The Protector Read Online Free PDF

lips, and a firm jaw. He was thirtyish, Caucasian, physically fit, and he’d left no fingerprints.
     
    Hence the gloves, Jackson thought, berating himself even more severely than his supervisor had.
     
    “He doesn’t look like a terrorist,” Ringo mused. One of the lenses of the agent’s glasses was cracked. He had a nasty contusion on his right shoulder. But he’d refused to let the ambulance take him to the hospital.  
     
    “Because he’s not,” Jackson murmured, and both his colleagues frowned at him.    
     
    “Are you guessing again, Maddox?” Caine needled.  
     
    “With all due respect, sir, I can tell you who he is,” Jackson insisted. “I’ve seen his kind before.”  
     
    Caine folded his arms over his chest. “Okay, Rookie,” he said with measured patience. “Tell us. Who is he?”
     
    “A professional soldier, sir, sent by McClellan to get his daughter back.” He was sure of it.
     
    Caine’s upper lip curled, but he didn’t look as incredulous as Jackson thought he’d be. “What about the explosion? Was that McClellan’s doing, too?”     
     
    “No, sir. That was the work of the terrorist.”
     
    “And this guy just happened to be waiting out back when the bomb went off.”  
     
    Jackson had to admit the timing was remarkable, but McClellan had been badgering their field office about his daughter for days. He’d overheard Director Bloomberg telling Caine that McClellan was becoming a real pain in the ass. The Commander had wanted his daughter released to his personal representatives, while Bloomberg maintained that Eryn wanted to remain with the FBI. The bottom line was that McClellan now had what he wanted. At least Jackson hoped that was the case.  
     
    “Hold onto that theory, Rookie,” Caine advised, causing Ringo to divide a puzzled glance between them. “Right now, we still have to eliminate the UPS man as the suspect. Either he martyred himself for Allah, or he was at the wrong place at the wrong time. Ringo , I’m volunteering you to get in touch with UPS. Find out everything you can about the driver. We’ll want the original packing slip for the box and a copy of their surveillance tape.”
     
    “Yes, sir.” Ringo darted out of the sound room.
     
    As the biometric lock on the door to the MCC clicked shut, Caine applied himself to transferring their image of the soldier over to their facial recognition program. The software took measurements and compared them to tens of thousands of archived images. Caine sent Jackson an indecipherable glance as the computer went to work. It finally chimed, reporting 668 possible matches for the image.
     
    “Shit,” Caine muttered.
     
    Jackson hid a private smile. He wondered if Caine had any clue what kind of special operator McClellan would have picked for the job. Not only had the man arrived in the nick of time, but he’d sabotaged camera three without any of them realizing till it was too late.   
     
    “Sir,” he said, recalling his incredulity when the bomb had detonated. “How did the terrorists find the safe house? You must have been followed when you went to collect our client’s dog.”
     
    “Don’t be stupid, Jackson. Nobody followed me. We leaked the address of the safe house to the Brotherhood.”  
     
    For ten seconds, Jackson couldn’t speak. “But...why?” he finally managed.
     
    Caine shot him an impatient glance. “Oh, come on, Rookie. You know how the game goes: No bait, no fish. Don’t look so horrified,” he added. “You, of all people, should appreciate what’ll happen if we don’t make an example out of these bastards. This is the New Face of Terror that the CIA’s been warning us about:   Strike at the U.S. military by targeting their families back in the States. We’re the FBI, Maddox. It’s our job to see the bigger picture.”
     
    “But, sir,” Jackson sputtered, “she could have been killed!”  
     
    “She isn’t dead, is she?”