<<Back to Chapter 1<< Note: There is
a lot of exposition in this chapter, but it is very important stuff! (Yes, you find out why Clark is a fugitive!)
Chapter 2
Jack sighed and rubbed his forehead. He’d been working nonstop since seeing Clark Kent two days previously. He had run his fastest after the fugitive, but Kent had cut across the park road and into a stand of trees on the other side. Somehow in that small area he had managed to disappear. Again. After telling his superiors what the situation was (and receiving a thorough dressing down for letting Kent get away and for not having his firearm with him during the incident) he had requested a number of other agents be assigned to help him temporarily. Jack Olsen didn’t normally need other agents to help him, but tracing Kent’s whereabouts in DC was a top priority.
The only thing was, it seemed Kent was no longer in DC. One intelligence source indicated that Kent had been spotted in Havana, where he was reportedly renting an apartment, the very next morning. Not for the first time, he wondered how Kent managed to travel like he did.
Even before he became a fugitive, there were no records of him being on any plane’s or ship’s passenger manifest. Of course, that meant he had to be traveling under an assumed name, except he always used his own name at customs. It had confused the hell out of every single investigator who looked at the case. Someone had even gone so far as to try and discover what pseudonym Kent might have been traveling under, but every single name checked out as being a real person. A different investigator had taken it a step further and interviewed every person who had been on the only flights possible for Kent to use to make sure they had really been there and not Kent just borrowing their name. It had all turned up nothing.
The only explanation anyone had managed to come up with was that the guy could teleport.
Jack reshuffled the papers in front of him and stared hard at a photo of Kent that had been taken a year and a half earlier in LA. He was wearing a baseball cap and talking to a young mother who had two children with her. After receiving the photo, Jack had immediately flown out to California and personally interviewed the woman. She had told him that she had taken her children to the mall to shop with her, her 18 month old in a stroller, the four year old walking beside her. Her four year old had wandered a little ways away because she had discovered the wishing fountain. Naturally, the child had tried to reach into the water, and had almost fallen in, when Kent had caught her. The mother had rushed over, gushing thanks, and the two of them had spoken for a few minutes before going on their separate ways.
“Just what kind of game are you playing Kent?” Jack muttered to himself.
There was no doubt about it, Kent was a puzzle. Even leaving out his uncanny ability to disappear completely and turn up again thousands of miles away, Clark Kent was an enigma. Jack had compiled dozens of stories, each one like that of the young mother: of Kent helping someone, having a casual conversation and then wandering off.
As far as Jack could tell, Kent had not committed any sort of crime in the past five years. Nor did Kent’s background and record prior to his arrival in Jamaica show any criminal activity. The sheer weight of it all almost convinced Jack that Kent was telling the truth when he claimed he had been framed.
When Jack found himself thinking that way, he would then return to the case file and review the evidence presented at the trial.
The evidence had been compelling: an inexpertly hidden paper trail, linking Kent to the smuggling ring; the video of the double murder of the two NIA agents, Rod Clemens and Matt Young; the gun that shot them had been found with no prints on it but with Kent’s prints on the bullets.
Added to that, was the testimony of the young pilot, John Hendricks. He had been contacted by the Jamaican military and questioned about the arms smuggling; to avoid being arrested he had agreed to take a video camera to the place where he knew the arms were being stored. He had seen and heard everything that had transpired that night, but after seeing the two men shot he had run. The camera had been dropped and the police had retrieved it later, but Hendricks had been caught by the men Kent had hired to move the goods. Kent had sneered at Hendricks and then proceeded to beat the crap out of him and left him to die. Luckily, a medicine man had found him and helped him live. Clemens and Young had not been so fortunate. Young had died immediately; Clemens had died hours later at a Jamaican military hospital. Kent had been arrested the next morning by the Jamaican military and turned over to FBI custody.
Jack had watched the tapes of the trial so many times that he had memorized every single word that had been said. Kent’s lawyer had done a good job with what she had, but the evidence was overwhelming.
Watching it all though, Jack had come to believe that Kent’s lawyer hadn’t done as well as she should have in defending him. This had bugged Jack so much that he had finally decided to interview the lawyer herself—there he had found out that he was right—but the reason her defense had gone so poorly was because Kent hadn’t cooperated very well with her.
Kent had claimed he hadn’t been in the area the night of the murders, but he refused to say where he had been; he said he had an alibi but wouldn’t divulge the name; he said the gun had belonged to Young (which was true) and he had only loaded it at Young’s request a week before when they had been doing some reconnaissance on the smugglers, but there had been no witnesses. On and on it had gone, according to the lawyer, Kent would say something, but offer no proof, no reasonable explanation.
Clark Kent’s trial had made national news—it had become a hotly debated topic because of the large group of character witnesses in Kent’s favor. The trial had been relatively short, and though he had proclaimed his innocence all through the trial, Kent had been convicted on two counts of first-degree murder, one count aggravated battery, and one count of trafficking illicit arms. He had been sentenced to two life-terms plus twenty years.
Then Kent had made the news again—when he had escaped federal custody the day after his conviction. He had been classified as a fugitive ever since.
Jack sighed again, near as he could figure, Kent had become tired of being a boy scout and had gotten involved in some pretty heavy crime but hadn’t been very savvy at committing crime nor covering his tracks. Of course, there had been others involved; they had figured out that Matt Young had been the original smuggler, but apparently Kent decided he would rather get the money than break the story and had arranged to steal what had already been stolen. What was worse, those weapons had been traced to the assassination of a pro-US South American leader.
Normally, the NIA wouldn’t handle a fugitive case, either the US Marshals or the FBI should be responsible, but the fact that Kent was wanted for murdering two NIA agents gave them leverage in claiming jurisdiction. They hadn’t gotten it immediately, but as Kent’s skills in disappearing became source of embarrassment to the abilities of those chasing him, other agencies had been happy to relinquish the case. Many people had attempted to apprehend Kent in the intervening five years, many tried to claim the reward money for his capture, but, though there had been hundreds of verified sightings of Kent, only once had he been brought back into custody—and he had escaped again just a few hours later.
A shadow blocked the light from Jack’s desk and he looked up to find Trevanian, the head of covert operations, looming over him.
Trevanian nodded at him, “Jack, I sure could use you on my team right now. You’re a good soldier, and I wish they hadn’t pulled you for this,” he waved at the Kent case file spread across Jack’s desk.
Jack smiled faintly, “Sometimes I wish the same thing. Although, Kent
is the biggest challenge I’ve had in about a decade, so maybe it’ll do me some good.”
Trevanian harrumphed and then spoke, “Well, you look like you haven’t slept in a week. Remember, if you don’t have your health, you don’t have anything.” The rotund man then ambled away.
Jack massaged his temples, he
felt like he hadn’t slept in a week. He was still a good agent, but every so often his body decided to remind him he was no longer young. He slowly gathered up all the papers on his desk and filing them back in his briefcase. Then, with a groan, he stood up, “Tibbs, McGraff, Todd, Davidson,” he called the names of the other agents who had been temporarily assigned to him, they all looked up at him from their desks, “I want want an accounting from each of you of what progress you have made, then report back to your previous assignments tomorrow morning.”
They all nodded their acknowledgement, and Jack pushed in his chair and left the NIA building for the first time in two days.
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