Breach of Protocol

by Nathan Goodman

  He would leave no trace of his presence, with one exception: a piece of evidence he would deliberately leave behind. Once he had fired the weapon, he would have to move, and move quickly. His mind swirled with questions. Why a crossbow? If silence is what is required, I could easily outfit my sniper rifle with a suppressor. And why deliberately leave this strange piece of evidence behind so that authorities would find it? But questions such as these became mere afterthoughts. Even if he knew the answers, he would have accepted the assignment anyway. His line of work required one thing: complete loyalty to his employers. It was as simple as that.

  A gust of wind pushed a wet blanket of rain in a sheetlike motion across the bustling Eleventh Avenue traffic below. He checked his watch. It would only be another minute or two before his quarry emerged from the glass double doors. Wind and rain would provide the perfect cover—it would be impossible for anyone to hear the muffled thumping of the crossbow as it discharged, much less determine the direction the shot came from. He would be off the rooftop and onto the streets below, mingling in the throngs of humanity, within moments.

  He slipped further underneath the plastic tarp and brought the cold stock of the crossbow to his cheek. The view through the high-quality optics cut the dark rain and revealed a clear field of fire. He twisted the scope ring to zoom the view closer and began a slow series of exhales, preparing his body to make the shot.

  Any moment and he’ll be walking through that glass door. Any moment now . . .

  His finger found the edge of the familiar trigger, and held.

  The double doors of the convention center swung open and his target walked straight into the crosshairs.

  4

  REALIZATION

  Melide, Spain

  “Cade!” Jana screamed. “It’s Latent. It’s Director Latent. Don’t you see? Jarrah is going to take out the director of the FBI. He knows Latent and I are close, and he’d view it as a way to hurt me and cripple the bureau. He already took out most of the CIA, and now he’s after the organization that has thwarted him at every level!”

  “Latent?” Cade said. “Oh my God.”

  “What? Do you know something? Where is he?”

  “He was to be the keynote speaker today at the International Law Enforcement Trainers’ Association convention. We talked last night.”

  Jana yanked at her hair.

  “He’s out in the open! You have to get Uncle Bill to call him right now.”

  “Way ahead of you,” Cade said as his cellphone dropped from his hands.

  He dashed out of his office and into the cavernous NSA operations center.

  “Uncle Bill!” he yelled.

  But Cade had no way of knowing that at that moment, Stephen Latent, followed by an entourage of FBI agents and media personnel, was pushing open a set of glass double doors that led from the Jacob Javits Convention Center and out onto Eleventh Avenue.

  5

  TO VANISH IN PLAIN SIGHT

  Midtown Manhattan, New York

  Rafael let out one long exhale then held it. He applied light tension to the trigger and the crossbow recoiled against his shoulder. His eyes never flinched. The full weight of the crossbow bolt, tipped with a one-hundred-grain Ramcat broadhead, rocketed across the street and entered the skull of FBI Director Stephen Latent just above the right eye. It tore a destructive path through the basal ganglia area of the brain and exited through the rear of the cerebrum. The resulting hole in Latent’s skull was large enough to fit a grapefruit. The arrow continued on its destructive path until it struck a BBC cameraman just behind Latent. The bodies of both men crumpled onto the ground. Neither flinched; they were dead.

  Rafael’s motions following the shot were swift, but calm. He crouched behind the upper wall of the rooftop, disassembled the crossbow from the stock, and placed the weapon into a zip-up nylon carry case, which he slung onto his back.

  From his pocket he removed a glass vial. The small ampule was filled with sulfuric acid, and contained a tiny, clear glass bead. He dumped the entire contents of the vial onto the spot where he crouched, and threw an olive-green poncho over himself. He was down the stairs and on the street in under ninety seconds. But he deviated from his well-rehearsed escape path which would have taken him down West Thirty-Seventh Street, one block left then one block right until finally descending the stairs leading to the Penn Station subway tunnel at Thirty-Fourth Street and Eighth Avenue. His plan was to be gone from the scene as though he had vaporized into thin air.

  As it were, his particular tastes in women led him instead around the rear of the young woman’s apartment building where he picked the lock on a side door, climbed three flights of stairs, then walked down the hall, counting units until he arrived at the fifth apartment from the left. Once inside, he found the young woman still in the shower.

  No one heard her screams.

  6

  A NIGHTMARE WITH NO END

  Melide, Spain

  Jana pressed the phone to her ear. “Cade? Cade?” She leaned toward Gilda, who was still trying to catch her breath from the downhill run. “He must have put the phone down. Cade!” she again yelled, squinting into the brilliant Spanish sunlight.

  The town of Melide had roots that could be traced to the tenth century. The main road was barely wide enough to fit a Smart Car. On one side sat an albergue, a type of hostel or hotel, and the other, a post office.

  “Is this thing still connected?” Jana said. “Cade, what’s happening?”

  “Jana,” Gilda said as she let her backpack flop to the ground. “Calm down. I’m sure he’s working on it.” She slumped to the cobblestone sidewalk to rest. Gilda’s command of the English language was superb, yet her accent decried just a touch of Bavarian. “Stay calm. Do you have a good cell signal?”

  “Yes, two bars. I can hear something in the background, but he’s not answering me.”

  “It’s not going to do you any good to lose your cool right now. You’re doing everything you can.” Gilda leaned against the post-office building, which shaded her face from the piercing sunlight. “God, I’m exhausted. You know we trekked twenty kilometers today?” Jana wasn’t listening, but Gilda, never one to allow silence to fester for too long, continued. She let her eyes close and said, “He’ll be back on the phone in a second, and you’ll see. Your other friend, Latent? Is that his name? He’ll be just fine.”

  “Gilda, you have no idea who we’re dealing with. Waseem Jarrah is number one on Interpol’s most wanted list. He is responsible for the nuclear bombing in America, and for a string of other terrorist attacks on the United States.”

  “Yeah?” Gilda said, exhaling. “You people sure do have a lot of enemies.”

  “Oh, and the Germans don’t? Cade,” she said again into the phone, “come on, pick up the phone.”

  A light breeze blew dust through the center of the tiny hamlet. A storekeeper across the way swept dirt onto the sidewalk.

  “I’m telling you,” Gilda said as she leaned her head back, “relax. He’ll be right there.”

  “This is maddening!”

  But Gilda shook her head and rested her eyes, her face again draped in afternoon sun.

  Cade finally returned to the phone.

  “Jana?”

  “Cade! What’s happening? Did you get Latent on the phone? Is he all right?”

  For several seconds, all she could hear was Cade’s breathing.

  “Cade? Are you there? What’s wrong?” Jana’s eyes darted from one side of the street to the other. “Director Latent’s all right, isn’t he? Cade?”

  Another gust of light wind funneled between the storefront buildings.

  “He’s gone, Jana. He’s been assassinated. In broad daylight. It’s all over CNN. It just happened.”

  Jana slumped beside Gilda. “No. No, it can’t be.”

  “They don’t even know where the shot came from. He was definitely the target though.”

  Jana covered her mouth and she began to shake.


  “We’ve got to get you out of there,” Cade said. “Uncle Bill is on the horn right now with the Spanish intelligence service, the Centro Nacional de Inteligencia. Just stay put, they’ll get to you.”

  “Cade, are you sure about Latent? I mean, are you sure it’s him? What if it’s someone who just looks like him, you know? He can’t be dead.”

  “Jana, it’s him. There’s no mistake. He was coming out of the convention center, surrounded by news crews when it happened. The footage is all over the airwaves. Listen to me. You need to get inside somewhere. I don’t like the idea of Jarrah calling your cellphone. You are in danger and I want you out of sight.”

  “He must know I’m on a hike, but I can’t imagine he actually knows where I am,” Jana said, wiping a newly formed tear. He doesn’t know where I am, right? she thought. “I mean, think about it. It would be just his style. Call me and make me paranoid that he’s watching me. His call to me was just a diversion. I think he likes to know his victims are squirming.”

  “Just get indoors. Do it for me, okay?”

  “Cade,” she sounded like a mom scolding a child, “I’m not in danger.” She leaned against Gilda. “Besides, I’m not alone. I’ve got a friend. She’ll look out for me.”

  Just then something slammed into Jana’s right temple and everything in her vision went black. Her body flopped onto the street. The last thing she heard was the sound of Gilda screaming.

  Across the phone line, Cade heard the muffled sounds, followed by a woman screaming, then the Middle Eastern voice of a man that spoke just one word. To Cade, the word sounded like “owe-woo,” which, although he did not know, was an Urdu word meaning, ‘come.’

  Cade yelled into the phone, “Jana? Jana?” His cries were answered only by a muffled gurgling sound reminiscent of a person choking on their own blood.

  “Jana!”

  With the calmness of a dog waking from an afternoon of slumber, the man standing over Jana smiled, put away his weapon, and walked back into the hillsides.

  Several minutes later, Jana began to regain consciousness. Her head throbbed. As she pushed herself upright, she startled as her hand landed in something wet.

  “Oh, my head. Gilda? What happened? Why is everything wet? Did you spill your water bottle again?” she said.

  But as she glanced at her palm, she found it covered in thick, dark blood.

  “Gilda!”

  Gilda’s motionless, half-opened eyes glared back. She was dead; a single wound to the torso.

  “Gilda, no!”

  An hour had passed by the time the Guardia Civil arrived in the tiny hamlet of Melide. The murderer was nowhere to be seen. Two hikers who came into town off the Camino Trail later reported they had seen a man hike past them, headed in the opposite direction. They thought this odd, considering the majority of the Camino Trail’s hikers walk toward the town of Santiago de Compostela, terminus of the trail, and not away from it.

  As Jana listened to the hikers, she made eye contact with nothing. They described him as being of Middle Eastern descent, having narrow shoulders, and carrying a long, flat pack on his back. But when they described his hair as wavy and black, with a thick shock of white up one side, Jana looked up, and a cold shiver flashed across her body.

  It was him. It was Waseem Jarrah.

  Jana turned and stared down the narrow street, but her mind wandered into a spinning swirl and the edges of her eyesight became glassy. She saw flashes of Waseem Jarrah’s face. But when another face appeared, a face she had seen in a thousand nightmares, her vision washed into whiteness and her hand began to tremble. A horrifying flashback from the events that had occurred two years prior played out in front of her as if she were living them again. It was all crystal clear. Waseem Jarrah’s disciple, terrorist Shakey Kunde, pointed the Glock at her and Jana stared in abject terror as white flashes erupted from the muzzle. Kunde laughed a monstrous laugh and she felt the puncturing impacts of bullets slamming into her chest.

  The next thing Jana saw was the shocking blue sky above the Spanish countryside as she fell back and her head slammed into the cobblestone street.

  When she awakened a few hours later in a rural hospital, Jana knew she had suffered another post traumatic stress episode. The PTSD had resurfaced, and she had no control over it.

  Her nightmare with Waseem Jarrah had begun again.

  7

  OF SWORDS AND DRAGONS

  John F. Kennedy International Airport, Queens, New York

  The flight from Madrid’s Barajas International Airport to New York’s Kennedy took just over eight hours. Jana followed the flow of passengers as they departed the plane and looked up only because everything in the terminal was so quiet. The airport was almost vacant. She could see just two ticket agents and a dozen men in business suits.

  One approached her and held out a badge and credentials.

  “Agent Baker, I’m Special Agent John Zucker, United States Secret Service. This way, please.”

  The other hulking men surrounded her on all sides.

  “Secret Service? What’s going on?”

  “Homeland Security directive, ma’am. As of this moment you are under federal protection.”

  “Federal protection? I’m a federal agent. I don’t need protection. You’ve got to be kidding me. Wait a minute, did you clear this entire terminal because of me? You can’t do that. What about all the people that are going to miss their flights? I’m not in any danger. Don’t you people get that? If Waseem Jarrah wanted me dead, believe me, I’d be dead right now. I’m perfectly safe. It’s anyone around me who’s in danger.”

  “Orders, ma’am.”

  “Yeah, yeah, orders. I know all about orders. All right, but don’t get too comfortable in your new assignment. I’m not going to have a dozen sunglass-wearing linebackers flanking me everywhere I go.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” the steely-eyed agent said before he spoke into a mic nestled underneath the cuff of his starched white dress shirt. “All units, all units. Sword is on the move.”

  “What did you just say? Sword? What is that, your code name for me? What does that mean?”

  “Sorry, Agent Baker. We give code names for anyone under our protection.”

  “So what do I have to do with a sword?”

  Zucker and the other agents surrounded Jana as they speed-walked from the gate. Their eyes darted back and forth so quickly they reminded Jana of coffee-shop baristas who had oversampled their product.

  “The sword and the dragon,” he replied.

  “What?” Jana said as she struggled to keep pace.

  “It goes back to meeting the dragon. If we face death in the line of duty, we consider that to be meeting the dragon. When you meet your dragon, you’ll either cower to save your own skin or ram a sword down its throat.”

  “So how does that make me a sword?”

  For the first time, he allowed himself to make direct eye contact.

  “Two years ago in Kentucky, when you came face-to-face with the barrel of a gun and with a terrorist about to detonate, you didn’t back down. That’s what we call meeting the dragon and shoving a sword down its throat. You are the sword.”

  Jana quickened her pace. “Men,” is all she said.

  8

  NEW TRAVEL PLANS

  Blueberry Café, Avenue M at East Sixteenth Street, Brooklyn, New York

  Rafael logged into the Gmail account. Here, he would find further instructions from his employer, if there were any. Instead of sending encrypted emails to one another and risking them being intercepted by the NSA, Rafael’s employer had suggested a more simplistic approach.

  Both Rafael and the employer had the login information to the account. When the employer wanted to communicate, he would compose an email, and then leave it in the draft folder. Since the email was never sent, there was nothing for the NSA to intercept. As long as no one found out this email account was being used by terrorists, the two could communicate at will. It was a low-tech sol
ution, and it worked like a charm.

  After successfully carrying out the assassination of the director of the FBI, Rafael found a single email in the draft folder.

  This employer paid very well and, in all likelihood, the email contained instructions for another assignment. With his Cayman Islands bank account flush with cash, Rafael didn’t really need the money. He needed the thrill.

  He opened the email and read:

  “A most successful venture. I congratulate you. Your timing was perfect. No doubt you were more than satisfied with the transfer made into your bank account. Based on the success of your first assignment, I have decided to continue your services. Your first mission was a target of the highest value, and thus, the highest pay. The next target, however, is of lower value and comes with lower pay. I am certain you will understand. However, the same bonus structure remains in place. If you carry out the assignment at the exact time of 2:16 p.m. EST, your pay doubles. And if you continue to be successful, you will receive new assignments. Attached is a photograph and details of your next objective. It is critical that you carry out this task at the exact time of day specified. Failure to carry out the task at the time specified will result in the termination of our relationship. For this assignment, you will use the vial labeled “number two.” Remember, after you are sure your objective has been completed, empty the contents of the vial at the scene so they will be found.”