by S L Shelton
LIEUTENANT COLONEL JACOB RUTLEDGE sat at his desk in the E Ring of the Pentagon. There, he ate his lunch as he did every day while looking out the window over the parking lot.
Rutledge loved his window. Being a lowly Lieutenant Colonel, and an assistant to a Major General, he didn’t rate his special portal into the world. But due to a fluke in the odd architecture of the Pentagon, he’d hit the jackpot with one of the smallest offices in the entire structure.
The corner in which the General’s office resided had been expanded closer to the bend in one of the five, one-hundred-eight-degree corners after the 9/11 reconstruction. The tinier remnant of the previous office became Rutledge’s cubby hole. If he were to lay down on the floor of his office, he would have to open the door for his feet—but he had a window, and he loved that window.
Rutledge had one other unique honor that conveyed with his position. He was the lottery master of a game—a prestigious game. Rutledge had the privilege of running the lottery for fighter pilots tasked with flying escort to Air Force One.
It was a simple job, particularly since Air Force One didn’t usually fly with escort fighters. But on the occasions that it did, Rutledge would pull out his fishbowl—his own flight helmet from years past—go to the flight operations center and collect the numbered tags for the eligible squadrons and flights from the flight board, then pour them into his helmet. After a dramatic performance of swirling and shaking the contents, he would pull the two lucky pilots from the bowl. Easy duty.
In addition to loving his window and loving his lottery, he had a particular affinity for the physical love of young men. That in itself wouldn’t have been a problem, as “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” remained a mildly effective policy for the officer class. But it had become clear that the current administration had been laying the groundwork for a full ban lift. It wouldn’t be more than a year, at most, before gays could serve openly. Everyone knew it.
Unfortunately for Rutledge, he was married, to a woman—one he wasn’t very fond of. And worse—and the point of order that would not only cost him his career but potentially his freedom—he often paid for the young men he spent time with.
As he sat enjoying his soggy tuna sandwich from the catering cart, and looked out over the Pentagon parking lot, his phone chimed. He turned it over and looked to see a notification from a particular site where he connected with the muscular young men he liked so much.
“Hmm. A message.”
He looked around the corner of his open door, then discretely nudged it closed a few inches with his foot. When he felt he had a suitable amount of privacy, he logged into the app on his phone and clicked the message. The sender of the message, GrabbyBot wrote; “Are you at your desk?”
He chuckled to himself then looked at his door, nudging it closed a few more inches before typing; “At my desk,” then after a short pause, “eating a nasty tuna sandwich.”
The next message arrived fast on the heels of his own. “Check your email.”
That confused Rutledge. Being careful over his many years of playing outside of his marriage, there would be no connection, no crossover, between his private dalliances and his work. He’d been too careful.
No one should have his work email address. He rarely even used his real name, and when he did, it was only ever his first name, never his last.
He typed back, “You don’t have my email address. Why would I bother?”
A faster response this time, “Check your email, LTC Rutledge.”
He felt the blood drain from his face. After dropping the remainder of his sandwich in its plastic wedge on his desk, he grabbed his mouse to wake his screen.
His hands trembled so that it became difficult to type his password, having to put it in twice before logging on. At the bottom of his screen, he clicked his mail icon and waited for it to come up.
His phone chimed; “Are you there yet?”
Sitting in his in-box was an email from GrabbyBot. He clicked it open and found it contained an embedded video. He hovered his mouse pointer over the play button, terrified at what it would show.
Another message: “Click it.”
He drew in a deep breath and clicked. The picture changed from black to a very high-definition color video, wide-angled, looking over a cheap hotel room. On the bed, naked, with a similarly naked young man lounging across his chest, lay Lieutenant Colonel Jacob Rutledge.
His speaker emitted the low moan of a man in ecstasy and he rushed to turn it off, spilling his soda across his desk in the process. He picked up his phone and typed, “Who are you?”
A message returned almost instantly. “Check your mail again.”
Simultaneously, a new message appeared in his Pentagon email in-box. He clicked it to find a color scan of a Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles ID. He recognized the man’s face as the one he had joined that night in the hotel. Nausea rolled in his gut, threatening to return his partially eaten sandwich as his eyes fell on the date of birth.
He quickly calculated that the young man who he had paid to have sex with was not twenty as he had claimed, but was in fact, seventeen.
Another message chimed on his app; “Do I have your attention?”
He quickly responded, “What do you want?”
“Wait until she leaves then open it.”
Confused, he asked, “What?”
Several seconds after he sent the message, a knock at the door nearly caused him to lose control of his bladder. He quickly pressed the power button on his monitor, shutting it off, then leaned forward to open the door.
One of the mail room couriers stood there, her mail cart all but empty and a manila envelope in her hand. “This came in a few minutes ago, sir…marked urgent.”
He stared at her, then the package, afraid to reach out and take it.
She thrust it toward him, a confused expression pulling her mouth into a frown. “It’s for you, sir.”
He nodded nervously and took it from her. He watched as she disappeared down the aisle and around the corner before closing the door. He felt the envelope and at first thought it might be empty until he touched the hard edge of a small disk. He opened the flap and dumped the contents on his desk.
A round disk, half the size of a poker chip like those from the flight-ready board, dropped to the blotter and spun briefly before falling still. He stared at it for a moment before picking up his phone and typing, “What is this?”
“Inside your helmet and liner for your radio, there is a recess between the foam and the receiver. Push the pilot tag into the crease between them and leave it there until the next lottery.”
His chest contracted, he pulled his trash can from under his desk and put his face over it, feeling his lunch returning up the way it had gone down.
His phone chimed again as he fought the nausea. When he relaxed enough to continue, he picked up his phone and read.
“You will do this, and you will draw that tag in the next lottery, or those two emails will be sent to your wife, Margaret, your boss, the Pentagon Office of Professional Conduct, and your children and neighbors.”
The room began to spin. Rutledge lowered his head to his desk and placed his trash can under his chin again. Two more messages followed in rapid succession. It was several moments before he had regained enough calm to read them.
“Answer with a simple yes or no.”
“You have to answer now.”
He stared at the phone, his thumb hovering over the virtual keyboard. After a failing thought of patriotism fell victim to the more emotional thoughts of his children seeing the video, he typed, “Yes”.
The response was quick. “Then you won’t hear from us again. Carry on.”
As if someone stood next to him operating his computer, the mouse cursor highlighted the two emails and they vanished.
He looked at his helmet sitting on the shelf over his computer, and after staring at it for nearly half an hour, he reached up and took it, bringing it slowly to his desktop
. He picked up the round pilot tag that sat there on his blotter, and, as if it burned his fingers, reached in and shoved it into the foam gap between the ear well and the receiver.
He held the helmet in his hands for several more minutes, turning it over to look at the darkened visor, trying to imagine himself behind it. He couldn’t.
His desk phone rang, and he lifted the helmet back into place on its shelf before answering the phone.
“Are you back from lunch yet?” the General asked.
“Yes, sir,” he said. “I’ll be right there.”
He hung up the phone and opened his door. After one long, lingering look back at his helmet, he closed the door and walked next door to brief his boss on readiness training exercises.
Easy duty.
He forced himself to breathe slowly again.
**
10:25 p.m. — Defense Intelligence Agency Special Projects Section, Research and Training Compound, Fort Detrick, Maryland
KATHRIN woke slowly over a period of hours. She drifted in and out of consciousness several times before she could form anything close to a coherent thought.
Where am I?
The heat emanating from her body exerted a painfully stark contrast to the cold of the dimly lit room she found herself in. She was freezing. It took a long while for her to blink enough sight into her foggy eyes to realize it was the floor on which she lay.
Her heartbeat pounded in her ears, and it felt as though she were bound, tightly wrapped from the neck down. A spasm in her arm sent her hand flailing across the cold tile, and she realized the feeling of restraint was her own body betraying her.
Where am I?
As if the silent question alone were some sort of grievous sin, electricity arced through her core and she convulsed violently, smacking her head against the tile. Her body remained taut for minutes after the seizure as if it had forgotten how to breathe. When the pressure behind her eyes become too great, she sucked in a breath like a revived corpse.
What’s wrong with me? Why won’t my arms work?
Through the haze clouding her mind, she heard voices in the corridor outside. They talked casually, unrushed. She couldn’t make out every word of what they were saying, but in her dazed state it sounded like someone was sharing a recipe—cabbage rolls she thought. It angered her that anyone existed in this universe of pain, able to speak in conversational tones and frivolous detail. She was in pain!
The agony of a new seizure surged through her muscles a second time—or was it the fourth? Time had no meaning, and her memory seemed to betray her as much as her body had. Her back arched against the floor and her legs cramped under the stress. She shook, unable to catch her breath.
When it ceased, she lay there drooling, her cheek pressed to the cold floor and one eye clenched shut against the throbbing and ringing in her ears. She feared that if she opened her eye, it would pop out of its socket from the pressure.
What’s my name?
Her chest contracted and her shoulders bent in. Her neck arced involuntarily at such an angle and intensity she felt her vertebra would be pulverized by the compression. A scream echoed off the walls of her cell, and for a moment she wondered where it had come from before realizing it was her own.
What’s happening to me?
For agonizing hours, she lay in her own filth, bile, and retch. The pain built to a crescendo during each seizure and each came faster than the last, offering less time to recuperate before the next wave of pain crashed down over her.
“Breathe through your nose between the seizures,” came a muted voice through the wall. “It helps.”
So soft was the voice she couldn’t discern if it was male or female, or even if it had been real. The voice could have as easily come from inside her own head. But a memory came back to her—the voice had been there before. But when? How long ago?
Another seizure grabbed her.
“Breathe,” came the voice again. A woman—definitely a woman.
Kathrin willed breath through her nostrils, fighting past the swelling and mucus in her sinuses. A quick breath out, clearing the way for more, and then a much easier breath. The voice had been right. The throbbing wasn’t as severe, and the pressure behind her eyes eased.
She lay there breathing through her fog and pain, the rattling in her chest rasping against each gulp of air. Her aching muscles pulled in and curled her into a ball.
“Why is this happening to me?” she asked, her voice weak and like gravel underfoot.
“I don’t know,” came the woman’s voice, also weak and grating. “It hurts.”
More memory came back; the voice helps her. That’s why it’s familiar. Another pulsing, pounding seizure straightened her on the floor, stretching her out flat against the tile. Her jaw clinched involuntarily, and she worried her teeth would crack under the stress.
When it subsided, she lay there flat on the cold floor, grateful for the cool against the fire in her skin. The fever would kill her, she was certain.
A short time later, after the worst of the spells had passed, the voice woke her from a shallow sleep. “Are you there?” The mystery woman’s voice was barely a whisper. Kathrin now remembered talking with a woman across a string of blurred days—or was it weeks?
Kathrin rolled slowly, painfully to her side and stared at the wall. “What’s happening?”
“I don’t know,” the woman said through sobs. “It’s like a nightmare.”
Kathrin suppressed the urge to cry as well. She was never one of those girls who let fear or pain drive her to tears—though in that moment it took all of her will not to. “Where are we?” she asked, her voice trembling.
She heard nothing for several minutes. A new spasm worked its way up her spine and she flinched, her body curling into a tight ball. It was several tense seconds before she remembered to breathe through her nose again. As the bout subsided, her stomach heaved, and bile burned its way up her throat before pooling under her cheek.
She coughed the remnants up and spat it across the floor in front of her, too exhausted to raise her head. The rattling in her chest increased after that, leaving her wondering if she would drown in her own fluids the next time she passed out or if the fever would get her.
“I don’t know where we are,” the woman in the next room said. “I’m too tired to care.”
It took Kathrin a few moments to realize the woman was answering her question. She had forgotten she’d asked it only moments earlier. She slowly slid her hand to her face and touched her nose, pressing one nostril closed. She breathed out trying to clear the other, but it took three breaths for her lungs to cooperate.
She coughed again then rolled onto her back. “Are you sick, too?”
Through the woman’s weak sobs Kathrin barely heard the word, “Yes.”
The tile beneath her felt like ice next to her skin. With a superhuman effort, she flipped her arm toward a dark lump on the floor. Ecstasy filled her when her hand landed on what felt like a crumpled blanket.
“Ah,” she breathed out in a whisper, dragging it closer and rolling herself into it as best she could.
That little effort left her winded and rasping through bubbling breaths. And she had only managed to roll it across her shoulders. Sweet warmth radiated back to her. She closed her eyes, reveling in the sensation, then she braced herself for her next bold move—covering her legs.
“Are you still there?” the woman asked.
Kathrin gave up on trying to raise herself from the floor. Her legs would have to remain cold. She collapsed in the folds of her blanket and rolled to her side again.
“I’m here,” she whispered.
Coughing through the wall grated on her hearing as if it were nails on a chalkboard. For several long seconds after the fit ceased, silence owned the space. Kathrin began to worry her neighbor had expired. Panic built in her gut and worked its way to her throat before it burst out in a desperate cry. “I’m here.”
Another wave of pain
closed on her and her fingers turned to gnarled claws, cramping, unable to straighten. But through her excruciation, she heard a cough in the other room. The spell eased and then dissipated.
“What’s your name?” the woman asked, her voice weak and frail.
Kathrin opened one eye and raised a shaking hand to wipe away the blur. She dove deep into her memory trying to remember. The effort to recall such a simple thing drained her will. She closed her eye, about to abandon her mental search when it popped to the surface. “Kathrin.” The name slid into place like a key to a lock.
“Kathrin,” the woman in the room repeated weakly. “I’m Tris.”
Kathrin smiled past the ache in her face. Hearing the name made her feel stronger, more hopeful of surviving this ordeal, whatever this ordeal was.
“Hang in there, Tris,” she replied through cracked lips. “We’re going to make it through this.”
three
Tuesday, April 26th
11:15 a.m.—Falling Water, West Virginia
WOLF looked out the kitchen window and watched the flatbed tractor trailer carefully wind its way toward the farmhouse along the dirt driveway. The dust cloud drifted in the dead air and lingered long after the truck had reached the barn.
Only Chief Petty Officer Seifert and Nick, dressed in jeans and flannel shirts, remained outside to greet the driver. But Wolf watched to make sure the hired trucker didn’t appear too curious about the farm or its inhabitants.
“Betty!” Nick yelled toward the barn. “Bring the tractor!”
Nick had taken to calling Jo Ann Zook, the sole female among the small cadre of SEAL and CIA rebels, Betty Boop. The sound of a large diesel engine coughed to life inside the barn and a moment later Jo pushed the double doors open. She returned inside briefly then drove the large John Deere tractor into the gravel circle outside the barn.
Nick climbed into the cab as she rolled slowly toward the truck and trailer. She moved aside and let Nick take the wheel to back it up to the trailer.