Do Not Call

by Julian Folk

  The two homeowners, Professor Connor Yard and novelist Ayelet Martin, were unharmed.

  The shooting death of Dr. Harris was the only one witnessed by viewers.

  Within an hour, FBI agent Robert Yard, Professor Yard’s older brother, arrived on the scene.

  He was strangled by an unknown suspect who escaped into nearby woods—

  “Nobody’s stronger than Robert,” Jimmy says.

  “Connor’s the one who gets his butt kicked, not Robert,” Jan says.

  “He musta got took by surprise,” Jimmy says.

  The suspect is a white male in his 30s, large build, with a black beard and curly brown hair.

  He is believed to be armed and dangerous.

  Agent Yard is in critical condition at a Springfield hospital.

  This comes on the heels of a digital stalking/abuse campaign targeting Professor Yard and Miss Martin.

  The perpetrators appear to belong to a group called HACKTIVATE.

  The FBI now believes that HACKTIVATE is not the independent hacking consortium it was previously thought to be.

  Investigators say the group is backed by a hostile government or a foreign corporation closely aligned with one.

  Jimmy clicks the remote’s big red button.

  “No one tells us shit but Scott Pelley,” Jimmy says.

  “How often do our sons get together in the same place?” Jan says. “We shoulda been there. Coulda talked to those cops.”

  “Nobody gets the best of Robert in a fair fight.”

  “Oh, the bearded guy cheated big time.”

  “This is worse than Eric Rice.”

  “We shoulda streamed the damn gorillas.”

  “Say, Jan, I already packed halfa suitcase, you know, for Connor’s thirtieth—”

  The house loses power. Living room fades to black. The front door opens. No, it wasn’t locked. Nobody locks their doors in this neighborhood.

  Minor inflows of streetlight and moonlight alleviate some darkness.

  The unwanted guest glides inside. She’s the kind of person you don’t see in Franklin Square, at least as an adult. The kind of person who graduates college, gets a good job, moves away and never visits.

  Jan and Jimmy see the silhouette and then some:

  Six foot tall. Gorgeous. Celebrity cheekbones. Asian ancestry. This uninvited guest’s clothes fit her form: black pants, thin black top. Her body is a bendy statue of small curves and hard muscles. It distracts you from the gun holstered on her chest.

  Jimmy makes her as a potential assassin, tied in somehow to the bearded man. Those thighs could suffocate him like a snake. Cell phones lie beside spotless takeout containers. He reaches for his phone, she shoots his pincer off.

  The question of what kind of people would hurt Robert rattles around Jan’s head.

  This lady could, if she had to.

  Time hasn’t chiseled lines on the intruder’s face. The nearer she stalks, the younger she looks. Something upsets her, no doubt. Life threw a wet blanket on her good mood today.

  Jan’s assessment: Girl can kill but she’s not a killer.

  Jimmy makes a bid to save their lives. He tells the truth:

  “We saw the news, young lady. If my wife and boys and grandsons are goin’ down, I don’t mind. You can shoot me. But if they’re not, I’d like to open up a dialogue with you, if you’re interested…”

  Out of habit, he reaches for his soda. She draws her gun faster than he reaches. “The soda,” the woman says. “Not the phone.”

  Damn sharp eyesight.

  The woman holsters the gun, swoops in like a bird and snatches the phones. Her pretty fingers dismember them. Their remains fall to the floor like trash.

  Lightheadedness strikes Jan. Her chest tightens. Indigestion creeps up. Sweat percolates on her forehead. Gas cramps tweak her bowels.

  “Our younger son had his, uh, nuts cut off,” Jan says. “This has to do with that, I’m guessin’.”

  “Sounds right to me,” the intruder says. “I’m told the bare minimum.”

  She stalks closer. She moves soundlessly on the creaky floor. Elegant, confident movements. Jan suspects the woman was born or raised elsewhere.

  Youth is her weakness.

  “You’re a baby,” Jan says.

  That gets her. Light shines in her eyes. She cracks a smile.

  “Pack a bag,” the intruder says. “One bag each. Take nothing digital under any circumstances. Don’t make a young FBI agent go back empty-handed.”

  Jimmy stands and offers his wife a hand.

  Jan’s symptoms won’t abate.

  “We don’t get around like we used to,” Jan says.

  “I’m sorry but you must pack,” the woman says, “or I’ll take you as you are.”

  The intruder’s approach leaves much to be desired. Jimmy’s mind doesn’t trust her, but his heart does. Ain’t no evidence of malice here.

  “If the lady had it in for us, Jan,” he whispers, “she wouldn’t let us take a bag.”

  “I’m Nikki,” the intruder says. “Pleased to meet you.”

  Jan stands and wobbles. “Hey Nikki.” The sweat cascades down her forehead and cheeks.

  Heart-attack or panic attack?

  “Pack,” Nikki says. “No stalling.”

  Jimmy trudges up the stairs. Jan follows and gives Nikki some side-eye.

  “She’s so bossy,” she says at the landing, hoping Nikki hears.

  Jimmy does as he’s told. He and his old lady planned on surprising Connor and Ayelet up there in the Berkshires for Connor’s thirtieth, the suitcase, in the corner of the bedroom, already filled with slacks and sport shirts, the kind of clothes a forty-three-year custodian at Carey High School never wore frequently enough to get comfortable in. Jimmy’s toiletries resist being gathered—he loses his electric tooth brush to the toilet water and drops and kicks his deodorant; the cap comes off and the stick rubs the hairy bathroom floor. Still, he fills his bag.

  Defiant, Jan dials 911 on the landline, hears no dial tone, hangs up, tries again. She checks the phone’s connection. Yup, the cord attaches to the jack. She unplugs it and plugs it back in. Still no dial tone.

  Nikki speaks in a tone of command:

  “I cut the line.”

  Neither spouse faces her.

  They know she drew her gun.

  “Mrs. Yard, don’t make me bind your wrists.”

  Jimmy finally faces the intruder. Yup, the gun’s drawn. In her other hand, cuffs and gags.

  “This is bad enough,” he tells Jan. “We shouldn’t make it worse.”

  Jan cries and shakes and compresses her surgically-repaired heart as Jimmy packs her suitcase.

  “Who are you?” Jan asks.

  Jimmy is allergic to confrontation, but his wife is upset, and he needs to do right by her.

  “If you could just tell us who, specifically, sent you,” he says.

  Nikki holds eye contact with the frightened retirees. Her hard expression looks inanimate. But the façade dissolves. She lets it. Exposes the youthful good cheer under it.

  “Robert sent me,” Nikki says. “I’m his Side Chick.”

  Nikki whips out her phone, a burner Robert gave her, and snaps a photo of his parents—big flash—to capture the precious confusion on their wizened mugs.

  Chapter 11

  Honolulu, Hawaii

  The drone flies at an altitude of 900 feet. At risk of being heard, it transmits video. The level of detail astounds.

  Noland re-watches key footage.

  Yard and Martin hurry down the steps of their North Berkshire house. The camera’s extreme zoom function reveals the goose bites on Martin’s ankles. Husband and wife lug backpacks, big hiking ones. They disappear under tree cover.

  The trees of North Berkshire hide so much. They render the ambulances, fire trucks and SWAT trucks invisible. Noland focuses attention on small gaps in the foliage and feeds an instruction to Kendra, the drone operator: “Get me the targets. Any means n
ecessary. Just don’t crash. Or Plinkton won’t let me go home...”

  Another drone operator, Kendra’s girlfriend Lisa, queries him: “Should I let the asshole, Bud, go?”

  “Hold on,” Noland says.

  Monitor 1 shows Kendra’s drone scouring North Berkshire for Connor and Ayelet, zeroing in on those tiny gaps in the green, where dogwalkers are seen.

  Monitor 2 shows the Strangler, Bud, hauling his deadly bulk north, around the lake that borders the Yard-Martin property. Cops pursue. Shooting on the run. It slows them down. Trees eat the bullets.

  “I watch Bud wolf down pancakes, pizza, burritos and cheesecake,” Noland tells the drone pilots. “Yet he’s the fastest, strongest and toughest of the Programmers.”

  “Bud hates women,” Kendra says, “pathologically.”

  “I see a car in the woods,” Lisa says. “Looks like Arun’s Jeep. Parked on a trail. Arun’s gonna drive him out. They’re safe.”

  “Alright, thanks,” Noland says. “If you could join Kendra and locate the targets.”

  “Sure thing,” Lisa says.

  Noland toggles back to the Yard-Martin house. No overhead footage available. He hacks the Programmers feeds. The living room camera shows Robert Yard on a stretcher, breathing from an oxygen mask. State troopers question him and remove the mask to get answers.

  What a beast. Robert was standing there taking a piss. Out of nowhere, Bud’s upper half flew in the window. His hands clasped Robert’s neck and twisted. It didn’t snap. Robert’s reflexes and strength prevailed. Bud switched to asphyxiation. Robert punched backward over his shoulder.

  Kendra pipes in: “Two more birds joined us. Altitude, 450 feet. Anybody who’s listening at ground level hears them.”

  Lisa pipes in: “I’d use the words ‘erratic’ to describe their movements.”

  “Desperate-ass Programmers,” Noland says. “Vincent and Maisie. Avoid them.”

  Noland hacks the Programmer’s drone feeds.

  Same view, same hindrances. Just closer to the treetops. Cars come-and-go on Main Street. Any one of them might contain the targets. Noland runs some plates. The database returns useless results.

  He toggles between drone feeds, watching a total of four monitors. Monitor 3 displays the Programmers’ Annex near the Smithsonian. While piloting the drone, Vincent flips out, spikes a latte on the floor, curses, stomps his feet. Maisie sobs, her face buried in her lap, her drone veering wildly, at risk of crashing.

  Noland wastes another hour of the ladies’ time and lets them go. The corpses remain in the North Berkshire house. CSIs process the scene. No sign of Yard and Martin.

  The neighbor, Gladys, stows a suitcase in her trunk and vamooses. So do other neighbors. Students and townies overrun the Main Street bars.

  This is the biggest fuckup Noland’s witnessed.

  Worse than Snowden.

  A black eye for Cyber Ops/Psy Ops/Black Ops.

  A black eye for the National Security community.

  A black eye for the United States of America.

  A black eye for the global fight against terrorism.

  Noland pees, brews a K-cup, raps on Plinkton’s door and nudges it ajar.

  Plinkton talks on the phone, nods in a frenzy, says “Yes sir, Yes sir.” To Noland, he mouths the name “Jasper.” After that geriatric unloads on a bureaucrat, he outlines a path forward. To deal with this fuckup, Jasper surely has a contingency plan. He always does. The contingency plan is actually a vital part of the original plan.

  There’s a lesson to be learned there.

  Noland zombies back to his cube.

  Action on Monitor 3. The Annex. Vincent and Maisie do the deed roughly on a table. We’ve all seen it. He switches the monitors off and picks up Book I of The Mother of the World. This is his fourth reading of the series. Since Showtime canceled the TV show, which he believes would have been superior to Game of Thrones, Noland’s only hope is for Ayelet to survive and write Books IV through VI.

  Please, Jasper, let his favorite author live.

  He reads an hour and ditches the book. He’s not a bibliophile. For Noland, even the best novel lags after fifty, sixty pages.

  Plinkton drums the cube wall.

  “Double down,” he says. “Jasper’s orders. Vincent has a day or two to tidy up his mess. Don’t sweat the psycho stuff, kid. Watch. Assess. Report. That’s your job.” The supervisor drums the cover of Book I. “Reread Ayelet’s books again if you have to. I’m on Book III—I wish we could keep the author alive but I doubt it. Go on a date, Noland. Watch porn at your station. Bang a pro in the conference room. Contribute to PETA. I don’t give a shit. Whatever it takes. Watch. Assess. Report. No more, no less.”

  Noland tries on a dejected look.

  “I just read fifty pages,” he says.

  “Go for a dive off the submarine dock,” Plinkton says. “Cover your tracks, though. Nobody’s supposed to use it.”

  “Thanks, Boss,” Noland says.

  Diving is fun. A real perk of the job. He wished and hoped for permission today. Now he has it.

  They built this complex in the sixties. Originally intended it to be a cold war installation, a Pacific bunker to shelter the Power Elite. When the Cold War fizzled, NSA claimed it.

  He hacked the system for fun one day and discovered the abandoned submarine dock.

  Noland manipulated permission to scuba dive a year ago and keeps his gear on the dock.

  To frolic underwater with marine life mitigates the stress induced by Watching Assessing and Reporting the escalating twistedness of the Programmers’ antics.

  Those four psychopaths…

  Diving trains Noland to keep his eyes peeled for long stretches of time.

  After the dive, he showers in the locker room. The adrenalin subsides. His body feels unreal and his mind seems disembodied. A lightning strike of insight electrifies him:

  I know too much.

  Too much about Jasper, too much about the Programmers.

  I need my own contingency plan.

  Chapter 12

  Western Massachusetts/Vermont

  When Robert lifted her to her feet and slipped the envelope in her pocket.

  And she packed her bag.

  And Connor heaved his body at the locked door.

  And they lied to Spagnoli about their intentions and fled the house.

  And they wandered the neighborhood, sticking their keys in the holes of old cars.

  And a gold, mid-90s Toyota Camry magically unlocked.

  And she flopped into the passenger seat and Baby kicked hard.

  And Connor inserted the key and started the old-school ignition.

  And the car merged onto the parkway.

  And the flow of traffic absorbed them.

  Ayelet was exhilarated.

  Yeah, the act of defying the digital terrorists exhilarates Ayelet.

  Not so much for Connor. Liquid anxiety circulates in his bloodstream. His hands jitter on the wheel, ass shifts in the driver’s seat. Hubby’s Big Bro nearly bought the farm.

  And Robert never liked her.

  The feeling wasn’t mutual.

  Maybe he softened a smidge—Robert left a pool bag of munchies in the passenger-side footspace. The envelopes he slipped in their pockets contained directions to a place in the Northeast Kingdom. Raised in Boston, Ayelet had visited Burlington in the northwestern part of Vermont and Bennington in the southwestern part. But the Northeast Kingdom, that’s Moose and Bear Country.

  Connor asks nervous questions like, “You think drones are watching us?”

  Ayelet answers to the best of her ability:

  “There’s no alternative to this, Babe.”

  She rests her hand on Connor’s thigh. The touch adds to his anxiety. He glances at his rearview, looks out the window and up to the sky. He swerves in the lane but hews obsessively to the speed limit. Twice he tells Ayelet to plug the Vermont address into the GPS, only to remember there is no GPS.

  “
You think there’ll be a team of agents up there, to fight these guys?” he asks. “You think it’s a staging ground?”

  “Robert did a lot of work,” she says. What she wants to say is focus on the road, man, or we’ll never find out. “When that fleabag strangled your brother, he attacked the FBI. When the hackers manipulated the SWAT team into shooting innocent people, they enraged every police officer in the country. These criminals are being hunted. The FBI is hungry. The police are hungry.”

  “I need to go back in my past,” Connor says. “I need to talk to my friend E.J.—”

  Ayelet wonders, Who is E.J. and why wasn’t he at the wedding?

  “E.J. has hyperthymesia,” Connor says. “If we bullied anyone together, or if he heard of me bullying anyone, E.J. will remember it better than you and I remember…the mass killing that just occurred in our home.”

  “Let’s wait ’til we get to Vermont,” Ayelet says, “and ask the agents about the wisdom of pursuing that lead.”

  “Of course,” Connor says. “Definitely. But E.J. remembers.”

  Ayelet places her hand on Connor’s thigh again. She smiles at him. She’s proud of her husband. He snuck out of the house to mail his brother a letter and wasn’t detected, not even by his wife. He hasn’t gotten them killed yet. He’s growing and changing by the day. He’ll be such a good father to Baby, if he gets the chance…

  “Connor Junior,” Ayelet says. “That’s what we’re naming Baby.”

  “Fine by me.”

  But the look in her husband’s eyes reads wrong. His expression is spacey. His thoughts are elsewhere. His eyes don’t see the car in front of them.

  CRASH!

  “Shit! Connor!”

  He rear-ended an Audi. No airbags deployed. The other driver pulls to the side of the road.

  Connor’s not fit to drive. Ayelet knew. She did nothing.

  Items in the back seat, which neither of them knew about, come flying to the front. Fresh deli sandwiches, bottles of water, books, Swiss army knives, license plates, jumper cables…

  “Pull over behind the woman you hit and change places with me,” Ayelet says. “I’ll do the talking. Sit tight and look pretty.”