Blank Slate

Chapter 8 - Payton Taylor

Two hours later I had regained my cool and had most of the information that I had been tasked to provide. Because the building that event was to take place was Whistler property, I was able to use the back door into Whistler's closed network that I had made while investigating the company. That gave me the details of the current building security already in place and the protocols that they were going to put into effect for the mock event. Whistler was going all out on these mock scenarios and treating them like real events that needed top security. Now we can work with the existing security and make our jobs ten times easier.

I was also able to gain access the live video feed within the building. I didn't know the overall plan for next Saturday yet, but I guessed that one of us, most likely Oliver, would monitor these feeds for any attacks directed towards us and the man we were assigned to protect.

Finding the blueprints for the building was a little more challenging because that isn't something that Whistler keeps on their network. However, the City of Helena didn't have much in the way of firewalls. It took more time to decipher their almost nonexistent organizational system to find the particular building in question, than it did to hack into their system. I figured we were lucky that there was a digital copy of the blueprints at all. I doubted we would be allowed to break into a government building to get the hard copies.

When it was about time for dinner, I returned to the Whistler compound armed with my laptop. Once I entered the dining hall I took a quick glance around to gauge the overall tone and then joined Jon and Victor sitting at a table after grabbing some food. Oliver and Amir joined us after a few minutes with Oliver talking before he had properly taken a seat. "Esli Vasquez is a diplomat from Honduras. He was born in Juticalpa in 1959 and is one of eight children. He was educated and graduated from the Univesidad Metropolitana de Honduras in Tegucigalpa in 1980. He worked is way up within government jobs to his position as attache to the United States that he took over twelve years ago." Oliver paused in his briefing to take a bite of food and then continued with his mouth full, "he has been married to Emely Vasquez for thirty-six years and has four children. He has a house outside of Washington DC that he lives in with his family, but he takes frequent trips back to Honduras."

As he paused to take another bite of food Jon interrupted him, "Oliver that is really good work. But please slow down and chew your food. I would hate to have to perform the heimlich maneuver on you." Oliver nodded and quickly ate the rest of his food. I noticed that Amir was already done eating. He must have eaten really quickly because they hadn't been at the table very long. Amir noticed me looking at his plate and met my eyes, once again daring me to question him. When I didn't press him, he decided to take up the story where Oliver had left off in his lilting middle eastern accent.

"Esli is a corrupt politician. He is using his sanctioned trips from Honduras to traffic drugs in this country. He is also using his power to crack down on land border controls, thus stopping his competitors from getting their product into the U.S." Amir gave me a look illustrated that he was not happy to be protecting someone he thought was a bad guy. And while I understood where he was coming from I also knew there were far worse people out there than Esli. Not to mention that Esli Vasquez wasn't even a real person, just a dossier that Whistler put together for this training exercise.

I thought that Amir would be a great asset to our team, but he looked at the world in clearly defined black and white, good and bad. If he decided that Esli was part of the black he might not work as hard to keep him safe. I pointed out the good parts of him in a hope to convince Amir to put his full effort into this exercise. "Let's just think of him as a loving husband and a father of four."

"How far did you get on the building security Payton?" Jon asked. At this I pushed my half-empty plate away and opened my laptop to show them the live security camera footage and blueprints of the building. Once he got a glimpse of what I had uncovered, Oliver grabbed my computer and started clicking through the windows.