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Agent Aldridge would never get used to the sequence of bad day after bad day. How could he, when he had to report each one to the Bureau? Still, many of the Bureau’s best cases had been tough to crack. He was nothing if not dogged. Now, finally, they might have got a break.
A tip had reached the task force. Someone in local law enforcement had spotted a person resembling "BX," their code name for the "Barbie Alien." The Bureau loved code names, couldn't think up enough of them.
The tipster had sent a grainy picture of a smallish woman jogging down a street, obviously taken from a car window. The lab techs, with their measuring tools and calipers, concluded that they couldn't rule out that it wasn't actually their elusive BX. She did indeed bear some basic resemblance to the pictures the bumblers at Fort Bliss had taken when they had her in custody.
And, oddly enough, the picture had been taken in Alpine, not El Paso. They'd been concentrating on El Paso, since that was where she disappeared. But Alpine was close to the observatory. Maybe BX had "returned to the scene of the crime." That happened sometimes.
Beggars could not be choosers. Best to put on a game face and send an interdiction team to Alpine, just in case. Aldridge would send sixteen men...correction; he would send sixteen agents, fourteen men and two women, immediately. He called the crew at the airport to have them prep the plane.
