Page 59 of Avenging Jessie
Outside, the air was cool and damp—classic Virginia in early fall. The pub sat on a sleepy block that looked like Main Street USA, all brick facades and flower boxes in the windows. The sign over the door read McCallister’s Public House – Est. 1939, and the scent of fries, burgers, and whiskey-soaked wood hit Jessie the moment they stepped inside.
She really was hungry. After they placed four orders of the special to go, she and Tessa slid into a booth near the back, far from the early lunch crowd arguing about sports on the giant screen TVs all over the place.
“So,” Tessa said, voice low. “What’s our first move?”
Jessie glanced around, ducked her chin. “You ever seen Brewer panic?”
“Only twice. The night he killed Mom and realized the Agency wasn’t going to cover for him, and then when we arrested him six months ago.”
Jessie nodded. “Third time’s a charm. Time to make him panic again.”
“If he loses control of the drones, that should do it.”
A waitress stopped and asked if they needed drinks while they waited for their order. Jessie thanked her but said no and waited for her to move on. “We need to up the pressure. Put a target on his back so big he can’t move in public without setting off alarm bells.”
Tessa frowned. “How?”
Jessie discreetly pointed at the nearest TV screen, where a news channel was on mute. A red ticker ran along the bottom with the day’s highlights. “We go to the press.”
Tessa smirked. “I like it.”
“Our government has been trying to hide and cover up everything Brewer’s been doing, so we flip the script. We expose him to every media outlet we can find. Makes it a hell of a lot harder for him to hide.”
“Damn, girl. Talk about breaking the rules.” She interlaced her fingers on the top of the table. “Where do we start?”
“We leak a falsified wanted bulletin with a Homeland or CIA logo on it. Make it appear as if it was extracted from an internal message and leaked to a whistleblower. It clearly states that Brewer is planning a domestic terrorist attack using drone warfare, that he was last spotted where Meg saw him, and it includes the most recent photos of him. The report hints at a connection to recent cyber breaches. We toss in buzzwords like EMP attack, nano-viruses, biochemical agents, whatever.”
“Fear sells.”
Jessie tapped the top of the table, keeping an eye on the nearby patrons, all absorbed in their food and beer. “Brewer will freak. He’ll realize he’s lost his precious drones and he’s been outed as an imminent threat to the country.”
Tessa expanded on it. “Best-case scenario, he gets arrested or ID’d before he can launch any plan against Langley, even if he has a backup outside of the drones. Law enforcement will be hunting him, throwing off his timeline and routes. Worst case, he has to scramble and pivot entirely. Either way, he’ll be distracted and panic, which is where we come in and take him down.”
Jessie pulled out her phone and began editing a memo from an old template she’d saved years ago for infiltration practice. Tessa typed notes into hers as they continued to chat—buzzwords, fear triggers, headlines she knew would get traction.
By the time their order was packed and they’d paid, they had finalized the text.
On the walk back, Tessa was already mocking up a thumbnail for a video. “I’m fabricating a CIA-style classified video using media footage, internal jargon, and doctored images of Brewer’s Pentagon breach. Want me to use his real face or the last alias we confirmed?”
Jessie thought about it. “Both. Split screen. Tag it with one of his old code names—Wraith. He used to say that a lot when I was with him and he was dealing with black market dealers. That’ll make the dark web take notice. Throw in phrases he hates, triggers that will infuriate him. Include an AI-generated voiceover, deepfake style, from a ‘government insider’ saying they fear the CIA is covering it up.”
Within minutes, Rat Trap was ready to launch. Back at the safehouse, Spence was still glued to his laptop, and Tommy had traded coffee for beef jerky.
Jessie dropped a greasy paper sack in front of each of them. “Eat.”
Neither looked up, but both dived in. Jessie helped Spence with his order of fish and chips, removing the lid from the tartar sauce. Finally, he glanced up at her and smiled. It was tired, but it was real.
She leaned in and kissed his forehead.
Across the room, Tessa slid into her spot with a soda and a grin. When Jessie sat at the dining table across from Spence, she read a message from her.
The trap is set. Phase Two drops in ten.
Jessie downed her food, picking at her fries as Spence muttered lines of code under his breath like incantations. Tommy sat beside him, tracking progress on a parallel system, tapping in real-time intel from the black-market forums the CIA had been monitoring since Brewer had ghosted them six months ago.
Spence muttered more under his breath. “I buried the failsafe in the original Cyclone OS. It was designed to trigger if the drones were ever overridden by an external source—government or foreign. I hardwired a priority conflict line. If I activate it, every drone in the system flags its current controller as a hostile interface and drops into a fallback protocol.”
Jessie muched on her last fry. She was still hungry. For food and for revenge. “And Brewer won’t notice?”
