Class Fives: Origins

by Jon H. Thompson

  John turned back to fix on him.

  “Really?”

  White nodded.

  “You have a good moral compass. You just need some training.”

  John seemed to consider this, then scooted around to look at the other man more directly.

  “Okay, so why don’t you do it?”

  “Do what?” White replied.

  “Train me. I mean, it’s just going to be the two of us out here. If something goes wrong, I’d like to know what to do, other than just piss myself.”

  White turned to regard him, and slowly smiled, then turned back to the road.

  He could see no problem with providing John with a few very basic bits of information that might prove of some use on the outside chance they encountered something unexpected. And it might keep him occupied and out of the way of whatever needed to be done.

  He considered for a moment why he had even brought him along. It had been a momentary impulse, seeing the sudden reaction the young man had exhibited when it appeared he was to be cut out of whatever was rapidly building to some kind of confrontation, and the resolution of this situation. Something inside himself had told him that this man could, one day, indeed prove a valuable asset. And his capability could prove genuinely useful, once he had been property trained and had a measure of experience under his belt.

  He might even be of some use on this current assignment, though he couldn’t foresee a circumstance in which he might prove necessary. Still, he was a decent man, and deserved to be treated with respect.

  “Look in the glove compartment,” he said.

  John wiggled back and leaned to pop the little door in the dashboard. It dropped open to reveal a pistol and a block-shaped radio.

  “Holy shit,” John breathed.

  “That,” White went on, “Is my back up weapon, and my long range sideband radio. Take them.”

  John snapped a glance at him, his eyes dancing.

  “For real?”

  “You made a logical suggestion,” White said simply. “Despite your ability, you would be much more effective if you had some rudimentary training.”

  “Sweet,” John whispered as he lifted the automatic pistol.

  “Have you ever handled a firearm before?” White inquired.

  “Not really,” John said, slowly turning the heavy gun over, taking in its threatening weight and cold look.

  “Put that back,” White said, almost sharply, “And take the radio. That is a Mark VII sideband, encrypted mobile audio communications unit. It has a standby battery life of about one hundred hours and active broadcast-receive life of twenty four hours. It uses a series of satellites that are designed for secure communications. More or less our private network.”

  John tried to absorb the words, to yank his attention into some kind of focus. He was getting a crash course in… in what, he wondered? Espionage? Secret Agent stuff? Never mind, he told himself. Just pay attention. This could be important.

  Crawford snatched up the phone on the first ring.

  “Crawford,” he said tensely.

  “Mission failure, sir,” the voice said.

  “I know, I saw it,” he snapped, his eyes flicking over to where the image on the computer screen showed the picture from the dashboard camera in the now abandoned SUV. The Czech Republic facility was now awash with vehicles, most with flashing lights, and people hurrying into and out of the frame.

  “What about the package?” he said, sharply.

  “Nothing yet. The chopper was abandoned about twenty miles from the strike zone. Hydraulics were shot up. We have local authorities on all airports, railways and border points. Cover is a terrorist cell carrying explosives. They’re coordinating through the State Department.”

  Crawford couldn’t prevent the unconscious wince that contracted his eyes. He would have a lot of tap dancing to do, but he might be able to protect the assets. Still, the failure to secure whatever it was Svag had been working on had immeasurably complicated the current situation. It had merely interrupted the transit of whatever it was to the experiment site. Slowed it down.

  His mind did a quick calculation. Whoever they were, they had no immediate extraction resources. They would have to secure those. They would probably know not to attempt to use mass transit. That meant they would have to drive to the border and find a way over that wasn’t watched. But which border? South, he considered most likely. The facility was located closest to that division between nations. That meant Germany to the west, Slovakia to the east, and Austria due south. Austria, his intuition told him. It was more open, easier to maneuver. From there to Vienna to pick up transport to Russia. Twenty four hours, maximum, until the object was on site.

  “Find out what it was Svag was working on. Some kind of object. Find out everything you can about it. Do it now.”

  “Yes sir,” the voice replied and the line clicked off.

  Crawford replaced the receiver. He sat stiffly in his chair, leaning over his desk, his body tense.

  Always one step behind, he thought. Always running after something already gone. This had been his best chance to interrupt the flow of events, and it had failed. That could not be allowed to happen again.

  It was horrible to suffer the consequences of ignoring things openly staring you in the face, and worse if you knew about them but were too timid to act. But this was the worst. To have the will to act and the intelligence to shape those actions, but to fail completely.

  This could not be allowed to happen again, he swore to himself. If we get through this, we can never be this unprepared again.

  But that was for another time. Now he was staring at a ticking clock that would run out within a day. And what did he have?

  He looked at the list of his remaining assets and saw only a pair of options, neither of which he felt he could even predict, let alone rely on.

  He sighed, leaned slowly back in the chair and raised his hands, rubbing them over his face.

  He needed some sleep and a good stiff drink, he told himself. But he would be receiving neither for a while yet.

  He pulled himself back up and reached for the phone.

  He had a new set of orders to give.

  The bald man leaned back, shifting his leg off the side of the bed until it touched the floor, and rose off his knee, straightening slowly.

  He let his eyes sweep over his handiwork.

  She was trembling, her body spasming both from her fear and the sobs that were muted against the large ballgag that filled and stretched her mouth.

  The bald man smiled slowly, feeling the welling rush flood through him.

  This was perfect, he thought. She was so beautiful, so perfect.

  He watched her pull against the bonds, succeeding only in tightening the ropes on her wrists and ankles.

  “Shhhhh,” he soothed her. “You’ll just hurt yourself. And I wouldn’t want that.”

  She went limp and the sobbing billowed up more intently.

  Yes, he thought. That was it. The innocence, the helplessness. That’s what had first captured his attention, all those long months ago.

  She was such an unexpected gift, he considered.

  Just a young waitress at a greasy diner on the edge of a meaningless town in the middle of nowhere. Just a girl trying to earn a few dollars, perhaps to someday escape the emptiness that was her life.

  Well, he thought, you will be escaping, child. Everyone will. Very soon now. It’s just, you get to go first. But don’t worry. Everyone will be along soon afterwards. You won’t be alone. I’ll be with you. I’ll take care of you.

  And he knew if he actually told her that, it would calm her. She would listen and believe. He had seen that in her eyes when he’d first started going into the diner after returning from a mission for his employer. She would beam her dazzling smile at him and find excuses to stop by his table. When things were slow, she would stand there, just chatting and flirting with him.

  What am I in your eyes, he wondered? A father?
An exciting stranger? Someone who is something from that world you think you want to get to? But that didn’t matter anymore. This was it, the last of the last. A final day or two and then the curtain descends on this ridiculous travesty. No bows necessary.

  He reached to undo the cuff buttons on his plain, white shirt and slowly roll up the sleeves. It was time to begin.

  He surveyed her clothes. A blouse and jeans, the shoes already having been discarded. Scissors, he thought. Good, safe, surgical scissors. He didn’t want to risk injuring her. Not before he was able to survey her naked skin in all its fineness and unblemished purity.

  This was going to be exciting, he thought. And he would make it last. He would wallow deeply. One last time.

  Roger sat in the small jump seat just down the narrow alley from the two cramped seats occupied by the pilot and copilot. He tried to relax, but the chair bolted to the bulkhead was so small he had to be extra careful. If he fell asleep and accidentally kicked out, he might knock a hole in the fuselage, and at this altitude that would be disastrous.

  He also had to be careful of the tight, heavy helmet that gripped his head leaving only a small opening from eyes to chin.

  The only entertainment was the occasional chatter of the two men at the front of the craft through the helmet headset.

  He raised an arm and glanced at his watch.

  “Where are we now?” he said into the small microphone on the lip of the helmet.

  “We’re over the arctic right now, sir,” the pilot said.

  “How long before we land in England?”

  “ETA is approximately three hours.”

  Roger grunted and drew in a long breath.

  This morning, he considered, I was a guinea pig. Now I’m an asset. What next?

  He heard the click in the headset indicating the signal had once again closed, something that he had been told to expect when secure communications came in from ground stations.

  A few moments later the signal clicked open again.

  “Sir,” the pilot said, “We have new orders.”

  Roger felt a momentary stiffening in his shoulders.

  “What orders?” he responded tensely.

  “We’re no longer bingo to the U.K. We’re to orbit over Scotland and do a refuel, then prep for penetration.”

  “What does that mean?” he snapped, his annoyance momentarily flaring.

  “We have to take on fuel over Scotland, and then we’re heading into Russia.”

  “Why so soon?”

  “They didn’t say, sir. Just that the time table has been advanced.”

  Roger felt a slight uneasiness as he pondered this. Whatever was happening, whatever they wanted him to prevent was apparently happening a lot sooner than they had expected, and that couldn’t be good.

  Jones had briefed him on what they knew, and what he had to do once he landed at this place, wherever it was. He was to look for a large structure of some kind, most likely camouflaged, and tear it down with his bare hands. There was some kind of device inside it that had to be smashed to pieces.

  As to where in the vast reaches of the Russian heartland it might be located, that was something they had yet to work out.

  “We’re to take an orbit over Bilyarsk and await further orders,” the pilot said.

  “How long can we hang around there?”

  “Once we top up,” the pilot responded, “A few hours.”

  “And then what?”

  “Then we have to extract and refuel.”

  “So we could be at this all day,” Roger said.

  “Welcome to the Air Force, sir,” the pilot said quietly.

  Roger smiled and glanced around the cramped utilitarian space.

  “Say we get orders to do this thing,” Roger said. “How do we work it?”

  “You just crawl through that hatch, sir, into the bomb bay, and lay flat on the forward set of doors. We open them up, you drop out.”

  Roger considered this for a moment.

  “You do know,” he said, “That I’m not using a parachute, right?”

  “Yes sir,” the pilot said, unperturbed, “That’s what they said during the briefing.”

  “Aren’t you curious about that? I wouldn’t think you’d run into it very often.”

  “Sir,” the pilot said, “I just do what they tell me. If they say to drop you out at forty thousand feet with nothing but your jumpsuit and a smile, then that’s what I intend to do. Not my job to know why.”

  Roger thought about this quietly.

  Just do what they tell you. Don’t make any choices, because that’s not your job. Don’t ask why or if it’s right. Just nod and smile and do it.

  Could he really operate like that, he wondered? Just take orders and carry them out? Not ask? Not need to know why? Not know whether it was somehow a good thing or a bad thing?

  And how does somebody do that, decide what’s right and what’s wrong? What factors to you take into consideration?

  He was soon going to throw himself into the air, drop to the ground, and totally destroy some kind of facility, and perhaps people would die because of that. He would have killed them. Something he never even would have considered a month ago.

  But he accepted that what he had been told was true, that if he didn’t do this thing the consequences would be worse than he could even imagine.

  But what then? What if he succeeded and this crisis, whatever it really was, went away? What then? Would they ask him to do more? Would they come to him again and hand him more orders? And would he be expected to simply nod and go off and do them?

  Could he even do that? Just follow orders?

  Whose choice would it be the next time he did what apparently only he, of everyone in the world, could do? Would he be following somebody else’s orders? Or would it be because he could see the right of it, the good of it, first? Saving those kids, that had been an impulse. He’d just done it, because something inside him told him he had to. And that was fine. He’d saved their lives. And even that crane, that was okay too. He’d prevented something much worse, though the owners of that property might not think so.

  But then there had been that delivery truck, when he’d unnecessarily crushed the rear ramp out of pure spite.

  He realized he was capable of that sort of thing as well. Being petty. Being human. And how would he know, going forward, if what he was being asked to do would simply be someone else’s pettiness being acted out by proxy, using him?

  He couldn’t allow such a thing to happen, he told himself. He couldn’t allow himself to one day wake up and realize he had been used as someone else’s tool to accomplish something he himself would have been ashamed of.

  He thought back to the children, weeping and screaming, their little lives about to be snuffed out, and realized he had indeed done the right thing that time. And with the toppling crane.

  But those had been his choices, his instincts. He’d known they were right.

  But what if he’d been wrong? What if he’d wound up hurting someone, killing someone, not even meaning to? What then?

  If I’m going to do this, he told himself, I’ll need to know why.

  He leaned his head gently back against the padded rest and crossed his arms before himself, trying to get as comfortable as possible.

  He had a lot to think about, and was just beginning to realize that what he could do was a lot more complicated than he’d ever imagined.

  “So,” John said, turning the small radio over in his hand, “This is the power, this is the frequency, push to talk, with or without the earpiece.”

  “Range?” White asked.

  “Unlimited in satellite mode.”

  “Good,” White said. “And the weapon?”

  John put the radio on the seat beside himself and lifted the gun from his lap.

  “Glock, nine millimeter, semi-automatic. Sixteen rounds in the clip, one in the barrel.”

  “Good,” White acknowledged. “And the mission objective?�
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  “We watch Lupus to see if he leads us to Montgomery.”

  “And if the parameters change?”

  “We pick him up.”

  “Correct.”

  John settled back into the seat, letting the gun nestle in his lap.

  Outside, the sun was sinking beyond the horizon and they were approaching the small town of Providence. Peter Lupus had a rented house there. And presumably he was currently in residence.

  “Can I ask you something?” John inquired quietly.

  “Ask,” White responded.

  “You ever actually kill people?”

  White nodded.

  “When necessary.”

  John regarded him evenly a long moment.

  “How do you do that?”

  “Usually a firearm,” White said, almost casually. “Some strangulations. One time I used a pencil. That was tricky.”

  “No,” John interrupted, “I mean how do you get yourself to do it? Actually kill somebody?”

  White seemed to consider this a long moment before responding.

  “It is difficult at first,” he replied quietly. “We have a natural instinct for survival, not only for ourselves but for everybody else as well. That is difficult to overcome. But after a few times, it becomes easier.”

  John stared at him, suddenly unsure of what he was doing here. He couldn’t kill anyone. Even smacking that stupid robber over the head with his own gun had made him wince inside himself in a horrible way. To actually kill another human being. He doubted that was something he could ever do, no matter what was going on at the time. Not if he could just jump away and whatever it was wouldn’t even have happened yet.

  White reached to flip on the headlights and slow the car as it began to pass a few small buildings. They were entering Providence.

  “How much further?” John asked.

  “A few blocks,” White replied.

  The car cruised through the small municipality, a scattered collection of low buildings, the most substantial of which lined the highway as a sort of unofficial downtown of shops and stores. Midway through, they turned left to where the streets lined with slowly aging houses lay just out of sight of passersby.