by James Hunt
“Get down on the ground. Now!”
As the husband began to comply, the wife put a knife to his throat, keeping him in place.
Jim cursed under his breath. “Drop the knife, Kate!”
Kate pressed the blade deeper into her husband’s neck. A trickle of blood ran down his neck, staining his white collar.
“Kate,” the husband asked, “what are you doing?”
“Shut up, Doug,” she said.
Jim peered through the sight on his rifle. He didn’t have a clear shot. He inched a little closer.
“A corpse still works as a shield,” Kate warned.
Jim froze. He started to feel hot. The room swayed. He could taste sand in his mouth and his lips felt chapped and dry. He glanced down at the rifle in his hands, except it wasn’t a rifle anymore. It was a 9mm pistol. He looked at Kate and Doug, but it wasn’t them anymore…it was Matt using his 5-year-old niece as a human shield.
Kate worked her husband like a puppet along the kitchen counter. They passed the refrigerator, moving in front of Jim, who was preoccupied with trying to shake the images from his mind.
Jim’s rifle dipped, which gave Kate the window she was looking for. She knocked Doug’s legs from underneath him and sent him barreling into Jim. Jim popped out of the hallucination and instinctively swung his rifle, knocking the husband out with the butt of the weapon.
Jim shook the images from his mind. He jumped over Doug’s collapsed body and chased Kate through the living room. She flung the blade back at Jim, slicing his shoulder.
Kate’s hand wrapped around the knob of the front door. She jerked it open, but Jim slammed into the back of her, forcing the door shut. She fought back as Jim tied her hands behind her back with a piece of zip line. Then Jim heard the hard click of a hammer being pulled back on a revolver behind him.
Kate’s son, no older than nine, stood on the steps of the staircase behind Jim with tears streaming down his face and the six shooter shaking in his hands. His younger brother was crouched behind his legs, clutching the staircase banister as sobs left his tiny body.
Jim kept Kate close, turning the both of them around. He kept one hand on Kate’s restraints and the other up high; free of any weapons. “Take it easy, buddy,” Jim said calmly.
“L-let her go,” the boy said. His voice trembling as he kept both hands on the pistol aimed at Jim’s head.
“Hunny, come and get mommy out of these cuffs, okay?”
The boy moved down the steps, trembling as he approached his mother. Jim pulled Kate slowly away from the front door back through the living room.
“Go back upstairs,” Jim said, his eyes soft as the young boy followed. “We’re not going to hurt anyone.” Jim bumped into furniture backing up towards the smashed rear door that had served as his entrance point. The boy pursued them sheepishly until his eyes fell onto his unconscious father sprawled out on the ground. Jim let go of Kate and lunged for the pistol in the boy’s hands, knocking him to the ground. Jim turned to watch Kate vanish out the back door. Jim flipped on his radio. “Twink, she’s heading your way!”
Jim looked down at the boy who had crawled over to his father. He was crying and shaking his father’s body. Jim gently lowered the hammer of the revolver and shoved it into his belt loop. When he rushed out the back, Twink was wrestling Kate to the ground. Brett was already over helping keep Kate down. Brett pulled out a syringe and stuck it into Kate’s arm. Her body finally stopped resisting and went limp on the grass in her backyard.
Blood dripped from Brett’s nose where Kate had kicked him. “Well, I’m not carrying the crazy bitch.”
With Kate over his shoulder, Jim started the long hike through the rocky terrain toward the evacuation site. The cries from the boys inside the house never quite faded away, no matter how far Jim walked.
The chopper was waiting at the rendezvous point when they arrived. Jim and Twink secured Kate in one of the harnesses while Coyle and Brett strapped themselves in. Coyle looked around the group, his eyebrows raised as if he were waiting for something.
“What?” Jim asked.
“No leftovers?” Coyle asked.
***
The helicopter landed fifty miles south in Northern California at a military installation that wasn’t on any civilian map. Kate was still unconscious when they arrived. A pair of medics came and put her on a stretcher to take her to the interrogation room where she’d be “woken up.”
Jim, Coyle, Brett, and Twink headed toward the command post to be debriefed. Coyle walked ahead with Jim while Brett and Twink hung back out of earshot.
“What happened in there?” Brett asked.
Twink adjusted the shoulder strap of his pack as they walked across the tarmac. “Not sure. I think he froze up again.”.
“He hasn’t been the same since Phoenix,” Brett said.
“I don’t think anyone would be the same after what he went through,” Twink said.
Jim walked to General Locke’s office. Coyle was chewing his ear off about something, but Jim wasn’t listening. His mind retreated back to the missions he’d been on over the last three months. It was his driving force. Those missions gave him something to focus on so he didn’t have to think about anything else.
What happened in Phoenix had changed Jim’s life. It was there Jim tried to prove Matt’s innocence by risking not just his own life but also the lives of his friends, only to have his trust betrayed. The vision that he saw on tonight’s mission was the same he’d seen in his dreams every night since that day. His sister, Samantha, hadn’t spoken to him in months and had forbidden him to see Annie, his niece. Jim had fought hard to find them and keep them safe. After the bombings in San Diego that set all of this in motion, he had battled gangs, soldiers, fires, bombs and riots. Now, the only family he had left didn’t want anything to do with him.
The only piece of him that was still with Annie and Samantha was his cat, Tigs, who wouldn’t leave Annie’s side after what happened. Jim missed the feline, and as much as Coyle wouldn’t admit it, he did too.
Jim subdued the memories as he opened the door to Locke’s office. Officers, soldiers, and administrative clerks moved in logistical synchronization around the floor. Jim didn’t look at their faces. He made a beeline straight for the interrogation room.
On his way, Jim passed the locked doors of the men and women who he had brought in on charges of conspiracy and treason. The organization he was hunting ran deep; politicians, businessmen, and lawyers, all of who were part of the attacks on major U.S. cities four months ago. Now they sat behind locked doors in 8x8 cells. None of the assailants he brought in had said a word though. Even when he turned them against one another, saying their friends already gave them up, they wouldn’t talk. They were unwavering in their loyalty.
Locke stood behind the one-way glass examining the empty room. His belly sagged over his belt and he smoothed his mustache as Jim entered through the door behind him. Locke didn’t turn around. He knew who it was. Jim joined Locke by the glass. Medics carted the still-unconscious Kate in on a stretcher. They placed her in a chair and restrained her limbs. One of the medics prepared a syringe of adrenaline.
“Any collateral damage?” Locke asked.
“Nothing serious,” Jim responded.
The adrenaline did its job. Kate shot awake and gasped for breath. She looked at her restraints and struggled to free herself. Two interrogators dressed in matching army cargo pants and blue shirts replaced the medics. One had a file folder in his hand and tossed it on the table in front of Kate.
The interrogators showed Kate photos of her family, but she refused to look. They threatened her and her family, lied that her co-conspirators had already given her up. One of the interrogators pointed at pictures of her sons, but she appeared indifferent to all of it. They grabbed the water bucket. One of the men held Kate’s head back and placed a cloth over her face. He continued to bark questions at her, but she remained silent through the breaks in the water’
s flow over her face.
“We’re not getting anywhere, Locke,” Jim said over Kate’s gurgled chokes and coughs coming through the speaker system.
“It’s going to take time, Jim. You yourself said they were well organized. Whatever it was they had planned, they’d been preparing for a long time.”
“We have over twenty members of this organization and we don’t know who’s in charge, why they attacked us, or what they have planned next,” Jim replied.
“Jim,” Locke started, turning his back to the interrogation, “the President has ordered all reservists into active duty and brought home sixty percent of our soldiers from foreign bases to help re-establish order.”
Jim shook his head. “If these people are as deep as we think they are, then why is it so hard to believe that this could be what they want?”
Locke exhaled and turned back to the interrogation scene. Kate coughed up water while the men shoved more pictures in her face.
“How are the sessions going?” Locke inquired.
Jim looked away from the General back through the one-way glass.
“I stopped going,” Jim responded.
Locke heaved a sigh. “Jim, it’s important you go. What happened to you and your fam-”
“She was going to kill him,” said Jim, nodding toward Kate.
“What?” asked Locke.
“She had a knife to her husband’s throat. If it came down to it, she was going to kill him,” Jim said. “These people don’t care about threats. They don’t care about their families.” He turned to leave. “You’re not going to get anything out of her.”
“Go to the sessions, Jim,” Locke said. “It’ll help.”
“There isn’t anything that can help me now.”
Jim closed the door and left Locke by himself watching the cloth go over Kate’s head one more time.
Chapter 2
Chase Brenner, dressed in a fine dark grey suit, crisp white shirt, and black tie watched a news report on television. All the news channels were in an uproar about the same thing: military abductions on civilians without warrant or probable cause. Chase poured himself a bourbon, neat, into a crystal glass. The diamonds in his watch sparkled from the light of the parlor chandelier.
Congressman Jones and Chase’s younger brother Derrick sat on the opposite ends of the couch sipping drinks of their own. Jones tapped his index finger on the armrest while he watched the interview between a reporter and a military official from the Pentagon. Derrick was focused on an article in the Wall Street Journal. “We could use that.” Chase sipped his drink and caught the attention of his guests. Chase joined Jones and Derrick on an adjacent chair. He folded one leg over the other as he swirled the brown liquid in his glass, relishing and sniffing its contents.
“Sir, it’s too soon to go public. We’ll risk exposing ourselves,” said Jones.
“We’re not going public, Congressman,” Chase reassured him. “Who do we know on the appropriations committee?”
The congressman thought for a moment. “We have Wessick and Furth on that committee, sir.”
Derrick put the paper down and leaned forward, intrigued. “Leverage?” he asked.
“Precisely,” Chase responded, putting his glass on a coaster on a table in front of him. “The media is in a frenzy about the lack of constitutional rights our country is experiencing right now. We’ll have our liberal friends propose legislation to require greater transparency in our military’s operations.”
The congressman shook his head not quite following. “Even if we did, it would take months to get the bill passed, and we don’t have that kind of time.”
Chase looked at the congressman like a father practicing patience on a child. “The bill isn’t meant to pass, Congressman. We need it to cause a stir. The more obstacles we can get our enemies to juggle, the better our chances of success.”
“I’ll reach out to their offices,” said Derrick.
Once Derrick left the room, Chase and the congressman found themselves alone with the television.
“Your brother is quite the ambitious one,” the congressman said, fiddling nervously with his hands.
“Yes, he is,” Chase replied.
Jones finally summoned the courage to speak what was on his mind. “Mr. Brenner, I think that we may be biting off more than we can handle at the moment.”
Chase narrowed his eyes at Jones as he sipped from his glass.
Jones’ hands fluttered in his lap and he repositioned himself on the couch. “I’m just trying to say that with the large number of people the military has been able to poach over the last few months, maybe now’s not the best time move forward. What if they told them something?”
“My people understand the meaning of conviction, Congressman,” Chase replied.
“You don’t think they gave anything up?” Jones asked.
Chase held up his glass to the chandelier light and examined it.
“Do you know how long it takes to distill bourbon, Congressman?” Chase asked.
“I… I’m not sure what you mean, sir.”
Chase leaned forward in his chair, his elbows resting on his knees. He held the glass in both hands like it was a precious gift. “Most manufacturers require that the liquor is distilled for no less than four years. Now, if you want to really get the most out of the bourbon, you want to age it between eight and ten years. That is where you’ll get the optimal flavor. But after ten years, the aging process gets tricky. The wood from the barrels start to overtake the flavor of the bourbon. Most manufacturers don’t try aging barrels that long because if it goes sour, they’ll lose profits.”
Jones moved uneasily in his chair. His face was turning pale and the loose skin under his neck started to shake.
“There are a few distillers though that are willing to risk it because, if stored properly and in the right conditions, the bourbon can become more flavorful as time goes by, mixing and fermenting the contents of the barrel into something that’s never been tasted before.”
Chase’s eyes roamed from his glass to Jones. He rose from his chair and walked over to Jones, who shrank back into his seat. “Now, the only way to check to see if an aged barrel has gone bad is to taste it. If it turns out the barrel has gone sour, then it’s discarded.”
Jones kept his eyes on the floor as Chase walked closer. His hands grappled his pant leg as he tried to contain his nervousness.
“Unlike most bourbon manufacturers, I don’t have the fear of losing out on profits to see what can be created,” Chase said, grabbing the congressman’s chin and lifting it up so he could look him in the eye. Chase rubbed his thumb over the congressman’s lips and bent down to whisper in his ear. “Don’t go sour on me now, Congressman.”
Chase downed the bourbon and set the empty glass on the chair of the sofa. He headed for the door yelled back behind him before he exited. “Make sure Wessick and Furth do their job!” He walked to his office. His footsteps echoed off of the finished oak floors up into the high ceilings of the house. He passed paintings, sculptures, and elegantly decorative furniture. The house looked more like a museum than a home. When he reached his office, he opened the door to find Derrick sitting in the chair across from his desk typing away on his laptop.
“Where are we with Kearny’s widow?” Chase demanded.
“Still looking for her,” Derrick responded.
Samantha Kearny was the missing link for Chase right now. Out of all of the people that had disappeared, he needed to find her the most.
Derrick noticed the frustration on his brother’s face. “Why are you so convinced that Matt would have sent it to her?”
Chase sat down forcefully onto his chair and leaned back, biting his thumbnail. “Because, we should have received his backup code by now and if his instructions weren’t to send it to us, then he must have sent it to her.”
Derrick closed his laptop, focusing his attention on his brother. “We’ve had our contacts watch all possible avenues. If Matt ha
d instructions for a delivery, then we would know about it.”
“Keep an eye on the congressman for me. He seems to be losing his nerve,” Chase said.
Derrick pulled his cellphone out of his jacket pocket. He instructed one of the guards to tail the congressman.
Chase powered on his computer and opened up a file labeled “Matt Kearny.” He browsed through pictures of Matt with his wife, Samantha, and daughter, Annie. Birthday parties, vacations, it was all there in front of him. The sum of one man’s life that had once worked for him compressed down into one gigabyte of data. He clicked on a subfolder labeled “Work” and it opened up files of code and projects that Matt had been in charge of.
Chase never really interacted with Matt directly but was always impressed by the diligence in which he processed his work. Matt never missed an assignment, failed to meet a deadline, or showed any sign of disloyalty. The fact that he hadn’t received Matt’s final code sheet raised some concerns.