Free The Alberta Connection by R. Clint Peters Page A

team had arrived and were
busily working on their laptops. By 7:00 AM, all of his agents were
busy.
    At 7:30 AM, Ryce returned to his office to
compose an email to Doug. Almost all of the state driver’s license
databases had been accessed without success. The three men at the
cabin continued to be unanswered questions. Mark had mentioned John
had possible access to the military service record databases. Did
Doug have any news on that front?
    Ryce wandered through the work centers after
sending his email. He was getting jittery. The three most important
research projects of the Joint Border Task Force were stalled.
    Ryce decided a few hugs from the most
significant woman in his life would likely cheer him up. However,
after the third long kiss, he realized he should return to his
office before he locked her office door.
    As Ryce returned to his office, he heard
voices coming from the conference room. Reversing his course, Ryce
walked into the conference room. Sitting with Doug were a man and a
woman with FBI nametags. Doug looked up from the open laptop in
front of him.
     
    “John asked me to ask you if you’d include
these two FBI agents in the JBTF.”
    The male guest stood and shook Ryce’s hand.
“My name is Roger Twills. The lady on my right is Dylene Kent.”
    Dylene stood and shook Ryce’s hand.
    Ryce asked if they could be split up and
suggested Roger join Lynette’s team, while Dylene would join Ryce’s
team. Doug agreed with the assignments.
    Ryce accompanied the two added agents to
their new work centers, introduced them, and then returned to the
conference room. He needed some answers from Doug, and he needed
them now.
    When Ryce walked back into the conference
room, Doug held up both hands. Ryce pulled an invisible pistol out
of his pocket and shot him. Doug laughed and then confirmed he had
received Ryce’s email, but was still waiting for an answer from
John.
    As Ryce reported the lack of information on
the three at the cabin, he had a thought.
    “I have the license plate numbers on both
vehicles at the cabin. I am sure we have access to motor vehicle
licensing, but I have been using only the photo recognition
software.”
    Ryce could hear Doug chuckling. “I think we
can find something. I’ll send Mark over with a flash drive.”
    Mark must have been close. He arrived in
Ryce’s office within five minutes and handed Ryce a flash
drive.
    “The program on that drive will get you into
every DMV in every state. John doesn’t want this program getting
any legs. Use it only under your personal supervision, or better
yet, only you or Tanya. You got any questions?”
    Ryce shook his head “no,” and then found a
USB port on his laptop. After loading the program, he checked the
pictures he had taken of the license plates. When he enlarged both
pictures, he was able to see where each had been registered and
selected those states for his research.
    Ryce plugged the information from the license
plate on the Dodge into the program. It was from Wyoming. After he
pressed enter, the program thought for a few moments and then
reported that the tags had been expired for five years.
    Ryce studied the picture of the license plate
again. According to the tags, the plate had four more months before
the expiration date. Ryce checked the serial number on the tags.
The tag serial number did not belong to the license plate. Ryce
enlarged the tag and carefully inspected it. The special glue on
the tags made removal from a plate extremely difficult. The job
done on this plate was remarkably good. It belonged on a VW Beetle
that had been totaled in a collision six years earlier. Ryce began
to get the feeling that this particular research project was not
going to turn up anything reliable or accurate.
    He turned his focus to the Suburban that the
four men had arrived in. It had been stolen in Seattle four days
before it arrived on the road below Ryce’s position on the
mountain. It was not going to provide any new data,