On The Black: (A CIA Thriller)

by Theo Cage

  Rice went under and grabbed the anchor chain that had flipped into the water when he capsized the boat. He had no illusions the aluminum boat would provide shielding from large caliber machine gun bullets. But he knew they would gain a few seconds from the pilot’s confusion over the missing occupants. They would scan the area looking for them. But they would eventually attack the boat. It's what he would do. No stone unturned.

  Under the water, despite the cloudy day, visibility was good. The water was clearer than expected. He watched Britt pull herself down the chain, her feet kicking. Then he heard the distant muffled roar of the H320 machine gun and saw the bullets plow into the pale green water around them. They streaked through the water, a white tunnel of disturbed air and bubbles trailing them. But they lost momentum with surprising speed. What was deadly at the surface became a tumbling copper slug after five feet or so. Rice watched with fascination as they drifted past him, spinning harmlessly.

  Rice looked over at Britt who was making a sign with her fingers. She was pointing up. She wanted to head back to the boat. Rice flashed five fingers to her twice. He was trying to communicate ten more seconds. But she obviously couldn't wait. The first barrage of bullets has stopped. The gunner was considering his options. It was hard to judge success without a visible target. Maybe he was looking for blood in the water.

  Rice followed Britt up and he broke the surface of the water under the boat seconds after her.

  “Do it again,” said Rice. “Hyperventilate.”

  “No problem,” said Britt, breathing in noisy gulps of air, probably referring to her state of mind.

  Rice looked up. The boat was perforated with hundreds of holes, the grey light painting the surface of the water with a pattern of floating dots. Pretty under any other circumstances.

  “Let's go. This time we head east.” He pointed. “Grab the seaweed to stay down. Follow me.”

  Rice dove and pulled himself down the anchor chain. He heard the machine gun open up again and felt anger blossom in his chest. Would this ever stop? Britt bumped into his shoulder. She was in a hurry, which was a good thing. Bullets were everywhere around them, showering down.

  One slug hit Rice on the head, probably traveling about the speed of a fastball. It didn't penetrate the skin, but it still hurt, reminding Rice of how close they had come to a quick and ugly death.

  He reached over from the chain and grabbed a handful of weeds, pulling himself in the direction of the shore, anchoring himself to the bottom, the pull of flotation keeping his feet dangling above him. They moved that way along the bottom for a minute or so, their lungs burning, stirring up the murky river bottom.

  Feeling they could go no further, Rice pulled Britt to him and let go of the weeds. They bobbed up. Rice broke the surface in a thick mass of bulrushes, the brown seedpods waving back and forth about them. The water was only four to five feet deep. If they kept their heads down, Rice thought they might be able to stay hidden in the thick marsh close to the shore. He could hear the chopper, but couldn't see anything through the mass of rushes.

  “Now what?” asked Britt.

  “Good question,” answered Rice. “They've shot up an old capsized fishing boat and probably drawn a lot of attention to themselves. The only place they can land is a quarter mile from here, but then they have no easy way to get to this side. To the east is swamp and trees. Sometimes helicopters can be a pain in the ass.”

  “You wouldn't be saying that if we were still sitting on the boat,” added Britt.

  “Wasn’t it your idea to go for a swim?”

  “I needed to make up for the spa treatment you promised me,” she said.

  Rice could hear the helicopter rotors growing louder. They were probably guessing the occupants had headed for shore. Or they were just looking for bodies.

  Rice pulled the grey poncho Britt was wearing off her head and peeled his off as well. He pushed them both down into the mud with his foot. The grey plastic would stand out too much from the surrounding marsh.

  “Get down,” he said. She crouched in the muddy water, her face near to his, her hair plastered to her forehead.

  “Sorry I had to land in your backyard,” he said.

  “That's alright,” said Britt. “A friend of mine told me I was stuck in a rut. She said I needed to be more adventurous.” She wiped some river mud off her cheek, her eyes on the horizon. “Easy for her to say though. She's not sitting in a swamp with a terrorist.”

  CHAPTER 95

  Indian Creek, Indiana

  THE PILOT PULLED THE BLACK HAWK up with his stick and hovered over the sinking fishing boat. The hundreds of bullet holes removed any buoyancy from the old hull, and the wreck was now settling into the dark water, slowly moving with the current downstream.

  Trent Razer had given the command to eliminate the two fishers. The pilot was surprised to find them gone when he circled back, the boat upside down in the water. The last thing he expected an escaped terrorist to do was to troll for bass. And if they were trained killers, where did they disappear to? Even an ex-Navy Seal didn't have gills. They had to come up eventually.

  Of course, there was always the possibility the bodies were trapped under the boat. They probably didn't expect to be fired upon.

  The pilot slowly moved the bird towards the muzzy shoreline choked with weeds and rushes and old logs. There was no safe place to put down, to do a foot search. He hovered again, scanning the bull rushes waving in the wash from his rotating blades, moving as low as he could. Razor paid well, but he was a tough taskmaster. If the pilot missed anything, there would be hell to pay and no bonus.

  From his blind in the weeds. Rice shot four times, following the slow turn of the hovering bird. One of them connected, killing the pilot instantly. He fell back, pulling the stick with him, forcing the nose up. The Black Hawk whined, the rotors cavitating, the ship sliding back and down. Rice could see the gunner, on his side, hanging on to the handle of the gun, bracing himself.

  The helicopter rolled on to its side, tail rotor down, and hit the water. The rotor blades threw up a rooster tail of river water and then the giant blades snapped as they hit the river bottom. The bird quickly settled into the churning surface of the water.

  Rice and Britt were up at this point, slogging through the sucking mud near the shore, making their way to the tree line. What they couldn't see was the bird’s gunner, climbing down off the Black Hawk’s main deck and throwing himself into the river. It was Brent Razer.

  CHAPTER 96

  Indian Creek, Indiana

  WHEN BRITT TURNED BACK, her legs covered up to her knees in muck the consistency of peanut butter and her wet shirt sticking to her back, she was shocked to see another man in pursuit. Like them, he was struggling with the heavy river mud and tangled weeds and making slow progress. He also looked injured, one leg stiff and uncooperative.

  When she turned to alert Rice, she could see he had already made a decision, and was heading back towards the downed bird. She looked to the stranger dressed in black and couldn't see a gun. What was he thinking? Rice was armed and fully capable of shooting helicopters right out of the sky. What hope did this mercenary have?

  Rice was slogging back through the wet cement-like muck when Britt saw him return his gun to his shoulder holster. She could hardly believe what she was seeing.

  When Rice got to within a few feet of the other man, they both stopped. Rice raised his hands.

  “Turn around,” said Rice. “I don't have the stomach to kill anymore today. Especially Special Forces. That’s a huge waste of years of training. “

  “No can do,” said the other man. “I have a job to do.”

  “A job given to you by a commander with RCI?” Britt had heard the expression before. Rectal cranial inversion. Head up your ass.

  “You may be right. But an order is still an order.”

  Rice shook his head. “You've been warned. And you're an idiot,” said Rice, his hands on his hips. Britt watched them stand ther
e motionless, the military helicopter on its side in the background, two of the giant rotor blades poking up at odd angles into the murky sky.

  The other man hunched forward like he was about to leap and Rice simply punched him, a heavy roundhouse right that connected with the mercenary’s jaw. The man wobbled back slightly, then swung at Rice, who ducked and took a glancing blow to his shoulder.

  Britt watched the strange choreography of the fight as it progressed, quickly realizing the problem.

  Neither of the fighters could depend on footwork. They were both planted and slowly sinking. The other man tried an uppercut, but it threw him off balance, and he toppled backward into the muddy soup. Rice struggled to move forward and finally took a hesitant step in the other man's direction. Then he dropped onto the sinking soldier, both hands quickly around this neck. They struggled that way, twisting in the shallow water, like two tired predators.

  Britt moved toward them, feeling helpless. She couldn't make sense of what was happening. Why wasn't Rice using his revolver? She looked around for a weapon - a piece of wood or a rock – there was nothing but weeds and filthy water.

  Britt felt like it was taking hours to make a few yards of progress. Meanwhile, the two men had exchanged positions. Rice was now prone in the water, with the other man above him, his back covered in slime. Rice's head was underwater, and the other man was leaning forward, pressing all of his weight down on the ex-agent.

  Britt took another clumsy step forward, finally losing one running shoe and sock. She felt the cold mud ooze around her toes. Two more steps was all she needed when she saw Rice roll over like some frantic marine animal and throw the other man sideways into the brown soupy water. They grappled with each other, kicking and clawing unwilling to get up just to be trapped again in the river mud.

  Britt took one more step, falling to one knee. She put out her hand to stop her fall and felt her arm sink right up to her shoulder. She looked over, unable now to make out Rice. Two filthy creatures were wrestling only feet from her, and she struggled to identify friend from foe. At this point, one man had struck the other in the face with his fist, mud flying through the air. Then again. And yet another, each punch growing weaker and more labored.

  Britt was crawling now, covered in grey ooze from head to foot, both feet bare. She reached the back of the man who was pummeling the other and grabbed his shoulders and wrenched him back. As they slid to the side, Britt could not even see the face of the man at the bottom anymore, and she felt her heart squeezed in her chest like someone had taken hold and was trying to rip it from her body.

  “Nooooooo!” she groaned, her hands now on the man's head, scratching for purchase, throwing her weight on him, forcing his head into the water.

  Then she heard a voice through a mouth filled with water and mud, sputter out a word. She didn't understand at first. Then she pulled her hands away.

  “Britt,” said Rice, spitting out river muck and wiping the mud from his eyes. “It's me,” he said. “I'm the good guy.”

  Britt sat back, out of breath, her knees throbbing.

  “Why didn't you use your gun?” she asked.

  Rice pushed himself up with one arm awkwardly and spat out more river water. He went to wipe his mouth, but realized it would only make things worse. His hands were shapeless lumps of clay.

  “I have two bullets left. I didn't want to waste them on him. We might need them later.”

  Rice looked down at the half-submerged body, his shoulders slumped.

  “Who was he?” asked Britt. Rice shrugged.

  “He survived the downing of his helicopter. Probably the gunner who fired on us. Just another soldier.”

  “Where did you learn to do that? Take down a helicopter.”

  Rice turned to her, squeezing the clay off his fingers, one digit at a time. Then he wiped the mud off his forehead. “Let’s get out of the open. Who knows what they’ll do next.”

  They struggled back into the shade of the forest and sat, their backs up against a moss-covered Oak tree. Britt, like Rice, was barefoot. They did inventory. She had a soggy twenty-dollar bill stuffed into her front pocket. Her purse, her phone and her ID were back at the lodge. Rice's phone was soaked and wouldn't power up, but he kept it, telling her he hoped it would dry out and there might be enough battery power to make one call. He also had one pre-paid credit card left and the keys to the half-ton pickup he had left up the road from the Inn.

  And finally, Rice had his .45 with two shells remaining - one in the breech and one in the magazine.

  Rice admitted to being stranded on missions before without supplies, but never shoeless. Traveling any distance was going to be a challenge. “We need to separate,” was all he said to Britt, waiting for a reaction.

  She just shook her head. “I'm not leaving until I get champagne and a foot rub. Until then, I'm sticking to you like glue.”

  “Be sensible, Britt. This forest is probably full of assassins. But they're after me, not you.”

  “Be sensible? Was it sensible for me to harbor a criminal for three days while the Feds circled the block? Or agree to meet you at that booby-trapped Inn you had the nerve to call a retreat? And now this? I don't swear much, Rice. But this is truly fucked up!”

  Rice propped his head back against the tree trunk. “I'm out of ideas,” he said, still scraping mud off his arms and legs. “You should head east.”

  “Can't we just surrender?” asked Britt. Rice shook his head.

  “Britt, I don't think I can protect you anymore.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Did you see me back there? Trying to talk another soldier out of doing battle? I'm a joke.”

  “You've got us this far."

  Rice put his head back. "I can't do this anymore. You can still walk away.”

  “If I had shoes."

  Rice grinned through his mud mask. “Britt, this is no joke. They'll kill you. They'll do it right in front of me if they think it will get them a scrap of information.” Britt looked down at Rice, hunched up at the base of the tree. His body looked shrunken, his head hanging like it was too heavy to carry. “You can’t depend on me, “ he said. “You know why? My wife wasn't killed by Kreegar and his mercenaries. I shot her."

  “What?"

  “When I left the service, Kreegar sent two Chechnyan freelances to bring me back. We were in Antigua when they stormed our apartment. They grabbed her.”

  “Anika.”

  Rice just nodded. “I’d made that same shot a dozen times before.” He shook his head. “I was so pissed. Why involve her? I aimed at the hostage taker’s head. He turned and the bullet hit her. I killed both of them.”

  “My God, Rice.”

  “Then I just ran. There was nothing I could do. I saw them going after the rest of my family if I stayed in the open. My friends too. And I was right.”

  “Because of what you know? The bodies?”

  Rice nodded. He had his gun out now. He wiped the mud-soaked barrel off on his sleeve and picked away at the embedded clay.

  “Who else knows?” she asked.

  “No one,” said Rice. “That's the whole point.”

  “You didn't upload the info somewhere? Into the cloud with all of your notes and photos? And then set a timer in your email to mail everything to the major news outlets if something happened to you?”

  Rice looked at her, surprised by her knowledge. “I didn't have time. When I went into hiding, a cloud was something you saw in the sky and imagined was a dolphin or a dinosaur.”

  “But they don't know that,” she said.

  Rice stared into her eyes. “Too bad they won't give me a chance to spin that lie. They have shoot on sight orders,” said Rice. He just closed his eyes. Britt guessed his preferred response involved hand grenades and rocket launchers, all of which they were sadly out of. Her tactic was starting to sound more plausible.

  “Move over,” she said, “I'm climbing this tree.”

  Using Rice's shoulde
r as her first step, she shimmied up to the first branch. From there, she reached up the next. Within a minute or two she was twenty-five feet off the ground. After several minutes of scouring the surrounding area, she climbed back down.

  “That way,” she said, pointing north. “Two soldiers in dark clothes, moving very carefully in our direction. Three hundred yards.”

  Rice reached for his gun.

  “No. You need to play hurt. I'm going to tell them you're injured. I'll play the part of the frantic female.”

  “I'm not sure if you're that good an actor.”

  Britt smiled. “You're sweet. By the time they get here, I'll have told them the story you told me. About the timer. I'll throw in some medical mumbo jumbo about your injuries. Stay down and stay quiet. Look helpless.”

  “Then what?” he asked.

  “You'll have options. It's better than a shallow grave in the muddy Indian River. You deserve better.”

  “Be careful,” was all Rice could think of saying, reluctantly passing his destiny into the hands of a woman he hardly knew.

  “If you want to get their attention - mention the operation. OK.”

  “OK, what?”

  “OK! It’s the name of the mission. Operation Kindergarten. That might get someone’s attention.”

  CHAPTER 97

  Indian Creek, Indiana

  BRITT WAS MARCHING TOWARD an uncertain future, but she was glad the journey was only a few hundred yards. Her bare feet were already painfully punctured by dozens of hidden sharp twigs and gnarled roots.

  She tried to clean herself up as she walked, squeezing the clay out of her hair and wiping her thumbs under her eyes where she imagined her mascara had smudged. But maybe pitiful was the best look to go for, so she stopped trying to improve her appearance.

  As she drew closer to the expected meeting point, she began warming up her act. She tried calling weakly.

  “Help!” She got no response. She felt she needed to amp up the anxiety level. She was a lone woman in the forest, her man mortally injured. She had experienced hundreds of similar situations in the ER, terrified spouses begging for assistance. Out of their minds with fear. She began to cry, at first a kind of low moan, building to a shriek. Then she started to run and stumble. She wanted to make sure some trigger-happy stud wasn't going to shoot her thinking she was the escapee.