons, the locked door popped open, almost silently.

She steeled herself, then went in.

She took three steps inside, and then stopped, memories flooding back. She'd been through repressive therapy, in order that the memories she had of her repeated violent rape and subsequent programming after not overwhelm her, but standing there, in a carbon copy of the same room where it had all happened stopped her dead. It was one thing to know it might exist, it was quite another to be standing there.

She could remember how cold it was, how the lights never went off. The grunts of the men raping her, and the others, encouraging it. The random small acts of calculated kindness of the Doctor, slowly removing her from her reality and replacing it with his.

There was a hand on her shoulder and she jumped, grabbing it and lifting it off, elbow on the other arm raised and ready to drive itself into the body behind.

"Hey," said a concerned Morgan. "You okay?"

April willed herself to relax. This was Chris Morgan. No threat to her.

She let her arms drop and stepped forward, turning as she did.

"Sorry... memories. Bad ones."

He looked enquiringly at her.

"Later. We need to get her out of here. I don't know how far she's gone with the process." She nodded to the girl over her shoulder, who was still slumbering, even with them in the room. April could quite believe why. She was probably full of a cocktail of drugs to keep her docile.

"Her and everyone else," replied Morgan. "We can get her on the way out. There'll be others who need us."

April sighed. There was no end to the cruelty of this place.

"C'mon," he urged. "There's more to see."

He led her gently out of the room, and down the corridor. As they passed each room, April insisted on activating the external pad, to see if the rooms were occupied. Three were.

When they reached the end of the corridor, Morgan went right. There were several more door, and a more benign office door at the end. Morgan didn't even slow down. He ran at the door, foot outstretched and literally kicked the lock in.

He glanced back at April, grinning. "It's sound proofed down here. They won't have heard it upstairs. Call it violent therapy."

They ran into the office beyond, that had several work stations set up, with soft yellow glow lighting. There were five computers and one laptop, and Morgan immediately went to work on the first one, inserting a thumb drive from his pocket.