by E. M. Smith
Bad Influences
By: E. M. Smith
Copyright 2014 E. M. Smith
“Bad Influences” by E. M. Smith is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
For Officer Mary
You can handcuff me anytime.
Table of Contents
Bad Influences
About the Author
I kicked a broken desk over and took cover behind it. Whoever was shooting at me stopped.
My gun felt light. Almost empty. Bravo was hunkered down in a cubicle across the way, the only one close enough to help me.
“Hey, Jersey Shore,” I hissed. “Throw me some ammo.”
“Learn to conserve your bullets, bitch-boy,” he said.
“We’re on the same fucking team!”
“Not my fault you’re a trigger-happy little—”
I shot him in the arm.
“You son of a bitch!” Bravo slung his gun over his shoulder on its strap and charged across the aisle.
I met him halfway.
For a fake-baked city boy, Bravo sure knew how to tackle. I tried to break, but we tripped over a file cabinet. Bravo came up on top and reared back to hit me. Red exploded over the left eye of his goggles. A second later, somebody shot me in the top of the head.
“Subjects down,” Romeo’s voice came through the headset.
“Confirm Romeo’s kill, Foxtrot,” Whiskey said.
“Pretty sure they’re not walking away from headshots,” Romeo said. “Just saying.”
Fox leaned around the copy room doorway, careful to stay small and keep his paintball gun up and ready even though this was a training exercise. He leaned back.
“This is Foxtrot. Confirmed. Subjects are dead. Repeat: Bravo and Juliet are stupid and dead.”
“Hooyah,” Romeo said.
“This exercise is over,” Whiskey said. She sounded pissed. More pissed than usual, anyway.
“This was not my fault,” Bravo said. “Bitch-boy took a cheap shot at me.”
“I hit you in the arm, you fucking pansy. You couldn’t give me a handful of bullets?”
“How about I trade you for some cigarettes?”
“Fuck you.”
“Fuck yourself.”
“Shut your mouths.” Whiskey shoved the stairwell door open, knocking over the barricade. “We’re done here. Get your asses out of my sight.”
*****
“I’m just saying it’s stupid,” Romeo said, following me out of the subway station. “By some miracle, we find the only empty seat at rush hour and you want me to sit?”
“I was being polite.” The rain felt like it was fixing to turn to sleet any second now. I shoved my hands in the pockets of my jacket and headed for the coffee shop. Romeo followed me. She was such a short little thing she had to speed walk to keep up.
“The guy who fell out of the helicopter a few months ago wants me to sit while he stands?” she said.
“Five months,” I said. “And I wouldn’t be allowed to go on exercises if I wasn’t all healed up.”
“I just can’t believe that you don’t see why—”
I let the coffee shop door swing shut in Romeo’s face.
She came scrambling in after me. “What the hell, Juliet?”
“If you’re going to bitch and moan every time I try to be nice, hold your own damn door,” I said.
When Romeo laughed, the scratch-mark scars across her nose and cheek distorted. I don’t know how she managed to be cute with those. They made her look like one of those little dancing sushi cartoons that had gotten into a fight with a cat.
“What?” she said. She frowned and put her hand in front of her face. “Do I have something in my nose?”
“No.” I quit staring at her and checked out the menu.
This was the second time we’d gone out just us two. The first time—right after I’d gotten discharged from the hospital—had been because she promised she would take me for coffee if I didn’t get anybody killed on my first mission. Her asking this morning had caught me off guard. Like maybe this was supposed to be a date or something.
Before things could get too serious, I put on my thickest hick-ass drawl and asked her, “What the hell’s a mack-chee-ato?”
“Stop it,” Romeo said.
“Some kinda fancy city-folk drank?” I said, a little louder.
“I hate you.” She shook her head, but she was smiling. “I just hate you so much.”
“C’mon, pretty mama, don’t do me that-a way.”
Romeo shot me the finger and stepped up to the counter to order for us. Iced something-or-other for her, straight black for me. I paid, even though the last time she’d told me she would shoot my balls off if I ever tried to pay for hers again.
This time, she didn’t say anything about me paying. Maybe this was a date.
“Mine’s going to take a while,” she said. “Why don’t you get us a table? I’ll wait for our order.”
“A’ight,” I said.
She glared at me. It took me a second to figure out why.
“Oh, fuck you. That’s how I talk for real.”
Romeo laughed. “Well, if I can’t tell…”
I sent her the double-bird, then went to find a table. I picked one near the back without anybody else too close. I needed a place to stretch out my leg. It wasn’t that it hurt or anything—with physical therapy, the leg, my arm, and my back were all 100% again—but Romeo bringing up me falling out of the helicopter had made my bones kind of antsy. Like my body was worried I’d have to tackle some other guy out of a helicopter.
In all fairness, though, I didn’t know for sure that I wouldn’t have to. Killing Delgado had been my first mission with NOC-Unit and I’d had to sit out the next several while I recovered. For all I knew, I might end up jumping out of helicopters without a parachute every time. Maybe that’d be my specialty, the way Romeo was a sniper and Mike was a medic and Bravo was the team dickweed. Other than being too stupid or stubborn to die, I didn’t have a lot of skills.
“Here we go,” Romeo said. “A black coffee for the asshat who though he could embarrass me …” She sat a ceramic cup in front of me, then shook her plastic to-go cup. “And an iced caramel macchiato—which the asshat knows perfectly well how to pronounce—for me, the light of everybody’s life.”
Instead of sitting across the table from me, she took the chair beside mine and put her back against the wall. Romeo didn’t seem to be in any hurry to talk about anything in particular, so we drank our coffee and watched people.
The suit crowd came and went. They had someplace to be. The punk-ass hipster kids weren’t in a rush to get anywhere. They came in dressed like they’d got their clothes out of a Christian Ministries to Haiti barrel and lounged around the coffee shop, typing away at their computers or playing on their iPhones.
“What are you glaring at?” Romeo asked.
“A bunch of rich kids who think it’s cool to dress like their mama smoked their back-to-school money.”
“You sound like a CEO or something,” she said. “Now grumble at them to get a job.”
“Shit. They wouldn’t know what to do with one.”
“If you want to hate on the one percent, you ought to hate on Whiskey. I heard she grew up loaded. Crazy, I-can-buy-your-country money.”
“Nah, can’t hate on the boss. She’s at least got a job.” I took a drink of my coffee and looked over at Romeo. “How pissed is she about this morning?”
“You mean when you and Bravo went at it like little boys fighting over a Tonka truck instead of training for pinned-down interior combat?” Romeo rolled her eyes. “Not at all piss
ed. Whiskey cuts exercises short like that all the time. I remember this once when a hurricane took out our training ground and she almost let us quit early.”
“She’s probably putting a bomb under my bunk right now,” I said.
“Wishful thinking,” Romeo said.
I rubbed my hand across my face, suddenly feeling tired. Not even on the team six months and already I was the fuckup. I needed to get back to barracks and hit the books. Maybe if I could impress Whiskey with some progress during our next forensics lesson, she’d decide not to kill me.
“Let’s talk about something else for a while,” I said.
“Your nieces,” Romeo said. “When do you go see them again?”
“Tomorrow,” I said.
Romeo stared at me for a few seconds like she was waiting for something. Then she asked, “So, how are they adjusting to city life? Do they like the Upper West Side?”
“I think so. I haven’t been up to see them since last week, but Della was fixing to start preschool. She was pretty excited.”
Romeo cocked her head at me.
“But you’re not whipping out your phone to show me pictures from your last visit,” she said. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” I took a drink of my coffee. “Me and Ms. Baker don’t get along great is all.”
Which was about the biggest understatement a guy could make. If I wanted to take the girls to the playground, Ms. Baker thought the weather was turning too cold. If I wanted to come by and hang out with the girls on non-scheduled days, Ms. Baker thought I’d mess up their routine.
Of course, Ms. Baker and NOC-Unit probably had a lot of reasons for not wanting me to show up unannounced or take the girls anywhere without supervision. But you’d think Ms. Baker could be a little less of a bitch about it. Especially if she wanted to keep me from getting suspicious.
“Aw, did you get into a fight with sweet, old grandmother-lady?” Romeo made a fake pity-face. “Did she tell you no cookies before supper?”
I tried not to smile. “Your parents didn’t beat you enough, did they?”
“I was a daddy’s girl,” she said. “Nobody laid a finger on me.”
“Yeah, I kind of figured.”
“So, when are we—” Romeo’s phone started blasting “Who Let the Dogs Out” and flashing.
A second later, my phone went off. I gave Romeo a look, then fished it out of my pocket.
Blocked.
“It’s not a coincidence,” she said, turning her screen so I could see—Blocked. “That’s my work song. Welcome back to active duty, Juliet.”
*****
The dispatcher had given Romeo and I twenty minutes to get back to headquarters—which I couldn’t see happening at two a.m. in this city, much less in rush hour traffic with sleet coming down—so we ran it. Three miles from Fort Greene in Brooklyn to Lower Manhattan. In my new boots.
“Why the hell can’t we do briefings at barracks?” I asked.
“Pussy.” Romeo picked her sweater away from her chest with two fingers, then let it drop. “This is chenille. Don’t hear me complaining, do you?”
We made it to NOC-Unit headquarters with about nine seconds to spare. Fox was just climbing out of a cab.
“Coming in awfully hot,” he said.
“Fort Greene,” Romeo said. “Didn’t know we were on call.”
“We weren’t.” Fox punched in his code, then held the door for us. “The other teams must not have been able to make it. I’m just glad I hadn’t started home for the night or I’d look like you two.”
I shook some of the sleet out of my hair before I followed them inside.
“Where do you live?” I asked Fox. “Or is it not cool to ask that?” The senior NOC-Unit operators were all pretty private. With damn good reason, from what I’d seen so far.
Fox smiled.
“The Adirondacks,” he said. “Asking me to be more specific would not be cool.”
We went through the ID, retinal, voice, and handprint scans, then got in the elevator. The doors were shutting just as Bravo came running in the front.
“Hold the elevator!”
I would’ve been fine with letting them close, but Fox was closest to the doors. He grabbed the panel and they reopened. Bravo sprinted in and dropped back against the wall between me and Romeo, trying to catch his breath.
Fox laughed. “Let me guess—barracks?”
Bravo shook his head. After a few more deep breaths, he took his sunglasses off and checked his watch. He smirked.
“Twenty-seven fifty-six. Not a personal best, but not too fucking bad coming from Crown Heights.”
“Crown Heights?” Romeo asked like she couldn’t believe it. I guess you had to know Brooklyn better than I did. “What were you doing down there?”
“Helping a buddy move,” Bravo said. “I thought India’s team drew the next op.”
“Something must’ve come up,” Fox said.
“Or we were requested specifically,” Bravo said.
Fox nodded. “There’s also that.”
I just stared at them.
“Repeat customers,” Romeo explained.
The elevator stopped on 8 and we got out.
Whiskey and Mike were already in the war room, sitting at the conference table and talking to some guy. Mike’s green hospital scrubs looked pretty out of place between the guy’s black suit and Whiskey’s all-business, all-the-time gray.
“Wes?” Romeo groaned when she saw the guy. “Like we don’t get enough goatfucks from the private sector.”
“Good to see you, too, Romeo,” the guy said. “And when this job goes on record, it’s going to be private sector, so officially…”
“So, officially, you’re not here on behalf of the CIA’s special contracts division,” Romeo said. “Great. I bet that’ll make a huge difference in how badly this goes off.”
“CIA?” I said. “Cool.”
“You must be new,” he said. He stuck his hand out to shake. “Jarrod Wesson. Don’t worry. You’ll learn to hate the sight of me, too.”
I had an image in my head of CIA guys as these big, badass killing machines, but Wesson was average height, average weight, average looks. If there was any such thing as an average age, he was probably that, too.
“Let’s get this briefing over with,” Whiskey said. “We’re not exactly drowning in time.”
I took the last empty chair, between Mike and Bravo. Every place at the table was set with a binder and a pen, but nobody touched them.
Wesson went to the head of the table.
“Let’s skip the plausible deniability bullshit and cut straight to page ten,” he said. “Gerald Trent and the Brotherhood of the Living Ascension.”
I flipped through my binder until I found page ten. It was a photo of a middle-aged white guy wearing overalls, standing on a platform, surrounded by other men in overalls and women in sundresses.
“Trent’s former Navy,” Wesson said. “Really liked all the weapons training, really hated all the sitting around on docked battleships with his thumb up his ass. He stuck it out long enough to qualify for one of those MBAs-for-vets programs. By late ’09, he’d racked himself up a fortune extorting and embezzling his way to the top. By the time the IRS could prove it, Trent had it all locked away offshore. They turn up the heat, Trent drops off the map, spends a little time working on his tan on some non-extradition beach somewhere. Then last year, he reappears in West Texas under the name Gerry Ray Young, leading the Brotherhood of the Living Ascension. Standard cult manifesto—renounce your worldly possessions, Armageddon is coming, the government is the root of all evil. The CIA, FBI, and IRS all have major hard-ons for him.”
“But none of you can touch him,” Mike said.
Wesson tapped his nose and pointed at Mike.
“Bingo. Every member of the Brotherhood signs over their earthly possessions and power of attorney to Brother Gerry Ray when they join. They think he’s ascended, and that he’s going to teach them the p
ath to enlightenment or some shit. We had a man inside gathering evidence so we could bring Trent up on fraud charges, but today he missed the meeting with his handler.”
“And you guys still aren’t going in?” Romeo asked.
“They can’t,” Fox said, sitting forward. “Followers of a highly-trained gun-nut preaching Armageddon and ascension? If he isn’t passing out the Kool-Aid, he’s got them preparing to go down shooting.”
“Exactly,” Wesson said. “Our source indicated that Brother Gerry Ray has one big-ass stockpile on the commune—anything that goes bang that every member used to own—just in case the heathens attack.”
“I still don’t get why you want NOC-Unit to go in instead of the CIA,” I said.
“They have to cover their asses,” Bravo said. He was too busy glaring at Wesson to make a prison-rape joke at my expense. “The Company doesn’t want to explain to some family why their idiot kid got blown away in a firefight. That comes with a lot of paperwork, internal investigations, lawsuits, and media noise about a government-sanctioned massacre of American citizens on American soil by American soldiers.”
“Which is why, officially, Senator C. L. Miller is hiring you,” Wesson said. “Pages sixteen and seventeen, for those of you following along.”
I looked around the table. I was the only one following along.
“Miller’s daughter, Audi, dated Gerald Trent before his disappearance,” Wesson said. “Last month she disappeared. Not long after, she was photographed on the commune, looking an awful lot like Brother Gerry Ray’s newest fuckbunny.”
The picture on sixteen was a shot of a chick in heels and booty shorts, carrying around one of those ugly little purse-dogs and a bunch of shopping bags. The picture on seventeen was the same chick wearing a white sundress, looking whacked out of her mind and hanging off Trent’s arm.
“Audi?” Mike said. “What the hell are parents thinking these days?”
“‘Want me to check under your hood?’” Romeo said. “No, wait. ‘What you got in the trunk?’”
“‘Check out the liters on her,’” Bravo said.
“‘I’m not a mechanic,’” I said. “‘But I’ll take a look.’”