The Shadow Agent

by Daniel Judson

  There was no way of knowing whether or not their training had concluded. Stella couldn’t imagine that there was anything left for them to endure. Or maybe she didn’t want to imagine that there still could be more to come. Either way, she knew she needed to run, as much for her mind as for her legs.

  She rose from her cot quietly, took a clean pair of coveralls from the assigned locker, and put them on over her sports bra and boy shorts. As she was lacing up her running shoes, Number Three sat up in his cot.

  He was a runner, too, in his midthirties, so ten years younger than Stella, at least. The few times she had been able to work in a run, he had joined her.

  Number Six rose as well. He was younger than Stella by twenty years, had the thick build of a powerlifter.

  Both men announced that they would be running with her.

  The path, heading west of the compound, was the same path along which their instructors made their daily predawn run.

  Five miles out, five miles back.

  Stella fought through leg cramps as she set the pace for the group.

  She would have liked to think that the act of these men running with her now was a sign of their respect for her, and maybe it was to some degree, but she knew that alpha males were competitive by nature and that her having outperformed them in the resistance lab wasn’t something that they could let stand.

  This run was an opportunity for one of them to reclaim the spot as the dominant member of the class.

  Reclaim it, too, from a woman, not to mention a woman pushing fifty years old.

  It was a few miles into the run that Number Three suddenly dropped out. Stella glanced back to see him doubled over, his hands on his thighs—poised to vomit. She turned away before he did.

  Number Six hung on for longer, matching Stella’s pace till the five-mile mark, when he slowed to a stop as Stella kept going.

  He watched her for a moment before calling out, “You’re crazy.”

  Stella got the sense that it was not an insult but rather a statement of surrender.

  Alone now, she could vary the pace, easing off for a stretch before pushing herself to maintain a semisprint for as long as her lungs would allow.

  With no running path to follow past the five-mile mark, she was forced to cover rough terrain until she came across a two-lane road, which she followed, clocking maybe another two miles.

  The twilight sky over the western edge of the Gallatin National Forest a mile away was the first hint of beauty she’d seen in two weeks.

  She continued toward and was maybe a half mile from the tree line when she spotted a vehicle ahead.

  A Range Rover, heading toward her, traveling from east to west.

  Still a hundred feet or so away, the vehicle pulled over and came to a stop; its passenger door opened, and a figure climbed out.

  Stella stopped, too, and recognized that the figure was a woman.

  The driver emerged as well—a man, who left his door open as he moved around to the nose of the vehicle.

  He remained there while the woman, waving broadly, started walking forward.

  The tattoos visible on that waving arm—a contrast between colored ink and flesh more than discernible details—were what caught Stella’s eye.

  It didn’t take long for her to recognize Krista MacManus.

  And with that woman now identified, Stella took another look at the man waiting by the vehicle.

  She had briefly considered that it might be Tom, but this was based more on hope than observation, because the figure one hundred feet away was clearly Charlie Cahill.

  There could only be one reason why these two people were here.

  Tom was in trouble.

  Stella felt her gut tighten, but she ignored it.

  Resuming her run, she moved in an all-out sprint toward her waiting friends.

  Thirty-Four

  Seated in an easy chair, naked but wrapped in a heavy blanket, Tom lingered on the edge of consciousness, held there by regular injections of adrenaline administered throughout the day.

  Shortly after having been brought to this dark and quiet back room, Tom had heard Grunn and Hammerton talking through the closed door.

  Equal to the sound of their voices was the steady ringing in his ears.

  At one point Tom heard from somewhere deeper in the apartment the sound of a door opening and closing. This was followed by an enduring silence—save, of course, for the dull peal from which there was no relief.

  Tom had no idea which of his friends had left; he was beginning to think that it might have been both of them, but then he heard Hammerton speaking on the phone.

  Whatever the man had said eluded Tom, but he didn’t really care.

  All that mattered was shaking the effects of his multiple injuries and getting back on his feet.

  Tom was left alone for no more than an hour at a time.

  Hammerton would come in to administer more adrenaline, then would sit with Tom, neither man saying much.

  The former SAS trooper knew enough about field medicine to recognize that while Tom needed to be kept awake, he also should be kept quiet.

  The last time Tom had seen his friend was six months ago, when a new recruit had betrayed Hammerton. Shot and in hiding at an isolated location, Hammerton had self-treated his serious torso wound as best he could, after which all he could do was wait in his own blood to be found.

  It was ten hours before Tom and Cahill located him.

  Hammerton had been transported to a hospital, where he remained, recovering, for nearly three months.

  Tom hadn’t even been able to say goodbye to his friend before shipping out to begin his training.

  Though Hammerton was easily the toughest man Tom had ever known, he was also in his sixties now. And even in Tom’s current condition he could see that his friend had yet to fully recover from his near-lethal injuries.

  The cruel truth of aging meant that Hammerton might never again be the man he used to be.

  The man to whom both Tom and Stella owed their lives.

  Tom was alone in the back room again when he heard the sound of the apartment door opening and closing a second time.

  With the shades drawn to ease the strain on his eyes, there was no way for Tom to track the sun over the course of the day, so he had no sense of time.

  And he had lost count of how many times Hammerton had come in to administer the hourly injections.

  But shortly after the closing of the door, Tom heard another conversation—again, little more than indistinct words.

  After a while the apartment door opened and closed again, and then Tom heard occasional footsteps but no voices.

  Tom’s mind, as well as his hearing, grew clearer as the hours passed, his inner thoughts becoming more complete.

  There was darkness beyond the drawn shades—now he was ready, knew the questions he needed to ask.

  The time to resume his mission had come.

  He was rising from the chair that had held him all day when Hammerton reentered the room.

  Standing, Tom faced his friend.

  Hammerton moved stiffly, and Tom recognized that this was the effort of a man concerned with aggravating an injury.

  Dealing with a discomfort not unlike that one, Tom didn’t have to examine his own chest to know that the nine-mil slugs stopped by the Kevlar vest had left behind ghastly bruises the size of fists.

  The similarity of their current conditions did not escape Hammerton and Tom.

  Hammerton looked Tom up and down, then grinned and joked, “Ain’t we a pair.”

  If Tom could smile he would have. Instead, he asked where Grunn had gone.

  “You don’t remember?”

  “Remember what?”

  “You wanted to know if the files on the tablet could be recovered. Grunn said she’d take it to a tech friend of hers.”

  “Oh. How long ago did she leave?”

  “Nine hours, but it took her three just to contact her friend. Frankly, I th
ought she’d be back by now. I tried to call her a few times, but she doesn’t answer.”

  “She’s a capable person,” Tom said. The statement of confidence, he realized, was more for his benefit than his friend’s.

  “Worse comes to worst, I have a resource who can try to track her phone,” Hammerton said.

  Tom thought about asking who that resource was but didn’t. “I heard Torres out there at some point.”

  “She went to meet with some law enforcement associate. She said you’d know what that was about.”

  Tom nodded.

  “Care to fill me in?” Hammerton said.

  “There was a woman with Raveis. She seemed to know a lot about us. I asked Torres to find out what she can about her.”

  “How will she do that?”

  “The woman’s license plate. Torres used to be law enforcement, still has friends in the department.”

  “That’s a handy person to have around.”

  Tom nodded. He needed to limit his thinking to what mattered at this moment.

  “There were two other teammates,” he said. “Lyman and Durand. They were about to interrogate a woman we had taken prisoner, but I’d contacted Torres and told her to get some extra hands to back them up. Did the backup get there? Are they all right?”

  “Maybe we should take things slow, Tom.”

  “Are they all right?”

  Hammerton let out a breath. “Your teammates are dead. And your prisoner is gone.”

  “How?”

  “All I know is Lyman was killed in the safe house. His body—and the apartment it was in—was set on fire. Durand was found in the lobby of the building, as was the quick-response team that had been dispatched to back them up.”

  “How many in the QR team?”

  “Two.”

  Tom was silent as he added to the list of the dead.

  “None of that’s your fault,” Hammerton said. “At all.”

  “Fuck yeah, it is.” Tom paused. “I’m starting to get very pissed.”

  Hammerton gave his friend a moment before continuing. “The reason Cahill contacted me this morning was because he’d run a photo of your prisoner through facial recognition and got a hit. Her name is—”

  “Esa Hirsh,” Tom said.

  “How’d you find out?”

  Tom shrugged off the question. “What do you know about her?”

  “She’s one of the Benefactor’s top operatives. Third-generation killer, apparently. Her father and his father were nasty fucks, just like she is. Cahill was concerned, naturally, so he reached out, but he also wanted me to know that the two of you are starting to believe that Carrington is innocent.”

  “I don’t think he’s guilty of what he has been accused of,” Tom said.

  “You think he was framed.”

  “Yes.”

  Hammerton thought about that. “I’ve spent all these months thinking he was responsible for what happened to me. I wanted to kill him for it. That was all that mattered. In the hospital, that’s what pushed me to get better, was my reason every day for getting up and fighting through the pain.”

  “I imagine that would be a hard thing to let go of.”

  Hammerton nodded. He watched Tom for a moment. “It’s . . . disturbing to know that for all this time I wanted to kill the wrong man. And would have if I’d had the chance.”

  “The evidence looked solid.”

  “It didn’t to you.”

  Tom shrugged. “Maybe that’s only because I didn’t want it to. I could just as easily have been deluding myself.”

  “So if not him, then who? Raveis?”

  “One minute it looks that way, the next minute it doesn’t.”

  “The woman you said was with him. What was her name?”

  “Raveis called her Slattery.”

  “She rides a motorcycle?”

  “A black BMW, yeah. You know her?”

  “I’ve heard of her.”

  “Who is she?”

  “An investigator. Some kind of whiz kid. Rumor is she spent ten years down in Washington, working for various senate committees, digging up dirt. She relocated up here a year or so ago.”

  “She had the kind of accent that military brats sometimes end up with. Any idea what her background is? Education?”

  “No. She’s a ghost. Whoever she was, wherever she came from, it’s all been buried, which is no small feat these days. But with her Washington connections it makes sense that Raveis would hire her. You dig around enough down there, you end up knowing where the skeletons are.”

  “Why would Washington, DC, skeletons be of interest to Raveis?”

  “Because DC is where the money comes from, Tom. The real money. It’s always about the money, isn’t it? The work we do—the plots we stop, the bad guys we expose or end—that’s just our particular sausage, if you know what I mean. That’s the product we make, that’s what brings in the cash.” Hammerton paused as if to decide whether or not to say what was now on his mind. “I’ve collected information over the years,” he said finally. “I have detailed files on the key players, their ops, everything. I think when you’re up to it, you should have a look.”

  “Where are they?”

  “Here, locked up.”

  “They’re actual files?”

  “Paper is safe. It can’t be hacked, then dispersed around the world in a second. And once you burn it, no one can retrieve it.”

  Tom looked around the room. “So where are we, exactly? Is this your apartment?”

  “You don’t remember getting here.”

  “No.”

  “It’s a place for members of my old unit, somewhere we can go in times of trouble.”

  “Who else knows about it?”

  “Just a handful of us. And the person who bought it.”

  “And who was that?”

  “A grateful member of the royal family. We have a few of these around the world. London, Berlin, Buenos Aires—every one of them, like this one, purchased through a trust. They’re just dives we can crash at, safe places where one of us can disappear or all of us can gather if it were to come to that.”

  “I guess you really didn’t need me to send Grunn for you, did you?”

  It was a rhetorical question, so Hammerton didn’t respond.

  “I’ll need my clothes,” Tom said. “I’ll want to meet up with Torres. If she has anything to report, I don’t want her to do it over the phone. And we shouldn’t draw attention to this place with too many people coming and going all of the sudden.”

  “Yeah, well, there’s a problem with that, Tom.”

  “With what?”

  “With you going outside.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You were involved in a shootout in New York City. It’s all over the news, and as of an hour ago, so is street-camera footage of you. It’s grainy, and your cap helped hide your face, but right now the NYPD is canvassing all the shop owners and landlords in the area, looking for private security cameras that might offer a better angle. It’s only a matter of time before they find footage of your face.” Hammerton paused. “You’re going to need to lay low for a while. At the very least, when you finally do leave here, you’ll need to look different. Grunn had Torres pick up a change of clothes for you this morning. She got you a pair of clippers and a razor, too.”

  It wasn’t the news he wanted to hear, but he nodded and said, “Okay.”

  Hammerton paused. “So what’s this about, Tom? What’s on the tablet?”

  “Surveillance video of Raveis talking to my father.”

  “Talking about what?”

  “Killing the man who killed my mother and sister.”

  “And you’ve seen that video.”

  “There were six on the device. I watched the first three. I need to see the others, though.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it looks like over the course of a series of visits, Raveis went from sharing details of the murders with my fathe
r out of friendship to persuading him into going on an op he had no hope of completing. Watching the two of them talk, I got the sense that Raveis went there with no intention other than to exploit my father’s grief. The story I’d been told was that my father had grown obsessed with the idea of getting revenge and hunted down the Algerian on his own. But these recordings tell a different truth. One that someone is desperate to keep hidden. And in the process, a lot of good people are dying.”

  “Why would Raveis do that? Why would he manipulate your father?”

  “That’s what I need to find out. The Engineer said that my father’s death somehow benefited what he called ‘the Colonel’s great experiment,’ which is the organization you and I and everyone we know works for.”

  “Hold on,” Hammerton said. “You’ve met with the Engineer?”

  “Yes.”

  “When?”

  “This morning. He gave me the tablet. Why?”

  “How did you two get together?”

  “Carrington set it up.”

  Hammerton thought about that for a moment, then nodded toward the small table beside the easy chair.

  His disposition had changed; he was now a man in a hurry.

  “Your gear is in the drawer there,” he said. “Phones and wallet, the Colt and mags. The new clothes we got for you are in the bathroom. Your vest is there, too.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “I’ll be in the basement, getting the files together.”

  “John, what’s going on?”

  Hammerton nodded toward the table again. “Grab your gear, get dressed, meet me in the basement as soon as you can.”

  In the bathroom down the hall, stacked on the lid of the toilet tank, were a pair of jeans, underwear and socks, a black T-shirt, a button-down flannel shirt, a heavy canvas hooded jacket, and a baseball cap.

  Beneath that stack of clothing was the Kevlar vest.

  On the floor to the right of the toilet was a pair of work boots.

  On the edge of the sink, still in their packaging, were the electric clippers and rotary-head rechargeable razor.