Will had just crossed the border from Maryland into West Virginia. The storage facility that Alvin had told him to go to was within an hour’s drive. He planned to enjoy it.
Alvin wanted him to get a duplicate documentation of Slim’s design–the only one. It was Alvin’s back up plan should he have had to destroy Slim to keep it from getting into Larkin’s hands. The documentation would have allowed him to rebuild it efficiently rather than starting from scratch. Alvin had written the documentation in a secret code but codes can be broken, and he did not want to take the risk. So, the plan was for Will to retrieve it and destroy it.
The rolling countryside was beautiful, and Will wasn’t paying any attention to his speed when he noticed the blinking lights and siren of a West Virginia state trooper behind him.
Shit, he muttered to himself as he continued driving on the curving road.
He realized that getting stopped could pose a problem, and he made a quick judgment to go into stealth mirror mode as he rounded the next curve. Once he was invisible, he pulled over as the police cruiser flew passed him.
Officer Gridley was surprised that he hadn’t overtaken the speeding motorist. He radioed dispatch and another trooper entered the same road two miles ahead coming the other way. With no turnoffs or intersections with other roads they would have this yahoo soon.
As the officers came into view of each other they pulled off to the side of the road and talked to each other with their windows down.
“Son of a bitch disappeared,” Gridley said.
“How you gonna’ report that in?” the other officer asked.
Gridley thought and then said, “I’m simply going to tell the truth.”
“Good luck with that.” The other officer laughed as he drove away.
Gridley reported that he had been in pursuit of a vehicle doing seventy in a fifty, but it eluded him. It just disappeared.
“Come again?”
Gridley repeated himself.
For clarification, the dispatcher repeated what she heard. “So, Officer Gridley, the vehicle just disappeared?”
“Yes.”
“I think we’ll just conclude that it got away from you. Stay with ’em cowboy.” She laughed as she signed off.
The analyst at NSA called his boss. “We have a West Virginia state trooper reporting a vehicle that disappeared.”
“Did he identify the vehicle?” the boss asked.
“No sir. They’re writing it off.”
“We’ll see about that.”
Within minutes after the call from Larkin, Reed Logan was on a chopper to West Virginia.
He landed adjacent to the West Virginia State Police Barracks near Berkeley Springs. Officer Gridley met him in the conference room.
“Thank you Officer Gridley for waiting for me,” Logan said as he shook Gridley’s hand.
“No problem.” Gridley was anxious and uncomfortable. His comment that a vehicle had disappeared had gotten attention that he couldn’t understand and didn’t want to.
“Tell me exactly what you saw.”
“I was looking at my instruments and the vehicle passed my station at seventy in a fifty. I pulled out and got a quick look as it followed a bend in the road and left my sight. I radioed dispatch that I was in pursuit and another officer came at the vehicle from the other direction. There are no side roads or intersections in that stretch of road. The other officer and I met up in little more than a minute. There was no vehicle in sight.”
“What can you tell me about it?”
Gridley didn’t have much, and he felt stupid. “I only saw it briefly from behind as it left my line of sight going around the bend. It was a small car. It was a dark color, I couldn’t really tell.”
“It wasn’t silver.”
“No,” Gridley answered.
“Could it have been a PT Cruiser?” Logan asked, even though he knew he was grasping at air.
“I really couldn’t tell, but I can’t say that it wasn’t.”
Logan was at least pleased with the non-answer rather than a flat no. “Thank you Officer Gridley.” He turned and left. There was a lot of work to do.
Will pulled away slowly over the treetops as he watched the two policemen converge. He could hear the report to the dispatcher, and he was relieved that the officer didn’t get his license plate and couldn’t describe the vehicle. He was also glad that he had Slim change the color from silver to dark blue as a precaution. Slim was racing through the network of surveillance and either erasing the vehicle or generally corrupting the data.
I’ve got to be more careful. Jesus!, Will chastised himself.
He touched down inside the perimeter fence of the mini-storage facility and had slim disable the security cameras while he retrieved the box with the manuals that Alvin had prepared. In short order, he was on his way back to Philadelphia.
Where is Parnell?” Logan asked the surveillance team.
“He’s in his apartment,” his agent answered.
“What about his car?” Logan thought it was worth a shot.
“I don’t know but we’ll look.”
They pinged the tracker that they put on the car, which Slim picked up immediately.
“Will Parnell. They are trying to locate the PT Cruiser,” Slim reported.
“Put the PT Cruiser at a dealership north of the city and insert an order into their system to change the oil and rotate the tires. Get us there so we can deposit it on their lot as fast as possible.”
Logan received a report that the car was at a dealership. Something still wasn’t right about Parnell, he just felt it in his bones
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