The Shadow Agent

by Daniel Judson

  Tom saw a list of documents contained in a secure cloud backup system.

  Among the Excel and Word documents was a mix of audio and video files.

  “My insurance policy,” Raveis said. “All the evidence needed to bring the Colonel’s world crashing down around him.”

  “You hacked him.”

  “Some of those are his private documents, yes. Correspondence, bank records. The audio recordings are of conversations between him and me that I’d made without his knowledge. The videos are surveillance clips documenting his travel over the years, one of which is of particular interest.”

  Torres reached over, located the video file Raveis was referring to, and touched it with her fingertip. After a short lag, a media player opened up and the video played.

  There was no audio, and it was obvious that the camera was handheld.

  The camera operator was inside a vehicle, shooting through the driver’s door window. For a few seconds the screen went dark as the camera was lowered behind the door.

  When the camera was raised again, it was aimed at a doorway located directly across a city street.

  Tom noted that the signs above the stores, as well as the traffic signs along the street, were in Spanish.

  The newer-looking vehicles visible in frame—some parked, others passing between the camera and the doorway—were at least twenty years old.

  Several men entered the picture, and the camera operator zoomed in on them, revealing the Colonel and his security detail.

  They moved through the doorway, and the camera zoomed out again.

  The playback continued for another half minute before another group of men entered the frame. Torres waited until the camera zoomed in on the man in the center of that group before reaching across the screen again and pressing “Pause.”

  Tom was looking at a man in his forties. Dark hair, handsome, well dressed.

  “That’s the Benefactor,” Raveis said.

  It was the first time Tom had seen the man’s face.

  There was nothing about it to indicate that he was a mass murderer capable of unspeakable cruelty, the ideological child of the twentieth century’s vilest monsters.

  Tom handed the tablet back to Torres and said to Raveis, “So why are you running if you have this?”

  “Because what brings him down also brings me down.”

  “You could cut a deal with the prosecutor, turn state’s evidence.”

  “We’re guilty of treason, Tom. I’m talking about the literal, constitutional definition of treason. We aided the enemy in a time of war. There is no deal I’d get that wouldn’t include prison time, and I’m not going to prison.”

  “What good do these files do me?”

  Raveis nodded to Torres, who once again navigated the open app on her device.

  After a moment she looked up and said, “It’s on its way.”

  A few seconds later, the cell in Tom’s pocket vibrated.

  He took it out and looked at the display.

  Torres had sent a copy of that video via text.

  “That should get his attention,” Raveis said. “At least he’ll know you have something more than your life to negotiate with.”

  “I need to do more than just get his attention.”

  Again, Raveis looked at Torres, and again she went to work on the device.

  Tom’s phone buzzed again. The text she had sent him included a link to the cloud storage as well as the username and password Tom would need to log in. He allowed himself the seconds it took to memorize the information.

  “It’s yours to use,” Raveis said. “If you use it right, maybe you and Hammerton can get out of this alive.”

  “You said this evidence incriminates you, too. What if I have to turn it over to the feds? They’ll be after you.”

  “By the time that happens, I’ll be long gone. They won’t find me. No one will.” He paused. “Anyway, I let my friend die. The least I can do is to give his son a shot at avoiding the same fate.”

  It took Tom a moment, but finally he said, “Thanks.”

  The door to the hotel opened and closed again. The bodyguard returned with a duffel bag. He handed it to the man who had ordered him to retrieve it.

  That man placed it on top of the bar and unzipped it.

  He removed a pair of tactical pants, a T-shirt, and a light jacket, all of which were black, as well as a pair of socks and boots. He stacked the clothing and carried the pile to Raveis, handed it to him, then went back for the boots.

  Raveis held the pile out for Tom, who began to undress, first by removing his sweatshirt, which revealed the Kevlar vest he was wearing beneath.

  Raveis’s eyes went to the marks in the material left by the two rounds that had struck Tom.

  “He’ll need a new vest, too,” Raveis announced.

  His men moved to carry out that order as Tom continued to undress.

  “It’s not just the Colonel and his men you’ll have to contend with,” Raveis said. “He made a deal with the Benefactor’s bodyguard. A man named Karl Weber. Remember, the Colonel’s housecleaning includes the Benefactor, too.”

  “Esa Hirsh is with them,” Tom said. “I saw her with the Colonel this morning at Cahill’s old safe house.”

  Raveis nodded. “The Colonel doesn’t miss a trick.”

  “What does the bodyguard stand to gain for his betrayal?”

  “Once the Benefactor is eliminated, the bodyguard replaces him. The détente continues, except this time with more favorable terms for the Colonel. They have been working on this for a while. The bodyguard knows everything the Benefactor knows. He has been watching the man for over a decade. It will be a seamless transition.”

  Tom had removed all his clothing. The cold, dormant air rushed across his still-damp skin as he reached for the pants atop the pile Raveis was holding.

  Torres was looking at the scars on Tom’s torso, but there wasn’t anything he could do about that.

  “Why didn’t the bodyguard just assassinate the Benefactor instead of defecting?”

  “Without the Benefactor, there was no keeping you in line. Maybe you’d find out, maybe you wouldn’t, but the Colonel didn’t want to take that risk. He needed you where he could get to you when the time came. But that doesn’t matter anymore. Now the Colonel needs you both dead. Here’s the ironic thing, Tom: you’ve only lived this long because the Benefactor was alive. You were trained to kill him, and it’s the job you were waiting all these months for, but killing the Benefactor wouldn’t have set you free. It would have marked you for death. You would have remained a hunted man, only this time you’d be sought by the men and women who’ve had the same training as you, who may have even worked beside you at some point. You wouldn’t have known who to trust. And I’m sorry to say, you wouldn’t have lasted very long.”

  Tom didn’t see any point in dwelling on that fact.

  “Anything else you can tell me?” he said.

  He had pulled the pants and T-shirt on, and then was handed a new Kevlar vest. As he put that on, Torres moved behind him to help him adjust the fit.

  “You’ll need to pick the right location for the meeting,” Raveis said.

  Tom nodded. “I know.”

  “You’d better have a good plan. And help.”

  “I’ll have both,” Tom said.

  It was at best a half truth.

  He had a plan, and only time would tell how good it was.

  As for help, Tom was determined to put no one but himself at risk.

  He finished dressing, then transferred his holster and mag carrier to his new belt and removed his belongings from the pockets of his jeans, placing them into the pockets of the tactical pants.

  Raveis watched him, waited till he was done and ready before saying, “Keys.”

  The man who had jumped at all his orders so far stepped to Raveis and handed him a set of keys.

  Raveis held them up for Tom to take. “There’s a black Rubicon parked outside. This rai
n is only going to get worse, and in a few hours the winds will be gusting at up to fifty miles an hour, so that bike isn’t going to cut it for you. You’d be in a pretty sorry state by the time you got back to Connecticut.”

  “What makes you think I’m going to Connecticut?”

  “You were a Seabee, Tom. You not only constructed bases but also protected them. There’s only one location that offers the advantages you’ll need.”

  Tom said nothing.

  “The Rubicon has a dashboard-mounted computer. Torres will email the blueprints to it. You’ll need them. That factory is a maze.”

  Tom looked at Raveis’s men one by one. Then he faced Raveis and Torres again.

  “Thanks,” he said.

  It was more than the comfort and safety the Jeep would afford that Tom appreciated.

  Slattery’s motorcycle was equipped with LoJack, and Tom had no doubt that she and Grunn had tracked his movements to his current location.

  Leaving the motorcycle where it was eliminated the possibility of their following him to his next destination.

  Raveis wished Tom luck.

  Torres said nothing, simply looked at Tom, smiled, and nodded.

  Tom turned and exited the room.

  One of the men guarding the doorway held up a black duffel bag as Tom passed him.

  Tom stopped, then took the bag from the man.

  By its weight Tom knew what the bag contained.

  Fifty-One

  The Rubicon limited-edition Jeep Wrangler was the last in the line of a half dozen vehicles parked on the street.

  Behind the wheel, Tom started the engine and touched the computer’s keyboard to wake the system. The blueprints were already there. He clicked on the file and waited as it opened.

  On top of the shifter knob was an operator’s cap. Tom put it on. The duffel was on the passenger seat, and Tom unzipped it and looked inside.

  It contained a suppressed HK416 and a battle belt with three double-decker mag holders attached. In each holder was a thirty-round mag. The belt also held several other carriers, one containing a bleed-out kit, another, a multitool.

  The last items in the duffel were two mags joined together by a coupler.

  There was for Tom no avoiding the fact that a short-barreled carbine equipped with a suppressor and capable of automatic fire was prohibited under federal law, and that magazines with capacities greater than ten rounds were illegal in both New York State and Connecticut.

  There was also no doubt that the credentials Tom was carrying, which had been provided by the Colonel, were no longer valid.

  But there was nothing he could do about that.

  What he needed to do would require more firepower than the Colt M45A1 holstered on his right side afforded him.

  Tom zipped the bag closed and laid it on the floor in front of the passenger seat.

  Once the file was opened, Tom scrolled through it fast to make certain the document was complete.

  The plans for all four wings and the courtyard, as well as for all four floors and the basement, were there for him to study.

  Shifting into gear, he pulled away from the curb.

  Ansonia should have been a ninety-minute ride, but there was rush-hour traffic.

  And just as Raveis had said, the rain grew heavier and the winds stronger, sometimes gusting with such force that the Jeep veered in its lane.

  Added to that was the fact that the last thing Tom needed was to get pulled over for speeding or find himself party to a fender-bender—or worse.

  As a result, it was three hours before Tom steered off the Merritt Parkway and onto Route 8 northbound.

  With Ansonia just fifteen minutes away, he pulled over and took out his cell phone, entering the number that Cahill had sent him into the message app and attaching the video file that Torres had provided.

  He thumbed in a four-word message—SEND THE COLONEL. TOM—and sent the text.

  As he waited for a reply, he went ahead and composed a follow-up text.

  This one contained the coordinates he’d been shown by Slattery two mornings ago.

  41◦ 20’40.7” N, 73◦ 04’42.9” W

  He was entering the last few numbers when a reply came in.

  LOCATION?

  Tom keyed in the final number and pressed “Send.”

  There was just one more instruction he needed to pass along.

  BRING HAMMERTON.

  Then Tom shut down the phone, lowered the window, and tossed the device as far out into the darkness as he could.

  Pulling back onto the highway, he resumed his journey northward.

  Tom circled the block occupied by the abandoned factory several times.

  The small city had appeared desolate when Tom had stepped off the train just minutes before midnight two nights ago.

  Now it was even more so, but the pounding rain and monsoon-like winds did that.

  As Tom scanned the building, he saw nothing different about it.

  The same number of windowpanes was smashed out, and through them he could see an interior faintly illuminated by the streetlights, though as he studied the upper-floor windows, he noticed that his view was limited to the ceilings.

  Just like Carrington had, Tom would choose the upper floor for his meeting place, if only to keep himself and the Colonel out of the view of anyone passing by on the street below.

  It was possible that the Colonel would arrive with some degree of security in tow, which was why Tom hadn’t bothered to include in his instructions the demand that the Colonel come alone.

  And it was just as possible that Tom would be disarmed by whomever was accompanying the Colonel.

  But Tom had a plan for that.

  He continued to circle the block, this time scanning the windows of the apartments across from the factory.

  In one dark window he saw what looked like the silhouette of a seated man looking out. The figure didn’t move as the Jeep passed. Tom made one more revolution—his fourth—but this time the figure was gone.

  He parked the Jeep a block away, then grabbed the duffel bag and got out.

  Moving around to the rear bumper, he opened the hatch and searched through the gear stored in the back compartment. The elevated hatch protected him from the hard-hitting rain.

  Tom found a rolled-up military-surplus wool blanket, put it into the duffel, then closed the back hatch and headed toward the entrance he had used two nights ago.

  The building was unheated and exposed to the elements, and Tom might need the blanket to keep warm as he waited.

  The jacket and hat protected him from the downpour, but the wind blew the rain sideways at times, spraying his pants legs with sheets of cold water.

  He’d anticipated having to overcome a locked door, had learned during the first weeks at Raveis’s compound how to do that, but as he approached the entrance, he saw that it was slightly ajar.

  Slowing almost to a stop, he considered what that could mean, but then he resumed his steady stride.

  There was no turning back.

  Reaching the door, he laid the duffel down and opened it, removing the HK416 and slipping it into its sling. He grabbed the coupled mags, inserting the right-side mag into the mag well, then drew back and released the charging handle, chambering a round.

  Thumbing the safety on, he shouldered the duffel bag, then stood ready.

  A light was attached to the front end of the Picatinny rail, its activation pad taped to the right side of the foregrip. Tom knew not to switch on the light until he was inside.

  As he had done before, Tom pulled the door open just enough to slip through. Balancing on his right foot, he eased the door closed behind him with his left foot.

  Facing forward, he shouldered the carbine as he lowered his left foot to the floor. He was about to take a step into the vast room when he heard a sound and froze.

  Someone was to his immediate left and moving toward him.

  He heard the sound of fabric swishing and heavy feet on
the rotting floor directly ahead of him.

  Out of these vague sounds came a specific one: the click of a safety being disengaged.

  It was immediately followed by a man saying, “Don’t move, partner.”

  Tom ignored his words, dropping into a crouch and activating the rail-mounted light with his right hand as he thumbed the safety to the “Fire” position with his left.

  In this dimly lit space, the 600-lumen light was as bright as a camera flash.

  Tom saw a man standing just a few feet in front of him—a man with a surprised look on his face who yelled, “Shit!” when he saw that Tom was armed with more than just a pistol.

  Before the man could do anything more than that, Tom put two rounds into his chest, dropping him.

  The man to Tom’s left, holding a Beretta 92, had aimed the weapon at the side of Tom’s head—or rather, where he had estimated in the dark that Tom’s head would be.

  Tom turned, lay on his back on the floor, and aimed his carbine up at the second man.

  He looked just as surprised as his associate, but he was adjusting and bringing his pistol to bear when Tom fired two rounds into his torso.

  That man fell, and Tom scrambled back to his feet, stood over the second man, and fired a single round into his head, then quickly did the same to the first man.

  Without hesitating, Tom displaced, scanning the room with his light as he moved from position to position.

  Only when he was certain there were no more men on that floor did he allow himself a moment to gather his thoughts and catch his breath.

  Raveis had anticipated that Tom might come looking for him at the hotel, and it was clear that the Colonel had had the same idea about this location.

  No doubt the Colonel, after receiving Tom’s texts, had alerted his men that Tom was on his way.

  Had Tom not been better armed than they . . . Well, he didn’t want to think about that.

  It took Tom fifteen minutes to clear the rest of the building—all four floors of all four wings as well as the basement. He kept his light off as much as possible.

  With that done, he began his preparations.

  His first stop was the fourth floor, where his Colt 1911A1 was hidden.