CHAPTER 25



   Not that Jake had taken Norm’s idea all that seriously but, Jake was kind of glad that he woke up and nothing had happened. Norm might have understood the streets but Jake’s skill set was of an entirely different nature and there were things that Jake did not even tell Norm. It was not because there was any specific reason for keeping these things a secret. It was more like telling the man would just be a waste of time. Norm just wouldn’t care. Some of these things were the reason that Jake had known he could get away with certain things now. Nothing he was doing, well, most everything he was doing, was not of an arbitrary nature and the timing of these matters were sometimes critical.
The people at this station knew him now. Most of them trusted him to a degree. Some even respected him. They had taken some pretty hard blows and survived. They had also slid a bona-fide win under their belt. To Jake, this was all currency that had to be spent wisely. Jake was not even sure if Norm understood the scope of things that were most likely on the way. If they were not ready then people were going to start dying and that was something Jake did not want to see happen, ever.
After Jake turned the shower water off he just stood there for a minute. He listened to a very quiet station and that was really the problem. It was way too quiet. That could mean all kinds of things and, by Jake’s estimation, none of them were particularly good. He could locate one person though.
This person was just standing there, on a tiled floor, and would shift weight from one foot to the other every now and then. This person was trying to be quiet. Jake reached up into the I-Beams, that supported the ceiling, where they formed a little cubby hole. He put his hand on the plastic bag that was hidden there. He waited a moment as he heard the person lean up against a sink. No, this person was not here to do anything violent or, at least, not deadly. If it was a bad guy they would have already walked in here and tried to kill him. Jake left the bag, with the gun, in it’s hiding spot.
This situation required an entirely different kind of strategy. Jake walked out of the showers, with his towel on his shoulder and nothing else. As he casually strolled over to the sinks and his bathroom bag, he asked the person standing at the sinks, “when did you get back?”
Barbara crossed her arms and pretended that Jake actually had clothes on, “enough time to get an earful.”
So that’s why the station was quiet. Everybody was outside waiting to ambush Barbara before she got in the door. Jake almost laughed but, he did not want her to think he was making fun of them so he remained casual but humor free, “so how did your little vacation go?”
Barbara was not in an amused frame of mind. Jake could not quite blame her really. She had just finished a very long flight and, to be here now,  meant that they had left Valley Point pretty early. Barbara sure sounded it, “Well let me see.” Barbara was trying to concentrate as Jake began shaving, “the long and the short of…” She stopped and rephrased her words, “Tony crashed a chopper, Danni got stuck in a hole, Kent was the guest of honor at a medieval banquet, and some old prospector tried to kill me.”
Jake stopped shaving for a second. He looked at Barbara in a very serious way and then asked, “medieval banquet? What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
Barbara was even less amused, “really funny Barton.”
“You ok,” he went back to shaving.
“Yeah,” she said with no enthusiasm, “Danni snuck up behind him and shot the guy.”
That did alarm Jake. He sighed heavily and asked with his head bowed, “did she kill him?”
“No,” Barbara said in an almost business like fashion, “she put a hole in one cheek and it went right out the other. Fortunately for this guy, he had plenty of ass to spare.” Then she waived the entire matter off, “we turned him over to the sheriff and came on back. I had enough of Valley for the week. Course, I’m not sure I wasn’t the lucky one.”
Jake was now chuckling about the prospector. He just had to say it, “maybe for punishment they’ll sentence him to the chair.”
Barbara ignored him and went on, “what in the hell were you doing to my station while I was gone? You stole our cars. You abused our people. You…”
Jake’s head snapped up, “did you say what I thought you said? Was there a plural possessive pronoun in there somewhere?”
“I have tolerated these little shenanigans,” Barbara went on, “that you and Norm have cooked up but, this time, you went a little too far.”
“We’re being watched Barbara,” Jake told her in a calm way, as he kept right on shaving.
“What?” Barbara felt a chill run up her spine, “by who?”
“That’s what we’re working on,” Jake said with a shrug and then he started cleaning out his razor.
Barbara was still alarmed, “how long have you known this?”
“Oh, I don’t know, let me see,” Jake pretended to think about it and then he just spit it out, “since day one maybe?” When she didn’t reply he told her, “oh come on Barbara. Whoever these people are, they seem to know every little thing we’re doing. They knew right when and where to hit us. We are not dealing with the kind of people who do things on a whim. The stuff they’re doing takes planning and that requires intelligence. How are they getting that?”
Barbara settled down and became very serious, “ok Barton, I’m game. How?”
Now Jake got a bit emotional, “I don’t know, that’s what we’re trying to find out.”
Now Barbara was thinking about everything she knew. She asked with genuine curiosity, “and the whole training exercise thing? That was just… an excuse?”
“Naa,” Jake shook it off and began gathering his things, “it was real enough. Nobody said we couldn’t do both at the same time.”
“Ok Barton,” Barbara shook her head in disbelief, “I don’t get it but, I also…”
After Jake rubbed his chin off with his towel he tossed it back over his shoulder and walked right up to Barbara. She almost took a step back but, forced herself not too. Jake squared off with her and told her, “the kind of people we’re dealing with. They don’t do anything for one specific reason. Anytime they make a move, they got all kinds of things they want accomplished. That way if one goal fails several others succeed and they’re still ahead of the game. It’s also camouflage. If you don’t know the whole plan, and they make sure very few people actually do, then, whatever any outsiders see just look to be a series of random events.”
Barbara’s breathing was a little bit heavier than normal, “and that’s what you’re seeing here?”
Jake just shrugged, “it’s black bag one oh one, Barbara. These guys learned the same playbook I did and if we‘re going to take them down then we have to play it the same way.”
“And how did this mess you made help with…”
Jake ticked it off, “we spread the cars out. One was at the city impound lot and I had the other one parked in view of a security camera that was owned by a business I had access too. We spread our people out and separated them from the cars. We made it look like we had an internal rift, what the spooks call a mole hunt. That way they thought we were divided.”
Barbara nodded, “you were sending them the picture you wanted them to see.”
“Exactly,” Jake nodded and then continued, “and we hit them with it so fast that they had to tax their resources to keep up. That means they would most likely make a few mistakes. Meanwhile I swapped cars with one that they thought was out of the game, and did my own surveillance.”
Barbara’s eyes got big and she was slightly irked, “did it work?”
Again, Jake just shrugged and he remained cool. He walked past her and, as he did, he told her, “remains to be seen. We’re working on it.”
Now Barbara was truly frustrated. She practically grunted at Barton as he walked out the door, “so what next?”
He stopped, looked back at her, and then said, “well that’s the bad news. We tipped our hand. Now, they know we know. Yesterday, well, that was our first real offensive in this little war. It was just a scouting mission but, we made them react to us for a change. They’re going to remember it and they are not going to be happy.” Jake walked back to his room.
THEY were not the only ones who were unhappy. Barbara snorted in fury and then walked back to her own room. She had to admit that there were certain parts of Barton’s logic that made sense. At the same time, the rest of it seemed entirely insane. Barbara was not sure which infuriated her the most, when Barton was wrong or when he happened to be right.
Then there was just that little sneaking suspicion in the back of Barbara’s mind. She could not get past all of the things that Idhitri had told her about Barton. She could not get past his keeping secrets from her, his little vanishing acts, all of it was very suspicious to her. No matter what Jake Barton did, no matter how many times he might be right, when you boiled it all down there was only one real thing that mattered. He was not one of them. For that reason alone, Barbara had a very hard time trusting the man, even if she had no real proof that he was anything but, what he said.
Barbara stopped in front of her door and put down her things. She grabbed the combination lock that she had recently started using. When she went to enter the combination, the bottom part slid right off the bar before she could even turn the dial. It not only unlocked but, it separated completely in two. Someone had not only broken her lock but, they did it in a way that showed no damage at all, then put it back. Why would anyone do that?
The answer was very simple. Only one person at this station had those kind of skills and, more important, a reason to do it. Barbara gritted her teeth and in a very guttural roll she said his name, “Barton!”





        THE END