Against All Enemies

by John Gilstrap

  Jonathan headed for the fridge and the potable water. He grabbed three and passed them out. “Grab a seat everybody. Boomer, you’ve got some ’splainin’ to do.”

  “Where should I start?”

  Boxers answered, “Did you kill a bunch of Agency pukes?” Why dance around the elephant in the room, right?

  “Yes, I did.” Dylan launched his answer without hesitation.

  “Well, shit,” Jonathan said.

  Dylan wasn’t finished. “And if I could resuscitate them, I’d go back and do it again.”

  Boxers chuckled as he spun a chair around and sat in it backward. “You asked for a place to start,” he said. “That seems like a natural.”

  “I know you visited Christyne. I presume she told you about Behrang?”

  Jonathan nodded. “I heard he was killed.”

  “No. Killed puts it too cleanly. The Taliban leader—he called himself Satan—knew exactly where he was going to be, and he knew that Behrang was an informant. They went right to him. They pounced on him, yelling to the villagers that he had betrayed them all and would suffer. They stripped him—”

  “We don’t need to know the details,” Boxers said.

  “Yeah, you do,” Dylan shot back. “All of my friends from the old days are out to judge me, so the least they can do is endure the details.” Tears balanced on his eyelids and he swiped them away.

  “They stripped him and they hung him by his hands from a sign mounted to the wall of a coffee shop. Jesus, he couldn’t have weighed more than seventy pounds. He pleaded with them to stop and when he kicked out with his feet, they tied them together and then weighted the rope with what had to be an eighty-pound rock. It was like stretching him on a rack.”

  “Oh, Goddamn,” Boxers said. Jonathan’s stomach churned. He’d seen the aftermath of Taliban cruelty. He didn’t know specifically what was coming, but he knew it was going to be awful.

  “He couldn’t move, Scorpion. All he could do was scream and plead. He cried out for me. I was there for Christ’s sake. I watched the whole goddamn thing.” Dylan closed his eyes as he relived the moment. His breathing increased in rate and volume. “I stood there and watched the whole . . . goddamned . . . thing.”

  “You had orders,” Boxers said.

  “Shut up, Big Guy. You’re going to hear this. So here’s this little boy who’s been one of our greatest intelligence assets—the boy I was going to bring home to my family—strung up naked. And then the cutting began. Long strips of flesh peeled away while he screamed for help that never came. Not from his villagers, and not from me. Some of those bastards laughed.

  “I don’t know how long it went on. A long time. When Behrang finally started to lose consciousness, they cut his throat and it was finally over. After he was dead, they cut off his head and placed it on the ground beneath his feet.”

  When Dylan looked up, his eyes were scarlet, his cheeks wet. Jonathan felt ill. He avoided eye contact with Boxers.

  “All that because he trusted me. I loved that kid. Yeah, I know that crosses the line of lines, but he was family to me.”

  “He was outed by the Agency, wasn’t he?” Boxers guessed.

  A deep settling sigh, one that seemed to work only partially. “Yeah. It seems that the NCA”—National Command Authority—“had more important priorities. Some Kabul political bullshit with tribal leaders. To make it work, the local Agency pukes—Tyler, Baker, and Campbell—agreed to give up the assets in the region. Behrang was just one of three who were sacrificed.”

  “And Tyler, Baker, and Campbell were . . .” Jonathan was certain he knew, but he wanted to hear it from Dylan.

  “They were the three I killed.”

  “What were you thinking?”

  “That I was ridding the world of murderous parasites.”

  “Good for you,” Boxers said.

  “That’s not how it works,” Jonathan snapped. “They were federal agents acting under orders.”

  “They were under immoral orders,” Dylan said. “They shouldn’t have followed them. I couldn’t let that go. And now, according to what you told my wife, more of them are out and about trying to find and kill me. That’s not how that’s supposed to work, either.”

  Jonathan started to speak, but then stopped. He had to get this right.

  “If you’re coming to take me into custody, then you need to know there’ll be a fight to the death.”

  “We’re not here to do that,” Boxers said. Jonathan heard a not-so-subtle threat in his statement. If it came to choosing sides, Big Guy would be with Dylan.

  Jonathan bristled, but he pushed it down. “Big Guy’s right. I have no interest in doing the bidding of the Marshal’s Service. Nor do I plan to reveal that we know where you are. We’re here because Stanley Rollins thought you might trust us and meet us. That’s all.”

  Dylan extended is arms. “And here we are. What’s next?”

  “I’ve got one,” Big Guy said. “I get the business about killing the killers. That’s done. As far as I’m concerned, you did fine. I want to know about this traitor shit.”

  Dylan recoiled. “I need more than that. I’m not sure I know what traitor shit you’re talking about.”

  “I think you do,” Jonathan said.

  Dylan smirked and gave a noncommittal head bobble. “Let’s play the game my way for a little while. What traitor shit are you talking about?”

  “Not knowing how long the list is, let’s start with the business of leaking secrets to foreign embassies. Is that part of your punishment plan for the CIA?”

  Dylan held up a finger. “To be clear. I wasn’t punishing the Agency. I was killing murderers. With that account settled, I have no quarrel with Langley. And those leaks were bait to bring you to find me.”

  Jonathan reared back in his chair. “What?”

  A grin bloomed on Dylan’s face. “You heard right. That was bait.”

  “For us.”

  “Well, not specifically for you and Boxers, necessarily, but for somebody from the Unit. Even then, it was a pretty short list. I’m glad it was you guys.”

  “I’m not sure I like being bait,” Boxers said. “Where’s the hook?”

  “What do you know about the nature of the secrets I’ve leaked?” Dylan asked.

  Jonathan sensed that he’d worked out the choreography of this meeting in his head, and he was determined to stick to it. “Not a thing,” he said, confessing the truth. “Only that you’re leaking them.”

  “Uh-huh.” Dylan laughed. “They’re the kinds of ‘secrets’ that aren’t really all that secret. And certainly nothing that deals with national security.”

  “Why leak anything at all?” Jonathan pressed. “You’ve been part of the Community your whole life. We don’t get to make the call on what’s important and what’s not.”

  “Where did these secrets come from in the first place?” Boxers asked. “Are you just launching stuff out there from memory?”

  Dylan finished the last of his water and rose from his chair to retrieve another one from the fridge. He opened the door, lifted a plastic bottle, and stripped the cap. “After I killed Campbell, I noticed that he had a computer case hanging from his shoulder. I hung back for a long time, just watching. It never makes sense to enter the scene of a long-range shot, but that case was really calling to me. I hoped that that computer could give me more insight into who might have killed Behrang. After maybe fifteen minutes, I figured, oh, the hell with it, and I did a drive-by and snatched the bag. Did anyone tell you that the bag was missing?”

  “No,” Jonathan said.

  “Figures. On that computer, I found ridiculously large amounts of classified material. Apparently, Campbell had been tapped for something much larger than what he was doing. I found lots of intel about a wide range of stuff. What I released to the embassies of the world—and you’ve got to give me credit for not releasing any of it to The Washington Post or New York Times—was piddly shit about the movement of diplomatic res
ources from one place to another. I released that the ambassador to Buttscratchistan stopped at the same coffee shop every morning at nine-fifteen. It was stuff that everyone already knew.”

  “Yet here the United States government is so pissed at you,” Jonathan said. He wasn’t buying.

  “Yeah, how about that?” Dylan challenged. “Why might that be?”

  “Because they’re paranoid,” Boxers said. “This administration has been kicked in the balls half a dozen times from people leaking information.”

  “But I’m not leaking anything harmful to the administration,” Dylan said. “In fact, I haven’t leaked anything that is close to the administration.”

  “You’re being deliberately cryptic,” Jonathan said. His patience for the dramatic reveal was waning. “If you’ve got a point to make, make it.”

  Dylan took a long pull on his water, and sat back into his chair, turning it around to match Boxers’ backward pose. “Okay,” he said. “I believe with all my heart that I have uncovered a plot to overthrow the president and his administration.”

  Jonathan’s laugh escaped his throat before he could stop it. “Bullshit,” he said. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what you think you’ve got, but ours is a government particularly insulated from a coup. That whole separation of powers thing.”

  “Yeah, it’s a stupid idea,” Dylan said, but his ears turned red. “That’s why I risked my freedom—and my life, as it turned out—to bring this to you. It’s because I’m paranoid.”

  Dylan had every right to be paranoid, Jonathan thought. But that didn’t necessarily translate to irrational thoughts or actions. “I think you need to put your cards on the table,” he said.

  “It’s called Operation Serpent,” Dylan said before he took another pull from his water. “It’s actually pretty brilliant. According to the documents on Campbell’s computer, the overthrow of the United States government does not require an invasion of Washington by a division of tanks. Rather, it involves a handful of selective assassinations, followed by a seeding of panic in the media. You get neighbors to distrust each other because of differing political beliefs. You get them to concentrate on guns and race and other social issues that don’t mean anything. Whatever it takes to distract the papers, bloggers and TV shows. You get groups to hate each other. Conservatives versus progressives. Gay versus straight. Black versus white. Civil war. While everyone’s responding to what the media is spewing—always facile and always mostly wrong—a junta waltzes into power, and it’s over. Straight out of Hitler’s playbook.”

  “I don’t know how to say ‘be less cryptic’ any clearer,” Jonathan said.

  “Steel yourself, guys,” Dylan said. “The National Command Authority is planning a coup.”

  “Bullshit,” Boxers said.

  “See? I knew someone would say that,” Dylan declared with a laugh. “My money would have been on Scorpion, though. Do you think for a moment that I would risk all that I am risking for anything that was less than really freaking important?”

  Jonathan sighed and closed his eyes. For the umptieth time in his life, he realized that he’d entered space where he had no business being. “And you got all this from a computer file.”

  “I got a lot of stuff from those files. Campbell had a collection of five or six hard drives in his case. All of them were encrypted, but his computer came complete with the decryption software.”

  “Was it an Agency computer?” Boxers asked.

  “I imagine, but as you might recall, spooks rarely put Company logos on their equipment. Most of the information on the drives was standard intelligence crap, the stuff that every agency churns out—not just the Agency. Sensitive and boring. Oh, and it didn’t have any Internet connection.”

  “Disabled?” Jonathan asked.

  “Uninstalled.”

  “I don’t understand why you were scouring these in the first place,” Jonathan said.

  “Would it be disingenuous to try to take the high ground and say I was worried about leaving that kind of intel just out there in the world unprotected?”

  Jonathan measured an inch between his thumb and forefinger. “Maybe just a touch.”

  “Well, anyway, that was part of it. That’s why I left my cover to retrieve the bag. Once I had it, though, I started trolling through it to find what I could about the plans to kill Behrang.”

  “You were obsessed,” Boxers said.

  “I was committed.”

  “I think it’s clear that you should have been committed,” Jonathan said. He tried to make it sound like a joke, but his words came very close to his feelings.

  “Yeah, well, that horse has left the barn. Do you want to hear what I found or don’t you?”

  Jonathan made a sweeping motion with both hands. “The floor is yours.”

  “There’s a group out there on the Internet called the Uprising. Ever heard of it?”

  Both other men shook their heads.

  “It’s a Chicken Little sky-is-falling nutjob militia website like so many others, but this one has the attention of the CIA. And maybe the Bureau as far as I know, but definitely the Agency. They seem to think that this one is real, that it has legs. And they’re spending a lot of time trying to track down the guy who calls himself The Commander.”

  “I’m guessing he’s the leader,” Boxers said.

  Dylan scowled and cocked his head, stroking his chin with the tip of his thumb and the knuckle of his forefinger. “Hmm. I never thought of that. Could the Commander be the leader? I need to give that some thought.”

  Boxers flipped him off, triggering a chuckle from Jonathan.

  “Yes, he’s the leader. If you read through the posts and the analysis, you’ll see that he likely has a military background. If you read a little deeper, you’ll find that a lot of other military personnel have a deep interest in him. A scary-level interest.”

  “What’s the theme of his typical screed?” Jonathan asked.

  “What you’d think. Everybody’s afraid of the power grab in Washington. The president’s casual disregard for the law, the proliferation of signing orders and executive orders, and the fact that no one seems to care because he represents the party in charge, and therefore everything he does has to be supported one hundred percent.”

  “Sounds like the truth to me,” Boxers said.

  “That’s the problem,” Dylan went on. “It sounds like the truth to anyone who’s served in uniform. Anyone who’s not on Darmond’s side of the aisle. The difference with the Uprising is the fact that the Agency believes that these folks are actually planning to do what they say they’re going to do.”

  “I don’t get it,” Jonathan said. “Why is the CIA even in play? This sounds like a purely domestic issue. Why isn’t this with the FBI?”

  “Damn good question,” Dylan said. “I asked that myself. So I dug a little deeper—really, these guys should be more careful about the kinds of shit they save on hard drives—and I found out that not only was the FBI not involved, neither was the CIA. Not officially, anyway.”

  “You’re being cryptic again,” Jonathan said.

  “Think about it,” Dylan said. He’d become more animated, leaning forward into the table, his elbows rested on the edge. “Here we’ve got a guy with a computer that is isolated from the Web and he’s carrying encrypted files with the decryption software installed. It was a stand-alone, rogue machine.”

  “I don’t know what that means,” Jonathan said. He wasn’t being obtuse. Computers and he had never gotten along well.

  “It means that the machine was entirely untraceable. No one could track where it was, the NSA couldn’t peek under its skirts to see what it was doing. Yet, all the files it carried had been downloaded from somewhere.”

  “Which means . . . ?”

  “It means that someone was doing an independent research project,” Boxers said.

  “Bingo to the Big Guy. It think that’s exactly what it means. If the Agency were trying to track down thi
s Commander guy to bring him down, it would be a shared file with a lot of different players. Instead—”

  “It’s a private quest that involves Agency operatives,” Jonathan said, connecting the dots in his head.

  “Another bingo. And if bringing the Commander and the Uprising to justice would be a mission for a multi-agency task force, an independent effort to find him would be . . .” He waited for his audience to finish the sentence for themselves.

  “There’s an effort to find and support the Uprising,” Jonathan said. He saw the logic in his head, but he hadn’t test-driven it yet, wasn’t sure that he should trust his first instinct.

  “Right,” Dylan said.

  Boxers held up both hands, as if to stop an approaching train. “No, no, no. Nothing’s that easy,” he said. “You can’t just say, yada, yada, yada, so therefore the government is planning a coup. There have to be a thousand possible reasons.”

  “There are a million possible reasons,” Dylan agreed. “Possibilities are limited only by imagination. Reality, on the other hand, happens only one way. Remember what I said to you about the Uprising’s strategy? About there being no need for invasion and tanks?”

  Jonathan found himself nodding like a kid caught in the rapture of a good ghost story.

  “It only takes a few well-placed assassinations,” Dylan reminded. He waited for the rest.

  “Congressman Blaine,” Jonathan said. “Chairman of Ways and Means.” It seemed so obvious now.

  “And Haynes Moncrief,” Boxers said. He looked disappointed at being dragged into the direction the conversation was going.