The Perfect Teacher

by Christopher Metcalf

  Preacher took aim and pulled the trigger three times, putting two of the three rounds into the rubber sidewall of the left driver-side rear tire of the van. The effect was immediate. The tire exploded as the air under extreme pressure a second earlier, blasted out of the two holes, ripping the rubber and steel belts of the tire to shreds. The van slowed, like suddenly driving into quicksand. The vehicle's driver worked to keep control of the whole thing.

  The Mercedes drifted up and Preacher was right next to the gent he'd chased through the warehouse district minutes earlier. The guy whipped his head to the left and looked right down at Preacher just feet away.

  Now, people are strange. Really strange. They do things that surprise others. Truly strange things. People scream, laugh, howl, cry, fall to pieces. Sometimes they kill others. Preacher's done a lot of that.

  But sometimes, he surprises himself. Like now. Sitting there in the back seat of a taxi with a 9mm pistol aimed at his target a whole 11 feet away. Preacher did the strangest thing. He didn't pull the trigger. He didn't do what he'd done hundreds, no thousands of times, before. He didn't squint his left eye shut and take aim between the eyes of his target and gently squeeze the 9mm's trigger with gloved hand and fingers.

  No. Preacher did something different. He smiled. Just smiled.

  He still pointed the gun and aimed it between the blue eyes of the dude driving the white van just feet away from him. But he didn't pull the trigger. Could have. Probably should have. The guy would have shot him if the shoe was on the other foot and he had Preacher cold in his sights.

  But something that was tugging at him, pulling at a loose strand holding a seam together, wouldn't subside. He'd been thinking, working through it for 17 minutes now. In the grand scheme o' things, a crew sent to kill him was not really a big deal. People die every day. Hundreds of thousands of humans shuffle off this mortal coil each day.

  And to be honest, something Preacher rarely is, he didn't mind. He deserved to die. Deserved it a hundred times over for what he'd done. Who he'd been.

  It wasn't the how that tugged at the synapse at the back of his screwed up brain. It was the why.

  He was also interested in the who. Not the who as in "who are these guys?" No, "the who" of whom sent them. And that was the reason for the smile. The little wrinkle of his nose and wink of his eye at the driver of the white van just feet away. It undoubtedly messed with the dude. Had to.

  Seeing a crazed smiling face of an individual hanging out of the window of a Mercedes pointing a gun at your face couldn't do anything other than screw with a person's head.

  But alas, the briefest of moments shared must end. Preacher ended this one by moving his aim a quarter of an inch to the left. This slight movement, followed by the ever so gentle squeezing of the trigger, resulted in a 9mm round blowing through the window next to the van driver's head and continuing out through the front windshield.

  This then resulted in said driver whipping his head back away from the window and simultaneously wrenching his hands on the steering wheel, turning to the right to take the exit just a few hundred feet past the end of the bridge.

  "Follow him onto the exit ramp." Preacher pulled his head back in the vehicle and spoke calmly to his driver. "It whips back around to the east very suddenly. Be prepared."

  "I know the exit." The driver whispered as he hit the brakes and whipped the wheel to the right. Tires screeched as both vehicles rapidly decelerated and then fired forward and around the exit ramp from the bridge back around to Henryk Slawik Rakpart, the two-lane road right beside the Danube River's west bank.

  "Stop." Preacher reached and grabbed the driver's shoulder. Directly ahead, as they came to the end of the sharply curved off ramp, was the Danube. You had to go left or right or get really wet. He and the driver watched as the van just feet in front of them sped through the red light where a red sedan was coming through the intersection at a pretty good speed.

  The sedan t-boned the van. And because the driver of the van was trying to turn left, the physics of the violent collision resulted in the van's two driver-side tires to lift off the road. Forward momentum caused the vehicle to roll over onto its right side and then roof before slamming into the barrier designed to keep vehicles from careening into the Blue Danube.

  Preacher dropped several more $100 bills into the front seat of the taxi and kicked the rear passenger door open. He raced across the intersection even before the crunched red sedan completed its spin and slow coast to a stop. Looked like the woman driving the sedan was shaken but still conscious.

  He shot straight ahead toward the guardrail barrier and hopped over it with his Sig aimed to fire. He reached the van nine seconds later and bent to a knee to aim inside the overturned vehicle. But within the same second of pointing the Sig into the driver window, he saw something move out of the corner of his eye.

  Instinctively, he dropped and rolled to the left behind one of the guardrail's supporting wooden posts as a barrage of bullets slammed into the metal of the guardrail and the van now beside him. He adjusted aim and returned a salvo of a half a dozen rounds back at the spot he saw gun barrel flashes. He stayed in his somewhat protected spot for another few seconds before rolling back out with gun still aimed into the darkness of the path leading away beside the river.

  He was definitely impressed with the van's driver exiting of the vehicle within seconds, moving away and turning to fire on him. Good stuff. Real talent. Preacher shook his head as he rose to a knee and then to his feet. Shouldn't be impressed with a contract killer sent to end his life, but couldn't help it. He appreciated excellent work by any artist - whether poet, painter or assassin.

  Before he popped up and ran after his target, Preacher scanned the scene from beside and river and from on high via spy satellite images he devoured a couple of years ago in an obscure NSA facility in Maryland. He knew what he needed to do immediately. Up and running, he hurdled the guardrail and raced across the two-lane road beside the river. The move exposed him a little more than he preferred but it achieved the desired result in keeping his prey on the walkway next to the river.

  If the guy was allowed to cross the street and move up to higher ground and the university campus just above that, it would be a bitch to track and stop him without putting others in danger. Preacher shook his head at the thought. What the hell did he care about others getting hurt? Weird.

  He stayed as low as possible moving west, keeping the guy across the road in sight. A guardrail on his side of the road offered a little protection should the German he was following choose to turn and fire again. Why wait for that?

  Preacher stopped, brought up the Sig and rested it on the guardrail, took aim and exhaled. He could see the guy's head bobbing up and down over by the river. He really wanted to pry some info out of this one, so he adjusted his aim to 15 feet in front of the fella and fired off seven rounds. His prey dropped out of sight. Probably laying flat on the stones lining the bank of the river.

  This provided a brief moment to make a move. Preacher burst up and over his guardrail and went diagonally across the street, moving ahead of the German. When he reached the other side of the road, he hopped over the guardrail and dove to the sidewalk to roll and take aim. He positioned himself behind a wood post and was ready to fire when a barrage of bullets came his way. The rounds hit the ground, the wood post and the metal of the guardrail. One lucky little piece of lead found its way into the soft tissue of Preacher's left shoulder.

  Pain and heat seared. No time. Preacher adjusted to the other side of the wood post and returned a salvo of the last four rounds in the magazine back at the location of the barrel flashes. Sounded like most missed. But he was pretty sure he heard the distinctive exhale and groan that follows being struck by a bullet. Preacher pressed the button to drop the spent clip out of the Sig and shoved a full 16-round clip into the magazine.

  From over there, closer to the river, he heard shoes pounding on stones. He rolled and got up to follow. Handgun
aimed and at the ready. A passing car lit him up and cast enough light to spot the guy down near the water. He was close to a tour boat moored to permanent dock.

  "Don't go on there." He whispered. Too late, herr German raced up the walkway and jumped up and over a short fence to continue onto the boat. "Great."

  Preacher was a little pissed at this development and let the guy know by dropping to a knee, taking aim and firing five rounds at him. Time to end this.

  He reached the walkway to the boat and stopped to take a knee behind a large concrete pedestal that looked like it once held a statue. His latest target was down the gangway on that long, narrow tour boat. The dude was hurt and bleeding. Preacher turned and put his back to the cold concrete and dropped to his rear. He reached up and unzipped his jacket so he could reach in and feel the wound to his left shoulder.

  It was more than a scratch, but not deep. He closed his eyes and shot skyward, up to the heavens where he could clear his head and think for a few moments. He remembered the radio in his jacket pocket so he returned to this mortal coil. He pulled the radio out and depressed the talk button.

  "Miene freunde, bist du da?" He asked in Deutsche. Are you there?

  After 15 seconds, he got a reply. "I'm here." English with a thick German accent. But the guy insisted on English.

  "I'm glad you kept your radio. You do know that you are only alive because I want information?" Preacher got right to it.

  "You did not take that shot on the bridge a few minutes ago when you could have. I figured you wanted me alive, for a few minutes longer at least."

  "I wonder, do you know who I am?" Preacher smiled and looked up at the night sky.

  He heard a chuckle at the other end. "I have a pretty good idea who you are. Only whispers and myths, but I assume you are the geist. You killed four men on my team like it was child's play. You tracked me to the bridge and made me turn back and get on this boat. I suppose if I had known who you were before taking this job, I would have demanded ten times the fee and a larger team. But that wouldn't have changed anything, would it?"

  "Probably not."

  "You can't kill a geist, the ghost."

  "Already dead. Many times." Preacher agreed.

  "And you are going to come onto this boat and kill me." Resignation in the voice.

  "That's the plan, or at least it was until a few seconds ago."

  "What changed?" Hope in the voice.

  "You answered your radio."

  Delay and process at the other end. "And that means you are not going to kill me?"

  Preacher chuckled. "Kommt darauf." That depends.

  "Yes?"

  "What you share with me now."

  "Ahh, if I betray the confidence of those who paid for my services and trusted me with this mission, you will let me live?"

  No reply from Preacher. He was back up in the sky, above the clouds, looking down on the spinning, the churning of all the wonder. He already knew the script for the next few minutes. He'd pried information out of hurt and dying humans dozens, maybe hundreds of times over the past decade. It was all really the same. Peel back the layers of skin and every human is the same underneath. Preacher could name every piece and part during these pre-death autopsies.

  "Where do I start?" The gentleman on the boat on the Blue Danube beside him was ready to talk in hopes of living at least one more day. Preacher let him spill his guts over the radio.

  Chapter 36

  Transcript. 11.05.1998. Participants (names redacted). Sub X1; X2.

  Begin: 11:21 p.m. EST

  X2: "Jig's up."

  X1: "How's that."

  X2: "Element of surprise is lost."

  X1: "Unsuccessful?"

  X2: "No. Completed. But others crashed the party."

  X1: "Abort?"

  X2: "No. One more stop."

  X1: "Sure?"

  X2: "Yes."

  Chapter 37

  "We have a leak. Possibly a mole." Wyrick looked around the table.

  "Where?" NSA asked.

  "The task force."

  White House Office of Intelligence shook her head. "You're certain?"

  This was the second meeting of Account One since the suicide of the director of Central Intelligence nine days earlier. Wyrick was the CIA representative until a new director was Senate-confirmed and brought up to speed about an ultra-secret meeting only a very select few know exists.

  "We picked up a conversation in Jordan that contained knowledge only previously shared in the al-Qaeda task force meeting. It was a select meeting with only the representatives of each organization in attendance. I was there and I shared the information that was heard days later. Classified, eyes-only stuff. Nothing written or visual provided."

  "Damn. So someone in that meeting from one of the six agencies working the task force passed top-secret information. Who did they give it to?" NSA asked.

  "Still determining that. The captured conversation was between a Jordanian intelligence operative and a Saudi GIP mid-level director." Wyrick was matter-of-fact in his delivery. The GIP is the General Intelligence Presidency, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia's version of the CIA.

  "Well, we can rule out CIA as one of the six around the table in the task force meeting. I'm fairly certain you're not the leaker. The ghost of Seibel would surely come and take you for that." White House joked. "So that leaves five possible players. Are you already working this?"

  "Forty-eight hours in." Wyrick replied. "And thank you for making me worry about one more thing with that ghost."

  "And how serious is the information that was passed? Are their specific worries about operations or individuals compromised?" White House was now the senior member of this group.

  "No. We don't have those worries?"

  "No? Just overview information then?" White House again.

  "Actually," Wyrick hesitated.

  "Oh, I get it." NSA this time.

  "What?" White House asked.

  "Fake information. He provided deliberately false information."

  Wyrick just raised his eyebrows.

  "Aha." White House sat back. "So you had suspicions about the task force?"

  "I did."

  NSA leaned back in his chair. "Can I ask why? Did you have any evidence?"

  "None. Just a hunch."

  "About anyone in particular?"

  "No. Again, had a hunch. Something didn't feel quite right. In the months after the task force was formed, I perceived a change in communications. Nothing to go on. So I decided to use the select meeting as a test kitchen."

  "And now you've cast a net over this. Are we 100% sure we will find the leak, or even a mole, among the five representatives? This could be a case where one of them shared information with a trusted resource who in turn relayed it to the external player." White House, an experienced intelligence prosecutor, was already working through next steps.

  "Absolutely a possibility." Wyrick replied. "Be advised, I'd much rather not be focusing on this. I've kind of got my hands full with multiple live operations underway."

  "Understood." NSA replied. "Let's move on to those."

  "Ok, first..." Wyrick started.

  "I'm sorry, I'm sorry," White House interrupted.

  "Shoot." Wyrick nodded.

  "I just have to ask a question related to the previous topic."

  "Sure, go ahead."

  "The model employed, the planting of false information in a small group to see if it gets leaked. Has that method been employed with us, with this small group?"

  No hesitation from Wyrick. "Certainly. By me and most certainly by my predecessor."

  Chapter 38

  "Geez, what happened?" Abbie's face aghast as she stood up from a full-bend stretch and spotted the stitched up gash on Preacher's forehead.

  "Cut myself shaving."

  "Ok," She nodded, but needed to look away. "I guess you need to change your razor blade. That's a nasty scratch."

  "You ready?"

  She shook
her head. Couldn't keep her eyes off the wound. "I'll assume the other guy looks worse."

  "Let's go." Preacher started walking and broke into a slow jog. Sunrise over the blue Danube in Vienna was still an hour way.

  Chapter 39

  "So, no one."

  "You act like that's a surprise; like this is somehow news to you."

  Abbie and Preacher walked beside a stream. They put in seven-plus good miles of running this morning. Unlike her jogging experience with "Neil," she found that Preacher could push her pace. He had no problem keeping up or leaving her behind.

  "But how can it be no one? I can't trust my grandmother or Broley or you?" She asked.

  Preacher chuckled. "Me least of all. You have to base everything on the simple fact that every interaction you have with another human is an exchange between two innately selfish beings. Simple."

  "You trust no one." A statement.

  "No one. Never have. Look where it has gotten me?"

  "Right. Look at you. Are you the loneliest person on the planet? Do you even have one friend? No way you have ever had a relationship, a real relationship with a woman, hell with anyone." Abbie stopped and turned to the babbling brook. "How long are you going to make me call you Neil?"

  Preacher kept walking. He was several paces ahead of her. "I might always be Neil to you. I like the way you say it with that North Carolina accent you work to hide. Two very pronounced syllables, especially when you're angry - 'nee-ull.' I like it."