Danger Close

by S L Shelton

  The cop nodded his understanding. “Yes, sir,” he replied and then directed his partner to grab a cover out of the cruiser to put over the bodies.

  The woman who had hit my attacker was too shaken to move her car. The whole fight and his death had occurred on the road, right in front of her. One of the officers pulled the vehicle to the side for her and began directing traffic through the scene on the overpass. Below, two patrol cars had taken up position to divert traffic around the rear of the van.

  I suddenly remembered I had John on the phone in my car.

  “Where are you going?” Nick yelled at my back as I jogged across the bridge.

  “John’s on the phone,” I replied over my shoulder as I hopped the rail and ran down the slope. I reached into my wreck of a car and fished the phone off the floor in the backseat.

  “You still there?” I asked as I reached for it.

  “Yeah,” he said calmly. “Any bullet holes?”

  “Not in me,” I replied, disappointed I wouldn’t be able to report a live capture.

  “Is Nick there yet?” he asked.

  “Yeah. Hold on,” I replied and then walked over to Nick who was now peering into the van.

  “It’s John,” I said, handing him the phone.

  “Yeah,” Nick answered after taking it from me.

  There was a pause and then he looked at me. “Four?” he asked.

  “That’s what I counted,” I replied, plopping down in front of my ruined Toyota wondering how I would explain this to the insurance company.

  “Four,” Nick repeated into the phone. “Three dead for sure. The Fairfax Police are checking on the fourth one up the road.”

  “No,” he said in response to a question. “Monkey Wrench got the driver and the guy on the bike if he’s dead. He had one on the ground squealing when the last one popped up and killed him trying to shoot Monkey Wrench. I had to take him out—reflex.”

  Nick looked at me and winked.

  “Okay. As soon as they get here, I’ll bring him in. We need to rethink moving him,” Nick said.

  I was already shaking my head when he hung up and handed my phone back to me.

  “What?” he asked.

  “I had him,” I muttered, still rubbing the side of my face. “Right in my hands.”

  “From my point of view, one of you was gonna die,” he replied. “I’d be thankful it was the other guy.”

  “I’m really liking this on-the-job training program you’ve got,” I said grinning from ear-to-ear, trying to alleviate some tension with humor—bad idea.

  “Fuck you,” he replied, a deep crease forming on his brow. “I said we should have moved you last month. You aren’t trained for this. Maybe someone will fucking listen to me now.”

  I raised my eyebrows and looked away dismissively. “I thought I handled it okay,” I muttered.

  Maybe he thought he had been too friendly yesterday and needed to be doubly dickish today, but I was having a hard time figuring out Nick’s mood swings—smiling and winking one moment and then swearing at me the next. He glared at me before turning abruptly to yell at a cop for getting too close to the van.

  I stayed silent as we waited for the forensics team to arrive to take over the site, unwilling to put my feelings on the line for another assault from Nick—in my current heightened emotional state, I might say something stupid. When the Agency security team showed up, the police escorted part of the unit to the other dead suspect on Franklin Farm Road and I followed Nick to his truck.

  “We need to stop at my place first,” I informed him as we got in.

  “Why?” He asked, impatient.

  “I need to get John’s Glock. I wasn’t planning on going back to Langley today…plus, I need to wash this guy’s blood off my hands.”

  He shrugged and started the engine. I called the office as we pulled onto Route 50.

  “TravTech special projects division,” Jo answered.

  “Hey, Jo, it’s Scott. I’m not going to be in today,” I said, pressing my ribs where I’d smacked the steering wheel. “Something came up and I have to go back Langley today,”

  “Understood. I don’t suppose you’d care to share what’s come up?” she asked unemotionally.

  I couldn’t slip anything past her. “Car trouble…I’ll explain later. Also, I’ll be needing you or Storc to come and get me later.”

  “Don’t do that,” Nick said. “John will hook you up with something out of the federal impound.”

  I looked at him, and he reiterated his statement by nodding.

  “Never mind,” I said to Jo. “I’m covered.”

  “Okay,” she replied.

  “Tell Storc and Bonbon not to worry.”

  “Sure,” she said, ending the call.

  A few moments later, we were at my house. I ran in, nearly forgetting to enter my entry code, and then jogged up to the hall bathroom to scrub the blood from my hands. As the water went from running clear, to bloody red and slowly back to clear again, I had to check myself—I didn’t seem to have a problem with the fact that this blood belonged to someone who was now dead; I just wanted it off me.

  Is that normal? I wondered.

  Once I was half way presentable again, I went into my bedroom and retrieved John’s Glock from the nightstand, but as I turned to leave, I had a sudden overwhelming desire to check the progress of the worm I had sent to harvest data from Baynebridge. I hadn't done it earlier because my new wardrobe choice had made me late. Late was irrelevant now, though; I would simply be absent from work.

  I smiled when I saw there were forty-three new messages in my secure anonymous mailbox. It only took me a few seconds to download the detached files from their messages and dump them to an SD card. Satisfied by my little soldier-worm’s efforts, I jogged back downstairs, arming the alarm before I left.

  “Okay. Let’s go,” I said as hopped in, pulling my messenger bag into my lap and patting it.

  He put the truck in gear and looked over to me as he backed out. “What took so long?”

  “I had an urgent download to take care of,” I muttered.

  “Is that geek speak for taking a shit?”

  “Something like that,” I said with a grin. Taking a shit all over Baynebridge’s corporate firewall.

  **

  10:00 a.m.—Fayetteville, North Carolina

  THE SURVEILLANCE TECH, whose code name was ‘Alpha’, was not happy about having to deliver the news. He had only been with Harbinger for a few months, but already knew failure was not an option—not one with pleasant results, anyway.

  The phone rang at precisely 10:00 a.m., as ordered.

  “Speak,” came a deep voice at the other end.

  “This is Alpha,” he said. “The operation failed.”

  There was a long pause. Alpha could hear the teeth grinding on the other end of the phone.

  “Please relay that I want the entire team in Fayetteville by night fall,” Harbinger finally said.

  There was a brief pause while Alpha gathered his response in his head.

  “Sir…the team was retired,” he said nervously.

  There was another moment’s pause while Alpha listened to more tooth grinding on the other end of the call.

  “How?” Harbinger asked simply, quietly, his voice almost a whisper.

  “Unclear, sir. Wolfe appears to have had assistance from the Agency,” Alpha replied.

  “Maintain surveillance on Wolfe,” Harbinger commanded. “I want to know where he is, what he’s doing, what he eats, how long he sleeps, how big his cock is, what flavor toothpaste he uses, and where he buys it.”

  “Yes, sir,” Alpha said, relieved he was not being ordered back to Fayetteville. He was a simple surveillance tech and wanted no part of the bloodshed that he saw from a safe distance as a watcher.

  **

  HARBINGER ended the call and shoved the phone into his pocket. He ran his gigantic hand across his short, flat-top crew-cut and then dropped his hands to his sid
es, clenching and unclenching his fists several times as he felt the blood popping behind his eyes.

  Outside the warehouse office, a team of twelve men were preparing gear for an operation. They were loading weapons, desert survival gear, and electronic equipment into metal cases. The cases would be crated, labeled “machine parts” and loaded on a delivery truck to be taken to the airport.

  “Wolfe,” Harbinger muttered.

  He was supposedly a civilian, supposedly a computer geek. Harbinger couldn’t understand how four of his men were not only unable to capture him, but how they were killed in the process.

  “Who the fuck are you?” he asked himself, referring to Wolfe.

  Heinrich had said two of Baynebridge’s men had been killed in the last abduction attempt, but they had no details. Perhaps there was more to the boy than Heinrich had conveyed.

  He had no respect for Baynebridge. As far as he was concerned, they were trigger-happy, glorified security guards. Anyone of worth among their ranks had already been recruited into Harbinger’s force—there hadn’t been many.

  Harbinger was sorely tempted to go out and pick a fight with the men to bleed off some of the rage rising in his chest, but he knew it would be counterproductive in this instance—there was no one left to punish.

  Perhaps I should simply accept their deaths as punishment enough for their failures, he thought, but then shook his head. No…too unsatisfying.

  He walked out of the office and onto the warehouse floor, ducking out of instinct to avoid bumping his head on the door frame. He stood and observed the men working for a moment before stepping to the center of the activity.

  “I’ve just received an update from our team in Virginia,” he said in a slow, deep timbre. “I must say I am quite disappointed in the results.”

  Sudden tension flashed across the faces of the men.

  “It would appear that every member of the team had inexplicably lost all value for their own lives and allowed a young man—a boy, really—to end them,” he continued calmly as the men instinctively moved away from the big man. “My only regret is that I cannot, now, ask them…What is your life worth to you? How much effort are you willing to expend to execute your assignment, so that you may one day retire to felicific comfort?”

  He stepped close to one of the men, looked down at the rifle he was about to crate, and then gently relieved him of it.

  “But then, I suppose I already have my answer, don’t I?” he asked, gesturing with the rifle as if it were a weightless pointing stick, the pitch and volume of his voice building as he spoke. “I must assume—since they cannot answer for themselves—that their response might be: ‘Our lives are meaningless. Our duties are hollow and without virtue, and you, dear, dear Harbinger, have failed to motivate us to the levels required to succeed.’”

  He looked at the men, letting them tremble in their own insecurities, guessing what he might do next.

  “Well. I can only offer my apologies to those men,” he said with a tinge of sadness, drawing confused looks from the group. “I have nothing left to offer from which they may benefit…and I blame myself for that.”

  He held the rifle up to examine it, looking like a child’s toy in his massive hands.

  “But, my fellow mourners… I can offer them one, posthumous, gesture,” he said and then suddenly folded the rifle in half, its ballistic plastic and metal parts breaking into shards and falling to the ground. “I can ensure that I properly motivate their surviving comrades.”

  He dropped the remaining pieces of the rifle to the floor.

  “Rejoice!” he said, his voice booming evangelically, a smile on his face. “For you shall reap the benefit that I have failed to provide to them. I give you the gift of motivation!”

  He looked at each of them, slowly, measuring the level of fear on their faces.

  “From this moment forward, you will treat each and every adversary as if it is me with whom you do battle,” he said in a quiet, eerily calm voice. “Because that, in its rawest essence, is what you’ll be doing. If you fail me, then it had best result in your deaths…because if it does not, it most assuredly will when I lay eyes on you next.”

  He waited for a response but got none.

  “Come to think of it, perhaps the team in Virginia anticipated my response and threw themselves on their swords, preferring death over failure,” he muttered. “In that regard, perhaps they did learn from me…we’ll never know.”

  He smiled and looked at each face again.

  “Please tell me you understand the gift I’ve just given you,” he said quietly.

  “Yes, sir,” a few of them managed to mumble through their fear.

  “Excellent!” he boomed as he strode back into the other room. “Carry on.”

  **

  11:35 a.m. —Langley, Virginia-CIA Headquarters

  “I don’t care how capable he is,” Nick exclaimed as if I weren’t even in the room. “He was lucky—plain and simple. He needs to be in hiding until we can figure out who’s after him.”

  He got up and paced some more. John’s office was fairly small, so the act was even more annoying because he passed by me each time he crossed the room.

  “You can’t call it luck, Nick,” John exclaimed. “There’s a reason he’s been assigned to the group before he even goes through training.”

  “Should I leave the room?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Nick said.

  “No,” John said at precisely the same moment.

  “I just don’t want to make anyone feel uncomfortable for talking behind my back while I’m still sitting here,” I replied with a little too much snark for the already-tense moment.

  “And that’s another thing,” Nick said. “Where does he get off—”

  “Enough,” John said.

  “—talking to us like—”

  “ENOUGH!” John yelled, winning the moment. “You don’t want to say anything you are going to regret later.”

  “Pfft,” Nick huffed. “Like I care.”

  Is this really the same guy I spent time with yesterday? Why the sudden change?

  Then it dawned on me. Nick is WORRIED about me! The sudden realization made me smile before I could stop myself.

  “What? What are you smiling at, you arrogant little prick?” Nick muttered.

  “Nothing,” I replied with a grin.

  Nick blinked before he turned and stormed out of the office, slamming the door behind him.

  “He’s right, you know,” John said quietly. “You were lucky in the regard that they still want you alive. If they just wanted you dead, they could’ve put a block of C-4 on your car and ended the whole argument.”

  “I have to admit, two attempts in three days have put me a little on edge,” I replied.

  “Plus last month at your house and in the alley in L.A.,” John corrected, “—that’s four.”

  “The alley was incidental,” I said. “They were probably after Gaines.”

  He nodded in agreement of my assessment.

  “How’s Mark?” I asked, seeing an opportunity to slip the question past John again.

  “Still not talking, but at least it seems Homeland isn’t going to be able to disappear him,” he replied. “Not yet anyway.”

  “Justice got him?” I asked with a smile, pleased he had shared without hesitating.

  “No, not yet. But there’s an injunction in place to prevent him from being taken,” he said without looking up. “He’ll sit in the Navy brig at Norfolk until a full hearing. The AG has his teeth in this, and I don’t think he’s going to let it go.”

  “That’s good news for Mark, right?” I asked, milking the answerfest for all it was worth.

  “Yes. Anything that doesn’t involve torture is good for Mark,” he said and then looked up, realizing he had disclosed information to me that he had been withholding for a month. The blank expression on his face quickly turned into an astonished smile and he shook his head. “Besides, I have a sneaking suspici
on that he'll be more likely to volunteer information with the Department of Justice than Homeland. I’m concerned that someone at Homeland would like for him to just disappear.”

  “You think that the stars of the new republic were tied to Homeland Security?” I asked, referring to the media personalities who Gaines supposedly murdered—though I was certain he had not.

  “I think a lot of things,” he grumbled. “It’s all circumstantial and coincidence at this point.”

  “You’re CIA,” I said with a grin. “I didn’t think you were allowed to believe in coincidences.”

  He chuckled, rubbing his graying hair with his hand before he finished the betrayal of his exhaustion by rubbing his eyes. He sat back and stared at me for a few beats when he was done.

  “Do you want to me to call and set up a meeting with Dr. Hebron?” he asked, referring to the CIA psychiatrist I had been seeing once a week since returning from Europe. The look on his face, though, told me he was testing me.

  I thought about it for a second, at least giving the appearance that I was considering it before looking up with acceptance and a bit of a grin on my face. “Nope, I’m good. I'll catch her up on my next regular appointment.”

  “I don’t know what to do with you, Scott,” he said through a sigh, a brief and refreshing moment of pure honesty breaking through his tired features.

  I watched him for a moment before responding. “What’s the dilemma? I’m certain I’m not the first contractor or witness you’ve had.”

  “You are nothing like any contractor I’ve ever had,” he replied, a little frustration showing through his smile. “There are guys downstairs who’ve been CIA for years and can’t do what you do.”

  “Then swear me in and put me in the field,” I said, only half joking—testing the water with him.

  He looked at me for a second, trying to figure out if I was serious or not. I could tell there was a decision being wrestled with. I couldn’t do anything but wait for him to figure it out.

  “Are you serious?” he asked with more testing in his glare. “Because if you are, I can put you in pretty fast. A cycle is getting ready to start.”