By her fifteenth birthday, Jett was participating in almost all of John’s clandestine activities for the Company. Sure it was against all CIA policy and if they had been caught, John would probably be fired and then jailed for allowing it to happen. Nevertheless, Jett and her father were too close to think of doing anything else. Heck, they were closer than close.
At seventeen, their stability wobbled. John moved them to Los Angeles and assumed another identity. The Agency set them up in a home in Culver City and John went about creating another normal looking life for his family. This one would be a long assignment for a deep cover operation, at least a year, maybe two, and he wanted some semblance of order for Jett.
The assignment was deemed highly dangerous, too dangerous for Jett to tag along. Intelligence sources indicated terrorist cells were growing in the City of Angels and John’s mission was to infiltrate and identify the participants and ascertain how far along they were with their plans. As weeks grew into months, John told Jett portions of what he learned, but he never told her all of it. He was getting closer, moving deeper into the group, and he carried the increasing tension that went with it. His daughter noticed, and was worried.
Jett was nineteen when they murdered John Sunday. She was at a school friend’s home in Hermosa when she heard her father’s alias spoken during a breaking news story on the local NBC affiliate. Several men gunned John Sunday down in broad daylight near the intersection of the Sunset Strip and Laurel Canyon. A witness said he saw the man running down the sidewalk as two cars full of men with guns raced to him. They fired before the vehicles even stopped, dropping the running man in his tracks. The vehicles sped away as pedestrians scrambled for cover, with no one getting a license plate number.
CHAPTER 10
From that point on, Jett Sunday lived by her wits and stayed away from their home in Culver City. No one in the CIA could locate her, and it was as if she had vanished from the face of the earth.
Hondo said, “Until we showed up.”
Harris nodded, “Until you showed up. Now we need to find her. She’s in danger.”
I slapped my forehead, “So that’s it!”
Harris looked like he tasted something sour, “Very funny, Baca.”
Hondo said, “What do they think she has?”
“We don’t know.”
“Are you saying that because it’s the truth, or because you don’t want to divulge it?”
“The truth. We don’t know, can’t seem to find out, and we’ve been trying for two months. But Berenko and his people are behind it.”
I felt like Harris was lying, but wasn’t sure.
Hondo said, “Why not pick up Ajax or John Wesley and take them in for questioning?”
“The locals issued attempted murder warrants for John Wesley, but we don’t have enough concrete evidence to arrest Berenko for anything.”
I said, “What about Magilla?”
Harris looked away, then said, “Who?”
“Magilla Sykes. He’s shown up almost everywhere John Wesley has, except for here in our office.”
Harris said, “I’m not familiar with anyone by that name. I’ll do some checking.”
Hondo said, “So will we.”
Harris stood up, suddenly in a rush to leave. He said, “If you come up with any more information, you have my number. Call me.”
I said, “And you’ll call us if you come up with anything, right?”
Harris looked hard at me, then left.
I turned to Hondo and said, “I don’t like this.”
Hondo said, “Good guys lying to us, bad guys lying to us.”
“So, pretty much business as usual. Say, are there any donuts left?”
The rest of the day, we made phone calls trying to find Jett, and in between calls, we studied our script pages for tomorrow’s big callback audition.
The next morning I arrived first at the office and Hondo walked in a minute later with a box of donuts. I was so nervous I didn’t even want one. Hondo put the box on my desk and said, “Are you sick?”