*~*~*~*~*~*ON THE RUN*~*~*~*~*~*
The advantage of being me is that I have the knowledge to get lost and not be found...
The disadvantage of being me is that someone will always be looking for me...
*
I had gone to a place I had never been before - the mythical land of real, heart pounding fear. Now I needed space and time to think.
Over the ten years that I've been doing my job I've gained enough knowledge to recognize there are four basic parts to running a good operation; Planning, Execution, Concluding and most importantly - having a fucking good back-up plan. I have never started an op without having an escape plan already in place.
Somewhere along the way, about five years into this life I adopted, I realized that it would prudent of me to have an escape plan if anything ever went wrong with the job, exactly like what was happening to me now. I could cite a thousand reasons why but it basically boiled down to I valued my life enough to want to build an escape plan on my home turf if this day ever arrived.
The moment my SUV exited Langley I went into overdrive executing what I called my "Get-the-Fuck-Away" plan. I only had a Plan A so I knew it had to be a good one. The basic premise of the plan was to ditch everything that could be tracked back to Aaron Mitchell as quickly as possible. This involved dumping the SUV and everything that could remotely connect me to my former self at a mega mart shopping center 3.3 miles from the Langley gate.
My plan was executed in stages. One: get to the Mega Mart and get a clean (bug and tracker free) set of clothes. Two: Hide out until dark - there was an hour and a half hours of daylight left. Three: Make my way using alleyways and side streets to the storage facility where I had everything I needed to assume my new identity and make a (hopefully) clean getaway.
The only kink in my plan and the thing that I feared the most was facial recognition software.
The software had become the bane of my profession because as the technology had developed the 3D capabilities used to identify distinctive features on the surface of the face, such as the contour of the eye sockets, nose and chin had become more precise. I was gambling on the hope that the shopping center I had chosen my escape in was old enough that they didn't have the state of the art cameras and that the people tracking me were going to use the software to do surface viewing. I was counting on them looking through the crowds to find me rather than searching each person in the camera's eye on a detailed level. I figured it was all dependent on who had access to the video cameras that surrounded the area and how badly they wanted me.
My hiding space at the Mega Mart was a little niche I had discovered under the loading dock at the back of the anchor store in the shopping plaza. It's amazing how people look past you when you put on dark pants, a yellow shirt and carry what looks like a vest over your shoulder. To them I was just another employee getting ready to step out on the loading dock to take a break. I had run this scenario, under the guise of practice makes perfect, every time I came home from an operation and never once did anyone question me.
When I was sure I wasn't followed I made myself comfortable with a store bought bottle of water and two protein bars while I waited on the darkness. This brief respite gave me the quiet time I needed to figure out my next step after I made my getaway. Sadly I knew that I wouldn't be able to contact Lawrence. He was persona non grata for however long it took for this thing to end. As disturbing as this was it truly was for the best. I had lost my focus with him and let my guard down, something I had never done before.
The reality of the situation is that paranoia, in contained situations, can result in a healthy state of mind when you do the type of work that I do. For me it makes me question everything around me, especially the things I do and say. Other than the first ten minutes of our meeting, the four days I spent with Lawrence were free of any doubts or second thoughts which in turn opened the flood gates for other, new to me, emotions to surface. The biggest thing, and something I had never experienced before with someone, was a Zen-like state many people called optimism. I even envisioned a future with him, something I had never experienced before.
Unfortunately, like many things in life, all that went south the moment we left the bubble of my Fredericksburg house. I returned to my life as Aaron Mitchell to the apartment I occupied as him in Arlington and was following my normal routine of checking my place with a hand held bug detector for listening devices that might have been added since the last time I was there. The minute I turned it on it began beeping loudly.
It should have come as no surprise to me that I was bugged but it kicked the dormant paranoia from neutral back into overdrive. Emptying my pockets I ran the hand held machine over the items until it scanned the coin that Lawrence had given me. He had said it was his grandfathers and he wanted me to have it to keep me safe.
I sat on my bed starring at the coin, remembering how valued I felt when he handed it to me. Now I pondering why Lawrence had given it to me. Was it because he cared so much he wanted to be able to keep track of me or did he mistrust me so much that he felt the need to keep track of me? Doubts about what we had shared slowly crept over me filling me with regret that I let my guard down so much with him.
Regardless of his reasons the coin, like my relationship with Lawrence, was now gone. The moment my SUV fled the exit gates of Langley AFB I aimed and flipped it into the bed of a passing pickup truck heading into Langley.
Shaking my head I tried to get my thoughts back on track again but they were still jumbled as I went back and forth between trying to figure who the mole was, why Lawrence wanted to pin the General's death on me and the bad vibes I had been picking up from Brian all afternoon. Brian was a bigger surprise to me. Even more than Lawrence. I had only known Lawrence for five days, Brian I had known for over seven years and countless times my life dangled in his hands.
The day before he was my ally and appeared to be my protector. He stood up for me whenever Lawrence starting crossing the line. Today, however, was a different story. At first I thought Brian was feeling condescension for how I ran the operation but after awhile I was feeling something else. His body language changed drastically when I talked about the conference in Dubai, like he knew I was digging this hole that I would never get out of. I had always been the type of person that allowed my sixth sense to guide me and now it was telling me to put Brian on the top of the list while at the same time stay clear of him.
"Oh fuck..." I muttered under my breath when it finally hit me. We spent so much time and energy trying to figure out who the mole was without taking into consideration who was giving the mole their instructions. To the layman the obvious choices would be Chinese, the Russians or one of the Islamic factions.
To me, I knew that this was centered on a Muslim faction and I suspect I knew exactly who. If it were any clearer it could have slapped me in the face. The first incident was one of our operatives was killed in Afghanistan, another operative was kicked out of Israel, the result being an even more strained relationship between the United States and Israel and then the General was killed.
I don't know why, but for some reason my mind went to Prince Abdullah. He definitely had the smarts and money to pull this thing off - but why? What could he possibly hope to succeed in doing if he was behind this? Why would he kill the General? I couldn't help but think of the relationship the two of them shared. They loved each other with a passion - that same passion I had hoped to find one day with someone. How could he have killed him?
Sadly, I realized that beyond the love they might have shared Al stood for something that Abdullah was opposed to. Al wanted to enjoy the Western ways and relax the conservative rule of Islam. Abdullah wanted to unify Islam and take conservative rule to new heights.
In their world death came easy to those that weren't willing to embrace Allah totally in body, mind and spirit.
*
Darkness finally arrived and I slipped from the loading dock and made my way to my next destination. I jumped the low stone wall that ran along the back of the Mega Mart and followed alleyways until I knew I was clear of prying eyes and cameras. The storage facility I stored my escape vehicle was a short ten blocks away which I covered at a comfortable jog so as not to draw any attention to myself.
I chose this particular storage facility because it was the oldest facility that was closest to Langley AFB and after several trips to the office to pay the bills I found out that the cameras they had on every corner of the six one story buildings were old and fed to a non-internet based recording system. I would be long gone before anyone would ever think about scanning the recordings.
I punched the code into the keypad at the front gate and made my way back to the last building where I lifted the heavy combination lock I used to anchor the oversize garage door. As the door opened a smile crept across my face seeing my Class A 40' RV come into view. What better way to escape? It was my own traveling hotel room. Complete with a king size bed, full bathroom, kitchen, satellite TV and internet and enough space in the rear to store a motorcycle. I had stocked the RV with a full wardrobe of clothes, shoes, toiletries and even some non perishable food. In the bedroom I opened a small wall safe I had secreted away in the bottom of one of the storage cabinets. In the safe was ten thousand dollars in cash, a new set of ID's and the keys to the RV.
I got to work getting things ready for my departure. In the bathroom I applied a full, extra thick, beard that changed the shape of my face, colored contact lenses going from brown eyes to green and glasses. The crowning touch was thicker eye brows and a natural looking wig giving me the appearance of longer hair. Looking in the mirror even I couldn't recognize myself. I hoped it would be enough to fool any prying eyes that might be searching me out.
It was just after nine o'clock when I pulled the RV out of the now empty garage. I didn't even bother closing the garage door. I would never be back there and the phone number they had on me on file was nonexistent. The seemingly white RV with its Maryland license tags rode smoothly away from Washington. It wasn't until I was deep in Virginia that I allowed myself a quick pit stop at a closed truck weigh station. There I pulled the white contact paper from the sides of the RV and switched the false tags for the real ones.
My now black sleek RV with its Connecticut license plates was ready to go.
*
