Read Online Loralynn Kennakris 2: The Morning Which Breaks by Owen R. O'Neill, Jordan Leah Hunter - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Owen R. O'Neill, Jordan Leah Hunter
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nature of the plot, but a sensible approach would have taken into account that the task force, being an interagency organization, lacked its own assets and was ill-equipped to handle prisoners or undertake their interrogations.
The obvious solution—to include the Bureau of Public Safety in the task force and let Nick’s well-trained people conduct the interrogations—was rejected in favor of bringing in the Nedaeman Directorate of Intelligence and Analysis. NDIA was not, strictly speaking, a field organization, so they in turn brought in teams of contractors, who were not sufficiently diligent in testing the terrorists for tripwires, as anti-interrogation implants were commonly known. So the NDIA and Foreign Office reps watched as the brains of several subjects, including the man called Larson who’d led the cell that carried out the operation, literally melted before their horrified eyes.
Trin had managed to get her hands on the forensic analysis—the actual raw data, not the sanitized version that made it into the official report—and it was painfully obvious to her professional eye just when and where and how the operators hired by NDIA had gone wrong. Interrogation was a delicate business, requiring at least a day or two by a skilled operator, and tripwires were, by their very nature, touchy things to deal with. To disable them took at least twice as long, maybe even a week.
The implants Larson and the others had been fitted with were good but not the best she’d seen. Any halfway decent CEF interrogator would have found them and known how to handle them. Which meant that either the contractors selected by NDIA were not halfway decent or that something else was going on. And the more she looked at the situation as a whole, from the botched interrogations to the failed raid, the more the possible dimensions of that something else grew to disturbing proportions.
“Weren’t going to bring in any of your people, were they?” She offered to the silence.
“Never got that far. The grumbles said SOCOM was gonna try to keep it in-house this go.” Nick wagged the forefinger of his beer-holding hand at the last slice. “Sure you don’t want to split that?”
“Thanks, but you go ahead.”
Nick did and Trin watched as the last of the pizza fulfilled its destiny. “Who was read in on this op?” She asked as the last bite of crust disappeared. “Anyone new?”
He looked at her over his glass. “What’s on your mind, Trin?”
She wiped her mouth again on a napkin, scrubbing at more than just pizza grease, and dropped the crumpled cellucine wad into a trash receptacle. “It’s just that . . . Nick, have you ever known an op to go so wrong?”
“Not above a couple dozen.”
“No, I mean so precisely wrong. The plan was timed to the minute, from insertion to extraction. Look at this.” She brought a small envelope out of the breast pocket of her uniform.
Taliaferro’s eyebrows climbed high up the dark-tanned forehead. “You printed it?”
She nodded. “My paranoia is rising to a new pitch. Look.” She unsealed the envelope, extracted two folded flimsies and spread one out on top of the pizza box. “This is the timeline, as far as we’ve been able to reconstruct it. The more I look at it, the worse it seems—like they had a precise list of targets and were just waiting for them to show themselves so they could take them out.” She ran her fingers down the list of events, showing the planned and actual timing. “See the tolerances? Now here’s what we think happened.” She overlaid the second sheet on the first. “Note this delay? Another couple of minutes and they almost certainly would have aborted. But they were pushed right to the edge, where they’d have the least amount of time to adapt if anything went wrong. Then they walked straight into what must have been a trap.”
She sat back as Nick stared hard at the flimsies, lips moving in silent vexation.
“Now wouldn’t it take some
The obvious solution—to include the Bureau of Public Safety in the task force and let Nick’s well-trained people conduct the interrogations—was rejected in favor of bringing in the Nedaeman Directorate of Intelligence and Analysis. NDIA was not, strictly speaking, a field organization, so they in turn brought in teams of contractors, who were not sufficiently diligent in testing the terrorists for tripwires, as anti-interrogation implants were commonly known. So the NDIA and Foreign Office reps watched as the brains of several subjects, including the man called Larson who’d led the cell that carried out the operation, literally melted before their horrified eyes.
Trin had managed to get her hands on the forensic analysis—the actual raw data, not the sanitized version that made it into the official report—and it was painfully obvious to her professional eye just when and where and how the operators hired by NDIA had gone wrong. Interrogation was a delicate business, requiring at least a day or two by a skilled operator, and tripwires were, by their very nature, touchy things to deal with. To disable them took at least twice as long, maybe even a week.
The implants Larson and the others had been fitted with were good but not the best she’d seen. Any halfway decent CEF interrogator would have found them and known how to handle them. Which meant that either the contractors selected by NDIA were not halfway decent or that something else was going on. And the more she looked at the situation as a whole, from the botched interrogations to the failed raid, the more the possible dimensions of that something else grew to disturbing proportions.
“Weren’t going to bring in any of your people, were they?” She offered to the silence.
“Never got that far. The grumbles said SOCOM was gonna try to keep it in-house this go.” Nick wagged the forefinger of his beer-holding hand at the last slice. “Sure you don’t want to split that?”
“Thanks, but you go ahead.”
Nick did and Trin watched as the last of the pizza fulfilled its destiny. “Who was read in on this op?” She asked as the last bite of crust disappeared. “Anyone new?”
He looked at her over his glass. “What’s on your mind, Trin?”
She wiped her mouth again on a napkin, scrubbing at more than just pizza grease, and dropped the crumpled cellucine wad into a trash receptacle. “It’s just that . . . Nick, have you ever known an op to go so wrong?”
“Not above a couple dozen.”
“No, I mean so precisely wrong. The plan was timed to the minute, from insertion to extraction. Look at this.” She brought a small envelope out of the breast pocket of her uniform.
Taliaferro’s eyebrows climbed high up the dark-tanned forehead. “You printed it?”
She nodded. “My paranoia is rising to a new pitch. Look.” She unsealed the envelope, extracted two folded flimsies and spread one out on top of the pizza box. “This is the timeline, as far as we’ve been able to reconstruct it. The more I look at it, the worse it seems—like they had a precise list of targets and were just waiting for them to show themselves so they could take them out.” She ran her fingers down the list of events, showing the planned and actual timing. “See the tolerances? Now here’s what we think happened.” She overlaid the second sheet on the first. “Note this delay? Another couple of minutes and they almost certainly would have aborted. But they were pushed right to the edge, where they’d have the least amount of time to adapt if anything went wrong. Then they walked straight into what must have been a trap.”
She sat back as Nick stared hard at the flimsies, lips moving in silent vexation.
“Now wouldn’t it take some
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