Calculated Sabotage Read online

  Calculated Sabotage

  The Calculated Series: Book 3

  K.T. Lee

  Vertical Line Publishing

  Copyright © 2018 by Vertical Line Publishing, LLC ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

  * * *

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, sold or transmitted in any form or by any means, without prior written permission, except for statuary uses, the use of brief quotations in a book review, and other quotations with appropriate reference.

  K.T. Lee

  www.ktleeauthor.com

  Publisher’s Note: This work of fiction is a product of the writer’s overactive imagination. It is not intended to be a factual representation of events, people, locales, businesses, government agencies, or rocket science. Names are used fictitiously and any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, is completely coincidental.

  Calculated Sabotage/ K.T. Lee - 1st ed.

  ISBN 978-1-947870-06-2

  Book cover design by The Book Design House

  www.thebookdesignhouse.com

  The Calculated Series

  * * *

  Calculated Extortion (Prequel Novella)

  Calculated Deception (Book 1)

  Calculated Contagion (Book 2)

  Calculated Sabotage (Book 3)

  Calculated Reaction (Book 4)

  Calculated Entrapment (Book 5)

  Table of 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

  Note from the Author

  Calculated Reaction Bonus Chapters

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  For my family

  1

  Quinn King raised her gun and looked down the sight. She relaxed her shoulders, let out a breath, and squeezed the trigger. The bullet passed through the center-chest X and the paper target fluttered. It had been six days since Rory, her friend and sometimes-partner, had been murdered. It had been four days since her boss had officially rejected her request to find her friend’s killer, reminding her that Rory’s death had not yet been ruled a murder. It had been three hours since Quinn had decided to investigate her friend’s death independently, orders be damned.

  Quinn shut her eyes tight, then opened them. She fired again. The bullet passed through the same neat hole in her target as the previous rounds. Quinn emptied the rest of her magazine into the X on the head of her target. She reloaded her weapon with a fresh magazine, pulled the slide to chamber a bullet, and slipped the Glock into the holster on her back.

  Quinn removed her ear protection and rolled her neck. The range master nodded at her, a small grin of admiration sneaking across his face. He knew her as Amy and had asked her out a few times. He was clearly former military and just attractive enough to not be obnoxious about it. He seemed like good people, but she just didn’t need the complications right now. She had work to do and it would start with a flight across the country.

  Contrary to popular mythology, even “lone wolf” CIA operations officers were expected to work well on a team. Quinn met Rory shortly after she started at the CIA, and they’d hit it off immediately. Rory had the charm to recruit foreign assets, and Quinn was the patient, strategic one. Some might call Quinn paranoid, but careful often looked like paranoid to the untrained eye. Within a few months of meeting, Quinn and Rory began to work on most of their operations together. However, it wasn’t always practical to work on a team. Which was how Rory ended up dead and how Quinn ended up sorting through the wreckage. She rubbed a hand down her face. She considered putting a few more bullets through the holes on her practice target, but before she could reach for her gun, her phone buzzed against her hip. She didn’t need to look at the name to know the Director of Special Operations was calling. The only people who had this number were Rory and DSO Dan Floyd.

  “Hey, boss.” Quinn absently rubbed her neck and scanned her surroundings. The crowd was pretty thin today, but the pops from the guns firing around her kept her from fully focusing on the call.

  “How are you holding up, Falcon?” Dan’s voice was carefully neutral.

  “That’s my name this month? Hm. I like it.”

  “I was thinking Bluebird, but it’s too cute. You scare me a little, Falcon.”

  “Ha. Like anyone could scare you.” When asked about his own reputation, the DSO would only shrug and say he could neither confirm nor deny the stories. He scared the bejesus out of the new operations officers. Quinn respected him, and what’s more, she liked him. As long as he didn’t coddle her.

  “You’re awful calm if you’re in the middle of a shootout. Are you at the range again?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You want to talk about it?” Dan’s voice softened.

  “No, sir. Not unless you’ve changed your mind.” Quinn shifted her weight and put her free hand on her hip.

  “We have a team on it, Falcon. Look, I can get you in with a counselor. What you’re feeling is perfectly normal.”

  “With all due respect, you’d have to drag me in unconscious, sir. However, now that you mention it, I think I need to take some vacation time soon.” Quinn turned around to check her back. Still just a bunch of cops and civilians practicing their aim. Their targets had more scatter than hers.

  “I was afraid of that. I haven’t authorized you to investigate Rory’s death. Or pick up where she left off. Even on your own time. As I recall, I told you no. Multiple times.”

  “I have some ideas.”

  “I rejected your request for your own sake. You chase this down, I’ll have to fire you.”

  Quinn raised her eyebrows. She wasn’t under the impression she was irreplaceable, but she was good at her job because she knew when to call a bluff. “You’re a real cut-up, sir. So, I need to take that vacation. To spend as I choose. If I happen to see something fishy going on while I do some sightseeing, I’ll let you know. I’ve done some research of my own. I’m thinking of heading out west, maybe going to visit some mountain towns.”

  There was a long pause on the end of the line. If Quinn was there in person, she’d see Dan’s jaw tighten and nostrils flare, just slightly. “We’ve got analysts digging into the evidence and checking security video. You’re not the only person upset we lost one of our own. I need you away from this.”

  “Then you’re going to need to be a good shot to take me down. C’mon, sir. Let me take this on. You need someone who can get in there and get the job done.”

  “You know there’s a chain of command, right?”

  “I call you ‘sir.’ Will you put me in charge, sir?”

  Dan sighed. “If you show one sign of not being able to handle this, I’m pulling you. I’ll take you into custody if I have to.”

  Quinn grinned. “Deal.”

  “We’ll get you some information by tomorrow. Take your time coming up with a plan for this one. The last thing I need is to lose you too. I’ll be in touch.”

  “Sounds great, sir. Thank you, sir.”

  Quinn cleaned up her things, tossed her target, and waved goodbye to the range master. Then, she went back to her a
partment to pack. She couldn’t bring Rory back, but she could make sure her friend hadn’t died in vain.

  2

  Cam Mitchell’s phone buzzed. He looked around the tastefully decorated reception, but everyone was focused on the couple sharing a dance under strings of lights. He slipped his phone out of his pocket. It was a message from Morgan Grady, his boss at the Special Operations Group at the CIA. Come to my office when you’re back in town. He tucked the phone back in his pocket and considered what Morgan might have in store for him. He’d flown to Minnesota for the weekend to see his best friend and fellow operations officer, Tyler Scott, get married. Tyler’s new wife, Dani, leaned her head on his shoulder while cameras around them clicked. Tyler had met Dani when she helped them stop a plot to release a bioweapon, and their relationship had quickly blossomed into the kind that would very likely last a lifetime.

  It was possible Morgan had questions about the report he submitted about his trip to Moscow. He’d written it in his hotel room, just after his plane landed in the States and a few hours before the rehearsal dinner. He’d flown to Russia to meet with local sources to see if the politician behind the bioweapon had anything else up his sleeve, but Dmitri was nothing if not careful. Cam’s report didn’t have much useful information in it. However, it was unusual for Morgan to reach out on a weekend for something that could afford to wait. If it had anything to do with Tyler and Dani, he should probably check on it before they were out of the country on their honeymoon. It wasn’t long ago that Dmitri had orchestrated Dani’s kidnapping when she traveled to Europe for a conference. Cam slipped away through a side door and pressed Morgan’s name.

  Morgan answered on the first ring. “Good evening, Cameron. How are Dani and Tyler?”

  “Happily married. I think Dani will really like it in D.C. She’s pretty excited she landed a job at the National Institutes of Health.”

  “I bet. They didn’t waste any time getting married.”

  “Well, her parents are pretty conservative and they wanted them married before they moved in together. Tyler said he didn’t need any more time to decide.”

  “That’s sweet. I told him to take a few weeks off. After everything they’ve been through, they deserve it.”

  Cam checked his surroundings. All of the partygoers were still inside. “My flight is tomorrow morning, but I can get back sooner if it’s urgent. Is this about my trip?”

  “No, it’s something new. I’d rather not go into details over the phone. We have a situation we’d like you to look into. Dan is managing this one personally. Can I tell him you’re in?”

  Cam raised his eyebrows. The Director of Special Operations usually left the running of operations to the people who worked for him. “Always, ma’am.”

  “Thanks, Cam. Enjoy the rest of your evening.”

  Cam ended the call and returned to the celebration. Tyler eyed him and Cam returned an easy smile. Tyler had a honeymoon to go on – he didn’t need the stress of the next op weighing on him. And if Dan was in charge, he probably couldn’t talk to Tyler about it anyway. With any luck, Cam would be flying solo on this one. Their last op had included people from both the CIA and FBI. While it had been a productive cross-agency collaboration, it had gotten a little crowded for his taste. A little quiet time on a solo operation would be just what he needed to recharge.

  * * *

  After an early flight to Washington Dulles, Cam drove directly to Langley without stopping at his apartment. Morgan’s door was cracked open a fraction and Cam tapped on it before he walked in. She looked up at him and smiled. It didn’t reach her eyes. “Great. You’re here. How was the wedding?”

  “Good. Tyler and Dani are on a plane headed to an island in the Pacific.”

  “Sounds nice. And how was Moscow?”

  “Uneventful. Dmitri has been laying low. None of our sources know anything.”

  “We’ll get someone to keep monitoring our sources over there in case something pops. Right now, I need to move you to something more urgent. Would you mind shutting the door?” While Morgan Grady was just over five feet tall, her presence was commanding. Her short hair was styled to perfection and she wore her trademark, impeccably-tailored navy suit.

  Cam closed the door and took his seat across from Morgan. He raised an eyebrow. “How bad is it?”

  “We added another star to the Memorial Wall.”

  Cam was a polyglot, an officer valued for his fluency in multiple languages and dialects. However, there was only one word in his arsenal appropriate for the situation. “Fuck.”

  “Agreed, Cameron.”

  “Please tell me I get to go rain hell on whoever did this.”

  “That’s the idea. Quietly, of course. We need you to help find the person behind our officer’s death. It goes without saying that this will be a tightly controlled operation. Dan reached out to me and he’ll be heavily involved, along with one of his operations officers. Technically, since I report to him, it’s reasonable for me to involved. Practically, he asked me because he trusts me. We don’t know why or how this individual was targeted. In fact, it’s still possible her death was an accident and that we are overreacting.”

  “Yeah, it’s technically possible, but you don’t believe it, or I wouldn’t be here.” Morgan nodded and Cam crossed his arms. “Tell me about the officer who was killed.” Morgan didn’t make a big deal out of every operation. There was real work to do here.

  “The operations officer’s name was Rory Flanagan.” Morgan slid a folder across her desk, and Cam flipped it open to a standard CIA employee photo. Rory had strawberry blonde hair, freckles, and an easy smile – she looked like the quintessential girl next door. “She was a natural at recruiting assets and had a good sense for people. She had as perfect of a record as you can in this business. No indication she’d ever been burned. She was working a case at a rocket company in Victoria, Washington, called Innovative Rocket Technologies. The house she was staying in exploded.”

  “On its own? Or did it have help?”

  “Non-CIA accident investigators have pointed to a natural gas leak. Our people haven’t been able to prove otherwise yet, which could just mean our criminal knows what they’re doing.”

  “IRT is the company that just lost a rocket, right?”

  “Yes, their most recent launch exploded shortly after liftoff.” Morgan looked down at her notes. “Just over two months ago.”

  “Is that related to the officer’s death?”

  “That’s one of the things we need you to find out. Rory was sent to get a closer look at the company because the failed rocket was carrying a government payload. IRT’s track record up to that point was excellent and the circumstances of the failure had some of our people asking questions. Rory was just poking around the edges. Given what we know about her death, we have better than even odds that a criminal secured a position at IRT through legitimate channels. As you know, this occasionally happens.” Morgan raised her eyebrows. Cam’s collaboration with the FBI had started with just such a situation at a university. Their criminal did a good job covering his tracks, and if Cam hadn’t had an inside source at the university, they might never have known what he was up to.

  “So, our perp is someone working at the company and Rory got too close?”

  “That’s our working theory, but we have no way to be sure. Still, you and I both know that most criminals aren’t going to take someone out on a hunch they’re working for the CIA. It would draw more attention to them versus just getting out of Dodge.”

  “So, they must have something else planned.”

  Morgan nodded. “Rory’s partner thinks the criminal is still at IRT, waiting to execute whatever plan Rory uncovered. She wants to get a closer look.”

  “I’ll bet she does. I would too. Do I know her partner?”

  “Unlikely. Dan is holding on real tight to her identity.” Interesting. The CIA was notoriously secretive with last names and scrubbed most of the intelligence they collected, bu
t Morgan’s tone suggested something more. He crossed his arms and waited. Morgan folded her hands on her desk. “She’s an operations officer with very few paper records. They recruited her as a college student when she was having some trouble with her university’s paperwork. Found out her information wasn’t entered correctly in the government’s electronic systems and she’s incredibly intelligent. She’s quite good with a number of languages but not a polyglot. Understandably, they created records for her and quietly paid for her college. She’s been with us ever since. I only know her by the code name they gave her for this operation. And I know the additional facts only because I’ve been read in on this. Please consider even that top secret. Her code name for this operation is Falcon. Dan or Falcon will provide you more information at their discretion.”

  Cam let out a low whistle. He’d heard of these people but always thought they were more legend than anything else. Apparently not. “Who else are we bringing in on this?”

  “No one. The analysts who investigated Rory’s death will not know of your involvement. Even Tyler can’t hear about this one.”

  Cam crossed his arms. “And the CIA is still claiming they believe her death was an accident?”

  “No, I’m saying we don’t have the evidence to prove it was intentional yet.”

  Cam’s eyes narrowed. If the CIA was keeping it this compartmentalized, they’d already concluded the operations officer’s death was intentional. Worse, the Agency was treating this like it could have been an inside job. Of course, they wouldn’t come out and say it. They’d give him the spiel that Morgan just gave him. He nodded. “So, what are our next steps?”