The Prisoner's Gold

11

Two hours and three cups of coffee later, Special Agent Callahan stood from his chair and stretched his aching back. As expected, the footage of the bombing in Egypt had been hard to watch, and nothing of value had been gained. He was nearly ready to give up on the process when something unexpected popped up on the screen. It was so surprising that he thought he was seeing things.

‘Hold on! Run that back for me!’

Koontz, who was half asleep in front of the computer, blinked a few times before he emerged from his trance. ‘Why? Is she hot?’

Callahan pushed his partner aside and scrolled back through the last few minutes of footage before he let it play again. Shot by a witness with a cell phone, the video was remarkably clear. The camera panned across the scene of destruction before settling on a man who was bravely helping those trapped underneath the wreckage. As the bystander zoomed in, the hero’s blood-caked face filled the screen.

Callahan quickly pressed PAUSE. ‘I’ll be damned. Will you look at that?’

Koontz stared at the man, confused. ‘Um … that’s a dude.’

Callahan nodded, completely oblivious to his partner’s innuendo. ‘You’re not going to believe this, but I’ve seen that guy before.’

‘Where? Playgirl?’

‘No, asshole, that’s the guy who saved my life in Brooklyn.’

Koontz glanced at his partner, then back at the screen, then back at his partner. ‘And on that note, I think it’s time for a break. Just how much coffee have you had today?’

‘Jason, I’m serious!’

‘I’m serious, too. This is footage from a crime scene in Africa, not Brooklyn. Granted, both are filled with black people, but—’

‘Listen,’ he blurted, interrupting the racist remark, ‘I know what I’m saying sounds crazy — I know it does — but I’m telling you: that’s the guy who saved my life.’

‘And?’

‘And I need to know why.’

Koontz, who had been trapped inside the surveillance van during the firefight, hadn’t seen the man in question, but based on the tactics involved and the number of guards who had been eliminated, they had always suspected that the man had received extensive military training. If so, he was bound to be in their system.

‘Fine!’ he grumbled, as he copied the man’s face from the paused footage and fed it into the FBI’s facial-recognition database. ‘This doesn’t mean that I believe you. It only means that I want you to shut the fuck up.’

‘Trust me, I know the feeling.’

Koontz took the insult in stride. ‘I hope you realize that you can’t put any of this in your report, or we’ll be teased more than we are right now.’

Callahan nodded. ‘I know.’

As the program processed the face from the video, Callahan paced around the room like an expectant father. He knew the system could take hours to find a match, but there was no way he would be able to focus on anything else until the search was done.

Surprisingly, he received his answer less than ten minutes later.

‘I’ll be damned,’ Koontz muttered as he stared at the file that had popped up on his screen. ‘It looks like you were right.’

The black-and-white photo had been taken long ago, but it was definitely the same man from the video. His face had been slightly more rounded and vibrant in his youth, before the rigors of life had taken their toll, but his piercing gray eyes hadn’t changed. His stare was unmistakable.

Callahan read the accompanying information. ‘Jackson Cobb, Junior. US Army, Special Forces. Military record: classified.’

Koontz glanced at his partner, concerned. ‘Classified? Why would it be classified? You don’t think that …?’

‘I don’t think what?’

‘Do you think he’s the one who blew up Alexandria? Maybe this was some sort of Black Op that went wrong.’ The blood drained from his face as he considered the ramifications. ‘Son of a bitch! What the hell did you get us into?’

‘Me?’ Callahan teased. ‘You’re the one who ran his face through the system.’

‘Because you wouldn’t shut up about him!’ Koontz shook his head in frustration. ‘Look, we’re in enough trouble as it is. I don’t need the Pentagon getting involved with my personal life. I have more skeletons in my closet than Jeffrey Dahmer.’

‘Relax,’ Callahan said. ‘The guy was digging people out of the rubble. If his mission was to blow up the city, he wouldn’t have stuck around to help survivors. I think it’s safe to assume that he wasn’t responsible for the blast.’

‘Really?’ Koontz argued. ‘Because if I remember correctly, his team blew up half of Brighton Beach, then he stuck around to help you.’

‘True, but that was different. The only people who got hurt in Brooklyn were Kozlov’s men. Not me, not you, and certainly no civilians. Meanwhile, the bomb in Alexandria killed hundreds of innocents.’ Callahan shook his head at the thought. ‘Trust me, the two assaults were nothing alike.’

‘On the surface, no. But let’s be honest: Egypt hasn’t been the best place for tourists for a while. If he wasn’t there to see the sights, why the hell was he there?’

‘Beats me,’ Callahan answered.

Over the past several months, his passion had been waning as his talents were wasted in this windowless purgatory, but thanks to Cobb’s mysterious reappearance the gleam had suddenly returned to Callahan’s eye. After all this time, he finally had a reason to be excited about work again.

‘But I intend to find out.’