Black Flagged

by Konkoly, Steven; A. Sullivan, Felicia

  The woman charging Daniel never heard a sound. The concentrated, close range burst of 9mm steel completely stopped her momentum, and slammed her unceremoniously to the pavement. She was dead before her upper back slapped the pavement with a sickening thud. Daniel heard a pistol clatter underneath one of the cars, and caught a glimpse of a police badge gripped in a bloody hand jammed up against one of the car’s doors. He recognized the woman’s grey business suit, and froze for a second, staring at her lifeless body. He wished she had kept walking, but understood why she hadn’t. Several approaching sirens pierced his thoughts, and a large black SUV entered the parking lot near the edge of the grocery store. He tossed all of the gear into the front passenger seat and started the car, drowning the sirens with the Charger’s powerful engine.

  Daniel pulled the car out into the aisle and accelerated toward the back of the parking lot, reaching the end as the black Suburban careened into the same aisle. Behind the Suburban, he could see large groups of people piling out of the store, and jammed the accelerator as he turned toward Pershing Drive. The car lurched forward toward the quiet suburbs of Silver Spring, where Daniel hoped to reduce the odds even further in his favor. His plan was simple, he’d race ahead, opening some distance as they entered the twisting, crowded streets, where he’d pull the same trick he used in the grocery store.

  The Suburban gained some ground as he sped past Cedar Street. Wind poured through the open window, and Daniel drove a few blocks before he realized that Pershing Drive was a one way street. Approaching headlights confirmed this, as a car’s high beams flashed. The car quickly swerved to the left, as Daniel’s car approached rapidly with no intention of moving. He would need to get off this road before someone didn’t react quickly enough to his approach. Another street passed his car before he could make a decision, and the GPS indicated that Springvale Road was no longer an option.

  The next street was a one way that emptied onto Pershing Drive, so he pushed the pedal to the floor and rocketed past it toward Mayfair Place. He took the right onto Mayfair at an incredible speed, and squealed the tires through the turn, hoping the sound would warn any pedestrians out for a walk. This neighborhood was about to turn into a war zone.

  He reached the end of Mayfair Place, and saw the Suburban’s headlights turn onto the street behind him as he screeched through a left turn onto Greenbrier Drive. He decelerated the car and turned into the first driveway, bringing the Charger to a stop next to a Toyota 4Runner. He killed the lights and jumped out of the car with the assault rifle, sprinting for a thick tree just to the right of the driveway entrance.

  The street was oddly quiet for a moment, only broken by radio transmissions from the police scanner deep inside of Daniel’s car. Distant sirens competed with the radio transmissions for a few seconds, until he heard the unmistakable drumming of the Suburban’s engine, throttling at high speed down Mayfair toward the same turn Daniel had taken seconds ago. He hit the tree with his shoulder, and checked the rifle’s EOTech Holographic sight, as the intersection ahead of him filled with light.

  The Suburban ploughed through the intersection, taking the turn fast. As soon as the truck started to straighten onto Greenbrier Drive, Daniel fired a sustained burst from his rifle, keeping the green holographic bull’s-eye centered on the driver’s side windshield. A dozen bullets simultaneously perforated the glass, instantly causing the truck to accelerate and swerve in Daniel’s direction. As the Suburban barreled past, he raked the side exposed to him with automatic fire.

  The disabled Suburban cut diagonally across the driveway, and collided squarely with a solid maple tree in the middle the front yard, causing an incredibly loud crunch. The truck’s back end lifted a few feet off the grass, and slammed back down. Daniel reloaded the rifle with a spare magazine from his vest, and approached the back of the truck, crouching low to present a small silhouette to anyone still capable of a fight. The truck’s engine continued to roar and whine, which surprised him, considering the speed of the vehicle upon impact. He could smell a mixture of gasoline and oil, and wondered how safe it was to be standing near the truck.

  He heard a rhythmic thumping, every two seconds, on the far side of the truck, and risked a peek around the back. The front passenger door moved a few centimeters every time he heard the weak thumping sound. The truck door opened several inches from the next hit, and Daniel saw a bloody fist pull back into the vehicle. Whoever had survived was using his fist to pound the door open, which probably meant that their legs were pinned inside the truck.

  Daniel assessed the risk of approaching the target, and decided it wasn’t worth the gamble. He was most probably armed with a pistol or the same type of submachine gun he had found in the other truck, and he might not be the only survivor. He heard a few murmurs from further down the street, and decided that he shouldn’t stick around for a block party. Daniel saw the front door to the house across the street open.

  Suddenly, he caught a glimpse of a face in the Suburban’s side mirror, and a gun emerged from the gap in the front passenger door, firing an endless, fully automatic fusillade down the side of the truck. Daniel snapped his head back, first feeling the supersonic hiss of several near misses, before the deafening roar of thirty cartridge explosions reached his eardrums. Daniel knew the submachine gun’s magazine had been expended by the driver’s last ditch effort to defend himself. Firing at a cyclic rate of eight hundred rounds per minute, the gun would expend an entire magazine in roughly two seconds. He didn’t time the burst, but he knew from experience that the shooter had emptied the gun. He decided to take a chance.

  He sprinted around the corner of the truck, staying low, and pointed the green holographic sighting image at the open crack of the door. The engine continued to scream from the driver’s foot jammed on the accelerator. He could see frantic movement inside the truck, and edged a little further until a head came into view.

  “Stop reloading the weapon. If I sense any movement inside the vehicle, you’re dead!” he yelled.

  The movement stopped.

  “Just tell me who sent you, and I’ll leave. Otherwise, you get to join the rest. I just want to know who sent you out into the field on a suicide mission. Who do you work for?”

  “You murdered my friends,” the man spat.

  “Nothing personal, I guarantee you. Someone fucked you over big time today. You need to talk to them about why your friends are dead. You look like contract military types. Who do you work for?”

  Daniel listened to the approaching sirens for a few seconds. ���Last chance. Trust me, it would be pointless for you to die in that seat. I guarantee that your operation is illegal, and under the table. If you die here, you’ll be swept under the rug like dust. Who sent you?”

  “We work for Brown River Security. I wasn’t told who pulled the trigger on this, just that you were an immediate threat to national security. Black flagged,” the man said.

  “You were specifically told I was black flagged?” asked Daniel.

  “Yes.”

  Use of the term ���black flagged��� meant one thing: CIA. And if the CIA was involved, then someone other than General Sanderson had stumbled on his secret.

  “Throw me your laptop,” said Daniel.

  “I can’t turn around to reach it,” the voice coughed, “my legs are pinned.”

  Daniel rushed forward and opened the rear door. A blood soaked body tumbled halfway out of the truck, stopped by the waist restraint of the seatbelt. He saw the laptop at the dead man’s feet on the floor and snatched it, taking off for the car as the sirens grew louder. Daniel stopped a few feet from the Charger, amazed to see a dark haired, middle aged woman standing at the top of the driveway with a butcher knife.

  “Where the fuck do you think you’re going?” she yelled.

  “To get a grocery bag for your head,” he said, staring at her until she dropped the knife to the driveway.

  Leaving the woman in shock, he hopped in his rental car and backed it
onto Greenbrier. He decided to risk exposing the car to the surviving Brown River contractor, and gunned the engine, sending the car north on the road. He planned to work his way back to the downtown area, avoiding the closest point of approach from Whole Foods. Any police officers in the vicinity of Whole Foods would have heard the distant rattle of automatic weapons fire, which would have been immediately followed by several calls from this neighborhood. Half of the Silver Spring police force was probably en route to this address. He just hoped they hadn’t found the dead detective yet. Once word went out that he was a cop killer, every available unit in the entire Montgomery County police force would descend on Silver Spring. He didn’t have much time to get to a Metro Station before his only hope of escaping would involve more dead police.

  He took a quick left onto Woodside Parkway and drove at a reasonable pace to Colesville Road, where he took another left, and cruised out of the tree lined streets into the crowded, concrete downtown area. From the chatter on the police scanner, he could tell that they had not discovered the detective, but he didn’t expect the calm to last much longer.

  He could see the blue and red reflections of flashing police strobes as he approached Fenton Street, but didn’t directly see any police cars. He kept the car on Colesville Road until he saw signs for the Metro station, which led him to a massive public parking garage. He took the handicapped placard off the dashboard and hooked it onto the rearview mirror, easily finding an open spot close to the walkway leading to the Metro. He tossed the gear he had collected from the Suburbans over the front seat, and quickly got out of the car to move into the rear driver���s side passenger seat. He needed to clean up and get out of here immediately.

  First, he removed the Cubs hat, business shirt and jacket, jamming them under the seat with his feet. He opened the black nylon bag and removed the dark green backpack, placing it on the seat next to him. He dug through the pack until he found a large Ziploc bag containing a black hairpiece. He set this aside and removed a small plastic container of baby wipes next, which he used to thoroughly wipe his neck and head of any traces of blood. From there, he continued to transform himself, emerging within three minutes looking starkly different than before. He was now Michael Hinshaw from Annapolis, Maryland.

  He wore dark blue designer jeans, expensive black leather shoes, and an untucked, crisply pressed, white button down shirt with the sleeves rolled halfway between the wrist and elbow. His hair was jet black, hanging a half-inch over his ears, and his matching eye brows were neatly trimmed. He���d planned the look carefully, mimicking the recent “metrosexual” trend that gave most straight men an uncomfortable feeling. The vast majority of the cops were men, and none of them wanted to get caught staring too long at a possible homosexual. Locker room humor could be brutal, especially in the macho world of law enforcement.

  With the car’s remote, he popped open the trunk and placed the duffle bag inside, followed by the tactical vest and assault rifle. With one smashed window, it wouldn’t be long before someone studied the car more closely. Finding a military grade rifle or a tactical body armor vest in plain view would certainly result in a call to the police, and at this point, Daniel wanted to put as much distance between this car and himself as possible. He knew they’d find it eventually, but there was no need to make it too simple for them.

  He studied his reflection in the rear passenger window of the car, and slung the heavily burdened REI backpack over his left shoulder. Inside the backpack, he carried $30,000 in cash, six prepaid cell phones, several maps, his two remaining ID packets, two additional disguise kits, a blood stained knife, hair dye, a GPS receiver, police scanner, and the MP-9 submachine gun. He had to remove the gun’s bulky silencer to fit the weapon by itself into the middle compartment, where it could be removed within seconds. The assortment of laptop computers and digital cameras stuffed into the main compartment added to the bulkiness and weight of the backpack. If anything about him was likely to attract attention, it would be the backpack.

  He approached the north side Metro entrance, pulled his prepaid Metro card from his front jeans pocket and swiped it on the turnstile access, then rode the escalator up to the Metro platform. He felt the warm steel of his smaller, more concealable Gerber knife as he grabbed the card. He would take the next southbound train into D.C., and figure out where to meet Parker, or even better, General Sanderson. The outdoor platform was large and still busy with commuters, which was a good sign. According to the digital sign hanging above the tracks, the next train was scheduled to arrive in two minutes, which would be an eternity. He pulled a cell phone out of a small compartment in his backpack, and dialed General Sanderson, who answered on the first ring.

  “You’re alright?”

  “For now. I’m waiting to get the fuck out of Silver Spring on the Metro. Headed into the city. Did Parker get out?” he said, in a low enough voice not to attract unnecessary attention around him.

  “Yes. Apparently the team waiting for him barreled out of there right after you called him,” said General Sanderson.

  “I’m surprised Parker could pick them out,” said Daniel.

  “Don’t underestimate Parker. He’s better trained than you think. He just doesn’t have the same real world experience.”

  “He doesn’t have the edge needed for this work. I just ran into some Brown River contractors with a similar problem.”

  “Brown River? Are you sure?”

  “I had a little chat with one of them. Are you ready for this? He was under the distinct impression that I was an immediate terrorist risk to national security. Black flagged by whoever hired them,” said Daniel.

  “He used those terms?”

  “Yes. I specifically asked about that.”

  “Daniel, this changes things drastically. I need to accelerate our timetable. Keep this phone on at all times. Parker will call you shortly with a rendezvous location. What the hell happened out there?”

  Daniel didn’t care to hear the word ���timetable.��� “They tried to kill me, and I responded,” said Daniel, looking around the crowded platform for any sign of law enforcement.

  “Jesus, Daniel, it sounds like you did more than just respond. I’m picking up cross county chatter on all police bands,” said Sanderson.

  “My train’s coming. I’ll be waiting for that call,” he said, and wondered if Sanderson would abandon him if the heat intensified.

  Nobody gave him a second glance as he boarded the train headed for the city, wondering exactly what Sanderson meant by ���our timetable.���

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  8:45 PM

  FBI Headquarter, Washington D.C.

  Special Agent Frank Mendoza shut the door to his supervisor’s office, locked it, and walked up to Sharpe’s cluttered desk.

  “Grab a seat, Frank, and tell me about Black Flag. Based on your fax, I can only imagine the worst,” said Sharpe.

  He glanced out of the window onto 9th Street, and could see the windows of the Market Square North building sparkle. Low in the western sky, the sun peered around the corner of the J. Edgar Hoover Building, casting deep orange rays onto the seven story building. A few of the rays poked through the blinds, stabbing deep into Sharpe’s office. He could imagine some of the nation’s preeminent powerbrokers sipping a few too many drinks over dinner below, in the exclusive Caucus Room restaurant, oblivious to the implications of the day’s events, telling jokes about dead Arabs. He looked back at Frank, who appeared equally troubled.

  “It’s not good. I think we may have found our next investigation.”

  “Black Flag isn’t our mess to unscrew. I just want to unravel enough of it to figure out what happened today,” said Sharpe.

  “We’ll need to nab a few more of them. Munoz is useless to us at this point. He’s covered by a nice immunity agreement,” said Mendoza.

  “We’ll see about that. I’m not ready to release my only link to Black Flag. I’ve given Boston orders to transport
Munoz here. Olson will lead the prisoner transport convoy. We should have Munoz at HQ early in the morning.”

  Mendoza failed to hide a disapproving glance.

  “We can’t let him walk free until we’ve determined exactly what happened today. For all we know, Munoz and his friends might be part of an Islamic conspiracy, or worse. We don’t know anything right now, and people are getting nervous. Very nervous. We should have some new leads within the hour. I’ve mobilized SWAT and FBI field teams to take every operative on the list. I’m just waiting for word that all of the teams are in place, ready to go, and we’ll hit them all at once. I want a coordinated move against Black Flag. I don’t know if they’re all talking to each other, but I’m not taking any chances,” said Sharpe.

  “Well, sir. I wouldn’t get your hopes up too high. Munoz took his sweet time spilling information. Probably long enough to miss a few pre-assigned checkins. I’d be surprised if any of these guys were still around,” said Mendoza.

  “Yeah, the thought wasn’t lost on me, but we might get lucky one more time today. So, what are we really dealing with here?” said Sharpe.

  “From what I’ve been allowed to see by this mysterious Mr. McKie gentleman, Black Flag was a highly specialized program designed to create undercover operatives for our military. McKie said the program training lasted approximately four years, which is a long time for any training program. Hell, the CIA doesn’t even train field agents for this long.”

  “CIA agents are usually assigned to legitimate jobs, which are their cover. This sounds dramatically different,” interrupted Sharpe.