The Apparatus (Jason Trapp Book 5) Read online

  The Apparatus

  Jason Trapp Book 5

  Jack Slater

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  1

  The Fashion Center Mall in Pentagon City was already humming with the morning rush as Jason Trapp stepped inside. The throngs of tourists that flocked to Washington DC every summer and fall hadn’t yet roused themselves, so the shopping mall mostly contained locals, soldiers, sailors, Marines, and airmen who staffed the US military’s massive bureaucracy on the Potomac.

  And civilians, Trapp thought idly as his eyes picked their way through a sea of uniforms, alighting on as many business suits.

  He was dressed in an unremarkable fashion. A plain white T-shirt covered his scarred, muscular torso, though it too was concealed beneath a dark navy sport coat. Both sat astride a pair of black jeans purchased from a Goodwill store the day before, aged over years to a more indistinct gray. The look was neither eye-catching nor disagreeable. It was just…

  Gray.

  And that was the way that Trapp liked it.

  He moved through the mall, the flow of human traffic carrying him downstream, his uneven eyes always moving, cataloging every face and outfit for future reference. Someone was watching. Maybe someones. Someone was always watching, whether they knew it yet or not.

  But it was his job to remain unseen, unnoticed, to slink through a crowd without drawing a second glance, to remain alert without attracting attention. It was an infinitely difficult skill to acquire, and one that eroded through lack of use. Thankfully, it was one he called upon frequently.

  The uniforms made it difficult to distinguish individuals in the flow of faces. It was easier with the civilians, who announced their individuality brashly with a flash of color in their tie or a frisson of embroidery at the hem of a skirt.

  But the men and women in uniform were only ranks to him. The Army sergeant with the bulbous, broken nose who seemed at first glance more suited to the rigors of a foreign battlefield than the penance of riding a desk job to retirement. The Marine major with the rigid posture and battered briefcase in his dress greens, afforded an extra few inches of personal space in every direction by the lesser ranks on every side.

  And the Air Force colonel seated in the food court, fingers greasy as he devoured his breakfast order. Trapp had to smile at that one.

  He rode the stream of warm bodies to its edge, then stepped out of its way and knelt in front of a glass-windowed storefront to tie his shoelace. No one in the crowd behind him paid him a second glance as he scanned the reflection for the flash of eyes passing over his frame.

  Only an amateur would allow themselves to be fooled by such an obvious ploy. A trained surveillance operative would walk right on past without ever glancing down, knowing that another member of the team would seamlessly pick up the trail.

  But they weren’t always so professional. And maybe one in a hundred times, or five hundred, or a thousand, a trailing agent’s gaze might be attracted for a fraction of a second too long – just enough time to be noticed.

  However, not this time. As far as Trapp could tell, the flow of humanity carried on without a lull.

  He tightened the loop of his shoelace, then rode the glass-walled elevator to the mall’s second floor. Few of the stores were open yet, so he browsed a concession booth manned by a teenager with puffy, tired eyes who was staring aimlessly into the flashing screen of an enormous silver cell phone. The output sold mostly trinkets: baseball caps, keychains, phone covers, and the like, but the diversion gave him the opportunity to run a secondary tail check.

  Trapp purchased a souvenir keychain that bore the logo of DC United, the local soccer franchise. He made a show of pulling a set of keys from his pocket, loosening the existing chain, and tossing it in a trashcan before fixing his keys to the new purchase. As he did so, he occasionally glanced at the display mirror in the concession booth.

  Still nothing.

  With nothing much open at this hour, this floor of the mall was mostly empty. Certain now that he was indeed alone, Trapp circled it, keeping away from the balcony that looked down into the central courtyard under the pretense of occasionally glancing into a still-closed storefront.

  On the other side of the mall he called an elevator, which arrived swiftly and just as speedily carried him back down. This time, he fought against the river of office workers, a trick that would have made it easy to spot anyone following directly behind, which no one was, and walked through the tunnel that led to the Pentagon City Metro station.

  “Sorry,” he murmured, gently but intentionally bumping against a female Army NCO who murmured something indistinct in response and was soon lost to the morning traffic.

  Give them something to think about.

  At all times, he knew, a surveillance operative would be searching for a sign that their target intended to empty or add to a dead drop location. Or failing that, then any bump, any chance meeting of two individuals side by side in an elevator or behind one another in a store line or crowd could be a brush past – a physical exchange of secrets. Almost impossible to detect if conducted by two trained professionals. Less so when the counterparty was a nervous source.

  Thinking like this, Trapp knew, was a fast lane to insanity. When every innocent glance could be interpreted as a threat, the human mind was never able to relax, to decompress. He couldn’t simply walk casually through a crowd; he had to remember every face, scan every posture for a hint of danger.

  The problem was that the old phrase was right: it wasn’t really paranoia when they really were out to get you.

  A pair of screeching escalators ran down into the Metro station itself, causing Trapp to wince as he gently pressed his fingers into his ears for protection. Though the stairway to his side was packed two abreast with uniforms and suits, there was only one other lady traveling downward, a Latina who looked to be in her mid-fifties, hair pulled back into a graying bun and wearing the uniform of a local cleaning contractor.

  Trapp passed through the ticket barriers and made his way down to the trains. Belowground the tracks had a cinematic feel to them, a dim back-lighting glowing from behind vaulted concrete rectangles. The space be
tween the platforms was dark, giving up only the occasional glimpse of the gleaming metal of the worn tracks. Neither platform was busy, though a few trailing commuters from the last train to stop at the station were still making their way up to the ticket area.

  The display above the platform indicated the next train would arrive in under two minutes. Then a gap of only a minute before the one after that. It was the tail end of rush hour, so right now the Metro system was running fast and frequently, a fact upon which Trapp was counting. He had the transit map memorized and had already scouted half a dozen stations on his route at which he could jump off a train and get back above ground, dive into a cab or simply just change lines to defeat anyone in pursuit.

  A minute ticked away as Trapp waited alone on the platform, barring the cleaner from earlier. Two men waited on the opposite side, both wearing Army fatigues. The camo looked almost black in the gloom. One was leaning against the station’s back wall, his eyes seemingly closed. The other had his eyes locked onto a glowing cell phone screen. Trapp casually glanced across, under the guise of pretending to check when the next train was due.

  One minute.

  A woman bounded down the escalator wearing short heels and a blue and white striped blouse. She had platinum blond hair that was cut just above her shoulders. She didn’t appear to be paying attention to the steps beneath her, which she took two at a time, her attention focused on the handbag currently clutched against her chest with her right hand buried inside.

  She looked up, and a wave of relief washed over her face as she saw that she still had time. Trapp watched out of the corner of his eye as she rushed past him, settling the handbag back on her shoulder, a small black disc in her fingers.

  The woman stopped to his left, flicked open the small makeup case, and began hurriedly touching up her eyeliner. To Trapp’s right, he saw a small, bronze-coated cylinder rotating slowly on the platform, rolling inch by inch toward the platform’s edge. It was only a foot away from him, so he leaned down and picked it up an instant before it toppled toward the tracks. He lifted it to his eyes and peered curiously.

  Lipstick.

  “I’m sorry, ma’am,” Trapp said, walking over and gently tapping her on the shoulder. “You dropped this.”

  “My God,” she gasped, looking up from the mirror in her left hand. “You made me jump!”

  He smiled and proffered her tube of lipstick. “Sorry about that.”

  He wasn’t entirely. Like the sergeant in the commuter rush earlier, she was more chaff for anyone watching to deal with. More admin. Another set of due diligence.

  She plucked it from his fingers, removed the lid, and examined it with all the vigor of a diamond grader, as though he might have tampered with it while it was out of her possession. “Thank you so much!”

  Trapp stepped back and waved his hands magnanimously. “Forget about it.”

  The squeal of metal against metal echoed down the platform as a distant rumble of thunder warned of the approach of a Metro train. The sound attracted both their attention.

  And just as the train emerged from the darkness of the tunnel beyond, a second woman walked down onto the platform. She was dressed conservatively, like Trapp himself, and though she seemed to be in her late twenties, her haircut looked modeled for a woman twice her age. Likewise, her clothing seemed designed to disguise her figure rather than attract the eye.

  She didn’t look at Trapp as she stepped off the elevator. As far as anyone watching could tell, her eyes were drawn only to the train now slowing to a halt.

  Anyone, that is, except Trapp.

  2

  “Good morning, Papi.”

  Hector Alvarez León smiled at the sight of his young daughter’s face, already smeared red with a streak of tomato juice from the breakfast plate in front of her. He reached for a paper towel, tore off a strip, and wiped away the mess before running his fingers through her hair.

  “Morning, bella,” he said, using the family nickname for Gabriella León , his only child. Bella for beautiful. A beautiful accident. “Are you excited for school today?”

  Gabriella frowned, crossing her little arms over an equally delicate chest. “Can’t I go to work with you?”

  Looking up, Hector caught his dark-haired wife’s eyes roll with amusement. Every morning was the same. He blew her an affectionate air kiss, then pulled a wooden stool up to the breakfast bar. It was the rickety one, he realized as he sat down on it. The one he’d been meaning to fix every weekend for the last month.

  “You know you can’t, Gabby.” He smiled, glancing meaningfully at the half-eaten plate of baked tomato and eggs in front of his daughter. “But Papi will cook make you pancakes this weekend if you like?”

  “Hey!” his wife exclaimed as she set down a steaming plate of his own in front of him. “What’s wrong with my huevos?”

  He winked lasciviously at María León , raking his gaze up and down his wife’s perfect body in plain view of Gabriella. At only five years old, she was still too young to comprehend what her parents were up to. Yet somehow her childhood would disappear in an instant, and she would be all grown up.

  The thought pained him. In her school uniform, a dark navy skirt topped with a tiny white polo shirt emblazoned with the icon of a fifteenth century Catholic saint, Gabriella looked almost too pure to comprehend. Too innocent for this world. The image allowed Hector – if only with painful brevity – to pretend that he could protect her from the chaos of the world outside these four walls.

  But that was a lie.

  Gabriella’s school uniform was proof enough of that. Every morning, she was driven to school in an unmarked bus that was trailed by a pair of equally plain police vehicles. The school itself was attended mainly by children just like Gabby. The sons and daughters of police officers and local politicians and military types like him.

  Ordinarily, on a captain’s salary, Hector León would be unable to afford even a semester of Gabriella’s school fees. But in Mexico, few enough were willing to go to war with the forces of darkness. Fewer still would run the risk if their families weren’t offered at least a fig leaf of security.

  “Are you listening, Hector?” his wife María chided as Gabriella looked on with dark, soulful, disappointed eyes that echoed her mother’s words.

  He grimaced and gave a slight shake of his head. “What did you say?”

  “I cleaned your uniform,” she said, jerking her head at a duffel bag sitting by the front door. Her nose wrinkled. “The smell…”

  Hector shrugged, remembering the plate of food in front of him for the first time. He began to shovel the now slightly cooler eggs into his mouth, speaking through the maelstrom. “It’s natural. And we do a lot of running, remember?”

  “Oh, I remember,” María said, shooting her husband a look of her own. “And I thought we agreed you would learn to use the washing machine?”

  The chime of Hector’s fork meeting the now-empty plate in front of him scythed through the moment’s mild tension just in time to prevent Gabriella becoming alarmed. He threw up his hands in apology and communicated the same message by fixing his gaze directly on his wife’s eyes. “I’m sorry. Yesterday was busy. But that’s not an excuse.”

  “Every day’s busy,” María remarked with a raised eyebrow, though her expression had by now softened. “For me as well.”

  “Papi,” Gabriella yelped, pushing away her still-full plate so that it slid a few inches from her. “Will you drive me to school?”

  Hector allowed his gaze to linger on his wife’s eyes for a few more breaths to check she understood that he’d received her message loud and clear. María León was no pushover. That’s what he liked so much about her.

  “You know I can’t,” he said, standing and reaching across the table. He lifted Gabriella by her armpits and swooped her tiny frame through the air until she giggled, forgetting at least the immediacy of her request as he set her back down to earth. “Your friends would miss you.”

 
Gabriella nodded to herself, her lips set in agreement, convinced in that way young children often are of their own centrality to the universe. “But you’ll be home this weekend?”

  He crouched down in front of his daughter, squeezing her cheeks, his eyes briefly catching the position of the clock’s hands before they snapped back to her face. “For you, of course, hija.”

  With Gabriella mollified, he stood and kissed his wife goodbye. As always, he wondered if today might be his last opportunity. As always, he kissed his wife like he meant it, and she responded in kind.

  “I’ll check your car,” he said softly as his lips pulled away from hers, and instantly, the shine in María’s eyes died. Back to earth.

  He winced as he applied the coup de grâce. “And I won’t be back tonight. I’m on duty until tomorrow. I’ll sleep at the base. Okay?”

  María nodded, knowing not to make any overt show of concern in front of their daughter, but the worry in her dark brown eyes told that story regardless. He held her arms for a few seconds longer, communicating silently.

  I’ll be fine. I always am.

  Hector ruffled Gabby’s hair on his way out and drank in one last glimpse of his family as he hauled the battered Nike duffel bag over his shoulder. Like the rest of his public life, the bag was camouflage. He stepped out of the front door, and his eyes scanned the small, neat driveway outside his suburban house. The garage was detached from the main building but had its own security system, connected to the state police’s switchboard. Still, Hector did not trust modern technology alone to keep him safe.