Total Mayhem

by John Gilstrap

  “Feeling better?” Gail asked.

  “That’s not a high bar,” Masterson said. “Any chance you can tell me what the hell just happened back there?”

  “We saved your life,” Jonathan said.

  Masterson shifted his head so he was looking at the ceiling. He seemed to relish the comfort of a pillow. “Why?”

  “Because it was the right thing to do,” Jonathan said.

  Masterson laughed, and he was rewarded with a jolt of pain. “I know what you do for a living,” he said. “Or, I know what you used to do. The right thing was irrelevant.”

  Jonathan let a flash of anger pass. He wasn’t going to go toe-to-toe with a burned-out, shot-up shooter. He decided to tease him along. “Someone has to do Uncle Sam’s dirty work,” he said. “As long as you follow orders—”

  “You can shoot up all Hajis you want,” Masterson interrupted. “Women, children, insurgent, or innocent. Didn’t matter.”

  “How many deployments?” Jonathan asked.

  “Too many. Nine, I think. Four in the Sandbox and five in Afghanistan.”

  That matched what Jonathan already knew. “Okay, I get it,” he said. “You’re bitter. How does collateral damage on combatant soil lead to shooting up a school?”

  Masterson shifted in his pillow. “What would you guess?”

  Jonathan approached the bed and rested his arm on the folding rail. “I don’t have time to guess. I’d like you to tell me.”

  Masterson winked at Gail. “Life’s full of disappointments.”

  “Your mission mates left you to die,” Gail said. “They sent men to kill you rather than talk with us.”

  Masterson looked back to the ceiling.

  Jonathan walked to the other side of the bed, where he found a rolling stool. He pulled it up close and sat down. “I’m not going to bullshit you, Sergeant Masterson. This is unlikely to end well for you. But you’re not a victim. You launched this shit show. The question for you is, How do you want to spend your years in confinement?”

  “A prison is a prison, as far as I’m concerned.”

  Jonathan shook his head. “Not so. Have you seen a Pakistani prison? An Uzbek prison? Man, those places are brutal.”

  That drew Masterson’s attention.

  “Here’s the thing, Logan,” Jonathan went on. He wanted his tone to sound calm and businesslike. “You don’t exist. As far as the world is concerned, you were never caught, you were never arrested, and you were never shot. You’re not even here, because no one who’s here is here. Are you following me?”

  Masterson’s face folded into a mask of deep confusion. “No, I’m not.”

  “You weren’t arrested,” Gail explained. “You were renditioned. There are no limits on the harm that can come to you.”

  “Or the kindnesses,” Jonathan added. “The choice is up to you. I’m not going to be here in two hours. I didn’t know and didn’t care what your treatment was like before I saw it, and I won’t know or care after I’m gone.”

  “And there’s another detail that might help you choose a course,” Gail said. “Your colleagues just set off bombs at soft targets throughout the Midwest. Hundreds more are dead, and authorities are still no closer to having a suspect.”

  Jonathan picked up on her thread. “If you think this through—just on the dignity issue—there’s not a lot of that to be found when some Paki interrogator takes a blowtorch to your balls. Are you catching my drift here, Logan?”

  Finally, the fear arrived in his eyes.

  “From where I sit,” Jonathan continued, “the only chance you have for keeping your fingernails and kneecaps whole and healthy is to start cooperating. That is your single bargaining chip. One of one.”

  “So, I squeal, and they kill me, anyway.”

  “Maybe,” Jonathan said. “Or, maybe not. I guess it depends on the value and timeliness of what you have to offer. You’ll have to take me at my word when I tell you that I have quite a bit of clout at the levels where clout will serve you best. A kind nod from me can work wonders.”

  Masterson again focused on the ceiling. Jonathan could almost hear the gears turning in his head.

  “And an unkind nod from me can have you buried alive,” Jonathan finished. He fell silent for the better part of thirty seconds to let the starkness of Masterson’s choices sink in.

  “Let’s start at the beginning,” Gail said. Sometimes a softer voice tipped the balance. “How were you recruited for this? Or, were you the recruiter for others?”

  Masterson took a huge breath and brought his free hand to his face to cover his eyes. “Oh, how far the mighty have fallen,” he said, apparently to himself. Then he dropped his hand to the mattress, found the right button on the controller and raised himself to a more upright sitting position. “No, I was not the recruiter. I heard about this through another team guy. He found it on some Dark Web chat room for people like us. You know, team guys.”

  Jonathan stiffened at the first-person plural—there was no us between this animal and himself—but then he realized that he was referring to the buddy who reached out to him. “What, was it like a want ad? Killers-R-Us?”

  “What is your friend’s name?” Gail asked.

  “That’s a step too far,” Masterson said. “At least for today. And yes, it was very much like a want ad. At least that’s how my buddy explained it to me. I never saw the initial piece. He just gave me a link to an address. I’m not a computer guy, so I don’t know the ins and outs.”

  “What was on the other end of the link?” Jonathan asked.

  “At first, a lot of grief. Lots of running around. I had to get a burner phone and a new laptop for the communications. There was security on top of security on everything electronic. Iceman is friggin’ paranoid about getting spied on.”

  “Who’s Iceman?”

  “The guy on the other end. And before you ask, I don’t have more of a name for him. When we finally got in touch with each other, he told me that he had a client that needed some work done. He wouldn’t tell me what the nature of the work was until I committed to do it.”

  “Why would you do that?” Gail asked.

  “Five hundred thousand dollars,” Masterson replied. “Cash deposited wherever I wanted it.”

  “Where did you put it?” Jonathan asked, and instantly regretted wasting a question. What the hell did he care where the guy kept his money? That was for the FBI and IRS to figure out.

  “Also, a question too far,” Masterson said.

  “You had to have some indication what he was looking for,” Jonathan said.

  “I suppose I did. Most well-paying gigs for former operators involve carrying guns.”

  Very few require terrorism, Jonathan didn’t say. “So, once you were in and you got your mission brief, what was it?”

  “It was long on strategy but short on objectives,” Masterson said. “I got a date and a time and instructions to inflict as many casualties as possible at a Podunk high school event of my choice. Only guns. Iceman was very specific about that. No explosives, only guns, and it had to happen straight up at zero one hundred Zulu.”

  “Is Zulu his word or yours?”

  “His. And I’m assuming here that Iceman is a he. In reality, I don’t know one way or the other. But he did use Zulu, which made me think that he was trying to coordinate something across time zones.”

  “As he did,” Jonathan said.

  “Yes,” Masterson agreed.

  “Why?” Gail asked. “What’s the reason behind the carnage?”

  “I don’t know, and I didn’t ask. Once you take the money, it’s just following orders.”

  “You could have gone to the police,” Gail said.

  “When you get that much money, ma’am, you want to stick around long enough to spend it, you know? And there was a wicked threat to my family. I don’t have kids, but I’ve got siblings and nieces and nephews. Iceman had pictures of all of them. And I mean recent, real-time pictures. There was no backin
g out. I didn’t know there would be other attacks.”

  “Except Zulu,” Jonathan reminded.

  “Yeah, I had my suspicions, but those aren’t facts. If I didn’t go through with what I’d agreed to, then I’d just end up dead, along with a lot of people I care about. That was a nonstarter for me.”

  “And you never thought to ask why?” Jonathan pressed.

  “No, I didn’t. Because the why was unimportant. Dead is dead. Mission success is mission success. What difference does the rationale make?”

  “What was your exfil plan?” Jonathan asked.

  Masterson allowed himself a bitter laugh. “That part didn’t go so well, did it? I was going to leave the rifle where it was—it was untraceable—and then blend in. I had a car stashed behind the water tower, and then another one stashed in a shopping mall parking lot about a mile away. Nobody would know what they were looking for to begin with, and I’d have nothing to hide. Simple stuff.”

  “Until you got shot,” Gail reminded.

  “The bystander is always the big variable, isn’t it?” Masterson said. “I didn’t anticipate one guy having the balls to climb all the way up there to pop me.”

  “What were you to do after the high school event was over?” Jonathan asked.

  “Sit and wait,” Masterson said.

  “For what?”

  “For whatever. For nothing.”

  Jonathan scowled. “I don’t understand. What were your instructions for after the mission was completed?”

  “Iceman said there’d be more, but he never said what or where.”

  “How were you supposed to report in?” Gail asked.

  “I wasn’t. What would be the point? The results would speak for themselves. Either a school got shot up or it didn’t. More contact means more opportunity to get caught. That’s bad business.”

  Jonathan felt a twinge of hope, a feeling that these guys might have just made their first major blunder. “Did you have reason to expect today’s assaults? This current batch of explosions?”

  Masterson considered his answer for a few seconds before delivering it. “Not specifically, but I wasn’t surprised when you told me about them.”

  “How much lead time would be necessary to pick a target for a bombing attack?” Gail asked.

  “I don’t understand the question. Lead time?”

  Jonathan explained, “Do you expect that you would have been supplied the explosives and assigned a target, or would that have been on you?”

  “The school was all on me,” Masterson said. “I didn’t know anything about the bombing stuff, so I don’t know how to answer that.”

  “Could you get your hands on large quantities of explosives if you had to?” Gail asked.

  Masterson looked amused. “Of course.” He looked to Jonathan. “Couldn’t you?”

  Jonathan moved on. Gail had, in fact, asked a silly question. While commercial or military-grade explosives were a challenge to acquire, any middle schooler with a chemistry set could make explosive compounds in his bedroom.

  “I’ll tell you what,” Masterson said. “I’ll throw you a bone. Iceman indicated to me that he had a plan to bring terror to a new level. He wanted the American people scared of their own shadows. Those were his words.”

  “What did he mean?”

  “I don’t know for sure, but from what you told me today, putting it into the context of my previous dealings with Iceman, I’d say that he plans to make the attacks bigger and bigger. Isn’t that how you make people shadow-scared?”

  Jonathan looked to Gail, who answered with a shrug. He supposed it made sense to escalate the attacks to keep people off-balance, and the small Midwestern strategy was a good one, too. The more unsheltered people felt, the greater the mass anxiety.

  “I think he wanted things to get to the point of anarchy,” Masterson explained. “He talked to me once about what a beautiful thing it is to see neighbors turn on each other. He wants to see paranoia and racism and other-isms spinning completely out of control.”

  “Holy shit,” Jonathan breathed.

  “Once society boils down to that point, there really is no society anymore. Laws won’t matter because no one will trust the government to stop the threat.”

  Jesus. Masterson painted the picture just as Jonathan imagined it would evolve. The next stage would come when government forces would have no choice but to turn on the crowds who began to take justice and safety into their own hands. He envisioned the Posse Comitatus Act suspended and federal troops pulled in to control the chaos. Those troops would have to come from outside the town or the region of the civilly disobedient, because to use locals would require homeboys to choose a side.

  Even under the umbrella of the U.S. Constitution, with clearly defined branches of government and separation of powers and courts of blind justice, the rule of law was as fragile as the public’s belief in The System. Courts were presumed to be just because citizens chose to believe that. Money had value because citizens agreed that it does—without that agreement, the par value of cash was identical to the scrap value of the paper it was printed on.

  The world had seen this devolution of society countless times over the centuries. In fact, in the modern era, it had happened in almost every other civilized country except the United States. Ancient Rome and Greece and Egypt. More recently, all of Europe before and after two World Wars, and since then, the Soviet Union, Philippines, much of Central America, and the list rolled on. The United States persevered because its citizens and the citizens of the world saw Uncle Sam as a secular savior.

  Except those opinions were changing. Protestors in countless capital cities around the world gathered by the hundreds and thousands to burn American flags. Jihadists would spare no effort to bring death and destruction to any American, whether vacationer or politician.

  At home, in certain quarters, things were little better. In the American bastion of law and order, large swaths of the citizenry had declared open warfare on law enforcement officers, and shocking numbers of politicians flocked to the defense of the killers. In neighborhood parties and in office places and in social media, millions of Americans demonized fellow neighbors and coworkers who held dissonant political beliefs, choosing to end friendships and disown family members over philosophical differences. Jonathan knew more than a few pessimists who believed with all their heart that total societal collapse was merely a matter of time. Most had already assembled their bugout bags and stockpiled food and ammunition.

  Jonathan was the very opposite of an alarmist, but he could see how easily coordinated terror attacks could provide the tipping point for the loss of everything for everyone.

  “There’s another reason why I think this thing is going to be big and bad,” Masterson said.

  He had Jonathan’s attention.

  “Iceman gave the op an name,” he explained. “He’s calling it Retribution.”

  Chapter Twelve

  “Retribution for what?” Boxers asked after Jonathan finished filling him in. What had been a forty-five-minute chopper ride had translated to nearly four hours in the rental Suburban, and Big Guy had arrived cranky. The fact that they had to turn right around and drive back to the airport did not improve his disposition.

  “It’s the name a madman gave to a terrorist operation,” Gail said. “I don’t know that it needs to mean anything.”

  Jonathan explained, “The real takeaway is that this thing is blossoming way out of control. There’s real danger to the country here.”

  “You should get the real FBI involved,” Ray said from his seat next to Gail, behind Boxers.

  “Careful of the pronoun,” Boxers grumbled. “It’s we now. Not you. We.”

  “And they’re already involved,” Jonathan added. “But unless and until we find out that that strike force back at the prison wasn’t also the real FBI, I’m resistant to pulling the Bureau any deeper into this thing.”

  Jonathan twisted in his seat to look at Ray. “Tell us
about you.”

  “I’ve already shared everything with Big Guy during the drive.”

  “Humor me,” Jonathan said. What he didn’t say was that Ray’s were among the fingerprints he’d sent to Venice. Thanks to her, Jonathan already knew who Ray really was and what he was all about. None of it was scary in and of itself, but Jonathan wanted to know whether the guy was a liar. “You can start with your real name.”

  “Who said it’s not?”

  “You did,” Jonathan reminded. “When you first pointed a rifle at me.”

  “Ah, that wasn’t personal,” Ray said.

  “We knew that,” Boxers said. “That’s why you’re still alive.”

  “Fair enough. The name is Stephen Spencer. Call me Spence. Eight years in the infantry. Ground pounder. Turned into a merc once I got home and found out that ‘rifleman’ is not an element in most résumé review programs. Tried it straight for almost two years. Long enough to run my wife off and take the kid with her.”

  That matched perfectly with what Jonathan had been told. “What company do you work for?”

  “Why do I get the sense that you’re testing me rather than seeking information?”

  Jonathan chuckled. “Because I’m testing you rather than seeking information,” he said. “Didn’t know I was being that obvious. I can’t abide dishonesty. Who do you work for?”

  “I’m an independent contractor. You know, we’ve already discussed this, right? You and me, I mean.”

  “Again, humor me. I want to make sure the story stays straight.”

  And it did. He spun it out over ten minutes, and Jonathan noted no notable change.

  “Okay,” Spence said when he got to the end. “Now it’s your turn.”

  “Not gonna happen,” Jonathan said. He pointed through the windshield to a gas station that might have grown out of the cornfield. Still functioning and with a snack shop attached to one end, the place looked like it had been there since the days of the Model T.

  Boxers took the prompt for what it was and pulled into the parking lot, such as it was. More of a cleared area, really. Big Guy threw the transmission into PARK and stepped out and around to Spence’s door.