by Jason Kasper
“An airport. How many missions have you done for the Outfit?”
“One.”
“What did it require?”
The recovery of a case, I thought, that I later found out contained a billet of highly enriched uranium plucked from the black market by the Handler himself. My mind danced to the mission’s end, when I confronted Jais with the truth I’d pieced together from the fragments of conversations I’d overheard since becoming a criminal mercenary.
You said we’d only be outgunned as long as we were missing. The last person who told me that was Matz. I worked with him, and Boss, and Ophie. And Karma. None of them survived that day, and yet there’s a survivor. That’s how I know who you are…You had already left by the time I met them. They didn’t call you Jais; they called you Caspian.
My partner’s response to the accusation still rang painfully in my head. They were pushing it too far, David…They wouldn’t let me leave. I had to make them think I was dead.
I met Sage’s eyes. “I’ll tell you all about it at the debrief. Unless it will just be me and him?”
She smiled. “Not a chance. Why aren’t your teammates from the mission with you?”
I was again transported back to the hilltop with Caspian. I watched Ophie torture Luka to death for killing you…Luka kept saying it wasn’t him, that the Iranian killed you. That was your scout, wasn’t it? In the desert I asked if Sergio recruited you. You said it was an Iranian named Roshan.
A chill ran down my spine as I replied, “There were only two of us.”
In my mind, Caspian was limping toward me, forcing my hand. My last words to him were a promise that I was going to kill the Handler.
Then I shot him four times, once for each of the teammates he had betrayed.
“And?” she asked.
After he’d fallen, I gave him one final bullet. For me.
I replied, “My partner is dead.”
She drew in a long breath before her face relaxed into a self-satisfied grin. “I understand.”
“You understand what?”
She didn’t answer. Instead, she watched me absently as I waited for her response, processing something behind the closed doors of her mind.
Rising soundlessly from her seat, she slipped through the doorway and slid the door back in place, the silence of the cabin punctuated by a single click of the lock re-engaging.
I raced through a mental summary of our exchange, trying to make some sense of her questions and intentions. How much did she know? How much had I revealed? Before I could consider it for more than a minute, the plane lifted slightly and then hit hard on a runway.
I flew halfway out of my seat before catching myself as the cabin’s silence was broken by the screeching rumble of thrust reversers, wheel brakes, and wind resistance against the groaning aircraft frame. I braced myself with strained arms and legs for a full twenty seconds before everything went quiet once again.
I fell back into my chair with a grunt as the jet easily transitioned to a gentle forward roll. We reached a near-complete stop, and the nose of the plane veered left and then carved a neat circle in place before halting altogether. I heard the mechanical whirring of the airstair lowering, followed by hushed voices and the sound of approaching footsteps.
“Mr. Rivers,” a man’s voice called from the other side of the cabin door. “You are now under advanced security protocol, and any failure to comply with my instructions will be treated as a threat. Do you understand?”
His tone was as professional as a hotel concierge, and he spoke in a crisp British accent.
“Yes,” I replied. “I understand.”
“Face the closed lavatory door. Stand with your feet shoulder-width apart, arms straight out to your sides, hands open with palms facing down.”
I rose and turned away from the voice, doing as he said. “I’ve assumed the position.”
The click of the lock sounded behind me, and I sensed a man entering.
“Remain still until directed otherwise, eyes straight ahead.”
The squared point of a black metal detector wand appeared beside my face and swept over my head before tracking around my entire body.
Once finished, the man slid a pair of goggles over my eyes. The lenses were completely blacked out, and the elastic strap fit snugly against the back of my head. My last sight before the black veil blinded me was of the lavatory door’s glossy wooden veneer.
“Lower your hands to your sides, then turn to face my voice.”
I complied, shuffling in a circle, and almost immediately felt the cool clasp of metal handcuffs around my wrists as they were bound in front of me. Then the man’s hands encircled my sides, routing a chain behind the small of my back. He pulled the chain snug around my waist, binding my handcuffs to the restraint belt with a series of tugs and metallic clicks.
“Move forward, Mr. Rivers.”
He pulled me forward by my cuffs, and as I walked to the front of the plane, a second man’s gloved hand gripped the back of my neck from behind. The sound of the idling jet engines grew louder—we were approaching the open door—and just before the smell of jet exhaust sliced through the air, I caught a whiff of Sage’s perfume.
I turned my head toward the scent and pulled at the restraint belt but found no more than a few inches of slack at my maximum range of motion. So I waved with one hand and called out, “I think I’ll miss you most of all, Sage.”
“Turn left,” the man instructed, and as I did so a blast of icy air hit me. Curt commands guided me down the airstair and onto an unseen tarmac, one hand still on my neck and another now on my right triceps, guiding me from behind.
“Step down.”
“Flat ground.”
“Walk forward.”
I walked along the pavement, my muscles tensing against an air temperature that must have been in the thirties. Burning jet exhaust gave way to moist air clean with altitude and muddled with the heavy scent of pine, and the temperature seemed below freezing. As the sound of the plane grew quieter, I could hear the footsteps of at least four people falling in a steady cadence around me.
The British man said, “Everything from the time you left the Complex until you return to it is classified. You are not to speak of it again, under any circumstances.”
“I’m in the habit of keeping it to myself when I’ve been blindfolded and chained up by strange men.”
“Anyone who asks about your time here, even the smallest details, is to be reported to your Outfit chain of command immediately. Failure to do so at the earliest opportunity is considered evidence of treason.”
I gave a low, respectful whistle. “Just treason, or would that be considered, like, high treason?”
We came to a stop, and a second voice said, “David Rivers by direct request. Negative metal, restrained by 629.”
I felt myself beginning to shiver. “I’m just trying to figure out if punishment would be the king’s gallows or being hanged by the neck. Is it as bad as trading with the pirates and American colonies?”
A beep, a door handle clacking open, and I was led indoors—no pine, just warm air and the smell of metal and smooth plastic surfaces—before we passed back into the cold and I heard the rattle of a chain-link gate sliding open. As I stepped onto a softer surface, the ground shook with the roar of the jet throttling down the runway.
Then I heard the clanking of a second gate closing just behind me as I inhaled deeply through my nostrils: resinous pine, mountain air, though not the familiar low-altitude humidity of the Smokies that I would have recognized at once from a dozen hiking trips.
Pacific Northwest?
The British voice said, “I strongly advise steering clear of humor when you meet him.”
“His loss. I’ve got a ton of Revolutionary War material—” I stumbled on a stair to my front, and a set of hands caught me from behind.
“Step up,” the voice said.
I recovered my balance and walked up three stairs.
&n
bsp; We passed into the mercifully warm interior of a building and a door clanged shut behind me. The metallic echo ringing around us sounded like a bank vault, probably reinforced against breaching, and I caught a whiff of gun oil. Hushed voices whispered on either side of me as another door opened and I was led around a turn and down a corridor.
Another halt as the voice said, “Lock-out clear.”
The response came from a radio speaker above us. “Proceed.”
We entered another room, and the jangle of chains ended as I was stopped in place. I felt leg irons being clasped around my ankles.
Feet scuffled on smooth tile as the men around me moved into some preordained configuration. I sniffed; the scent of antiseptic was faintly discernable in the stale air around me. Then another door opened and closed to my front, and a solitary set of footsteps echoed off the tile.
A new voice, this one distinctly Southern and as genteel as a plantation owner, said, “Any problems?”
The Brit behind me responded, “None at all.”
A set of hands tugged gently at my handcuffs, then the leg irons, inspecting that my restraints were properly applied.
“This’ll do,” the Southern voice said. “Have your team stand by outside. Shouldn’t take long.”
A group of footsteps departed behind me, the door slamming closed as they left.
The door to my front opened again and the Southerner called, “Whenever you’re ready, sir.”
“You don’t have to call me sir,” I said.
He gave a quiet, rapid-fire chuckle, then leaned in beside me and whispered, “I like you, boy, but you got about three seconds to put yourself right with the Lord.”
I heard him step back, and for a moment I thought I detected murmuring voices somewhere in the distance before they went silent and a new set of footsteps echoed off the walls in front of me. Their methodical, rhythmic beat grew louder with each step, and between the footfalls and the ringing in my ears I could’ve sworn that the Southerner’s breathing quickened. My own heart rate grew faster, thumping to a fever pitch as my pulse slammed in my head.
The footsteps turned a corner, then came to a stop inches away as I inhaled a clove-like incense smell in the seconds before he touched me. My circulatory system was in overdrive, manifesting all the physiological effects of a crisis situation as I stood unbearably still: chained, shackled, and unable to show the increasing panic that I felt.
Fingertips grazed my scalp, pinching to a close around my temples and sliding the elastic band of my goggles over the back of my head.
His eyes were amber.
Lucid golden pupils fixed on mine, the stare piercing through the room’s bright lighting as my vision adjusted.
Blinking to gain perspective, I took in his face for the first—and very likely last—time in my life.
Short, thick eyebrows cast his amber eyes into black shadow with the slightest movement of his forehead. A Roman nose skewed to the right—perhaps one bad break in the past, or maybe several—and was set within a long, gaunt face. His skin was dark but not enough to identify a heritage—he could have been Native or Latin American, Indian or North African, Middle Eastern or Mediterranean. In his sixties, if he’d aged well, fifties if he hadn’t, but certainly not outside those parameters. His head was shaved down to salt-and-pepper stubble.
His face receded and lifted from view, and I realized he’d been leaning down to meet my eyes. He was lean and rangy: over six feet, with long, slender arms that ended in spiderlike hands.
One of them set upon my shoulder, the touch of those spindly fingers sending a flurry of chills up my spine and making the breath catch in my throat.
“David, welcome back from Africa.” His voice had one of those indiscernibly foreign accents, somewhere between South African and European, that I couldn’t narrow down any further. “Thank you for retrieving my case.”
“It was my pleasure,” I said, resuming my breathing and swallowing hard. I looked past him at the tiled walls of my surroundings, everything silvery and spotless. “Nice to meet you at last.”
“Proceed with your debrief.” He held the blacked-out goggles to his side, and a third man in the room stepped forward to take them.
My eyes darted sideways to assign a face to the Southerner, who was now putting the goggles into his pocket. He was a stout man wearing an open-collared dress shirt over a black canvas belt that supported a row of inverted magazines. The opposite hip bore a holstered racegun: a 1911 modified to the extent that only a professional-grade competitive shooter could come close to utilizing its full capabilities. Barrel extension, reflex sight, and a double-stack, high-capacity magazine indicating it was chambered in 9mm or .40 cal.
I looked back to the Handler, whose hands were folded to his front. Then I confidently began, “Our plane hit a storm over the Kenya-Somalia border—”
“I am familiar with the particulars,” he said, nodding graciously. “So tell me what has escaped me thus far.”
“I’ve been assured that nothing escapes you.”
He spoke with the slow, patient cadence of wisdom. “Your partner placed a distress call stating that you were both surrounded by an overwhelming force of enemy fighters.”
“That’s correct.”
“My recovery team reported that they arrived to find your partner dead and no enemy in sight.” His face shuddered slightly, as if he found the contradiction distasteful. “Surely you can explain this dissonance?”
“Before we were overrun, he told me two words to use as a last resort.”
“Which were what, exactly?”
“Khasham Khada.”
He inhaled through his nostrils. “And then your partner was killed?”
“We were both knocked unconscious in the mortar attack. I woke up to the sound of him being shot, and then I yelled the words.”
“Foot soldiers don’t know the meaning of Khasham Khada, I believe. Who did you yell these words to, David?”
“Their commander.”
“Whose name was…?”
“Sasa.”
The Handler nodded deeply, assuming a tight smile as if I had mentioned an old friend. “A 62-year-old Yemeni Al Qaeda operations officer not known for his compassion who was leading a platoon-sized element of fighters to personally oversee the recovery of the case. You must have quite the bluff.”
“My options were limited. I played the only card I had.”
“And lived to tell about it. Well done, David. But”—he hesitated—“this brings two complications to mind.”
“Which are?”
“First, the nature of what you now know, but shouldn’t. Khasham Khada itself is a simple phrase, a variation of the Farsi expression for ‘wrath of God.’ But in this context, David, it is one of the last vestiges of an ancient code of honor. Any aggression once those words are invoked represents a declaration of war against my Organization.”
“I didn’t speak it to anyone but the enemy trying to steal your case. Ask Sergio if you don’t believe me—I told him I would only discuss the specifics of my survival with you, in person.”
His chin was tucked low as he spoke, a slight tremor of movement in his head. “The authority to declare war on my behalf is an authority reserved for my highest envoys. Your excursion into Somalia did not grant you status as my direct representative, and yet you spoke the words anyway.”
“If I hadn’t, you wouldn’t have the case.”
“No one is disputing that. But this brings us to the second complication in this matter of ours.”
“Which is?”
“There is no possibility that your late partner could have known the words Khasham Khada.”
I felt my lungs constrict. “I don’t know how he knew, but the fact that I’m alive right now is proof that he did.”
The Handler didn’t respond. Instead, he seemed to be contemplating some philosophical question, the focus of his eyes shifting to some grander matter than the petty affair in which he current
ly found himself engaged.
“Tell me,” he said abruptly, “about the storm.”
“The storm?”
“The one that altered the flight path of your infiltration into Somalia.”
I stammered, “It, ah, was violent. A lot of turbulence. We were knocked down a few times before the emergency bailout.”
“And yet you exited the plane anyway.”
“We had no choice. The pilots had found a clear path, and we freefell between storm clouds.”
“It seemed terrifying, didn’t it?”
“It had my full attention at the time.”
“Good.” He nodded. “Very good, indeed. Now take a walk with me, David.”
He turned his back to me and walked out the door to my front. Racegun’s left hand immediately clamped onto the back of my arm, and he guided me forward with his non-gun side.
We rounded a corner to find a short hallway with three doors on the wall to my left. The middle one was open, and the Handler approached it as he continued speaking.
“The terror of the storm is a uniquely human phenomenon, David. You see, we are but transient life forms perceiving a greater terror in the sky above us.”
As I was shuffled forward in my leg irons, I decided that this guy was even more insane than I’d thought. I followed him into a room built like a giant shower, with tiled walls and a floor beset by a large circular drain.
The primary fixture inside was a throne of sorts—a high-backed, utilitarian chair of thick golden wood segments arranged into uncomfortable right angles and situated at the dead center of the room.
In it sat a paunchy Indian man restrained by leather straps at his ankles, chest, wrist, and lap, his head shaved into an awkward buzz cut and topped with a metal cap that was strapped around his jaw. From the top of this metallic crown emerged a long, writhing red snake of a cable running down his side and behind the chair. The Indian man was sweating heavily, and he looked at me with deep-set eyes that I recognized at once.
He was my fellow conspirator from the Redwood forest the year before, which now seemed a lifetime away.