The Shadow Agent

by Daniel Judson

  The shots were coming from the passenger side of an SUV on their tail.

  Tom rose, firing his HK416 as he moved toward the back door, but the small 5.56 rounds did little to the SUV’s windshield of reinforced glass.

  But the cluster of starlike fractures forming in front of the driver was rendering the clear glass opaque, so once Tom reached the back door he kept firing through the window till the bolt locked on an empty mag.

  He had no spare on him, but before he could say anything, Esa was beside him, handing her spare mag to him.

  Then she raised her M4, aimed through the other window, and fired at the windshield.

  The SUV was falling back, but its passenger was still firing.

  Tom inserted the mag and slapped the bolt release, was ready to rejoin the fight when Carrington called out.

  “Contact left!”

  The van was passing another of the Colonel’s men, this one standing on the sidewalk and taking aim at the side of the speeding van.

  He opened up with a burst of automatic fire, the rounds penetrating the sheet metal panel and filling the rear compartment.

  The man was just coming into Tom’s view when he felt Esa slam against him as if shoved. His legs buckled and he fell, too, hitting the floor hard, Esa landing beside him.

  Tom was immediately overwhelmed by a burning sensation deep inside his torso.

  He tried to breathe but couldn’t draw in air, was lying there stunned and gasping as Carrington’s bodyguard appeared by the van’s back door, firing through one of the windows at the lone gunman on the sidewalk and dropping him with a single shot.

  Then the bodyguard acquired the SUV still falling back behind them and put a round through its radiator, incapacitating the vehicle.

  Tom was still struggling to breathe when Hammerton leaned over him, saying something Tom couldn’t hear.

  Carrington’s bodyguard appeared beside Hammerton, opening a bleeder-blowout kit and calmly giving instructions to Hammerton.

  The van was still moving, and as it rounded a corner, gravity turned Tom’s head.

  He saw Esa beside him, saw her eyes find his.

  Looking down, he could see blood flowing from her wound, the location of which was nearly identical to his own.

  Hammerton had one hand on Tom’s wound and the other on Esa’s, applying pressure.

  Through the ringing in his ears, Tom heard Carrington’s bodyguard speak.

  “We only have one bleeder kit.”

  His tone was both calm and grave.

  Tom felt himself drifting—a tranquil sensation at first, but then it suddenly shifted into a sense of rapid sinking.

  It was as if he were being swallowed by a vast ocean of cold, swirling water.

  The last thing he remembered was the face of the woman beside him.

  A woman who vaguely resembled Stella.

  Tom slipped in and out of consciousness.

  At one point he was in the van, Hammerton and Carrington’s bodyguard standing over him and working frantically. He felt no pain but could sense the speed at which they were traveling. As he drove, Carrington was on a cell phone, giving orders.

  The next thing Tom knew, he was on a stretcher, being carried by men who were running. He didn’t recognize them, but he knew by their uniforms that they were some kind of med-evac team.

  Tom wondered whether he was back in Afghanistan, being transported by medics to a waiting Huey, the grenade fragments that had entered his torso—after first passing through Cahill’s—moving deeper into his flesh with each step the rushing men took.

  He wondered, too, if it were possible that everything he had experienced since that night had been some kind of trick of the mind, the reverse of seeing one’s life parade by in a flash when near death.

  Maybe everything—Stella and Canaan and all that had followed—had been nothing more than a dream of the mind unfolding in milliseconds, utterly unreal despite having been vividly felt, and despite the lingering memories of the woman—the only woman—he had loved.

  But the sky that had spread out above him back in Afghanistan was different—a desert sky, full of stars and vast.

  Above him now were only dark clouds from which fell a cold and bracing autumn rain.

  Tom’s vision darkened, and the ringing in his ears faded. He could sense motion every now and then, but nothing more.

  When he finally could open his eyes, once he had sensed that all that motion had finally ceased, the face above him, though not Stella’s, was one that he welcomed the sight of.

  “We’re going to take care of you, Tom,” Sandy Montrose said. “You’re going to be okay.”

  Tom spoke the only word that mattered. “Stella.”

  His voice was more of a gasp than a whisper.

  “She’s on her way. They’ll all be here soon.”

  Tom sensed that there were people around him, maybe even a crowd, but the only other person he could see was Carrington’s bodyguard.

  He was standing next to Sandy, as if preparing to work alongside her.

  Tom closed his eyes, and the last thing he heard was Sandy saying, “Okay, let’s put him under . . .”

  Fifty-Seven

  Semiconscious and adrift, Tom hears voices.

  Stella’s first, asking, What happened?

  Sandy answers. A round penetrated the van wall and struck the person next to Tom, passing through her and into him. He was wearing a Kevlar vest, but it was only rated for pistol calibers. Fortunately, the round had lost a lot of its energy by the time it reached him. As badly wounded as he is, if it weren’t for the woman next to him, things would have been a lot worse.

  What woman? Stella asks.

  Carrington answers, Her name is Esa Hirsh. She works for the Benefactor.

  To Tom the voices sound distant, as if his drifting has carried him away from where they are—wherever it is they are.

  Stella wants to know where Esa is now.

  Hammerton’s voice cuts in: She’s not going to make it.

  We only had one bleeder-blowout kit, Carrington explains.

  But the Benefactor is still out there? Stella asks.

  Tom can barely hear her. He wants to reverse his drifting, get back to where she is. To have come this far and waited so long, only to lose her again, angers him.

  He wants to call to her, tries to scream, but has no voice of his own.

  He is even farther away than he was a moment ago.

  He remembers the concerns he had about Stella undergoing the training that Raveis offered at his compounds.

  She would not be the same after it.

  No one was.

  He wants to see, wants to detect the changes in her.

  Who she is now, as seen by who he is now.

  But he is carried farther and farther away, her voice and the other voices fading to almost nothing.

  Tom hears Hammerton answer, Yes, he’s still out there.

  Carrington says, That’s what we need to talk to you about.

  Then Stella replies, So let’s talk.

  Tom can hear only murmurs that grow fainter and fainter.

  It isn’t long before he hears nothing at all.

  Lost, he succumbs to the emptiness that surrounds him.

  Tom is walking along a tree-lined street covered with brittle, colorful leaves.

  The air is chilly, the blue sky clear.

  Among his favorite memories are those of returning home from military school for Thanksgiving break.

  An early indication of his natural tendency toward self-reliance was the fact that Tom had opted every year to make his own way back.

  That journey required that he take an hour-long bus ride—the 370—from Troy to Schenectady, then Amtrak from there to the Lake Champlain ferry at Essex, New York. Once across and into Vermont, he would hitch a ride the rest of the way.

  Dressed as he was in his school uniform, a duffel bag over his shoulder, it didn’t take long before one of the cars disembarking th
e ferry stopped for him.

  Though the various drivers always offered to take him to his front door, he preferred to be let out on the edge of town and walk the rest of the way.

  He is aware that he is dreaming, so he goes with it, relives those long-ago sojourns, which were precursors to the five years of wandering that he would embark upon after his discharge.

  These were the first of an uncountable number of steps in an odyssey that would eventually bring him to that railcar diner in Canaan, Connecticut, where Stella worked.

  As he walks old and familiar streets, he chooses to savor the sights and sounds and smells his unconscious mind is re-creating.

  He passes the homes of his neighbors—childhood playmates and family friends he sought out during the long holiday weekends.

  But it is his own family right now that he wants to see.

  The first he should spot is his kid sister, who watched for him from her bedroom window, waving as he came into her view.

  Then the next he would encounter is his mother, who would greet him at the door with a warm embrace that, after she was lost to him, he would never again know.

  And finally he would see his father, emerging from his study, smiling proudly, eager to shake his only son’s hand.

  With all this in mind, Tom turns onto his street, sees his childhood home ahead, hurries toward it till he is running, kicking leaves, and pulling the sharp autumn air into his uninjured lungs.

  But as he approaches the home, he does not see his kid sister in the upper-floor window.

  No one is there to open the door as he reaches it.

  And once inside, he is alone in a place that has clearly been abandoned—a place too much like the spaces in which he has dwelled these past few months as he waited for his chance at claiming justice for those who were taken from him.

  He hears a voice behind him, thinks it’s Stella’s.

  He turns, desperate to finally see her, but the woman he is facing isn’t her.

  It’s Esa Hirsh.

  Tom sees the lacerations on her face, looks down at the fatal wound in her torso spilling blood.

  Tom asks what she said.

  Esa approaches him and extends her hand.

  In it is a cell phone smeared with blood.

  She places the phone into his hand.

  Her skin is ice-cold.

  She will kill him, Esa says. She will kill him for you. She will kill him for all of us.

  Fifty-Eight

  Tom woke in a bed, not flat on his back but slightly upright.

  It was a hospital bed, but even in the darkness, he knew he wasn’t in a hospital room.

  There was furniture—sofas and easy chairs—and the walls were covered with floor-to-ceiling built-in bookcases.

  On one end of the room was an ornately carved door, and on the other, a set of French doors, beyond which was a body of water, its smooth surface twinkling under moonlight.

  Even in his condition, Tom recognized that he was at the Cahill estate on Shelter Island.

  This room was the study in which he had first met the Colonel just shy of two years ago.

  It was shortly after that meeting that Tom and Stella had slipped away with the intention of roaming free, only to end up not far from Tom’s hometown, which Stella had wanted to see so she could know him better, and where they had spotted as they were leaving a small and secluded roadside diner for sale.

  It took a minute before Tom was able to do anything more than look around the dimly lit room.

  He was alone, and the stillness he sensed told him that it was likely late at night and possibly everyone was asleep.

  Eventually, he looked down at his arms. An IV was feeding a Ringer’s lactate solution into his bloodstream via the antecubital vein in the crook of his right arm. A cuff around his upper-left arm monitored his cardiac telemetry and oxygen saturation, as well as his blood pressure.

  He removed the cuff first, then withdrew the 18-gauge needle from his vein and sat up.

  If he had forgotten about his gunshot wound, he was reminded of it by the sudden wave of pain that almost sent him back down onto his back.

  But he pushed his way through it, remaining upright and catching his breath before swinging his feet off the bed and onto the floor.

  It took all he had to get that far, had to summon more just to stand.

  His legs were less than steady as he searched the drawers of a nearby wheeled cart for gauze and tape, which he found and attempted to place over his vein.

  The overall lack of dexterity he displayed made it clear to him that he had been administered some form of pain medication.

  It was by sheer will alone that he managed to complete his task and head for the door.

  Once through it, he followed the long hallway till he was standing in the main entranceway. There he heard voices, coming from the kitchen.

  Quiet talk, female voices.

  He turned down the narrower hallway and pushed open the swinging door at its end.

  He saw Sarah Grunn and Krista MacManus seated side by side at the island counter. Someone was standing at the open refrigerator door.

  It was Slattery.

  They all had their backs to Tom, but Slattery caught the open door behind her in the corner of her eye and turned. “Jesus, Tom,” she said.

  Leaving the refrigerator open, she hurried across the room to him.

  Grunn and Krista looked back.

  Tom said, “Where is everyone?”

  The painkillers made his mind work slowly, and he slurred his words.

  It seemed for a moment that none of the women knew what to say.

  Tom looked at each one of them before asking, “Where is Stella?”

  Fifty-Nine

  Six hours earlier, at sunset, Stella was standing on the back lawn.

  Carrington and Hammerton were facing her.

  White gauze was wrapped around the wounds on Hammerton’s neck.

  Positioned behind Stella at the water’s edge were two men, and a second pair was on the back porch.

  Former members of Hammerton’s SAS unit, each man studied the surroundings carefully.

  “Cahill has retrieved the cell phone from Esa’s hotel room in the city,” Carrington said. “He and Grunn and Krista are on their way back.”

  Stella nodded. “How long does the woman have?”

  Hammerton answered. “Sandy doesn’t think she will last much longer. Just too much blood was lost.”

  “What are the chances of her regaining consciousness?”

  “Not good.”

  “But she gave us a lot of information while she could,” Carrington said. “We should be able to use it to get the Benefactor to a meeting place once Cahill returns with her cell phone.”

  “And why would the Benefactor show up?”

  “His longtime bodyguard defected before being killed. He’ll want a report.”

  Stella thought about that. “So why is she helping us? What does she want in exchange?”

  “Mercy,” Hammerton said. “When the time comes.”

  Stella remembered her father’s death. Unlike her mother, who had passed relatively quickly, her father had lingered for weeks, drifting in and out of consciousness, though after a point he was never fully conscious again, never really the man she had known and loved her entire life.

  There were times as she’d sat by his hospice bed when she wished she could help speed up his passing.

  He likely had wanted that as well.

  Stella said to Carrington, “Do you think the plan will work?”

  “Slattery is already back. She found clothes that are close to what Esa was wearing when the Benefactor last saw her.”

  “And there is a resemblance,” Hammerton said. “From a distance, at least,” he added. “And that’s all we’ll need.”

  Stella nodded, glanced out at the water.

  Moored to a small dock was a rowboat, rocking silently on the gentle tide.

  She and Tom had
once used that very rowboat to slip quietly away in the middle of the night—to make their own way, for a while at least.

  When she turned back to face the two men, she saw that Carrington’s bodyguard had joined the former SAS troopers on the back porch.

  The contrast between Carrington’s bodyguard and Hammerton’s friends couldn’t be greater.

  The bodyguard was young, handsome, and lean, while Hammerton’s compatriots were well into their sixties, menacing, and powerfully built.

  Still looking toward the porch, Stella said to Carrington, “And what’s your friend’s name again?”

  “He goes by J. D.”

  “Do you know what ‘J. D.’ stands for?”

  Carrington shrugged, as if any answer he gave would be at best a guess. “John Doe,” he said.

  “How old is he? He looks like a kid.”

  “He’s twenty-five. But I’ve never seen a more talented shooter. Or a better field medic. And he has access to certain critical resources that made it possible for me to do what I needed to do.”

  “Your own zealot,” Stella observed.

  He smiled. “Something like that.”

  Stella faced the two men. “I’ll need to leave now, though, right?”

  Carrington nodded. “Soon, yeah. Esa and the Benefactor last met in the East River State Park in Brooklyn. She said he’s likely to suggest the meeting take place there, without actually mentioning it by name, as a way of confirming that it’s really her sending the texts. You’ll need to be able to get there at a moment’s notice. If he even senses that something’s not right, it’s unlikely he’ll take the bait.”

  “General Graves has filled the role as his security chief, so chances are good that he’ll be there, too,” Hammerton said. “We won’t ever get an opportunity like this again. The Benefactor will replace the Colonel’s organization with Graves’s. It’s obvious that’s been his plan all along. Graves doesn’t have the government connections that the Colonel had, but he brings something else to the table.”

  “What?”

  “He shares the same ideology as the Benefactor. It won’t just be a business arrangement this time. They’ll combine their army of supporters, and with the Benefactor’s rivals gone, thanks to our efforts under the Colonel, there’ll be nothing to hold them back. It will be as if everything Tom did—everything we’ve all sacrificed—was for nothing. The only thing we can do is wait for the next big attack, helpless to stop it or do anything about it once it does happen.”