by Reed Sprague
River was unsure of Eddy’s motives. “Eddy, I love you, but, first of all, I’m the one who’s supposed to ask that question. Second, we’ve been together only during our young teenage years, not as adults who can make a serious decision like this. Third, I don’t have a job, so I have no way to support us. Fourth, we have no place to live. Fifth, your Mom and Dad, as nice as they are, would kill us. Sixth, after your Mom and Dad killed us, my Mom and Dad would kill us. Seventh, I haven’t got a dime to buy you a ring. Eighth, no church will perform the ceremony because we’re too young to have a clue what we’re doing. Ninth, we wouldn’t be able to go on a honeymoon because I don’t have a dime to my name. Tenth, you shouldn’t ask a question like that unless you’re serious.”
“I am serious, River. I want us to get married. I’m not kidding. We can go to a justice of the peace, to the courthouse, or whatever. I don’t care about all the other stuff. I already know all of what your reservations are; although it was so romantic of you to list them off as if you were reciting some sort of top ten list or something.
“River, I want to get married, and I want to get married now. What do you think?”
“Wait a minute! You really are serious, aren’t you Eddy?”
River was surprised enough that Eddy would ask him to marry her, even if he felt she wasn’t serious. But a serious proposal really was a shock. “What do you want me to say!” River exclaimed. “I can’t say no, because I know that I love you enough to make it work, and I know that you love me just as much. We can overcome all the odds, and I know that. Are you serious? Is this a joke?”
“No, River. This is not a joke,” Eddy said convincingly.
“Oh, boy. I’m in deep trouble, then.”
“Why are you in deep trouble, River?” Eddy asked.
“Because, I’m not going to turn down a chance to marry you. So, if you’re serious, the answer is yes, I’ll marry you. We’ll go ahead and get into deep trouble together.”
CHAPTER SIX
River and Eddy married in May 2013, and settled in Houston, in a small apartment on the west side of the city. River, with an IQ that was above average, though not by much, graduated from the University of Houston after four and a half years with a degree in law enforcement.
In spite of his preference for naps, River proved to be methodical and thorough in his studies. He achieved more than his fellow students in his undergraduate work. “Napping River” somehow graduated near the top of his class. It was December 2016, though, and times were rough. Times were very rough.
The federal government had recently established a graduate school for future officers of its newly formed national security agency, the United States Federal Intelligence Agency, USFIA for short. The USFIA had been created by the federal government as a wholesale replacement for the Department of Homeland Security. The USFIA would be in full charge of the CIA, FBI, TSA, and all other federal investigations, intelligence and law enforcement agencies.
Multiple failures and bungled investigations, first by the CIA and FBI, dating back to the late 90s, were more than the public could stand. The Department of Homeland Security had been ill conceived, poorly planned and poorly managed. It was no longer considered a viable working model for managing national security and intelligence operations. It had quickly become the cumbersome bureaucratic nightmare many experts predicted it would.
Rather than manage the CIA, FBI and other national security agencies, Homeland Security often stood by while the intelligence agencies it was to control played P.R. games to cover their messes. They were obsessed with promoting themselves, covering their mistakes and making one alarming claim after another in order to make bogus cases for more power, authority, money and secrecy. Like narcissistic children, their relationship with their parent had become a joke. They turned the Department of Homeland Security into an enabling, incompetent and disrespected parent. The USFIA was to be a stern parent, fully in charge of its family.
The people of the U.S. were outraged by the obvious blunders of the CIA, including the incompetence that allowed the 9/11 terror attacks and the inaccurate intelligence about Iraq in 2001–02. Problems at the FBI were well known and had been chronic for decades. It seemed as if the FBI either was blackmailing a president, in collusion with the U.S. government against her people, trampling the rights of average Americans, or a combination of the three.
The core of all of the problems with the nation’s intelligence agencies was the bloated bureaucracy of each of the member agencies and the immense power vested in these agencies. In response to the public outcry, the federal government created what it hoped would be a highly efficient and focused national intelligence agency. The job of the USFIA was straight forward and simple: Manage the nation’s intelligence organizations and rid them of unnecessary and dangerously–bloated bureaucracy.
The Academy for the United States Federal Intelligence Agency, nicknamed “The Sentinel,” opened its doors at eight o’clock in the morning, 2 January 2017. Its future graduates were to stand watch. They were to watch over all of U.S. domestic and foreign investigation agencies’ activities, and they were to act as an investigative and intelligence agency in their own right. The government did not encourage applications to the USFIA from established FBI or CIA agents. Agents of other national law enforcement agencies were also discouraged from applying.
River had applied to the USFIA a year before it opened and was accepted. He began classes on opening day. He planned to attend the agency’s school for three years, receive a master’s degree in federal law enforcement and homeland protection, and then be on his way to a career that would take him to heights few could only dream to go. He and Eddy were elated. He was in on the ground floor of something big. His timing was perfect.
River’s disorganization and procrastination were faults of his past now. He had grown up. His training at the Sentinel was grueling. He was not near the top of his class. Academic achievement was not determined by IQ at the Sentinel, or by hard work. It was determined by a combination of intelligence, organizational skills, mental and physical toughness, and by something that had not been tried before in any major educational institution—a course named Life Decision.
Few would earn top grades in Life Decision. In fact, all instructors were told by the academy’s leaders that no student was to earn an A in the course. Life Decision was not a course about making good choices for happy living. It would have been more accurately titled, “Decisions That Might Decrease the Possibility of Death.”
Various scenarios were presented to students with no right answer. Each week a particular student was presented with a scenario and asked to give his or her decision in response to the circumstances so presented. Scenarios that offered only a slight chance for the preservation of life and the near assurance of death were routinely presented to the students.
The job for the rest of the class was to find one or more ways the decision made would get the decision maker and/or others killed. The decision maker’s job was to convince others in the class, especially the instructor, that he was capable of using reason, intelligence and logic to improve the odds of preserving life. The stress of this class, required to be taken as one class over two semesters, actually caused many students to become physically ill. Many dropped out of the academy altogether because of Life Decision. Several more each year gave up their dreams of working in law enforcement at any level.
The course was designed to bring the self–assured to the point of self–doubt, to make the weak strong, to humble the puffed up and puff up the humble. Results were always unpredictable. Many students who lacked self–esteem were encouraged because their decisions proved to be acceptable. Others who had positioned themselves on a high perch learned that their decisions were terrible; some were outright dangerous.
Weaknesses were exposed, and all personality types learned to think like analytical thinkers and problems solvers instead of mindless, big–muscled heroes. Each also learned that he must make d
ecisions regarding circumstances where there exists no clear answer. No student got to be Superman or Wonder Woman. There was to be no clear hero. There are seldom real heroes in intelligence work, at least not as heroes are typically envisioned, so there would be none at the Sentinel. Instructors taught the students that decisions might provide the “right” answer, even in a classroom setting, only twenty–five percent of the time.
Today it was River’s turn to be the decision maker. “Warwick, Warwick, here’s your scenario. You are on a boat, a fairly large boat. There are a total of eight on board, the maximum that the boat can handle. You’re working undercover. You were sneaked onto the boat to investigate its mission. You are posing as a drug smuggler, but at a low level. You’re a deck hand. You’re on your own. If they discover who you are, you’re doomed. You will be shot in the head and thrown overboard without any chance to talk your way out of anything, unless you survive the shooting and can talk the sharks out of eating you.
“The operators of the boat are smuggling drugs from South America to Key West. You have no cell phone and you have no gun. You do have one thing going for you: A crew of FBI investigators are waiting thirty miles away from Key West, at Big Pine Key. The agents at Big Pine Key believe that their location is the landing point for the boat. If the boat goes there, you’re home free.
“To complicate your problems, though, one of the boat’s crew members is a corrupt FIB agent who directed the boat to Key West because he knows of the setup at Big Pine Key. He suspects that one of our USFIA agents is on the boat, but he has no idea which of them is that agent. He knows, of course, that he himself is not the agent, and he knows that the boss is not, so that leaves only six who could be the USFIA agent.
“Conversely, you don’t know his identity. You know that you are not the corrupt agent, and you can logically presume that the boss is not him either. Neither he nor the boss has any use for the others on the boat after the drugs are brought to Key West. It’s likely, then, that he and the boss will unload the drugs at Key West then head back out to sea and get rid of all others on the boat to make sure they get the one unknown agent. So, if you expose yourself, especially to the boss of the operation, they will kill you, throw you to the sharks and proceed with a completely successful drug deal. And, of course, they will not have to dispose of the others. Their operation will be far less risky that way.
“Please let us know how you’re going to handle this situation. You have one hour to write on the chalkboard your exact plan as you’re explaining it to us. Please proceed.”
“Okay,” River began, “There are three questions about the corrupt FBI agent to which I must get the best possible answers. These are in no particular order: 1. What are his physical attributes? 2. What are his reactions to stressful situations? 3. What is his position in the group?
“I would begin immediately to try to figure out who the corrupt agent is. He will be one of the more influential of the group. I can rule out the guys at the bottom of the chain of command. Those who loaded the contraband, those who stand guard, those who fetch at the commands of others, are all excluded. The FBI agent will likely be in regular conversations with the boss. I will see him speaking with the boss in private quite often.
“This would narrow it down to, probably, two or three. The FBI agent will be armed, heavily armed. He may be a traitor to the FBI, but that will not mean that he’s a hero to the others on board. So he’ll be protecting himself. I’ll also look for tale–tell signs such as hair that is not dirty or greasy, clothes that are newer, fake tattoos, fake accent, use of fifty–cent words rather than plain talk. I’ll look for hands that are proportionate and smooth with clean and well–trimmed finger nails, rather than swollen and callused with rough nails. Details will be critical here.
“I’m familiar with people who spend a great deal of time on and around boats. There’s a certain worn look to them, to their clothing, to their shoes, to their faces and their hair. It can’t be faked.
“I will determine who the agent is, within a reasonable doubt, then I’ll start trouble. At some point during the trip, as we pass near land, I will wreak havoc on the boat. I will create a conflict between myself and another member of the crew. The FBI agent would likely be the person who figures out that he can’t allow us to settle the dispute by killing the other. He will also be more likely to discourage the shooting of either or both of us—because our bodies would wash up on the shore and create suspicion. If that person is the same person I suspected in the first place, I’ll consider that match to be the best possible confirmation I would get under the circumstances.
“Your run–of–the–mill drug smuggler doesn’t think things through that thoroughly. In a dispute like the one I have planned to create, your everyday drug smuggler would just shoot one or both of us and throw the bodies overboard. An FBI agent, corrupt or not, is smart enough to demonstrate a highly intelligent thought process. That will work against him, though, because it’ll help me to figure out who he is.
“My actions will not raise suspicion because stress that explodes into arguments is common during these operations. All on board will know that. Once I’m reasonably sure of the agent’s identity I’ll go to work on him.
“I’ll either convince him to do the right thing by appealing to his law enforcement training and his allegiance to the Constitution or I’ll convince him that he’ll be targeted by the boss once the operation is over. He’s likely to have a family. He’s likely to want to do what’s right. He’s probably a decent guy who just fell for a bribe.
“Though it would not be true, he could be told that his fellow agents at Big Pine Key will not be told of his corruption, that he will be hailed as a hero. I would convince him to fake a cell phone call from the FBI and then tell the boss that he just received word that the boat is to land at Big Pine Key rather than Key West.
“My alternative plan would be to convince him that the boss plans to kill him after the operation because the boss does not want an FBI agent talking about the operation under interrogation in order to save his own skin. At the conclusion of the operation, the boss would be through with him, having used him for what he needed. Why would the boss keep him alive at that point? He will be of no benefit. He can’t be used for another operation. The boss can’t take the chance that he will have no further contact with the FBI. I’ll convince him that his death is imminent.”
River’s analysis was fine, but he was all over the place with the details. Additionally, the instructor did not accept solutions that included either/or plans. “Nice try, River; nice try. But you know we don’t accept either/or plans. Which will it be? And you need to be absolutely clear about the specifics. Eight lives hang in the balance, including yours. Pick it up at the point that you have reasonably determined the FBI agent’s identity. Proceed from there.”
“Okay, I would appeal to him to cooperate with me. I would convince him that his death warrant has been signed by the boss. He and I would take over the boat by force, and proceed to Big Pine Key. I would convince him that once we thwart the operation, I would offer to testify that he cooperated. I would also recommend that he should be allowed to testify against the boss and crew, and that, in exchange for that testimony, his record would be clean—no fine, no jail time, no probation, nothing. I would not try to convince him that his career in the FBI would be salvaged, though, because he would undoubtedly know that it would not be salvaged.”
River’s fellow students were salivating. They couldn’t wait to slam him. He was one of the top logical thinkers in the class, and many of his fellow students saw this as an opportunity to knock him down several notches, thus elevating themselves.
“The bottom line is that you have a five in six chance of blowing this wide open. I don’t feel sorry for the others on the boat, but you’re likely to get them killed. You certainly are likely to get yourself killed. Your plan is ill–conceived and even amateurish,” lamented one student.
Another called out
, “There are many plans we could come up with in here that could possibly get people killed. Your plan eliminates ‘could possibly’ and replaces the term with ‘would surely.’” River had to think about that for a moment, but realized soon enough that the comment was not a compliment.
The rules called for River to provide a proposal. He was not allowed to challenge the students to come up with their own plan. He had to defend his plan’s viability. Still, he tried to deflect criticism by requesting that the others come up with a plan that he could then challenge. He knew it wouldn’t work, but he was unable to resist the effort. “There is no other option, certainly not a better option. If any of you believe that there is, tell me what you would do.”
“Again, nice try, River,” the instructor said, interjecting suddenly. “Now how about you play by the rules from this point on or your indecision and insecurity will not only get you killed on the boat, but might also kill your chance for a decent grade in this course.” All the students, including River, laughed. The instructor didn’t.
“Well; here’s what I meant. There are no easy solutions to this agent’s problem. There is no plan for this that we could find in a textbook,” River explained.
“I had to begin by thinking of bad plans, the least acceptable options, then pick the best of them. That’s really all we can do sometimes. It would serve no purpose to fake a positive or ideal solution. It would do no good to offer a grand plan that sounds good and would look good in a movie. I needed a plan that would provide the best possible outcome. An ideal solution does not exist when you’re in the midst of a difficult, dangerous situation such as the one presented. You have to make a plan work that does not seem workable.
“Of course there’s a five in six chance of choosing the wrong person. But that’s only if I don’t know what I’m doing. I do know what I’m doing. I’ve been trained. And I have experience. And I have been told to look for details, tell–tale signs that others would not notice. And I know how to talk with people, to reason with people.