by James Hunt
“Mrs. Kearny,” Derrick said, “My most sincere condolences.” He placed his hand over his heart as he spoke and gave a slight bow of his head.
Samantha began wiping the tears off of her face with her hands and shirt. “Can I help you?” she asked, fighting a runny nose.
“I should be asking you that,” he replied with a soft smile. Derrick took a swift step inside the door before Samantha had a chance to close it. He entered with an air of entitlement, as though Samantha’s apartment were his own home.
The gun; she desperately wished she had it with her now. Samantha backed into the living room while Derrick closed the door behind him. “Who are you?” she asked.
“My name is Derrick Brenner. I’m here on behalf of my brother Chase,” he said. “We both knew your husband.” His eyes darted over to the couch while Samantha slid her hand into her pocket, clutching the phone Jim gave her. “May I sit?” he asked.
Derrick leaned back onto the couch before she could answer, crossing his legs at his ankles. He spotted Annie creeping out from hallway. “Hello there.” Derrick smiled and waved at Annie.
Samantha rushed over to her daughter, picking her up. She placed her back in her room, instructing her to stay there and lock the door. Annie nodded and Samantha closed the door behind her. When she returned to the living room, Derrick pointed at Annie’s room through the wall.
“Your daughter is beautiful, Mrs. Kearny,” he smiled.
“Thank you,” she said. “Now, how did you know Matt?”
Derrick’s smile slowly faded and his tone went down an octave. “I think you know.”
Samantha’s hand went back into her pocket, and her finger hovered over the power button.
“You can call for help if you want, Mrs. Kearny, but I was hoping you could at least give me the courtesy of hearing what I have to say,” he requested, leaning forward in his seat.
Samantha stared at him for a moment. She lifted her hand from the phone and settled on the opposite end on the couch.
“You must think we’re terrible people,” Derrick said, shaking his head.
“The only thing that’s terrible is that there’s more than one of you,” she said.
Derrick laughed. “Matthew said the same thing when we met.”
“I’m not sure what you’ve been told, but we’re not what you think we are,” Derrick continued.
“Does being labeled a terrorist make it hard for you to sleep at night?” she asked.
“The military has forced you to spy on me, what would you label that?”
“Patriotism,” Samantha replied.
“Nothing is stronger than the heart of a volunteer. I have no doubts about that.”
Samantha’s eyes kept floating back towards her daughter’s room. Her mind kept wandering to the gun hidden in her sock drawer.
“I think,” Derrick started, “that I should get to the point of me being here. My brother Chase, whom I told you I represent, would like to meet you in person.”
“And why should I tr-“
“Trust me? Because we can offer you something the military doesn’t have,” he said, “Answers. In return, you give us the codes that your husband sent to you.”
“When would your brother like to meet?” she asked.
Derrick pulled a business card from his jacket pocket and handed it to Samantha. “The date, time, and location are all there.” He stood and adjusted his jacket as he headed toward the front door. Samantha stayed seated on the couch, examining the handwriting on the note.
From the front door, Derrick looked back at Samantha. “We hope you can make it,” he said.
***
Kate sat in her cell when the door clanged open and General Locke walked in. The corporal dragged in a chair and Locke eased into it. His belly rested on his lap as he situated his girth, attempting to get comfortable.
“I appreciate you coming to see me, General,” Kate said. Her hands were cuffed together and her feet were shackled to the steel posts on her bed. She couldn’t get up even if she wanted to.
“I’m surprised you asked to see me, Mrs. Hill,” the General responded. “From what I understand, you haven’t been very…” Locke searched for the right word. “Forthcoming.”
The chains rustled as Kate shifted on the bed. She knew Locke was a smart man. Her superiors had warned her that he was clever. She wasn’t sure how much he knew. “I take it that by the lack of visits I’ve received from your men over the past twenty-four hours that you’ve found something. Whatever it is you found, I can help you decipher it.”
Locke leaned forward in his chair. It gave a slight bend under his weight. “Help us? Why now? What is it that you want?”
“I want to see my children.”
“No, you don’t.”
The right corner of Kate’s mouth twitched upward with the hint of a smile.
“What do you want?” Locke repeated.
“You must have quite a lot of trust in your men, General,” Kate said.
The chair creaked as Locke leaned back into the seat. He pulled a cigar out of his pocket and stuck it in his mouth. A flame sparked out of a silver lighter and grew into an orange flame as it torched the end of the cigar. Locke puffed the smoke, ensuring the cigar kept the slow burn.
“Did you handpick these men yourself?” she asked.
Smoke blew from his mouth and nose after a long drag. He tapped the end of the cigar, and bits of ash fell to the floor. “I did.”
“It’s one of your biggest flaws, General.”
“What is?”
“Your trust.”
Kate’s chains clanked when she leaned forward. The pressure from her skin against the rusty metal cut into her ankles and her wrists. “You’re making the mistake most men in leadership do. You put your faith and your resources into men,” she said, spittle flying from her mouth. “Men lose sight of goals in place of their own ambitions, but an idea…” She paused. Her face winced in pain as the shackle’s metal dug deeper into her skin. “An idea slithers into all of the places men can’t reach.”
Locke took another long drag from the cigar, and his face turned grey through a filter of smoke. He rose from his chair, tucking the cigar into the corner of his mouth.
“We’re going to win, General,” she said.
At the door, Locke turned around, removing the cigar from his mouth to speak. “You say to put your faith into an idea. That an idea is stronger than a man? Well, my idea is to kick your idea’s ass.
Locke’s assistant Chris met him down the hallway. He had to double step to keep up with Locke’s pace. “Secure all of our files and assets. Tell Jim we need surveillance on his sister immediately.” Chris feverishly took notes as Locke spoke. Upon reaching his office, Locke turned to his assistant. In a quiet voice, he said, “We have a mole.”
Chapter 7
Jim paced back and forth in the small station room where he, Coyle, Brett, and Twink were staying to prepare for their mission with Samantha. He spoke into his phone as he strode across the room. “You’re sure?”
“It’s a hunch,” Locke replied through the phone.
Coyle watched Jim pace back and forth. It made him nervous. Coyle leaned into Twink, who was loading ammo into AR-15 clips. “I don’t think it’s a good phone call.”
Twink didn’t look at Coyle, he just continued loading bullets into the empty magazines strewn about the table. “When was the last time any of us got a good phone call?” Twink asked.
“Your mom called me to come over last night,” Coyle whispered back at him. “That was pretty good.” Twink paused loading the magazines and eyed his teammate. Coyle flashed him a shit-eating grin.
“What did we find on Brenner?” Jim asked.
“We didn’t find any direct correlation between Brenner and Matt, but after some digging, we realized that PamTech was a shell corporation under one of Brenner’s many ‘business’ ventures. Currently most of Brenner’s resources are tied up in renewable energy.”
“Seems too neat,” Jim said.
“That’s what we thought, so we dug a little deeper into the financials and found that the solar, wind, and water factories that he started had little to zero material for actual renewable energy,” Locke explained.
“Where are we with the codes Samantha gave us?” Jim asked.
“We were right about the chemical warfare. Brenner’s been stockpiling the ingredients for VX nerve gas for the past three years,” Locke said. “He has weekly shipments to a chemical plant in San Diego where we think he’s storing it.”
“Christ,” Jim whispered. “Do we know how much he has?”
“It’s enough to wipe out all of California if he wanted to, but his sights aren’t just locked in on the West Coast, part of the code that our analysts were deciphering were launch sites. Those layers of code we were analyzing were viruses set to override military silos. That’s why Brenner needs them. Without the missiles, the gas is useless to him. Jim, this guy’s smart. We found out that he had a congressman sponsor a bill looking into our missions. I haven’t fought it because I know it won’t pass, but he put it out there to see whose desk it would float across.”
Jim had second thoughts about bringing Samantha into this. If he was going to abort, now would be the time. Samantha and Chase were meeting in less than an hour. “Should we pull out having Samantha give him that code then?”
“No, as of right now, none of the gas has been shipped. It’ll take another week before he’d be able to do anything with it. If we hit him now, we’ll be able to stop everything before it even starts. Good luck, Jim,” Locke said and then ended the call.
Jim checked the time on his phone. He slipped it into his pocket and headed to the table where Twink was still loading the clips. “We head out in fifteen,” Jim said, glancing at each man in the small operations room. “Be ready.”
***
Samantha took a left at a traffic light and turned onto one of the main highways. A group of soldiers from Locke’s unit had already taken Annie to Matt’s aunt and uncle’s house. She wasn’t sure what she was getting herself into, but she wanted to know the truth. She wished she had handled her interaction with Jim better. She knew he must be hurting. She saw it on his face.
Stop it, she said to herself as she shook off the thoughts. She had to stay focused. If all of the theories that Jim had told her about what this organization was capable of, if they really were responsible for the attacks around the country months ago that killed millions, then the people that she was about to interact with were very dangerous.
The closer she got to her destination, the tighter her hands gripped the steering wheel. The buildings around thinned out the further north she drove. What was once a bustling metropolis area soon turned into rural farms and a few factory warehouses. She checked the GPS, saw she was only ten minutes out, and dialed Jim per his instructions.
“Hey,” he answered.
“I’m almost there,” she responded, feigning confidence.
Jim was tucked into the back of a surveillance van with Twink and Coyle. He was a half a mile from where Samantha and Chase were going to meet, but he had Brett on the ground hidden there in case anything happened.
“I just spoke with Brett. Chase is already there. Try and have him give up as much info as you can. Don’t press it though. You don’t want to act like you’re trying too hard,” Jim said.
“I know,” she said. “Jim, about Matt’s funeral,” she started, but Jim cut her off.
“We can talk about it after we finish this.”
“Okay,” she said, letting out a breath and getting into character.
Once Jim hung up his cell, he clicked his radio piece on.
“Brett,” Jim said.
Brett was lying down in a tall patch of unkempt grass on the edge of the building. His eyes were focused on two guards outside of the front door of the rundown warehouse where Samantha would meet Chase. “Copy, Jim.”
“She’s ten minutes out,” Jim said.
Brett shifted the scope on his rifle, checking the other end of the building. “Roger that,” he said, making sure to click the radio off then muttering to himself, “Next time, I’ll sit in the van and someone else can lie perfectly still for three hours. God, I have to pee.”
***
Kate lay on her back on the cot in her cell. The lumps in the mattress caused her body to elevate and sink in random places. Her dirty grey jumpsuit hadn’t been changed in over a week, and the cuts on her face were still fresh. Her left eye, now bloodshot, roamed the concrete ceiling. The dim fluorescent light flickered above while she lightly drummed her fingers on her stomach.
A soldier leaned back in his chair, occasionally glancing at nine monitors streaming live video of the prisoner cellblock before going back to his hunting magazine. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the first screen go dark, then the second, third, and then the other six. He jumped out of his chair, reaching for his radio to report the malfunction.
Kate’s eyes popped open at the click of her cell door unlocking. The door creaked open and a knife skidded through the crack. The knife came to a stop in the center of the cell floor. Kate snatched the blade from the floor and headed out the door.
Locke was at his desk when he heard the first shots fired down the hall in the cellblock. He reached for the pistol in his desk and clicked the safety off. He crouched below the windows of his office, peeking over the top. He saw a few Military Police Officers rushing through the door. He watched them flip over desks to provide cover from the prisoner’s bullets flying at them.
The gunshots blasted in all directions. Locke’s office door flew open and Chris, Locke’s assistant, jumped inside. Locke let out a sigh of relief.
“General, are you alright?” Chris asked.
“I’m fine,” Locke shouted over the gunfire behind him.
“General, I need to get you out of here,” said Chris.
“No!” Locke shouted. “Get on the radio for backup. We can’t let the prisoners leave this facility.”
Kate burst through the office door, holding a pistol she’d stolen from the weapons cache the prisoners had raided. Locke opened fire and Kate jumped behind Locke’s desk. Bullets splintered holes into the wood as Locke emptied his clip.
Then Locke noticed the silence outside the room. The firing had ceased. Locke peeked over the wall through the window and saw a dozen soldiers dead on the ground. Twenty prisoners were making their way toward him.
“Chris, we’ve got-,”
Locke’s words halted when the cold steel of Chris’s 9mm pistol touched the side of his temple.
“Get up, General,” Chris ordered.
Locke rose slowly while the prisoners piled into Locke’s office, their guns pointed at him. Chris snatched the pistol out of Locke’s hand.
Kate jumped over Locke’s bullet-ridden desk. Strands of ragged hair fell across her face. Her pistol hung loosely at her side.
“I told you, General,” Kate said.
Locke pointed toward his desk and raised his eyebrows. “May I?”
Kate eyeballed a box of cigars that had fallen off Locke’s desk. A few of the Cubans had spilled out. She walked over to it and picked one up, running it under her nose and taking in the smell of the tobacco. “My grandfather smoked these until the day he died. Anytime I get a whiff of one, I always think of him.” She tossed one to Locke.
Locke pulled the cigar clip out of his front pocket and chopped off the end. He flicked his lighter and roasted the end of the cigar as he puffed long, slow drags of the Cuban. He let the fire fill him for one last time and then put the cigar into the corner of his mouth and took a good look around him. Murderers, traitors, terrorists – these would be the last sights he’d see on this earth.
The barrel of Kate’s pistol hovered inches from Locke’s face, her finger on the trigger. “This is what your faith in men get you, General. I told you it was a mistake.” Kate gritted her teeth.
Locke took the cigar out of his mouth. The smoke from the tip of the cigar made a curving line from his mouth to his side. He ashed the cigar on the floor. “The only mistake I made was not adding retinal scans to the cell doors.” He walked closer to her so that his forehead was pressed hard against the barrel of the pistol. “You think your idea protects you from those that try and oppose you. The only thing that does protect you is the piece of steel and composite that you’re holding in your hand. And we have better trained gunmen than you do.”
A slight smile twitched on Kate’s face. She squeezed the trigger and the bullet went right between Locke’s eyes and out the back of his skull. Bits of blood, bone, and brain matter sprayed across the office floor. The cigar rolled out of his hand once he hit the ground, and Kate bent down to pick it up. It was speckled with blood. She rolled it between her fingers and then took a long drag and blew the smoke straight up into the air.